Weak Cards Banlist Discussion!
Posted: 02 December 2024, 19:12
In Lumin's banlist thread we have discussed banning weak cards from the draft. The format we primarily consider is 4 players - the normal setting of Arena. These cards are so bad that they just might be blank, in many cases you are better off not even paying for the card and the action. Even where they have a niche, that niche is very rare and still super weak. This thread is here to discuss the weak card banlist suggestion and I will start out by listing reasons why I think these cards should be cut. If you have any opinions, additional suggestion, make sure to comment (and like and subscribe)!
This thread is a collaboration between me and alexwjb. If you see the writing styles differ: I am probably the more verbose one, Alex is way more to the point ':D
There are some suggestions for more cards that could be considered towards the bottom.
Weak Banlist suggestion
A107 Catcher
A154 Paymaster
B147 Huntsman
D140 Loudmouth
A100 Curator
A110 Roughcaster
A151 Minstrel
A167 Breeder Buyer
C157 Resource Analyzer
C154 Twin Researcher
D165 Pig Stalker
D127 Hardworking Man
B101 Furniture Carpenter
D101 Sugar Baker
E108 Blackberry Farmer
B090 Cooperative Plower
D153 Wealthy Man
D116 Tree Inspector
C084 Perennial Rye
A070 Lifting Machine
B052 Growing Farm
C021 Heart of Stone
Occupations
A107 Catcher (Each time you place your 1st/2nd/3rd person in a round on a building resource accumulation space with exactly 5/4/3 building resources, you get 1 food):
Let’s talk tempo: For the 1st person, 5 does not happen on a lot of spaces. In 4-player (where we consider these bans) it can naturally happen on Copse, Clay Pit, Reed Bank and the stone ones. Copse generally gets taken before it does accumulate to 5 and so do rock spaces. Reed Bank sometimes stacks up in the late game, but it is very rare, it generally means somebody already has the BMW. If you are not the one with the BMW, I am not sure the 1 food is a good payout for taking that reed stack or if reed is so high priority you have to first pick it. Clay Pit could happen… but not very frequently, it is a 1 per round accumulation space after all. 2nd action 4 resource: this can happen naturally on every space apart from Forest: You might get a 1 or 2 hits of wood on Copse or Grove if you are lucky in the midgame on wood, but it is rare they are not snapped up with a high priority. Most likely are the clay spots. 3rd action 3 resources: Wood is most likely gone by the time you have 3 people (and Catcher played), stone sometimes lingers in heavy stone influx games, but not very commonly, so… most likely Clay Pit. In a game if it gets you 4 food: you are lucky. And for that you had to pay the card first. This is unplayable garbage.
A154 Paymaster (Each time another player uses a food accumulation space, you can give them 1 grain from your supply to get 1 bonus point.)
So you want to have so much influx grain that you can easily give it away (and not lose points by it), and either want the board so starved that they use the food accumulation spaces a lot, or they have a combo for it. They receive the grain, so they are more incentivized, but it also might give them a point (or two). I have not seen a single game where these criteria are met.
B147 Huntsman (Each time after you use a wood accumulation space, you can pay 1 grain to get 1 wild boar.)
If you have massive amounts of grain, which this card needs, I would assume your feeding is solved: therefore you want the pigs for points. So you do need to have some early fences / a few stables to actually start breeding those pigs with the grain to spare and then probably use the wood you get to fence / fence more. So you have to play the occ (1st action) and at least take wood twice with 2 grains to throw (2nd and 3rd action) This is only more efficient than simply taking the pig space if that space is hogged (pun intended), and you have a gajillion grain. Can that happen? Yes. Is it likely or worth it? No.
D140 Loudmouth (Each time you take at least 4 building resources or 4 animals from an accumulation space, you also get 1 food.)
Porter is a good card and the food is a big part of why it is good. But it is just part of it - the extra resource matters generally more. Porter does not work on animals, but having a 4 stack of animals on the board while Loudmouth is played could mostly only feasibly happen with sheep in the early-mid game and I am not sure it is Loudmouth that you would want to use your action to get out. So the animal part is mostly just pure blank. If you get 5 food from it, you are lucky… but do you want to play this with the horrible tempo of the card? Most likely not.
A100 Curator (In the returning home phase of each round, if you return at least 3 people from accumulation spaces, you can buy 1 bonus point for 1 food.)
It is not trivial to take three accumulation spaces in a round - by the time you take the third one, there probably aren’t very good accumulation spaces left. It’s a card that pushes you to take bad actions for a very slight benefit.
A110 Roughcaster (Each time you build at least 1 clay room or renovate your house from clay to stone, you also get 3 food)
This has a very niche use case, but that use case is so meh, that this card is hardly ever worth picking. You have to be in clay, you have to want to build rooms or reno to stone. Even if you build multiple rooms, it only procs once. With no support, the generic prospect of this card is about 6 food, with which you telegraph hard what you want to do on the board, which makes it also more blockable. And the payoff is very weak: consider Rustic, which gives 2food and a point on a clay room with no limit on the rooms per round - this makes Rustic a decent combo card. Roughcaster could be argued to stay with extremely niche game plans I guess work with cards like Clay supports and Renovation Company, but even then, it is weak.
A151 Minstrel (At the start of each returning home phase, if only one action space card on round space 1 to 4 is unoccupied, you can use that action space.)
Relying on others to have your card work generally is a rough choice, but sometimes it works - think Puppeteer or Buyer. You making Minstrel work for yourself will probably make you take suboptimal actions and would probably need you to have action advantage to guarantee proccing the card. Early game while the major space is used a lot, the sheep are generally only taken at decent stacks, fencing is rarely used, and Grain Utilization is used in some crop strats. Mid and lategame it has better chances, but it is rare that exactly 3 out of 4 are taken, in the very lategame it is likely all 4 are taken before Minstrel proc. If you still make all that work you might get… a single sheep? Maybe a Grain Utilization? And even then, as per errata: it uses the effect of the action space, so cards like Master Workman or Wood Barterer are not procced. This card wants action advantage and even then it is just so unreliable that you are better off not gambling on it.
A167 Breeder Buyer (Each time you build at least 1 wood/clay/stone room and at least 1 stable on the same turn, you also get 1 sheep/wild boar/cattle.)
Building a stable and room in the same turn typically happens between zero and two times per game. It is rare to build stone rooms. So in practice, this is a precious early action to get perhaps 1 or 2 sheep, or maybe a pig. It is absolutely terrible.
C157 Resource Analyzer (Before the start of each round, if you have more building resources than all other players of at least two types, you get 1 food.)
Holding large numbers of building resources in general is a strategic mistake, as you want resources to be used for helpful things like rooms, fences, improvements etc that advance your game. Having to hoard two separate kinds of resources, for the payoff of a single food per round, is awful. Possibly the worst card in the entire game, in that it encourages you to play very badly for a tiny reward.
C154 Twin Researcher (Each time you use one of the two accumulation spaces for the same type of good containing exactly the same number of goods, you can also buy 1 bonus point for 1 food.)
In practice it’s not even that common for there to be two spaces having the exact same amount of the same type of goods. When there are, they tend to be weak or mediocre actions (2f, 2w, 2c). Another card pushing you to take bad actions for minimal payoff.
D165 Pig Stalker (Each time you use an animal accumulation space, you get an additional 1 pig if you occupy a Round 1-14 action space which is immediately to the left or right of that accumulation space.)
This requires an extremely specific set of circumstances to proc. In practice it might be an awkward pig or two. You are almost certainly better off just taking pigs manually.
D127 Hardworking Man (This card is an action space for you only. If each other player has more rooms than you, it provides the "Day Laborer", "Build Rooms", and "Major Improvement" actions (all three).)
This card wants you to fall behind on the build queue (and therefore growth queue, something you generally don't want), which makes you have action disadvantage, then play this card. It does give you back the food and the extra action with a major improvement in one move and guarantee you cannot be room blocked. Works in very niche cases and has combos with stuff like Pastor or Priest. Very unlikely it procs two times. It is still a very niche scenario that you do not want to base your gameplan around, making it garbage in 99% of cases.
B101 Furniture Carpenter (Each harvest, if any player (including you) owns the Joinery or an upgrade thereof, you can buy exactly 1 bonus point for 2 food.
The Joinery is the least popular guild out of the 3 for a good reason: Wood is a very valuable resource, that people tend to fight hard for with fencing pressure on. But you want Joinery to be played somehow, maybe you passed a Plow Builder in the draft, but if not: probably you build the Joinery yourself. So it is either a wood or 2 food for a point per harvest but only if the guild is built. And you have to play it in time for the effect to work. This is horribly inefficient. Consider Cube Cutter (gives 1 wood when played, turns a wood into a food and a point per harvest), a weak, but sometimes playable card: it is food positive, when it comes out in the end. Not even considering other point cards which are just miles more easy to play and are more efficient.
D101 Sugar Baker (Each time after you use the Grain Utilization action space, you can buy 1 bonus point for 1 food. Place the food on the action space for the next visitor):
So you have to play this occ after which you want to use Grain Utilization a fair bit – ideally that 1 food comes back to you. This hinges on you having the actions to spare to use Grain Utilization a lot, actually benefitting from Grain Utilization apart from Sugar Baker. The earliest you play this card is stage 2 cause you need an oven / cookery to make it work and have spare food and crops to still sow. Even with ovens you do not want to Grain Utilization a ton, if you do: you have food issues: which Sugar Baker uses. Also high hopes it does not get blocked. This is asking for a lot. In my head I can dream up a scenario where it might work in a combo with Pan Baker and Firewood Collector, but the tempo of this card is just so bad, that this scenario remains a dream, and I have not seen it work once, nor wanting to play it.
E108 Blackberry Farmer (Each time you build fences, place 1 food on each remaining round space, up to the number of fences just built. At the start of these rounds, you get the food.)
You playing this card tells the whole board you want to fence badly, and then fence big and early enough that the food matters. In fencing strategies you generally want your food to come from your animals, and even if you want the food, you want it as soon as possible to have your breeding pairs intact. It is unlikely you want to spend an action for this occ. It could work with Hedge Keeper or Wood Barterer combos for multiple fencing, but it requires very specific cards being played and still early enough. Way too niche scenario and the effect is probably not that necessary.
B090 Cooperative Plower (Each time you use the Farmland action space while the Grain Seeds action space is occupied, you can plow one additional field):
The fact of the matter is, starting from the midgame: Farmland is generally a contested space, while Grain Seeds is not. Its best use scenario is if someone has a Grain Seeds combo card, but the problem with that is that every 'make a button' gameplan (like day labor combos) uses the action space generally as the last action. If you are the one using it early: you need to play the Grain seeds combo card, you need to play Cooperative Plower (somehow have food for the harvest after), on a future round Grain Seeds first action, hope Plow does not get taken second and have to have this sequence happen at least twice, cause you could have just plowed twice instead of paying the occ cost of Cooperative Plower. The scenario this works is so dreamy with so much hoping you do not get blocked, that this card is mostly just blank.
D153 Wealthy Man (At the start of each of the 1st/2nd/3rd/4th/5th/6th harvest, if you have at least 1/2/3/4/5/6 grain fields, you get 1 bonus point.)
This card requires powerful combos to even be considered (Field Watchman, Young Farmer). And even then, it’s a difficult requirement to meet. In practice, the card is almost never playable, and the benefit is too weak, leading to terrible stats.
D116 Tree Inspector (This card is a "1 Wood" accumulation space for you only. Each time the newly revealed action space card is a "Quarry" accumulation space, you must discard all wood from this card.)
Normally needs to be played in round 1 to make any sense, costing you the option to do something better. Then forces you to either risk losing all the wood or take a 3w action in r4, which is fine but opens the board for others. Might then give you another decent wood action or two depending on when stone flips. Is that better than just taking wood off the board normally (thus denying wood to others)? The stats suggest not and that this is one of the worst cards in the game.
Minors
C084 Perennial Rye (Req 2 Occs.Cost 1F. Each round that does not end with a harvest, you can pay 1 grain to breed exactly 1 type of animal. (This is not considered a breeding phase.))
It’s difficult to have enough animals, grain and animal capacity for this to even be possible, and even if it is, it’s not necessarily the case that the animal is better than the grain anyway. Add a food cost and two occ requirement and this is a very bad card.
A070 Lifting Machine ((Req 3 fields. Cost 1W.) At the end of each round that does not end with a harvest, you can move 1 vegetable from one of your fields to your supply. (This is not considered a field phase.)
An extremely marginal benefit which doesn’t even count as a harvest, so doesn’t combo with cards that give you a benefit when harvesting crops like Slurry Spreader. To add insult to injury, it costs 1 wood and requires three fields.
B052 Growing Farm (2VP. Cost 2C 1R.) You can only play this card if you have at least as many pasture spaces as the number of completed rounds. If you do, you get a number of food equal to the current round.
The main problem here is the cost. Having early fences is sometimes a good idea with the right hand. But having early fences and having 2c and 1r to spare to pay for the card almost never happens in practice. The most recent available stats suggest this is actually the single lowest power minor in the game.
C021 Heart of Stone (Cost 4F.) (Each time a "Quarry" accumulation space is revealed, if you have room in your house, you can immediately take a "Family Growth" action without placing a person.)
4f is a huge cost in the early game. You are then at the mercy of when stone flips, and in the meantime you have opened the growth queue in a way that has been telegraphed to everyone. Almost always terrible.
Some additional bad cards to consider
C111 Small Animal Breeder (Before the start of each round, if you have food equal to or higher than the current round number (e.g., 8+ food in round 8), you get 1 food.)
This is used more than other very bad cards, so not immediately included because some players seem to like it. But the stats suggest it is extremely bad, likely because it encourages bad play (food hoarding) at the expense of better actions.
C158 Forest Campaigner (Each time before you place a person, if there are at least 8 wood total on accumulation spaces, you get 1 food.)
Stats suggest it is weak. If there is at least 8 wood available, you often should take wood, which turns it off for future actions. But in wood rich games, not impossible for this to be ok.
C012 Cattle Farm (Cost 1W.) (For each pasture you have, you can keep 1 cattle on this card.)
This card gives you a specific animal capacity once you already have capacity, and not even very much capacity. It’s almost never useful.
B150 Large Scale Farmer (Each time after you use the "Farm Expansion" or "Major Improvement" action space while the other is unoccupied, you can pay 1 food to use that other space with the same person.)
With cards like these, you have to ask yourself: are you not better off taking those 2 actions separately than play this card and hope both are not used? Also being able to effectively use both spaces at the same time? And have to proc at least twice for you to have an action advantage coming from the card? In most cases, it is simply not worth to play this card.
A130 Mummy’s Boy (Once per round, when placing a person after your first two, you can place it on the action space with your 2nd person and use that space again.)
Normally, the second action you take isn’t a premium action like Cultivation or Urgent Wish for Children. So you normally get the option to take a mediocre action a second time. Maybe in very rare circumstances, where you have built a brilliant button with a fishing combo or something, that might be useful. But in general it’s just a very weak power to have.
D166 Stable Milker (Each time you build at least 2 stables on the same turn, you also get 1 cattle.)
Unless you have a Stable Cleaner (a very specific combo), this card requires you to use the Build Room space (mostly likely also wanting to build a room) and have 4 wood still for the stables. You also have to have a use for the cow. The benefit is very marginal, the circumstances very specific, and most cases you are probably better off taking single cow.
B165 Game Provider (Immediately before each harvest, you can discard 1/3/4 grain from different fields to receive 1/2/3 wild boars.)
A card that seems fun until you try it. In practice, if you have surplus grain, your game isn’t normally set up to also have something useful to do with the boar. And if you don’t have surplus grain, why are you playing the card?
C034 Elephantgrass Plant (Req 2 Occs. Cost 2C 1S.) (Immediately after each harvest, you can use this card to exchange exactly 1 reed for 1 bonus point.)
A very expensive way to turn a scarce resource into points, and it still has to be played early enough to have enough harvests left for it to matter.
A084 Silage (Req 2 Fields.) (In each returning home phase after which there is no harvest, you can pay exactly 1 grain - even from a field - to breed exactly one type of animal.)
Same problems as Perennial Rye, though at least a bit easier to play.
Meme cards too funny to ban despite being bad
Sequestrator
Forest Scientist
This thread is a collaboration between me and alexwjb. If you see the writing styles differ: I am probably the more verbose one, Alex is way more to the point ':D
There are some suggestions for more cards that could be considered towards the bottom.
Weak Banlist suggestion
A107 Catcher
A154 Paymaster
B147 Huntsman
D140 Loudmouth
A100 Curator
A110 Roughcaster
A151 Minstrel
A167 Breeder Buyer
C157 Resource Analyzer
C154 Twin Researcher
D165 Pig Stalker
D127 Hardworking Man
B101 Furniture Carpenter
D101 Sugar Baker
E108 Blackberry Farmer
B090 Cooperative Plower
D153 Wealthy Man
D116 Tree Inspector
C084 Perennial Rye
A070 Lifting Machine
B052 Growing Farm
C021 Heart of Stone
Occupations
A107 Catcher (Each time you place your 1st/2nd/3rd person in a round on a building resource accumulation space with exactly 5/4/3 building resources, you get 1 food):
Let’s talk tempo: For the 1st person, 5 does not happen on a lot of spaces. In 4-player (where we consider these bans) it can naturally happen on Copse, Clay Pit, Reed Bank and the stone ones. Copse generally gets taken before it does accumulate to 5 and so do rock spaces. Reed Bank sometimes stacks up in the late game, but it is very rare, it generally means somebody already has the BMW. If you are not the one with the BMW, I am not sure the 1 food is a good payout for taking that reed stack or if reed is so high priority you have to first pick it. Clay Pit could happen… but not very frequently, it is a 1 per round accumulation space after all. 2nd action 4 resource: this can happen naturally on every space apart from Forest: You might get a 1 or 2 hits of wood on Copse or Grove if you are lucky in the midgame on wood, but it is rare they are not snapped up with a high priority. Most likely are the clay spots. 3rd action 3 resources: Wood is most likely gone by the time you have 3 people (and Catcher played), stone sometimes lingers in heavy stone influx games, but not very commonly, so… most likely Clay Pit. In a game if it gets you 4 food: you are lucky. And for that you had to pay the card first. This is unplayable garbage.
A154 Paymaster (Each time another player uses a food accumulation space, you can give them 1 grain from your supply to get 1 bonus point.)
So you want to have so much influx grain that you can easily give it away (and not lose points by it), and either want the board so starved that they use the food accumulation spaces a lot, or they have a combo for it. They receive the grain, so they are more incentivized, but it also might give them a point (or two). I have not seen a single game where these criteria are met.
B147 Huntsman (Each time after you use a wood accumulation space, you can pay 1 grain to get 1 wild boar.)
If you have massive amounts of grain, which this card needs, I would assume your feeding is solved: therefore you want the pigs for points. So you do need to have some early fences / a few stables to actually start breeding those pigs with the grain to spare and then probably use the wood you get to fence / fence more. So you have to play the occ (1st action) and at least take wood twice with 2 grains to throw (2nd and 3rd action) This is only more efficient than simply taking the pig space if that space is hogged (pun intended), and you have a gajillion grain. Can that happen? Yes. Is it likely or worth it? No.
D140 Loudmouth (Each time you take at least 4 building resources or 4 animals from an accumulation space, you also get 1 food.)
Porter is a good card and the food is a big part of why it is good. But it is just part of it - the extra resource matters generally more. Porter does not work on animals, but having a 4 stack of animals on the board while Loudmouth is played could mostly only feasibly happen with sheep in the early-mid game and I am not sure it is Loudmouth that you would want to use your action to get out. So the animal part is mostly just pure blank. If you get 5 food from it, you are lucky… but do you want to play this with the horrible tempo of the card? Most likely not.
A100 Curator (In the returning home phase of each round, if you return at least 3 people from accumulation spaces, you can buy 1 bonus point for 1 food.)
It is not trivial to take three accumulation spaces in a round - by the time you take the third one, there probably aren’t very good accumulation spaces left. It’s a card that pushes you to take bad actions for a very slight benefit.
A110 Roughcaster (Each time you build at least 1 clay room or renovate your house from clay to stone, you also get 3 food)
This has a very niche use case, but that use case is so meh, that this card is hardly ever worth picking. You have to be in clay, you have to want to build rooms or reno to stone. Even if you build multiple rooms, it only procs once. With no support, the generic prospect of this card is about 6 food, with which you telegraph hard what you want to do on the board, which makes it also more blockable. And the payoff is very weak: consider Rustic, which gives 2food and a point on a clay room with no limit on the rooms per round - this makes Rustic a decent combo card. Roughcaster could be argued to stay with extremely niche game plans I guess work with cards like Clay supports and Renovation Company, but even then, it is weak.
A151 Minstrel (At the start of each returning home phase, if only one action space card on round space 1 to 4 is unoccupied, you can use that action space.)
Relying on others to have your card work generally is a rough choice, but sometimes it works - think Puppeteer or Buyer. You making Minstrel work for yourself will probably make you take suboptimal actions and would probably need you to have action advantage to guarantee proccing the card. Early game while the major space is used a lot, the sheep are generally only taken at decent stacks, fencing is rarely used, and Grain Utilization is used in some crop strats. Mid and lategame it has better chances, but it is rare that exactly 3 out of 4 are taken, in the very lategame it is likely all 4 are taken before Minstrel proc. If you still make all that work you might get… a single sheep? Maybe a Grain Utilization? And even then, as per errata: it uses the effect of the action space, so cards like Master Workman or Wood Barterer are not procced. This card wants action advantage and even then it is just so unreliable that you are better off not gambling on it.
A167 Breeder Buyer (Each time you build at least 1 wood/clay/stone room and at least 1 stable on the same turn, you also get 1 sheep/wild boar/cattle.)
Building a stable and room in the same turn typically happens between zero and two times per game. It is rare to build stone rooms. So in practice, this is a precious early action to get perhaps 1 or 2 sheep, or maybe a pig. It is absolutely terrible.
C157 Resource Analyzer (Before the start of each round, if you have more building resources than all other players of at least two types, you get 1 food.)
Holding large numbers of building resources in general is a strategic mistake, as you want resources to be used for helpful things like rooms, fences, improvements etc that advance your game. Having to hoard two separate kinds of resources, for the payoff of a single food per round, is awful. Possibly the worst card in the entire game, in that it encourages you to play very badly for a tiny reward.
C154 Twin Researcher (Each time you use one of the two accumulation spaces for the same type of good containing exactly the same number of goods, you can also buy 1 bonus point for 1 food.)
In practice it’s not even that common for there to be two spaces having the exact same amount of the same type of goods. When there are, they tend to be weak or mediocre actions (2f, 2w, 2c). Another card pushing you to take bad actions for minimal payoff.
D165 Pig Stalker (Each time you use an animal accumulation space, you get an additional 1 pig if you occupy a Round 1-14 action space which is immediately to the left or right of that accumulation space.)
This requires an extremely specific set of circumstances to proc. In practice it might be an awkward pig or two. You are almost certainly better off just taking pigs manually.
D127 Hardworking Man (This card is an action space for you only. If each other player has more rooms than you, it provides the "Day Laborer", "Build Rooms", and "Major Improvement" actions (all three).)
This card wants you to fall behind on the build queue (and therefore growth queue, something you generally don't want), which makes you have action disadvantage, then play this card. It does give you back the food and the extra action with a major improvement in one move and guarantee you cannot be room blocked. Works in very niche cases and has combos with stuff like Pastor or Priest. Very unlikely it procs two times. It is still a very niche scenario that you do not want to base your gameplan around, making it garbage in 99% of cases.
B101 Furniture Carpenter (Each harvest, if any player (including you) owns the Joinery or an upgrade thereof, you can buy exactly 1 bonus point for 2 food.
The Joinery is the least popular guild out of the 3 for a good reason: Wood is a very valuable resource, that people tend to fight hard for with fencing pressure on. But you want Joinery to be played somehow, maybe you passed a Plow Builder in the draft, but if not: probably you build the Joinery yourself. So it is either a wood or 2 food for a point per harvest but only if the guild is built. And you have to play it in time for the effect to work. This is horribly inefficient. Consider Cube Cutter (gives 1 wood when played, turns a wood into a food and a point per harvest), a weak, but sometimes playable card: it is food positive, when it comes out in the end. Not even considering other point cards which are just miles more easy to play and are more efficient.
D101 Sugar Baker (Each time after you use the Grain Utilization action space, you can buy 1 bonus point for 1 food. Place the food on the action space for the next visitor):
So you have to play this occ after which you want to use Grain Utilization a fair bit – ideally that 1 food comes back to you. This hinges on you having the actions to spare to use Grain Utilization a lot, actually benefitting from Grain Utilization apart from Sugar Baker. The earliest you play this card is stage 2 cause you need an oven / cookery to make it work and have spare food and crops to still sow. Even with ovens you do not want to Grain Utilization a ton, if you do: you have food issues: which Sugar Baker uses. Also high hopes it does not get blocked. This is asking for a lot. In my head I can dream up a scenario where it might work in a combo with Pan Baker and Firewood Collector, but the tempo of this card is just so bad, that this scenario remains a dream, and I have not seen it work once, nor wanting to play it.
E108 Blackberry Farmer (Each time you build fences, place 1 food on each remaining round space, up to the number of fences just built. At the start of these rounds, you get the food.)
You playing this card tells the whole board you want to fence badly, and then fence big and early enough that the food matters. In fencing strategies you generally want your food to come from your animals, and even if you want the food, you want it as soon as possible to have your breeding pairs intact. It is unlikely you want to spend an action for this occ. It could work with Hedge Keeper or Wood Barterer combos for multiple fencing, but it requires very specific cards being played and still early enough. Way too niche scenario and the effect is probably not that necessary.
B090 Cooperative Plower (Each time you use the Farmland action space while the Grain Seeds action space is occupied, you can plow one additional field):
The fact of the matter is, starting from the midgame: Farmland is generally a contested space, while Grain Seeds is not. Its best use scenario is if someone has a Grain Seeds combo card, but the problem with that is that every 'make a button' gameplan (like day labor combos) uses the action space generally as the last action. If you are the one using it early: you need to play the Grain seeds combo card, you need to play Cooperative Plower (somehow have food for the harvest after), on a future round Grain Seeds first action, hope Plow does not get taken second and have to have this sequence happen at least twice, cause you could have just plowed twice instead of paying the occ cost of Cooperative Plower. The scenario this works is so dreamy with so much hoping you do not get blocked, that this card is mostly just blank.
D153 Wealthy Man (At the start of each of the 1st/2nd/3rd/4th/5th/6th harvest, if you have at least 1/2/3/4/5/6 grain fields, you get 1 bonus point.)
This card requires powerful combos to even be considered (Field Watchman, Young Farmer). And even then, it’s a difficult requirement to meet. In practice, the card is almost never playable, and the benefit is too weak, leading to terrible stats.
D116 Tree Inspector (This card is a "1 Wood" accumulation space for you only. Each time the newly revealed action space card is a "Quarry" accumulation space, you must discard all wood from this card.)
Normally needs to be played in round 1 to make any sense, costing you the option to do something better. Then forces you to either risk losing all the wood or take a 3w action in r4, which is fine but opens the board for others. Might then give you another decent wood action or two depending on when stone flips. Is that better than just taking wood off the board normally (thus denying wood to others)? The stats suggest not and that this is one of the worst cards in the game.
Minors
C084 Perennial Rye (Req 2 Occs.Cost 1F. Each round that does not end with a harvest, you can pay 1 grain to breed exactly 1 type of animal. (This is not considered a breeding phase.))
It’s difficult to have enough animals, grain and animal capacity for this to even be possible, and even if it is, it’s not necessarily the case that the animal is better than the grain anyway. Add a food cost and two occ requirement and this is a very bad card.
A070 Lifting Machine ((Req 3 fields. Cost 1W.) At the end of each round that does not end with a harvest, you can move 1 vegetable from one of your fields to your supply. (This is not considered a field phase.)
An extremely marginal benefit which doesn’t even count as a harvest, so doesn’t combo with cards that give you a benefit when harvesting crops like Slurry Spreader. To add insult to injury, it costs 1 wood and requires three fields.
B052 Growing Farm (2VP. Cost 2C 1R.) You can only play this card if you have at least as many pasture spaces as the number of completed rounds. If you do, you get a number of food equal to the current round.
The main problem here is the cost. Having early fences is sometimes a good idea with the right hand. But having early fences and having 2c and 1r to spare to pay for the card almost never happens in practice. The most recent available stats suggest this is actually the single lowest power minor in the game.
C021 Heart of Stone (Cost 4F.) (Each time a "Quarry" accumulation space is revealed, if you have room in your house, you can immediately take a "Family Growth" action without placing a person.)
4f is a huge cost in the early game. You are then at the mercy of when stone flips, and in the meantime you have opened the growth queue in a way that has been telegraphed to everyone. Almost always terrible.
Some additional bad cards to consider
C111 Small Animal Breeder (Before the start of each round, if you have food equal to or higher than the current round number (e.g., 8+ food in round 8), you get 1 food.)
This is used more than other very bad cards, so not immediately included because some players seem to like it. But the stats suggest it is extremely bad, likely because it encourages bad play (food hoarding) at the expense of better actions.
C158 Forest Campaigner (Each time before you place a person, if there are at least 8 wood total on accumulation spaces, you get 1 food.)
Stats suggest it is weak. If there is at least 8 wood available, you often should take wood, which turns it off for future actions. But in wood rich games, not impossible for this to be ok.
C012 Cattle Farm (Cost 1W.) (For each pasture you have, you can keep 1 cattle on this card.)
This card gives you a specific animal capacity once you already have capacity, and not even very much capacity. It’s almost never useful.
B150 Large Scale Farmer (Each time after you use the "Farm Expansion" or "Major Improvement" action space while the other is unoccupied, you can pay 1 food to use that other space with the same person.)
With cards like these, you have to ask yourself: are you not better off taking those 2 actions separately than play this card and hope both are not used? Also being able to effectively use both spaces at the same time? And have to proc at least twice for you to have an action advantage coming from the card? In most cases, it is simply not worth to play this card.
A130 Mummy’s Boy (Once per round, when placing a person after your first two, you can place it on the action space with your 2nd person and use that space again.)
Normally, the second action you take isn’t a premium action like Cultivation or Urgent Wish for Children. So you normally get the option to take a mediocre action a second time. Maybe in very rare circumstances, where you have built a brilliant button with a fishing combo or something, that might be useful. But in general it’s just a very weak power to have.
D166 Stable Milker (Each time you build at least 2 stables on the same turn, you also get 1 cattle.)
Unless you have a Stable Cleaner (a very specific combo), this card requires you to use the Build Room space (mostly likely also wanting to build a room) and have 4 wood still for the stables. You also have to have a use for the cow. The benefit is very marginal, the circumstances very specific, and most cases you are probably better off taking single cow.
B165 Game Provider (Immediately before each harvest, you can discard 1/3/4 grain from different fields to receive 1/2/3 wild boars.)
A card that seems fun until you try it. In practice, if you have surplus grain, your game isn’t normally set up to also have something useful to do with the boar. And if you don’t have surplus grain, why are you playing the card?
C034 Elephantgrass Plant (Req 2 Occs. Cost 2C 1S.) (Immediately after each harvest, you can use this card to exchange exactly 1 reed for 1 bonus point.)
A very expensive way to turn a scarce resource into points, and it still has to be played early enough to have enough harvests left for it to matter.
A084 Silage (Req 2 Fields.) (In each returning home phase after which there is no harvest, you can pay exactly 1 grain - even from a field - to breed exactly one type of animal.)
Same problems as Perennial Rye, though at least a bit easier to play.
Meme cards too funny to ban despite being bad
Sequestrator
Forest Scientist
