Board Game Arena

I’d support removing it personally, but generally speaking trimming useless cards from the deck is politically difficult. There’s just a lot of inertia supporting the status quo and trash cards don’t ruin the game in the same way that overpowered cards do. In 5 years maybe a new edition of wingspan drops and they can clean up stuff like that.

vivafringe wrote: ↑21 July 2026, 13:24 I’d support removing it personally, but generally speaking trimming useless cards from the deck is politically difficult. There’s just a lot of inertia supporting the status quo and trash cards don’t ruin the game in the same way that overpowered cards do. In 5 years maybe a new edition of wingspan drops and they can clean up stuff like that.

I agree to an extent - but this seems like a special case. It's rare for one card to be universally agreed upon to be useless. And with the base game and the power 5 removed, it's just about impossible to score points with that bonus card. It's a significant competitive disadvantage to start with that card or draw it during the game, in contract to drawing a relatively useless bird card, for example.

I believe Cartographer to be significantly better than Anatomist. Redstart, Crow, Puffing, Baltimore Oriole, Carolina thingy, Eastern phoebe and mississippi Kite... those are cards you will want to play anyway, so if they can grant extra point its a major bonus.

I really think the "horned" birds (Lark and Owl), both very bad and almost unplayable, should be added in the Anatomist bonus card.

Photographer is a terrible bonus card. Yes a lot of birds qualify for the bonus, but they are also usualy terrible cards. You are not playing a white pelican just for the fun of it. Also it gives 3 points which is silly.
You can blindly pick Rodent, Berries or Geography because the related birds are awesome.