Ban list for Competitive play

[Lawton]

In the harvest expansion 2, a list of cards that were banned for serious play was included based on bgg feedback. these cards are as follows:
52 a Tutor (1st)
107 B Adventurer
115 b Princess
125 c Scribe
170 a Refugee Helper
189 B Seafarer

All of these cards are capable of generating 10+ points of tiles/silver or the equivalent in action economy during the game which is enough to swing the game between strong players. It would probably be good to have an option to play without these cards, especially once arena is available. These were written based on the norwegians context but this is still at the least a list of the most powerful cards

[michaelHastriter]

Were these cards eventually banned?

[KeithHendricks]

No. I have seen Refugee Helper and Seafarer recently.

I’m not sure that they need to be banned, at least in 3-4P games with a good amount of competition.

Even playing Refugee Helper only means other players will be more aggressive with emigrations.

Tutor lets you play a lot of cards, but you still have to do a lot of card draw actions to make it worthwhile. 3V actions are strong, but speculating in them so as to abuse the Tutor ability can be a risky gamble.

Adventurer is only good until all the islands are gone. As there are only six double sided exploration boards on BGA the card is of limited usefulness currently. I imagine sometimes all the islands are claimed before some people get Adventurer on the table. (I try to play my cards quick, but I see a lot of people holding on to them round after round.)

Princess might give you a couple silverware. I usually end with 3-4 houses regardless of my cards, so if you’re playing with me I’m giving you some stiff competition for that silverware making ability. Houses are premium VP especially at higher player counts where everyone is fighting over them, so in a 4P game especially I see Princess as being a limited card compared to say, Cottager, which you could save for a big mead pay-out to activate your house bonuses, then go on to make some pelts.

In 2P, perhaps some of these cards might become obnoxious, as they would create too much of a one-sided dynamic. So I guess I would be ok with removing them in competitive 2P games. But at 3-4P I don’t see them determining the winner.