Board Game Arena

To make a separate remark, I feel this thread is too dominated by 2 or 3 people who have made their point 5 or 10 times already. The thread feels less welcoming to me in that way.

Lumin_S wrote: ↑13 February 2025, 19:56 To make a separate remark, I feel this thread is too dominated by 2 or 3 people who have made their point 5 or 10 times already. The thread feels less welcoming to me in that way.

Sorry you feel that way Lumin - if I'm one of the people you are referring to I apologise, I very much do not want anyone to feel unwelcome in the discussion! I am very keen to hear as many views as possible, and my love of discussing Agricola might mean I am being too repetitive / noisy.

I will stay quiet for a bit

cranesflyhigh wrote: ↑13 February 2025, 17:25 I feel slightly obliged to add: I did try D76 Social Benefits in a game of mine - and it was... okay. That game however did have the stars aligned for it: I had Forest Reviewer (reed to spare) with cookery for animal feeding and a Studio: so manipulating my food was pretty easy to do for the harvests. That said the stars did align for it, I was explicitly going for it and it wasn't game-winning. I am on the fence on this card. I am okay banning it, cause most of the games it is just dead and too awkward, and also might be a trap for newer players trying to make it work too hard. The minigame of it can be alluring, I agree, but I am on the mind that if we do a weak cards banlist, let's just ban weak cards - and in most cases Social Benefits is just that.

That said I am one of the more banhappy people around

Imo the diuscussion is totally ignoring the effect of card power in diffrent player counts and social benefits is a good example, thats why I quoted you. In a 4 player game I totally agree with this is a banable card. But in 4p games clay is plenty. In a 2p game thats a totally different story and getting like 3-4 clay + wood over the course of a game might finance your entire late game renovation.
I like the idea of banning weak cards as an option, but would like to see universally bad cards being on that list and not just bad cards in a 4 player setting. Just my 2 cent

@Lumin_S: I am sorry you feel that way. I think there has been some good discussion in this thread, and both Alex and me are trying very hard to invite more people in to it. Perhaps we are a bit too enthusiastic about the topic as we do love to talk about it, and it can be off-putting to some people. You chose to not engage in the discussion, your input here was to call ideas to ban cards "insane" without any further nuance. Instead of these little jabs, I would value your insight way more, as you are a very knowledgeable player.

@Rudi1976: I have to admit, I know next to nothing about other player counts in Agricola, I mostly just play 4p. Most players tend to agree 4p is the primary competitive format and it seems to be most popular as well, that is why the banlist was set out with 4p in mind. Insight from other player counts is very welcome, so thank you for that - I know other people want to increase the amount of minors banned, explicitly for 2p reasons. The banlist will be optional for all player counts too, so finding a good list there would be ideal. In any case, that is another vote for Social Benefits to stay, so it looks like the card should probably stay, at least for lack of consensus, if nothing else.

Player count and format has a big effect on the power of a card. Fore example, Begging Student is not very powerful if you aren't using a draft, and the more cards in the draft, the better it is. When people say the competitiveness of the game is unbalanced, it often isn't the design of a game but rather the format that has become popular to play. Therefore, modifications to the game are inevitable.

I don't think Pioneering spirit belongs on a list of unplayable cards; it can boost some fun strategies and costs nothing to play. I think this thread is a little bit guided by the notion that fun equals scoring many points (I do apologise if I'm misrepresenting that) but I'm sure that many of us play primarily for fun and to exercise our minds with weird and wonderful lines that don't necessarily work. If we want to ban weak cards, I think we should confine ourselves to cards that are truly hopeless.

bomboloni wrote: ↑16 February 2025, 13:13 I don't think Pioneering spirit belongs on a list of unplayable cards; it can boost some fun strategies and costs nothing to play. I think this thread is a little bit guided by the notion that fun equals scoring many points (I do apologise if I'm misrepresenting that) but I'm sure that many of us play primarily for fun and to exercise our minds with weird and wonderful lines that don't necessarily work. If we want to ban weak cards, I think we should confine ourselves to cards that are truly hopeless.

Quite!

Hi all, it's been a month since someone has posted here so I'm rejoining the conversation

Here are the cards that have received 0 or 1 objections to being added to the weak cards banlist (either here, or on the Discord or, people messaging me):

Silage
Stable Manure
Elephantgrass Plant
Oven Site

So I think these should be added, and we leave it at that for now. Then maybe if we get stats in the future on what cards people are playing with, this could be reopened.

Thanks all for views (and keep them coming!).

Just played an arena game and it made me discover that I think is the core reason of objecting to banning weak cards.
We all agree that banning strong cards creates a more balanced game where no one can play a first-picked braggert last action for 9pts.
In other words, we dislike the outcome of the game being determined by one or two op cards.
However, in the case of weak cards, people will not instantly lose their game when they draft unplayable cards on 6 or 7th hand.
The win rate may drop if someone had a significantly weaker 6 or 7th hand than others, but I believe it is not significant when a good player can already see this coming at the first round of the draft.
I would rather keep the integrity of the game than making some artificial changes to balance this minor issue.

However, I think a possible adjustment of this is to change "banning weak cards" into "banning new-player-trap-cards"
For cards like Future Building Site, the game may be ruined when a 100 elo player plays it, realizes its effect and then takes random actions for the rest of the game. Banning these cards may improve the game experience with new players.
I think it may be a good idea if we pick cards according to this standard and make it a recommended option when new players are present.

Just a heads-up that I've updated the list with Alex's most recent proposal - keep this in mind when you vote for the next arena format.

Further discussion is always welcome, but hopefully we've reached a compromise where the list is impactful enough for the proponents without being too offensive for those on the fence about it. I don't think making minute tweaks to it will be all that useful at this point, so my preference would be to keep it stable for a while and potentially revisit the topic after another arena season or 2.

lFlowerl wrote: ↑20 March 2025, 06:17However, I think a possible adjustment of this is to change "banning weak cards" into "banning new-player-trap-cards"

I understand the reasoning behind your proposal, but I think such a list would be extremely short and therefore have very little impact. If anything, new players should simply start off with a limited card set (e.g. base only) and not worry about more complicated cards until they gain some experience. If someone decides to start playing with the full 800+ cards right from the start, there's not a lot we can do to protect them.