Weak Cards Banlist Discussion!

[WallBuilder]

I disagree with some of the new proposed bans. I like having the banlist option to make the drafts a bit better higher quality. But the fun of Agricola is to have stronger and weaker cards, and cards that are usually weak that can sometimes be useful.


Roughcaster [There's fun combos that make it very playable]
Dutch windmill [I've usefully played it. The effect may be rubbish but any cards with points can always be useful]
Mill Wheel [Same reasoning as Dutch Windmill]
Claw Knife [Can be usefully playable]
Heart of stone - I'd never base my game around it, but if someone wants to base their game on luck that's good for them. If it works it can be strong, so should be kept in as an option.

[alexwjb]

Thanks grnt - apologies if I'm missing something, but are you sure you mean Full Peasant?!

Each time after you use the "Grain Utilization" or "Fencing" action space while the other is unoccupied, you can pay 1 food to use that other space with the same person.

It's just when you say this is a "fallback resource", I'm not sure if you meant this card? If you need to fence and sow/bake in the late game, it would be better to take Fencing and then Grain Utilization rather than play this card? If anything, this card makes it less likely you get both, since it's so easily blockable, and basically puts up a giant sign saying "I am going to want to do this"?

If it allowed you to jump to the other space even if occupied, it would be totally different and a reasonable card. As is, it's one of the worst occupations in the game statistically, and has been consistently.

[alexwjb]

I disagree with some of the new proposed bans. I like having the banlist option to make the drafts a bit better higher quality. But the fun of Agricola is to have stronger and weaker cards, and cards that are usually weak that can sometimes be useful.


Roughcaster [There's fun combos that make it very playable]
Dutch windmill [I've usefully played it. The effect may be rubbish but any cards with points can always be useful]
Mill Wheel [Same reasoning as Dutch Windmill]
Claw Knife [Can be usefully playable]
Heart of stone - I'd never base my game around it, but if someone wants to base their game on luck that's good for them. If it works it can be strong, so should be kept in as an option.

Thanks WallBuilder. I guess it comes down to the threshold of the weak banlist. Personally, I think if we are going to have a weak banlist, we should ban a reasonable chunk of the weak stuff, so that it's a meaningful option. People never have to play with the banlist if they don't want to, with the arguable exception of the Arena settings, but that is decided by a vote the same as every other setting.

These cards are all right at the bottom of the card strength statistics and almost never a good idea. I've said my view of each of them individually in this thread already. I'll just mention two points in particular: (a) I strongly disagree that just because a card has points on it, it can "always be useful". You could make such an argument about literally any card, given that Cottar/Wood Carrier/Seed Almanac etc exist. I think the key thing is Dutch Windmill and Claw Knife are extremely unefficient ways to make points and consistently rank in the worst cards. (b) Your argument on Heart of Stone reads to me more like an argument in favour of banning it - the whole point of the optional setting is that people who want to play with these weak cards to try them out can do so, if they actively choose to. But Heart of Stone is now proven to be terrible almost always. (The only exception that I've seen have a reasonable use case is with Task Artisan).

[torvaldur_makan]

My latest proposal, broken out by retain/remove/add. Occs then minors in each case.

Currently banned and to stay banned
Curator
Catcher
Sequestrator
Paymaster
Breeder Buyer
Forest Scientist
Huntsman
Resource Analyzer
Twin Researcher
Forest Campaigner
Sugar Baker
Tree Inspector
Loudmouth
Pig Stalker
Minstrel

Perennial Rye
Cattle Farm
Silage
Elephantgrass Plant
Lifting Machine

Remove from banlist
Furniture Carpenter
Blackberry Farmer

Oven Site
Stable Manure

Add to banlist
Roughcaster
Cooperative Plower
Small Animal Breeder
Forest Tallyman
Hardworking Man
Large-Scale Farmer
Full Peasant
Mummy's Boy
Culinary Artist
Riparian Builder
Bean Counter

Brotherly Love
Dutch Windmill
Mill Wheel
Social Benefits
Claw Knife
Growing Farm
Heart of Stone

While I do agree with pretty much all of it, (except that I don't want any of the banned cards back), I think we should at least compare the PWR of these cards from the stats.

[alexwjb]

Here is the data from the last stats drop in a Google Sheet format, feel free to copy it out and do anything you like with it:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

Spoiler alert: all of the card proposed to be banned are terrible.

[grnt]

Thanks grnt - apologies if I'm missing something, but are you sure you mean Full Peasant?!

Each time after you use the "Grain Utilization" or "Fencing" action space while the other is unoccupied, you can pay 1 food to use that other space with the same person.

It's just when you say this is a "fallback resource", I'm not sure if you meant this card? If you need to fence and sow/bake in the late game, it would be better to take Fencing and then Grain Utilization rather than play this card? If anything, this card makes it less likely you get both, since it's so easily blockable, and basically puts up a giant sign saying "I am going to want to do this"?

If it allowed you to jump to the other space even if occupied, it would be totally different and a reasonable card. As is, it's one of the worst occupations in the game statistically, and has been consistently.

Yes, I mean full peasant, and of course you'd rather do the actions individually rather than pay 2-3 food to get them out, I am not disputing that.

The reason I say it's a fallback resource is that it's reliant on being in a gamestate where one or both tiles are heavily contested, sometimes you need to take starting player to get fences out at all.

This can let you get both (or get the one you want and lock someone else out of the other) in the case where you're either starting or 2nd player with the first player obviously busy doing something else (renovate+fence for example)

This is not going to happen very often at all, don't get me wrong. But I would say that objectively better value occupations picked as your 6th or 7th occupation are going to rot in your hand more often than not anyway (and you can usually tell if they are by that point aswell), I personally would rather pick something that could potentially be valuable to me at that point even if its 1/10 or 1/15 games.

[Broken5vpBMW]

Seed Almanac, Cottar etc. that provide something just by playing as a minor, and most of the already banned weak minors can be played for the purpose of trigger such cards.
List of minors available for such purposes mentioned in this discussion
C084 Perennial Rye
A073 Agricultural Fertilizers
B051 Digging Spade
D024 Brotherly Love
D052 Rolling Pin
C012 Cattle Farm
A022 Telegram
A076 Cob
A084 Silage
D023 Pioneering Spirit
A047 Trellises
C047 Garden Claw
D048 Civic Facade
If Growing Farm is not weak banned, I'll oppose the ban on all minors on this list(Including minors that are already weak banned)
Growing Farm is more useless than all the minors on this list(Including minors that are already weak banned)

[Rallye89]

I wonder why do we have still unbanned in 4p:

Brook (Req 1 of Your People on "Fishing".) B056

Each time you use one of the four action spaces above the "Fishing" accumulation space, you get 1 additional food.

It's a 100% predictable card in draft variant, nobody wants to keep it in the first picks, everybody knows that the card is somewhere and if someone who has it in hand goes to Fishing there are three actions to prevent the use of that card expecially from the player seating before that player. The card wheels undefinitely before going into garbage in draft 8+. Not so much changes in pick10 or standard mode except that other players don't know you can have it in your hand. Also the effect is really weak considering that you have to do a really specific sequence to play the card and you don't want it unless you have at least one or two other cards on fishing. If it would make some points maybe it could be interesting maybe when you have three or more family members, but it is worthless playing without points and considering you have to (in the most cases) throw away 1,5/2 actions to play it. Still can't believe it's not considered weaker than any other card, even worse than Perennial Rye.

and:

Growing Farm (2VP. See Below for Req. Cost 2C 1R.) B052

You can only play this card if you have at least as many pasture spaces as the number of completed rounds. If you do, you get a number of food equal to the current round.

Not so much to say about this one, everybody already said it's 100% unplayable and the cost is irrational. To be weakbanned asap.

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And i really want to see unbanned in 4p:

Elephantgrass Plant (Req 2 Occs. Cost 2C 1S.) C034

Immediately after each harvest, you can use this card to exchange exactly 1 reed for 1 bonus point.

I agree that this card is weak, however there are some situations where this card could be played and maxed, or maybe could be good to raise the point ceiling, it is really simple to make 2/3 points with this one, also consider that someone could steal you bmw and you can already have tons of reed, or maybe you can be in reno crisis and you can convert your reeds in points. There can be also games with weird reed injection, this one could be easily played in 2nd phase to be worth 5VP. Not so strong but the playability of this one is 10 times the Growing Farm.

[alexwjb]

I wonder why do we have still unbanned in 4p:

Brook (Req 1 of Your People on "Fishing".) B056

Each time you use one of the four action spaces above the "Fishing" accumulation space, you get 1 additional food.

It's a 100% predictable card in draft variant, nobody wants to keep it in the first picks, everybody knows that the card is somewhere and if someone who has it in hand goes to Fishing there are three actions to prevent the use of that card expecially from the player seating before that player. The card wheels undefinitely before going into garbage in draft 8+. Not so much changes in pick10 or standard mode except that other players don't know you can have it in your hand. Also the effect is really weak considering that you have to do a really specific sequence to play the card and you don't want it unless you have at least one or two other cards on fishing. If it would make some points maybe it could be interesting maybe when you have three or more family members, but it is worthless playing without points and considering you have to (in the most cases) throw away 1,5/2 actions to play it. Still can't believe it's not considered weaker than any other card, even worse than Perennial Rye.

and:

Growing Farm (2VP. See Below for Req. Cost 2C 1R.) B052

You can only play this card if you have at least as many pasture spaces as the number of completed rounds. If you do, you get a number of food equal to the current round.

Not so much to say about this one, everybody already said it's 100% unplayable and the cost is irrational. To be weakbanned asap.

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And i really want to see unbanned in 4p:

Elephantgrass Plant (Req 2 Occs. Cost 2C 1S.) C034

Immediately after each harvest, you can use this card to exchange exactly 1 reed for 1 bonus point.

I agree that this card is weak, however there are some situations where this card could be played and maxed, or maybe could be good to raise the point ceiling, it is really simple to make 2/3 points with this one, also consider that someone could steal you bmw and you can already have tons of reed, or maybe you can be in reno crisis and you can convert your reeds in points. There can be also games with weird reed injection, this one could be easily played in 2nd phase to be worth 5VP. Not so strong but the playability of this one is 10 times the Growing Farm.

Thanks Rallye.

I'm surprised you feel so strongly about Brook - I don't think it's that bad. On the latest stats (2025) it's a bad card, but there are 36 minors which are worse on PWR, such as Ox Skull, Rolling Pin, Loppers and Cookery Lesson (to name a few). Its a free minor which you can sometimes play fairly early and that can give a decent trickle of food through the game. Not a good card by any means but I'm not personally in favour of banning it.

Growing Farm I have much more sympathy with banning - it is consistently the worst or almost worst minor on PWR. The only reason it isn't banned is really a philosophical one: can there be games where it is actively good? The answer is yes, but it is very rare and it takes an extremely strong player to make it work. I'm interested in more view but would have no problem if the community want it added.

Elephantgrass Plant I am not in favour of bringing back, it is consistently among the weakest cards (bottom 15 PWR in last stats) and among the least played.

But with all of these, please all add opinions, we implement what the community wants for the banlists.

[lFlowerl]

Growing Farm I have much more sympathy with banning - it is consistently the worst or almost worst minor on PWR. The only reason it isn't banned is really a philosophical one: can there be games where it is actively good? The answer is yes, but it is very rare and it takes an extremely strong player to make it work. I'm interested in more view but would have no problem if the community want it added.

I personally enjoy trying to use these rare-case cards (many of which are weakly banned ) and would like to share my opinion about them.

Growing Farm: I had a recent Big County game and this card gave incredible values (2 clays + 1 reed -> 2 pts + 8 foods). This card basically fed my 4th/5th harvest where Big County strategy often struggles at. Without Big County, I think this card can still be playable in some early fence game as the food is quite significant. I'm always dreaming of a motivator + growing farm game.

Heart of Stone: I had played this card twice in my life. I think this card is more like a growth-out rather than a gameplan-defining card. Don't try to play it in the first stage but instead look for lines in second stage when the stone is not revealed yet. It is costly but it's usually worth its cost if you can grow with this card twice.

Rolling pin: I think this card is underestimated. This card can easily give 6+ food throughout the game with a second stage clay grab. The condition is not that hard if the gameplan is set accordingly (like early fences or clay room strat).