At this point there's been quite a bit of good discussion. I appreciate someone collecting the general consensus too on what others have been saying, that was nice and very helpful.
We also now know we're going to be getting statistics dumped every once in awhile, so we'll better be able to see what may be too strong. At this point there is nothing in this set that is obviously too strong, although there are cards we should be watching as they likely will be on the edge. (And I think it turns out we should be watching stuff like Tiller and Big Country also). I think for now we should just leave them in and over time we'll see what stats tell us on how those cards actually fare.
Then it comes down to discussing if there are cards that should be removed for game warping reasons, or for extreme variance.
Carriage Trip should be banned. I think there is enough consensus here, and there are plenty of good arguments for how warping it can be. The poster right above me did an excellent job laying out some truly egregious things that it allows for. Furthermore I don't think the game can possibly be argued to be better by including the card, as it doesn't lead you to do interesting or different things, it just breaks the fundamental order of the game's actions and flow. Easy ban, everyone seems to agree on this too, there's not much dissent.
Cross Cut Wood I am in favor of banning this still. I think this one is a bit more on edge, but it's just so warping to the stone/wood economy in games. I don't think it is a good thing that a minor improvement can just give someone a ton of wood and lets them play a totally different game of resource acquisition and usage.
Carrot Museum I am on the edge on this one. It is so tough to want to draft it in certain hands, but then hands like Childless can turn this in to an absolutely absurd value. This is my real problem with it--its strength is extremely dependent upon a hand, and in some hands it is extremely strong. I don't think it will ever show too strong in the aggregate because there aren't enough cards currently that provide a lot of vegetables to make Carrot Museum a monster with many hands. I think I'll wait for now and see it a bit more in practice and let others experience it, but my guess is this may need a ban due to too much variance.
I think that's it for now. The rest we can mostly wait for more statistics to find out if they're too strong--even those cards that might be too strong I think are mostly on the edge so it shouldn't be too bad to have them roaming around for now.
We also now know we're going to be getting statistics dumped every once in awhile, so we'll better be able to see what may be too strong. At this point there is nothing in this set that is obviously too strong, although there are cards we should be watching as they likely will be on the edge. (And I think it turns out we should be watching stuff like Tiller and Big Country also). I think for now we should just leave them in and over time we'll see what stats tell us on how those cards actually fare.
Then it comes down to discussing if there are cards that should be removed for game warping reasons, or for extreme variance.
Carriage Trip should be banned. I think there is enough consensus here, and there are plenty of good arguments for how warping it can be. The poster right above me did an excellent job laying out some truly egregious things that it allows for. Furthermore I don't think the game can possibly be argued to be better by including the card, as it doesn't lead you to do interesting or different things, it just breaks the fundamental order of the game's actions and flow. Easy ban, everyone seems to agree on this too, there's not much dissent.
Cross Cut Wood I am in favor of banning this still. I think this one is a bit more on edge, but it's just so warping to the stone/wood economy in games. I don't think it is a good thing that a minor improvement can just give someone a ton of wood and lets them play a totally different game of resource acquisition and usage.
Carrot Museum I am on the edge on this one. It is so tough to want to draft it in certain hands, but then hands like Childless can turn this in to an absolutely absurd value. This is my real problem with it--its strength is extremely dependent upon a hand, and in some hands it is extremely strong. I don't think it will ever show too strong in the aggregate because there aren't enough cards currently that provide a lot of vegetables to make Carrot Museum a monster with many hands. I think I'll wait for now and see it a bit more in practice and let others experience it, but my guess is this may need a ban due to too much variance.
I think that's it for now. The rest we can mostly wait for more statistics to find out if they're too strong--even those cards that might be too strong I think are mostly on the edge so it shouldn't be too bad to have them roaming around for now.
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