Board Game Arena

One added benefit of lists such as this one is that it levels the playing filed a little bit.

And it does so only on the bottom of the field where less experienced players will be “forced” to make less mistakes in the draft.

I reckon that in this game, drafting correctly is another layer of skill but do we really need to have all these banana peels to catch inexperienced players?

It is staggering to see how often the cards above don’t wheel. Even in Arena.


Regarding the minors, while they only cost half an action or less, their floor is higher than that of occs. One will play them anyway in some key moments.

I’d argue that it is worse to have almost no playable minors than to have almost no playable occs. Sometimes the worse part of having bad occs is that one can’t meet some minors pre requisites.

So, I strongly agree with the push to include more minors as trimming the bottom part of the minors seems to me as important as trimming the occs.

While getting rid of bad cards does indeed help inexperienced players a lot, by kind of forcing them to grab better cards, it is more of a side benefit (for me), than the main boon of a list like this. With less trash in the draft one can draft more according to their plan, opening up more possibilities and making the game overall more fun. And as you correctly stated: it also levels up the draft playing field. Wheeling a super garbage pack is less likely with such a banlist in place, so a tight draft count still makes the game full of strategic choices, but not overflooded.

Quick update: a few people have messaged me to say they don't think Telegram should be banned. So there is not a consensus that it should be included.

So far there seems to be support for the other minors being included, I look forward to more views.

I don't get liking the Telegram. 2f for a point is awful, the text on it is mostly blank, a fair number of times unplayable, you might already get to 5ppl before it, and even if you get the worker, it might block you from taking a grow space. The amount of hoops you have to jump through to make this card work is insane and it is probably not worth it anyway. It is a classic bad fantasy card.

I'm kinda late to join the discussion, but I would like to state my point of view.
I am positive about adding a new option to ban weak cards, but I am slightly leaning toward to not adding it to the arena.
I think if overall game experience can be improved by banning frustratingly weak cards from your draft, it might be good idea.
However, since having weak cards in draft is not as frustrating as facing extremely strong cards (e.g. playing Braggart last action for 9 points), I think we should be more conservative about this.
In my overall experience, I seldom have to pick a complete garbage card in draft 9 (current arena) or 10. In 8, probably banning weak cards is more balanced?
Also, if the list is constantly changing, I would recommend not to add it to arena since it is more competitive.
If suddenly, for example, a large amount of weak minors are banned, the value of actions (e.g. start player) may be too fluctuating for people to adapt to it.

In addition, I think we should have different standards for banning occs and minors, especially for cheap minor.
For cheap minors, I think it is more like: Am I ever willing to spend this tiny resource to play this weak card, or would I rather pass?
So a weak minor should be defined as something that you would almost always want to pass even if you have the resources and prerequisite.
(BTW, I don't think cattle farm is a really bad card. With this card, you can take 3 breeding pairs with 12 fences!)

Overall, I would suggest not to put it into arena, and we should think more in banning minors.

As I said in last post, I am more conservative about banning weak cards, especially minors.
Currently, I think the banned weak occupations is perfect.

My personal bannable weak cards would be:
The occupation that gives you 1 point per fireplace/hearth.
C084 Perennial Rye
A76 Cob
B38 Future Building Site
C034 Elephantgrass Plant
D23 Pioneering Spirit

I would argue that some minors can be useful as a late game "start player + a few points" sort of thing, as long as the price is not ridiculous.
I think Telegram, Dutch Windmill, Mill Wheel has some reasonable price and Elephantgrass Plant is too much.

Also, I would like to defend for some cards in the discussion.
Hardworking Man: I have seen Hardworking Man popping off several time.
It usually happens when players fight for 3rd growth. When 2 players have their room ready and the 3rd player (call it A) starts for build next round, the 4th player (B) can play this card. In this situation, when A builds, B can start + hardworking. If A doesn't, B sneaks into build queue. Either way B gets 3rd growth.
It is a rare situation but I have seen it more than one time.

Rolling Pin: I luv this card. Plz don't ban it. It is underrated and people should try it more. One food per round is as good as pavior. Clay > wood is not hard as long as you build your room.

Lifting Machine: With melon patch (provides a field for veg, give a free field when it is fully harvested), it is not bad. I would say borderline bannable.

I think you are going about this the wrong way, the question is not about wanting a possible option to play a card, because yeah, a possible option is always good. Would you have Pioneering Spirit over literally nothing? Sure! The real opportunity cost is taking that card over the other card. You can have Mill Wheel for 2 wood, a point and a mostly blank text on it. Are there ever scenarios where you want that trade? Sure. But is it a good trade option to have over other, actually reasonable cards? No. Compare the card to Steam Machine: it is 2wood for a point, which is admittedly bad, but the card has actual text on it that makes it decent on baking strats. You can make similar comparisons say with Telegram and Retraining or Pioneering Spirit and Lynchet. I want to be making strategic choices in my draft. You only ever draft 7 occupations and 7 minors. Filtering out bad cards makes games more interesting.

Also the list isn't meant to be constantly changing, we just want a little update to have more minors represented on the list. Whether this makes it into the arena (which I would prefer) is something the gurus vote on it ahead of the arena season, so everyone can prepare for it.

cranesflyhigh wrote: ↑02 February 2025, 17:53 I think you are going about this the wrong way, the question is not about wanting a possible option to play a card, because yeah, a possible option is always good. Would you have Pioneering Spirit over literally nothing? Sure! The real opportunity cost is taking that card over the other card. You can have Mill Wheel for 2 wood, a point and a mostly blank text on it. Are there ever scenarios where you want that trade? Sure. But is it a good trade option to have over other, actually reasonable cards? No. Compare the card to Steam Machine: it is 2wood for a point, which is admittedly bad, but the card has actual text on it that makes it decent on baking strats. You can make similar comparisons say with Telegram and Retraining or Pioneering Spirit and Lynchet. I want to be making strategic choices in my draft. You only ever draft 7 occupations and 7 minors. Filtering out bad cards makes games more interesting.

Also the list isn't meant to be constantly changing, we just want a little update to have more minors represented on the list. Whether this makes it into the arena (which I would prefer) is something the gurus vote on it ahead of the arena season, so everyone can prepare for it.

I understand your point.
I think the biggest disagreement between our points is how much cards we should remove to make the game more interesting.
I love Agricola because of its large variety of strategy.
I am still fascinated by Agricola after hundreds of games because I can regularly see somebody finding good uses of some random weak cards.

My border line of removeable weak cards is that, we should only remove those cards that are still unplayable/have no effect even in optimal situation. That is, those cards that will never be put down to the table unless they are action-free and cost-free.
For Telegram or Mill Wheel, they are playable cards, despite not being any strategy component.
They are suboptimal to Retraining or Steam Machine, yes. But we are not removing plow hero because of plow maker, right?

Maybe I'm being too conservative, but this is my current thought.

(Also, has anyone actually used the effect of Retraining before? I would be excited if I see someone in the game actually use retraining as part of their strategy.)

lFlowerl wrote: ↑02 February 2025, 16:37In addition, I think we should have different standards for banning occs and minors, especially for cheap minor.
For cheap minors, I think it is more like: Am I ever willing to spend this tiny resource to play this weak card, or would I rather pass?
So a weak minor should be defined as something that you would almost always want to pass even if you have the resources and prerequisite.
(BTW, I don't think cattle farm is a really bad card. With this card, you can take 3 breeding pairs with 12 fences!)

Overall, I would suggest not to put it into arena, and we should think more in banning minors.

Very much agree with this, and most of the rest of your post as well. I'm not against having this weak banlist, but I think most suggestions reach significantly too far.

lFlowerl wrote: ↑02 February 2025, 17:18 As I said in last post, I am more conservative about banning weak cards, especially minors.
Currently, I think the banned weak occupations is perfect.

My personal bannable weak cards would be:
The occupation that gives you 1 point per fireplace/hearth.
C084 Perennial Rye
A76 Cob
B38 Future Building Site
C034 Elephantgrass Plant
D23 Pioneering Spirit

I would argue that some minors can be useful as a late game "start player + a few points" sort of thing, as long as the price is not ridiculous.
I think Telegram, Dutch Windmill, Mill Wheel has some reasonable price and Elephantgrass Plant is too much.

Also, I would like to defend for some cards in the discussion.
Hardworking Man: I have seen Hardworking Man popping off several time.
It usually happens when players fight for 3rd growth. When 2 players have their room ready and the 3rd player (call it A) starts for build next round, the 4th player (B) can play this card. In this situation, when A builds, B can start + hardworking. If A doesn't, B sneaks into build queue. Either way B gets 3rd growth.
It is a rare situation but I have seen it more than one time.

Rolling Pin: I luv this card. Plz don't ban it. It is underrated and people should try it more. One food per round is as good as pavior. Clay > wood is not hard as long as you build your room.

Lifting Machine: With melon patch (provides a field for veg, give a free field when it is fully harvested), it is not bad. I would say borderline bannable.

Thanks Flower for your posts, it's really helpful!

Glad you are happy with the occ list

On the minors: it's clear there is a wider range of opinion about to what extent minors should be included. There's a reason the first list in the thread from Cranes and I had so many more occupations than minors: I agree with you that it is more clearly a good idea to ban some occupations.

On the above cards you mentioned:

- I actually would prefer not to ban Future Building Site. I like that it encourages unusual strategies. My issue with it is only that there are games where inexperienced players just don't understand it will stop them building a room, which ruins things.

- Hardworking Man: yes, this was kept off the list of banned occs.

- Rolling Pin: I agree that people aren't using it well! It's not on our suggested list to ban.

- Lifting Machine: this one I disagree, in that I don't think it is merely borderline bannable. If it had no prerequisite I could see the argument (though it is a niche case requiring you to get a particular minor with it) - but it already requires you to have three fields!! So I do think it is really, truly terrible. The worst minor in the game, in my opinion. At least you only lose 1 wood, I suppose.