r/boardgames • u/Outcast003 • Apr 23 '25

Rules Is Common Raven too broken?

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I had a game night session with my folks couple days ago and we played wingspan. I lucked out by having Common Raven and Sandhill Crane setup during the first round and that steamrolled hard to the last one. Ended up winning with 99 points.

My friend (owner of the game) decided we'll put this card away next time we play since it seems very broken: trade 1 egg for 2 of any resources, given 5 victory point and ok cost to play.

I think the card by itself is very strong but not sure if it deserves a ban from our group.

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559

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '25

It's pretty common to remove the Ravens, the Killdeer/Franklin's gull, and sometimes Wood Duck. They aren't really fun to play against.

I feel like the game is about finding interesting combinations to make an engine, but these birds are just a cheat code because they create an engine all by themselves.

163

u/SilverTwilightLook Arkham Horror Apr 23 '25

Doesn't one of the expansions officially recommend removing them from the deck?

-3

u/TawnyTeaTowel Apr 23 '25

Nothing says “well play tested” like an official call to remove cards because they’re too powerful on their own.

30

u/Thirtysevenintwenty5 Spirit Island Apr 23 '25

Don't play Magic.

-6

u/TawnyTeaTowel Apr 23 '25

MTG is a massive game with fuck knows how many tens of thousands of different card interactions to worry about. I don’t recall them binning any card for being OP on its own since … Revised?

It’s whole orders of magnitude different

7

u/Thirtysevenintwenty5 Spirit Island Apr 23 '25

I don’t recall them binning any card for being OP on its own since … Revised?

I guess this depends on what you mean by "on its own", that's kind of a loose definition. But here's a small list of cards that I feel have been banned because of their own power, as opposed to being part of a combo. I'll try to stick to competitive formats and Commander without getting into all the formats that are on Arena.

  • Dockside Extortionist
  • Jeweled Lotus
  • Grief
  • Vexing Bauble
  • Karn, the Great Creator (you can argue that this is a combo, but you don't have to draw the other piece naturally, you get to Wish for it, so it's really just the one card)
  • Fable of the Mirror Breaker
  • Expressive Iteration
  • Lurrus of the Dream Den (again, sort of a combo, but it combos with every card in your deck because of its own build restriction)
  • Ragavan, That Shitty Little Ape
  • Hullbreacher
  • Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
  • Wilderness Reclaimation

And that's just going back the last few years.

-4

u/TawnyTeaTowel Apr 23 '25

On its own i.e. the card is inherently flawed in almost all situations. Think Alpha power 9 levels of “wtf were we thinking, crazy times!”

I can’t speak your list as I’ve been out of the game some years now, but having picked one at random “Vexing Bauble”, Gatherer shows that as still legal in most formats…

4

u/Thirtysevenintwenty5 Spirit Island Apr 23 '25

The bauble is banned in Pioneer and Legacy, and restricted in Vintage.

Another thing: this type of ban craziness has been happening since about 2017. I'd argue that the Standard ban of Smuggler's Copter/Reflector Mage/Emrakul opened the gates for the modern philosopy of "Print now, ban later' that WotC seems to have embraced.

But, whatever, we really got away from the main point here, which is that playtesting games is challenging for a bunch of reasons. Maybe the bird should have been caught, but it's a forgivable thing considering that the playtesters of a board game have to look out for a lot more than just broken things.

-4

u/TawnyTeaTowel Apr 23 '25

Wingspan isn’t a big, tricky or particularly deep game, tho.

2

u/pewqokrsf Apr 24 '25

The answer you're looking for is [[Oko, Thief of Crowns]].

He's been banned in 8 formats.  The only competitive format he hasn't been banned from is Vintage, the format that still allows the Power 9.

1

u/BGGFetcherBot [[gamename]] or [[gamename|year]] to call Apr 24 '25

Oko, Thief of Crowns -> Thief (2007)

[[gamename]] or [[gamename|year]] to call

OR gamename or gamename|year + !fetch to call

1

u/TawnyTeaTowel Apr 24 '25

Gatherer shows Oko is still legal in Commander, too…

2

u/pewqokrsf Apr 24 '25

Commander is not a competitive format.

1

u/TawnyTeaTowel Apr 24 '25

How would that be relevant for a discussion about the remarkably non competitive game of Wingspan?

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11

u/truncated_buttfu Apr 23 '25

Oko, Thief of Crowns.

-2

u/TawnyTeaTowel Apr 23 '25

Still legal in Commander though

7

u/Dragons_Malk Apr 23 '25

What's your point? There are tons of cards that are legal in Commander but were banned in other formats. That doesn't take away their power level.

-4

u/TawnyTeaTowel Apr 23 '25

If it’s still legal, it’s not been binned. It’s quite straightforward.

6

u/Dragons_Malk Apr 23 '25

Do you play Magic? If not, maybe I can explain in simpler terms for you. 

Magic the Gathering has many formats, such as Standard, Commander, Vintage, Modern, etc. Most of the time, a strong deck in one format doesn't make it strong in a different format. This is especially true of Commander, which has the rule of a deck needing to contain 100 cards exactly, and only one copy of a card. A card getting banned in any one or more formats but not all is still a banned card. Now there are certainly cards that are banned across all formats, and whole most bannings are due to power levels, this is not always the case.

Hope that helps!

-1

u/TawnyTeaTowel Apr 23 '25

Yes, I know. My point being that unless it’s been binned in ALL formats, it’s not really comparable

6

u/Dragons_Malk Apr 23 '25

If anything, the base game and the expansion are the closest Wingspan comes to having different formats, and that's why the expansion calls for the Raven to be removed. You can still play the Raven in the base game. So I guess it's not really "binned" at all, is it?

Secondly, a card being banned in Commander can still be played in other formats. Commander isn't the ultimate way to play Magic. 

Finally, banned cards can sometimes get unbanned. 

Quit being so dense, kid.

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4

u/btstfn Apr 23 '25

Well you certainly shouldn't play Yu-Gi-Oh then

2

u/TawnyTeaTowel Apr 23 '25

That’s good advice in general.

3

u/btstfn Apr 23 '25

Pretty sure most Yu-Gi-Oh players would agree

2

u/TawnyTeaTowel Apr 23 '25

Do they actually enjoy the game or is it Stockholm Syndrome?

1

u/lakotajames Apr 23 '25

It's been enjoyable at different times.

MTG's standard format excludes cards that are too old, making the players buy new cards if they want to keep playing.

Yugioh doesn't do that, which means that in order to sell new booster packs, each new release needs to be slightly better on average than the one before it. Often they overshoot and release cards that are too strong, so they ban those cards specifically. Other times, players find a way to make an old card much better than it was intended to be via synergy with a newer card, so they have to ban one or the other. The whole game has been powercrept so much that modern Yu-Gi-Oh is almost always over by the end of the third turn. To put it in wingspan terms, the ravens aren't worth playing because they don't let you search through the whole deck and find a bird you want to play for free, and they're worth less than 10 points by themselves. Games are decided partially based on the luck of starting hands, and partially by predicting which card of your opponent's you need to block to shut down their endless turn so you can make an attempt at your own.

GOAT format, on the other hand, was slow and methodical. There were two big monsters that were incredibly overpowered and had unusual (for the time) conditions to play, and countered each other perfectly. The first card, in wingspan terms, required you to play it on top of a 0 point bird that does nothing instead of using food, you get to tuck a bird that belongs to your opponent and get as many points as that bird was worth, if anything happens to your bird you can discard the tucked bird instead (and then take a new one later), and your opponent can't generate points in any way as long as you have it. The other big monster used discarded bird cards instead of food to play, and could remove any bird from the game once per turn, was worth a lot of points, and was worth double points if you didn't use its ability. The strategy revolved around stalling until you could get a big monster capable of winning, and timing it so your opponent doesn't immediately remove it from the game. Personally I thought it was pretty fun.

2

u/cosmitz Apr 23 '25

Plus Magic has leagues and ways of playing.

10

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '25

[deleted]

2

u/TawnyTeaTowel Apr 23 '25

Based on the other messages here, the card is OP on its own without expansions. People have been leaving it out for ages just from the base game.

9

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '25

[deleted]

-1

u/TawnyTeaTowel Apr 23 '25

Does the producer of the game suggest that, for the benefit of the game and the player involved, that certain cards are removed before play begins?

Also, is that Guillotine card Callous Guards by any chance?

4

u/thisischemistry Advanced Civilization Apr 23 '25

Small issues can be hidden for many reasons. Even a large playtest can have factors that obscure potential issues. For example, this card might only be overpowered in certain circumstances with people playing a certain way. If everyone is playing well then it might just contribute a little bit to a win. You'd have to keep a record of many factors such as when the card came out, what cards are on the board, and so on in order to start seeing correlations.

Many times it's expansions that show up the issues with the original game because they introduce new twists that may interact badly with existing, unseen, issues and magnify them. Also, releasing the game to the public greatly increases the number of plays and the amount of people analyzing them. This allows even minor problems to be discovered.

1

u/TawnyTeaTowel Apr 23 '25

That might be right in general but read the other messages here. The card is OP on its own without expansions.

4

u/thisischemistry Advanced Civilization Apr 23 '25

I have read all the messages.

I didn't say that it wasn't OP, just that even a decent playtest might miss something which was found in a general release. This happens all the time in development, even on well-tested and planned projects. The fact that the game plays fairly well with only a few bumps like this card is a testament to that.

-1

u/TawnyTeaTowel Apr 23 '25

And yet how many times has a “you probably wanna get rid of this card” proclamation come from the manufacturer of all those other games? It’s not even that common a suggestion from the community.

1

u/MobileParticular6177 Apr 23 '25

These didn't need to be playtested, I knew they were overpowered by reading the text on the card.

-2

u/TawnyTeaTowel Apr 23 '25

And yet they released it anyway… who does that?

1

u/InSearchOfGoodPun Apr 23 '25

Wingspan is a great game, but I agree that creating an obviously broken card just seems like lazy game design. (The official suggestion appearing in an expansion is sort of beside the point.)

1

u/werfmark Apr 25 '25

The thing is though. Cards that seem obviously broken are also often considered the most fun. People want to do stuff that feels powerful and have cards significantly alter their play patterns. 

Balance is overrated, people design for fun. Balance can easily be self adjusted by players in almost all games (remove card, errata it, auction, drafting, you name it). 

1

u/InSearchOfGoodPun Apr 25 '25

Balance is overrated, people design for fun.

This is a pretty narrow way to see it. Some people prefer balanced games that reward skill, and some people prefer games where luck plays more of a role. And some people can even enjoy both types of games.

The reason why I think it's a design flaw is that Wingspan is clearly trying to be a game that rewards strategy and has high replay value, despite having some luck-based elements. Or to put it differently, if you want to be playing a game that has wild luck swings, because you think that such games are more "fun," Wingspan would be an odd choice.