Passport tier list

[TheFrogstar]

Hello fellow japan-trip planners,

This is the tier list of passports that I and a couple of friends have created. It would be interesting to see if others think the same or not!

S: Speak Japanese, Happy go lucky
A: Otaku, Discerning, Spontaneous, Adept, Japanophile
B: Go-getter, Adventurous, Thrifty, Returning visitor, Ambitious
C: Resourceful, Learner, Planner, Extravagant, Fortunate, Balanced

passports are somewhat ordered within tiers, but honestly sometimes its hard to separate them.

I would say we have judged it based on a non-scientific mix of consistency and scoring. And so the lower down the tiers you go, the bigger the problems the passports have with either consistency or adding enough points. Happy to discuss though!

This is largely based on our personal experience as "strong" elo players, according to BGA anyway

[Pinstar1]

I would bump spontaneous up to S tier. Many passports can be hate-drafted against. Like denying a happy go lucky opponent as many relaxation/frugal cards as possible. You can't hate draft against spontaneous, shy of maybe making sure they don't get a relaxation tag highlight bonus card. Even then that's a stretch since it is only three relaxation tags and you can score plenty of points without a card that scores off of them. It also lets you place more 4th walks which can swing your score even higher if you get good flips.

It is why I question why there is a passport that gives 3 level rewards and one that gives three level two rewards (The 3 wild tag one)

[TheFrogstar]

Thanks Pinstar. I can see the argument...For me, speak Japanese still has to be on a level above everything else. I haven't seen anything else regularly score 180+ like it does.

With a bunch more games grinded, I would update my list a bit:

S: Speak Japanese.
A: Happy go lucky, Spontaneous.
B: Adept, Otaku, Discerning, Japanophile.
C: Resourceful, Thrifty, Go-getter, Ambitious, Adventurous, Returning visitor.
D: Extravagant, Learner.
E: Planner, Balanced, Fortunate.

List is roughly ordered within tiers.
E-tier I feel must be next to impossible to score 170 with.
D-tier I think is still pretty unlikely but theoretically possible.
C-tier and above are essentially the good passports. But c-tier ones generally are high potential with more variance compared to the consistency of B-tier.
I think other passports can match happy go lucky in terms of max potential, but happy go lucky trivialises scoring 160+ in a way not much else does.
Think spontaneous could go there or top of B, game hasn't given it to me in ages, so going with Pinstar on it.

[Nick German]

Why is happy go lucky so high? Do you get plus points for the minus track too? 2x -3 = +6 ?

[TheFrogstar]

I haven't tried, but assume a negative happiness score would become doubly bad (so -3 x2 =-6).

So to be fair, it is that high in the tier list because my assumption is you can consistently score 20 in happiness. As 12+12 would be fine but not so high, and anything lower than that pretty bad.

So far I have always been able to, but perhaps I've got a bit lucky. You have to be quite disciplined about it - play almost every happiness it gives you, including on day bonuses that might be slightly lower points. Don't play any negative happiness cards, and lay them down as a walk if you have no choice. Consider trains if needed. Once you are confident of maxing happiness you can be more flexible.

But if you do that, and get average icons, you only need to average 15-16 points from your day scores to get 160. Which is very easy/solid scoring.

[TheFrogstar]

End of arena season and final tier list update from me and Kinty. Roughly ordered within tiers.

S: Speak Japanese
A: Happy go lucky, Otaku, Resourceful, Spontaneous, Adept
B: Discerning, Thrifty, Go-getter, Returning visitor, Japanophile, Adventurous, Ambitious
C: Planner, Learner, Balanced, Extravagant, Fortunate

Changes:
- Less tiers at the top and bottom, as its hard to distinguish between some passports, and this brings it all closer together.
- Planner & Returning visitor up a bit, Resourceful up a lot
- Discerning & Adventurous & Extravagant & Ambitious down a bit, Japanophile down a lot

There's lots of little uncertainties. And each individual game has a lot of luck involved. But feels like we've roughly got there.

[toddobrown]

I'm so curious, having played quite a few games now but just seeing the same few passports on repeat
I've never seen the Speak Japanese passport, what does it do?
Actually have yet to see a lot of the passports, but wondering what makes the Speak Japanese one the best...

[Kinty]

Speak Japanese gives one point per blue chat symbol you have and provides a +1 happiness. On paper it may not seem too strong but it has capability to score really high and is quite consistent.

There are several cards which have highlight of the days that provide 2 blue chat tokens (some with 1 and 3 too) as well as some points and several cards which award points for the number of chat tokens you have e.g. 5 points plus 1 for every blue chat. You can combo these cards very nicely by playing cards which gives blue chat symbols as their highlight in the early days and then play the cards that give you points for each blue chat in the later days. The passport gives you extra points for these and also increases your happiness significantly.

With speak Japanese it makes reaching max happiness and getting +20 points quite easy which is otherwise harder to do in my opinion without fully focusing in on happiness which often isnt ideal unless youre running happy go lucky passport.

Theyre the main reasons but in general the blue chat icon cards are typically quite strong either having good highlights, higher point scores with a negative affect that gets negated with speak japanese or with dual icons on them which provides extra flexibility in placing cards and racking up more blue chat icons.

[TheFrogstar]

Yeah, to agree with Kinty it's:
1. You can score +20 happiness, even while playing negative happiness icons, which is mostly not possible/optimal normally.
2. There are lots of options for stacking conversation icons up, and lots of options for converting those into points, including some of the better cards in the game.

Drawbacks are that if the game is particularly unlucky you just might not see enough conversations to play. And that with very lucky games a few other passports might possibly have a tiny bit higher ceiling. (Separately Otaku is probably as good, but maybe harder to use).


S: Speak Japanese, Otaku
A: Resourceful, Happy go lucky, Spontaneous
B: Adept, Discerning, Thrifty, Go-getter, Adventurous, Returning visitor, Japanophile, Planner
C: Ambitious, Learner, Balanced, Extravagant, Fortunate

[jolinha]

My opinion
Speak Japanese is definitely the strongest passport and hard to win against. I almost don’t like it, cause it makes the game so unbalanced.
Happy go lucky would be the next, l just got my highest score ever with it (first time 180 ), although it was not the perfect card combination.
Otaku can be very strong as well, but as you said it is a bit harder to use. You can easily make wrong decisions, so you need a good knowledge of the game, while with the Happy one it’s quite relaxed to get the 20 extra points. For me they would share the second position after speak Japanese.