Banlist Discussion!

[buldozer]

Hello banners!

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So, first of all, I have to say that people who come to Banlist Discussion are almost always people who do want to ban things.
Most people who don't want to ban things - they just happily play and don't care about banlist discussions.
Or maybe there are certain people who do want to ban, but just not really aware. I understand that people who post here are the most active members of the community and care the most about competitive game, but I don't like much the idea of banning things in the some chats.

I like how BGA puts the purple banner about the end of the season. Something similar could be about banning cards in our arena games.
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Now to about actually banning things.

I agree that banning should be implemented when needed. But I do believe that banning should be formalized as much as possible. For example by having the actual stats on cards performance (something in addition to stats we already have on BGA, like vp earned, food consumed etc). Like if we have stats that Begging student is a clear outlier - goodbye Begging student, go beg somewhere else. He most likely will...

Now the game-wrapping effect is a tricky one. We already had examples, like caravan, or magic wood generator card.

Big Country is considered to be both over the edge strong and also game-wrapping. It is a strong card, no doubt, there are lots of other incredibly strong cards and cards, which are really weak. That's completely normal. Do we know if it's really over the edge strong - not really. And I'm afraid there is too much of an influence from the elite streamers, who often shape the opinion of public into certain direction, and also to certain game styles.
Many discord-independent or new players often have their often styles, free of meta...

What I want to say, is that meta might create the appearance of certain cards to be too strong, or to be played in a certain fixed way.
And Big Country certainly appears to one of those cases. It's now almost always played in a 2-room house strategies.
It can often be successful, but it also fails so many times. In fact the more I play, the more I enjoy play AGAINST the Big country, since you can enjoy so much more freedom on board and build your combos and strategies more easily. As the result I generally have a good success playing against big country.

In fact I also enjoy playing as Big Country, as much as I like to play with Stork Nest or Carrot Museum or crazy 2-room combos, which deviate from the standard gameplan a lot. Those are just super fun!

Now I understand people can get tired of Big Country, it comes way too often they say (not for me, but I can understand). But we gonna have way more cards in future. So Big country will be like way way less rare. Almost like Christmas haha.

Big country is also especially fun experience for new players. And by newer I mean not just beginners, but players in their 200s and 300s. It helps to learn small house strategies in a relatively easy way. Growing now into my 500s, I still enjoy having it and to try something different with it.

What I want to say - I will miss Big Country a lot. And even if gets banned for now, I hope this post might get to think to reconsider this card in future.

#savebigcountry

P.S. No hard feelings about Begging student though. He is fun, but just too dumb to play. Like there is scholar, begging student is just a cheater version of it.

[msclark]

I think it's very difficult to tell whether a card is too strong for the format purely by playing your own games, and to be honest I'm a little dubious of anyone who says so with any confidence. Even if you've played 100 Arena games this season, and only a few here have, that still only means you've seen any one card at most 30ish times. That's not enough to see the trend across nearly 7000 games, even if you're taking notes and not just selectively remembering the outliers.

So I think we have to have actual data to be able to tell if a card is truly bannably strong. If BGA don't want to publish this, and it seems they don't, at least let someone sensible look at it and report back if our collective instincts are off-base.

Banning a card for being annoying / game warping / boring, however, is a more personal opinion, and I feel better able to vote on that. I do find Big Country pretty boring to play, and to play against, so I would vote to ban it. Begging Student I actually don't find that objectionable. It can be crazy powerful in some games, but in other games it's -3 points for net 2 decent occupations and 3 largely irrelevant ones. That's still a high floor, possibly too high, but it's also fun to play so I'm not too bothered by it. It is, though, a pretty automatic first pick, both because it's a good card and because passing it to someone who already snagged the best occ in their pack is too good for them. Should automatic first picks exist in a competitive format? Perhaps not.

TLDR: ban Big Country; agnostic on Begging Student.

[Tisaac]

So I think we have to have actual data to be able to tell if a card is truly bannably strong. If BGA don't want to publish this, and it seems they don't, at least let someone sensible look at it and report back if our collective instincts are off-base.

That's planned already.

[Booms]

Just adding my voice to the chorus asking for Big Country and Begging Student to be added to the competitive ban list. As someone who only started playing agricola 2 months ago, I can say without a shadow of a doubt, that my best (and often only chance) of beating much stronger players is when I draft Big Country or Begging Student. That, to me, is confirmation that these cards are unbalanced within our current card pool.

[Montu]

I'd like to co-sign what Buldozer wrote above.

While I agree that Big Country leads to relatively easy games (in the sense that your path is straightforward and you don't interact a ton with the rest of the table for the first half of the game), and it is fairly rare to see a Big Country with halfway decent supporting cards finish 4th, I've also seen it beaten enough times to be skeptical of some of the claims of its OP status.

In addition, if we add more cards overall, the rate of play for BC will decrease, and those cards might benefit other strategies more than BC strategies. For instance, if Church Warden or Village Elder are introduced, Big Country strats are immediately weaker.

I like that there's at least one card that allows legitimate 2-room strategies in this set. Otherwise, the growth queue is essentially the entire game, and whoever is 4th in the queue is usually at a massive disadvantage (yes, yes, if they can double build and grow 4th and 5th, and if they get a bit more compensation while setting that up--something like Straw Thatched Roof with early fields, or Clay Supports with clay synergy cards--then things can be okay, but statistically, win rates correlate with order of family growth, and Big Country is basically the only card in this set that defies that trend).

This discussion reminds me a lot of the early discussion of Cowboy and Mother when France Deck was first released.

http://play-agricola.com/Agricola/Cards ... 985_13.jpg

Cowboy and Mother also more or less guarantees a score in the mid-high 40s in almost any game, making it unlikely to finish last but also lacking the ceiling to win higher-scoring games. People were worried about that card too, but after a lot of plays, it became clear that 2-room, 2-action-per-turn games are hard to make work, and a lot depends on when Urgent Wish flips.

Of course, I will not argue too strenuously against the community consensus, and I 100% agree that Begging Student is far too powerful and should be banned. However, I'd much rather see Big Country remain, ideally as part of a larger card set, and let the community adjust to its presence. For me, Big Country games are a lot of fun, even when they don't win, and 3+ room games when the growth queue is one giant hot potato all game long are incredibly boring and not fun. De gustibus non est disputandum, as the Romans once said.

[RicardoRix]

Very much agree with the sentiment of buldozer and Montu.

If the game is going to boil down to the growth que, then this highlights one of the worst aspects of the game. With all the different cards then personally I am looking for diversity in the game, not single minded strategies that always work, like grow first.

I don't see how being stuck on 2 people is considered an advantage. An extra meeple or 2 or 3 should be enough compensation versus Big Country. I recently played a game with late growth and early wish, and BC still did not win. It feels that this card obviously has big potential for strength in diversity and that most peoples reactions are to complain if they ever lose to it, which they will do, because their rubbish players that love confirmation bias.

If I have a choice between Big Country and Carpenters Parlour, then I'm choosing Carpenters Parlour. With BC banned then I think Carpenters Parlour will stick out like a sore thumb in the statistics and then we can have a discussion about the fallacy of the slippery slope given this is in the original set.

Big Country: A good card - yes. Ban it and the game gets more boring and homogeneous.

[Dinandino]

Like said before there a two reasons for banning a card
A) It's to strong
B) It's to annoying to play with/against

When deciding on bans based on reason A above once should look at a cards statistics. Human minds (even the best ones out there) are biased.

Continuing with reason B, here are my thoughts about Big Country and Begging student
Big Country: I feel like games with or without BC are completely different for everybody as there is an even bigger wood shortage in the early game, but less of a struggle for growth. To me it adds variety to the game, which is a good thing. So I'm strongly against banning it for play reasons. However if data shows it's op, feel free to ban.

Begging student: Don't think this one is game warping or a annoying to play with/against. So I'm against banning if for play reasons. However if data shows it's op, feel free to ban.

Furthermore, don't think any one of the currently banned cards should be unbanned.

[EconSean]

It's been a while since I've posted my opinion but I just wanted to reiterate my viewpoint in light of people discussing a bc ban:

I still believe that begging student and big country should be banned.

One problem with big country that hasn't been discussed is that it makes many 3 room strategies not viable. Going 3 room when someone else is playing big country is a death sentence most of the time. The main way to combat big country is with aggressive growth. Without big country in the pool, this would expand the number of small house strategies available, including the number of two room strategies. Without big country, 2 room collector, and quick Reno into stone strategies become way more viable. With big country, trying to do either of those is just a mistake, as two two room strategies is super punishable. Removing big country both diversifies what is possible and leads to more skill expression while removing a highly powerful card from the pool.

I played 187 games of arena this season, and big country games happen far too often and are some of the most boring games to play with and are some of the most frustrating games to play against. If we get stats that say that big country is not powerful at all, I'm willing to reconsider, but based on the last stats dump and based on my own experience it's simply too powerful and should be banned.

[QBert]

It looks like begging student and big country have now been banned in competitive games. Yay!

[lpoulter]

Was any data provided to support the bans?