Banlist Discussion!

[Smoo]

Work Certificate must definitely go. it has Edit - negligible cost, either in playing the card, or triggering it. it doesn't just give the player free resources, it steals them from the board which is completely obnoxious. Even if the average game it only nets 5-6 resources, that's still too efficient for a minor with edit - negligible cost. And then there's the games where it's played in stage 1 and takes 15+ resources.

Little Peasant - we banned Big Country, and this card is worse since you cannot interact at all with the person playing it, other than on accumulation spaces.

Trade Teacher - as others have said, this card is too far ahead of the curve.

Wood Slide Hammer - while this card can often be a blank, when it isn't it's worth 5c,1r, 2s and an action which is too much for a 1w minor.

My 60+ pt games with the new cards have involved either teacher or hammer.

Beer Table - this might just be salt on my part, but i've lost to a number of 10pt beer tables that didn't require that much setup. It's hard to match that amount ceiling in one card.

[fiscused]

To clarify, Work Certificate has a prerequisite (3 Occs) and a cost (1f)

[Ranior]

I hope we can get the banlist updated soon, especially if the new decks make their way over to arena mode. Regardless, I think updates are in order, we've had these cards for quite some time now.

I agree that Work Certificate has to go. It provides so many resources so often, and it is taking those resources away from others. You can't even play around it all that well some games. It just is exceptionally strong. This is a clear ban for being too strong, and it's nearly ban worthy for annoyance reasons in how it warps the accumulation of resources.

Trade Teacher is a clear ban for strength reasons. It just does what some other cards do but much better. It can provide all of your crop and animal needs for a game. It does this while taking an action you already want to be taking which is playing and leveraging your cards. It often can lead to crazy high scores. Sure it sometimes won't work, but it allows access to things you cannot get from any other card.

Little Peasant the more I see it, the less I am convinced it is too strong, but I'm positive it should be banned for annoyance reasons. You basically have a player that gets to play a totally different game and then at the end you all compare scores. Regardless if they win or lose, it's just not a good card for a competitive format to have someone get to play the game unblockable.

I think that's all I'd ban at the moment, although I'm amenable to the possibility that Beer Table is too much. However, I'm a bit less convinced on this one as I still see players passing it a good bit. If we're banning something for strength, generally I think that card should be getting first picked and still wins an aberrant percent of the time. I think that fits the description of stuff like Caravan, Big Country, Braggart, along with Work Certificate and Trade Teacher. My experience is that Beer Table still gets passed a bit too much in the draft. Same with Wood Slide Hammer--I understand it kind of sucks if you feel you need to just dedraft a card that your gameplan doesn't involve playing, but also that's a bit of how Agricola works. If you're passing strong cards in the draft and losing to them...

I personally still find some of the wood injection cards on the pass to be a bit annoying, but I think they're not worth banning. I think I'm still content to leave Cross Cut Wood on the ban list because the trigger condition is more limiting, and because the amount of wood it can add is basically uncapped, while stuff like Writing Boards is more limited and more generally applicable.

[Smoo]

I think that's all I'd ban at the moment, although I'm amenable to the possibility that Beer Table is too much. However, I'm a bit less convinced on this one as I still see players passing it a good bit. If we're banning something for strength, generally I think that card should be getting first picked and still wins an aberrant percent of the time. I think that fits the description of stuff like Caravan, Big Country, Braggart, along with Work Certificate and Trade Teacher. My experience is that Beer Table still gets passed a bit too much in the draft. Same with Wood Slide Hammer--I understand it kind of sucks if you feel you need to just dedraft a card that your gameplan doesn't involve playing, but also that's a bit of how Agricola works. If you're passing strong cards in the draft and losing to them...

That's the issue with these two cards. When they're enabled, they feel unbeatable, but they aren't enabled in every draft. By comparison, Trade Teacher +13 random cards is still likely to win. There is a lot of grain support in the set, so good Beer tables show up frequently enough, but perhaps not enough that it needs to go.

[Moorland Holms]

The card is bonkers powerful. Here is an example of Crystal Maiden getting a whopping 71 with it.

I finally watched the game today and I'm shocked how often the opponents gave him huge piles of wood (e.g. 6 wood in 4th position).
Leaving aside that many good combo cards for Trade Teacher were passed to him in the draft, the game went perfectly for him with these many early resources, all very smoothly.
However, 14 points came only from his own cards (e.g. Lantern House, which comboes nice with TT) and another 5 for Animal Reeve's bonus. If you subtract that, it's not particularly hard to get 52 points with a big stone house and a filled farm.

He still grabbed breeding pairs of cows and boars while also getting sheeps from German Heath Keeper. So he converted every animal from Trade Teacher into food (22) plus getting 3 grain and 2 veggies minus the actions and costs to play occs that often wouldn't be played.

I don't want to talk down this result, it is still impressive.
But for example, it is not hard to set up Manservant and getting around 30 food without the requirement to use additional actions (so you could instead take 3x Grain+Veg with Greengrocer getting better results), but people think this card is at best mediocre.

What I want to say is, that not what you can reach with Trade Teacher, but the opportunity to make it work in nearly every game (even if its only a medium good card sometimes), is what makes it that much better.

[Lumin_S]

To address the recently anonymously posted stats list: I just want to state for the record that I had nothing to do with the post in terms of data collection, encouraging the post, or anything except passively providing the PWR framework for analysis that this poster performed. The PWR ratings do look legitimate to me.

I think that for sure, 3 cards need to go: Little Peasant, Work Certificate, and Trade Teacher.

Little Peasant is very high variance and should be banned for very similar reasons to Big Country previously: very low interaction and annoying to play against. It is also very strong in games with Urgent Wish in Round 12, very high threshold to beat IMO (more than 1 card should provide.) Data clearly shows its PWR as not too high, but the ban argument here is mostly for non-PWR reasons.

Work Certificate can be wildly strong (see game examples from previous posts of 15+ resources) and is also super annoying to deal with in games. I think the reasoning here is very similar to Carriage Trip and Little Peasant - occasionally blatantly OP, always annoying. The ban argument here is also mostly for non-PWR reasons, though the PWR ratings do show it to be a top tier card.

Trade Teacher falls under the last bullet point I made in the original post of this thread. It provides an unfair and unparalleled amount of goods. While the data doesn't show its PWR as being higher than all other cards, it's my belief from experience that the card is often misused in BGA games, and once the community learns its best use cases (find a food converter immediately and use the converter immediately) its PWR would climb quickly.

Other cards I would have argued to ban before seeing stats, but for now will hold off on after seeing the stats:

Beer Table is a card I think is too high-variance, and can be exploited for 8-12 points too often. Informant is a card I think offers an unfair and unparalleled injection of wood. Clay Supports and sometimes Field Watchman are very strong cards that can lead to degenerate gameplay strategies - and those degenerate strategies just wouldn't be nearly as possible if the cards weren't in the set. Also in the vein of the Cross-Cut Wood ban, Writing Boards and Baseboards are considerations but have much less player-to-player variance than CCW, and from my experience they seem OK to keep.

[torvaldur_makan]

Lover
Even though it is considerably nerfed compared to the original I still think it is too strong. Especially in the current set where the meta leans towards fewer rooms. You do need to draft more food, but the flexibility of the card allows it to be used later too. Basically as soon as you can afford.

The problem with the card is that you don’t need to set anything up besides the food and you don’t need to engage in the growth queue.

[buldozer]

1) Work certificate, not just gives too many resources, but it also takes it from other players. Card is just obnoxious, making each game involving it a miserable experience.

2) Cow prince family of cards. Here I refer to all the cards, which provide 4+ surprise VP points. By surprise I mean coming in the very end of the game and having immediate unanticipated effect.
Vast majority of 4+ VP cards in Agricola have some strong conditions and limitiations. e.g. play in r4 or earlier (earthenware potter), pay clay for each family member (earthenware potter again), play in r11 or earlier (butler), have more rooms than people (butler, luxurious hotel), have a very steep cost to play (fodder chamber, bottles).
Most of the cards are in fact limited to 2-3VP (so called 4w cards). But those are first of all open for grabs, and even when play late, still limited to 2-3VP, which is a standard amount of VP produced.
Now Cow Prince provides an easy 4VP and very often even 6VP without any additional costs - you don't need to kill those cows or pay some wood, don't need to play the card super early in the game. This card just laughs in the face of all the house stewards, constables and many other hard-working occs , it exists in a strong violation of Agricola spirit.

Now with the case of Cow Prince for sure extreme, as was now also proofed with some actual game stats, there are some other cards with similar strong surprise effects: Lord of the Manor (somewhat more predictable though and much harder to max VP), big instant wood injectors (wood carrier, baseboards). Those cards make game more random, luck-based, overall less enjoyable experience.

3) Little peasant. Locking action spaces is a central component of Agricola game. With bypassing its main rule, this game becomes becomes just some cheap parody for the peasantry. It's no longer Agricola for me but a Farmorama or smth.

4) Plow hero. He is not strong. Quite the opposite, this card is a directly worse version of another card - plowmaker. Same effect - getting 1 more plow for 1 food comes for the hero with strong limitation of having to plow first action. So far it's the only known case of having a strictly worse card. Of course there can be better and worse cards, but having strictly worse card by design - why? why? why?

[sorryimlikethis]

I think Little Peasant, Work Certificate and Trade Teacher are a pretty consensus 3 for bans. I don't like the idea of too many bans so would not advocate for any others.

4) Plow hero. He is not strong. Quite the opposite, this card is a directly worse version of another card - plowmaker. Same effect - getting 1 more plow for 1 food comes for the hero with strong limitation of having to plow first action. So far it's the only known case of having a strictly worse card. Of course there can be better and worse cards, but having strictly worse card by design - why? why? why?

I don't agree with this line of thinking. Plow Hero is a good card, just as Plow Maker is a good (better) card. If I have no plow support and see Plow Hero I'd be more than happy to take him. How often do you want to be Cultivating or Farmlanding as a first action anyway? Quite often late game.
Could you argue for a Sack Cart ban because Reap Hook exists? Sack Cart has the small edge case of 1 extra grain if played before round 4, but realistically that's rare.

[Old_Pepikos]

I think the following 4 cards should go:

too strong:
Trade Teacher
Beer table

Annoying:
Work Certificate
Little Peasant

But i also like to remove the super super weak cards like loud mouth