With the approval of Lookout Games, the developers here have kindly implemented a banlist option to improve the playing experience. Thanks to all who upvoted the suggestion to make it the highest-voted suggestion thus far. The option can currently be found in game setup with the "Competitive Level" drop down menu, and currently removes Caravan and Braggart from the card pool when selected.
Banning those 2 cards is my recommendation in the submitted suggestion, and while it's just the first iteration of a BGA banlist, I do have reason and justification to believe this is correct. I'll detail that below. The community as a whole should agree on which card(s) should be banned and for what reason(s). We have almost 3 months before Arena Season 7 starts on October 6th, and if we're lucky, Agricola will have left Beta by then and therefore be eligible for Arena. That gives us plenty of time to discuss what the most reasonable banlist setting is to use in Arena (which will most likely be 4-player with draft.) Perhaps we can also think about guidelines to use for banning cards from expansion decks *if* those get implemented at some point in 2022 and beyond. I'll now share some background on bans in Agricola and my reasons for picking Caravan and Braggart.
Is a banlist necessary for competitive play?
Banlists have been a part of competitive Agricola for many years, both online at Boite-a-Jeux (BaJ) and Play-Agricola (PA), and in publisher-sanctioned tournaments.
What has led to cards being banned?
Typically, cards are banned for being "annoying" and/or "too strong" and/or "poorly implemented". I think we don't have to worry much about the last point (but please do comment if you disagree)! The annoyance and strength factors both have some subjectivity and some objectivity and I'll try to explain those a bit more. Anyone should feel free to pitch in with a similar or different point of view.
In my opinion, annoyance and strength are the correct factors to consider. But the factors are certainly up for discussion.
This post ended up being much more detailed than I anticipated, so thanks very much for reading and I hope it provides a solid background for discussing card bans as a community, and explains why Caravan and Braggart are the first iteration of the BGA banlist. I know my perspective on bans is biased towards my experience on PA and from the 2017 championship, so it's certainly important that we have other perspectives involved in banlist decisions going forward.
TL;DR
My banlist suggestion was implemented. I think Caravan and Braggart are the right bans for the current card set. What do you think?
Banning those 2 cards is my recommendation in the submitted suggestion, and while it's just the first iteration of a BGA banlist, I do have reason and justification to believe this is correct. I'll detail that below. The community as a whole should agree on which card(s) should be banned and for what reason(s). We have almost 3 months before Arena Season 7 starts on October 6th, and if we're lucky, Agricola will have left Beta by then and therefore be eligible for Arena. That gives us plenty of time to discuss what the most reasonable banlist setting is to use in Arena (which will most likely be 4-player with draft.) Perhaps we can also think about guidelines to use for banning cards from expansion decks *if* those get implemented at some point in 2022 and beyond. I'll now share some background on bans in Agricola and my reasons for picking Caravan and Braggart.
Is a banlist necessary for competitive play?
Banlists have been a part of competitive Agricola for many years, both online at Boite-a-Jeux (BaJ) and Play-Agricola (PA), and in publisher-sanctioned tournaments.
- BaJ refers to their banlist option as "Tournament Mode" with discussion thread on their forum. (I think the discussion in the thread is inaccurate - all of the 2011, 2013, and 2017 world championships did not use decks available on BaJ. So there's not much productive discussion there.)
- PA has banlist options for a variety of deck sets: "-11" for EIKGCOZ decks, "-18" for NFW decks, and "-3" for ABCD decks. The community there has agreed (through a mostly mathematical process sometimes referred to as 'PWR' calculation) that for those groups of decks, it's appropriate to ban that number of cards.
- 2011 and 2013 World Championships held by Lookout Games both used the Wm deck only; to this date no cards from that deck have been banned.
- During the 2017 World Championship held by Lookout Games, Caravan was banned between the preliminary and semifinal rounds. Many players were unhappy about the lack of ban during preliminaries, and before the semifinals the judge and publisher representatives agreed that the card was affecting winning chances to an undesirable degree. Note that this tournament used the exact deck set that's currently available on BGA.
What has led to cards being banned?
Typically, cards are banned for being "annoying" and/or "too strong" and/or "poorly implemented". I think we don't have to worry much about the last point (but please do comment if you disagree)! The annoyance and strength factors both have some subjectivity and some objectivity and I'll try to explain those a bit more. Anyone should feel free to pitch in with a similar or different point of view.
- "Annoying" - This category of card is either an “attack card” or unexpectedly interrupts the family growth queue that usually takes place in the midgame of a competitive 4-player game - where, assuming all players have an empty room, the start player uses on Wish for Children and the next player uses Meeting Place so that they can do the same in the next round.
- “Attack cards” have been more or less eliminated from the Revised Edition.
- In my experience, there is subjectivity in deciding to ban (or not) cards that interrupt the usual family growth order, depending on the expense or limitations required by the card.
- "Too strong" - The most common objective measure for strength I've seen is how often a card is played on the winning board (the aforementioned 'PWR'.) Adapting this measure from PA to the current card set available here on BGA, any given card being played on roughly 29%+ of all 4-player winning farms would be banned. Note that a card won't dealt into every game, and when dealt, it's not always worth playing to the winner. In other words, that number shouldn't be compared to 25%. Unfortunately, BGA's framework doesn't support such a calculation.
***Edit Dec 13 2021: PWR calculations now possible on BGA: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 6&p=101625
PWR shows that overpowered cards typically do one of the following:- provide large amounts of bonus points without much extra effort,
- allow for family growth unusually early + at low cost, or
- provide unfair and unparalleled amounts of goods/access to action spaces.
In my opinion, annoyance and strength are the correct factors to consider. But the factors are certainly up for discussion.
- Caravan's ban in the publisher's 2017 championship is sufficient reason to ban it for Arena Mode or other competitive situations. Annoyance and strength both play a role for this card. There is also an extremely strong argument to ban it based on precedent: it's very close to strictly better than Wooden Hut Extension, which is a card banned on both BaJ and PA. And the N deck version of Caravan in the Original Edition is banned on PA. And I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, but the card also synergizes very nicely with multiple cards in the current card set - a bonus not found with Wooden Hut Extension or N deck Caravan.
- Braggart has been nerfed in the Revised Edition compared to its past E deck version (banned on PA but not BaJ), yet it still can have an outsized effect on the game outcome - 9 bonus points is effectively the highest potential in the current card set, and the card can be played as the last action of the game when one usually has few remaining point sources. When this version of Braggart is played in "Draft 7 of 9, occupations first" format on PA, it's rated significantly higher than the ban threshold. By its own nature, the card will be stronger in drafts with more cards (7 from 9 or 10) and weaker in drafts with fewer cards. Given the variety in available draft formats (and because we don't know future Arena format,) I think it's best that Braggart is banned. However, if a "Draft 7 from 7" option becomes the prevalent format, I might change my mind.
- Other cards - my opinion is that no other cards qualify here as being "too strong" using the factors above. Big Country can be worth up to 8 bonus points and 16 food, but has the significantly difficult prerequisite of filling one's farm.
This post ended up being much more detailed than I anticipated, so thanks very much for reading and I hope it provides a solid background for discussing card bans as a community, and explains why Caravan and Braggart are the first iteration of the BGA banlist. I know my perspective on bans is biased towards my experience on PA and from the 2017 championship, so it's certainly important that we have other perspectives involved in banlist decisions going forward.
TL;DR
My banlist suggestion was implemented. I think Caravan and Braggart are the right bans for the current card set. What do you think?
