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[Triumph44]

I don't post here very often, but I do play a lot of Dominion.  I've no idea how many unrated games I've played, but I'd guess it's around 5000, which probably means around 7000.  I don't play rated games all that often, but I have played nearly 500 of those on dominion.games and played a little bit on the previous implementation.  I've been starting to play them more as my yen for Dominion during leisure time has increased and the availability of my regular Dominion partner has either plateaued or decreased.  All this preamble is to say that I'm not coming at this from the perspective of a relative noob, nor am I upset that I lost a recent game because of Black Market.  I'm also not arguing that Black Market should disappear from the game, just from rated games.  In casual games it can be a neat change of pace.

Thesis:  Black Market extends the game and causes a bunch of strange rule interactions while being a wildly swingy card that is contrary to the basic idea of Dominion.

Let's take each of these individually -

A:  Black Market extends the game

I'd be curious to see numbers regarding turns of games with Black Market, but I don't think there's any argument that it extends games by time.  Players who use Black Market get a whole new buy phase where they have to evaluate the strength of 3 cards relative to the board they are playing.  Players who are behind in the game late may try Black Market in an attempt to fish for alt-VP cards or attacks that can slow down their opponent.  I recognize that not all Dominion games will take the same amount of time and that short games may not be a virtue, but taken with the points I'm going to make I think it at least merits some consideration.

B:  Black Market causes strange rule interactions

As Dominion has expanded, so have the amount of possible card interactions.  One of the great things about Dominion is that it rarely sends me scrambling for a rulebook or other errata - it's a remarkably streamlined game for how complex some of the interactions are within it.  Again, a lot of cards have complex rule interactions, but that's not the only problem with the card.  Searching for Black Market on here to see if anyone had made a post like this within the last few months brought up pretty much entirely either 'what are the rules for Black Market in this instance' or 'here's a crazy edge case with Black Market'.

C:  Black Market is wildly swingy

The obvious huge swing card in the Black Market is Fairgrounds, which in a heavy Black Market game can be worth between 8 and 12 points easily.  Other alt-VP cards like Goons or Bishop are less likely to impact the game in a serious way, but could very well do so.  The other thing is that there are cards that are outright useless or decidedly nerfed in the Black Market deck - Potion cost cards in a game without other Potion cost cards, Travellers, cards that interact with a Supply pile, cards that would normally be in split piles, and so on.  Avanto and Wild Hunt become Smithy.  Farmer's Market becomes Ruined Market.  Meanwhile, some other cards gain in power - Experiment becomes a 3 cost Laboratory.  I understand from a strategy perspective why dominion.games made it so that the Black Market deck is not visible to other players.

D:  Black Market is contrary to the spirit of Dominion

I recognize the absurdity of this claim in that Black Market is a Dominion card like any other and therefore can't be contrary to the spirit of the game, but the thing that separates Dominion from most other games, even games of this ilk like Star Realms, is that what's available to my opponent is always available to me.  Black Market does the opposite - what is available to my opponent, if he or she buys the only copy, is necessarily now not available to me.  I can't really plan for that contingency, either, except by getting my own Black Market and hope to pull the powerful cards myself.

Possession finally got the boot because new rules made it too unwieldy to have in the game.  Black Market is not so potentially onerous as that - there's no real danger of stalemates/locked decks - but I don't like how it extends the game without really expanding the strategy space.  Yes, I recognize there are edge cases, but I think the card was created in a different era of Dominion and its current implementation does not reflect that.  I don't think there's much point in trying to find the balance in a fundamentally unbalancing card.  It should go.

[sudgy]

There is one part of your argument that is missing: why does all of this mean that Black Market should be banned from rated games?  Honestly, I don't think the first two parts have a single thing to do with it (maybe with unrated games, but not rated).  Whether swingy cards should be in rated games is up for debate (there are plenty of other swingy cards too), and "the spirit of Dominion" is a very loose term that can mean a lot of things.

Also,

Possession finally got the boot because new rules made it too unwieldy to have in the game.

This is false.  Possession was removed because most people don't like it, not because of its crazy rules.

[Chris is me]

I don’t really want to interact with most of your argument because I both disagree with it and believe the premises themselves are not really valid or compelling reasons to remove a card from competitive play. I do want to clarify though that Possession wasn’t banned from the ladder because the rules got too complicated. Not at all.

Possession got banned, officially, because there will eventually be a system where players can ban five cards from appearing in their rated games, and until that is implemented, it is widely understood that people would almost always put Possession on that list.

The reason most players would be putting Possession on their ban list isn’t because of rules complications, but because of the overwhelming tendency for Possession to lead to degenerate games where both players cripple their own decks in order to lock the other out of the game. With Debt tokens in particular, it is not even especially difficult to cause stalemates or near-stalemates.

Black Market doesn’t really have any of these problems. It’s like, a little swingy and that’s it. So is Tournament or Swindler.

[Triumph44]

I don’t really want to interact with most of your argument because I both disagree with it and believe the premises themselves are not really valid or compelling reasons to remove a card from competitive play. I do want to clarify though that Possession wasn’t banned from the ladder because the rules got too complicated. Not at all.

Possession got banned, officially, because there will eventually be a system where players can ban five cards from appearing in their rated games, and until that is implemented, it is widely understood that people would almost always put Possession on that list.

The reason most players would be putting Possession on their ban list isn’t because of rules complications, but because of the overwhelming tendency for Possession to lead to degenerate games where both players cripple their own decks in order to lock the other out of the game. With Debt tokens in particular, it is not even especially difficult to cause stalemates or near-stalemates.

Black Market doesn’t really have any of these problems. It’s like, a little swingy and that’s it. So is Tournament or Swindler.

The rules governing victory point chips and Possession was changed for Empires - the alt-VP cards in Prosperity used to act as a nerf to Possession, but now players keep VP chips they earn via Possessing their opponent - had those rules stayed the same, I am not certain that the card would've been removed, even with the possibility of stalemates.

Tournament and Swindler are swingy but generally lead to early resignations, at least in my very long experience with those cards.  Black Market can often do the opposite - a player may avoid resigning despite an overwhelming disadvantage because there might be that miracle card that saves the game.

[sudgy]

The rules governing victory point chips and Possession was changed for Empires - the alt-VP cards in Prosperity used to act as a nerf to Possession, but now players keep VP chips they earn via Possessing their opponent - had those rules stayed the same, I am not certain that the card would've been removed, even with the possibility of stalemates.

Well, that change was already reverted (only debt tokens go to the possessing player now), and the card is still banned.

[Triumph44]

The rules governing victory point chips and Possession was changed for Empires - the alt-VP cards in Prosperity used to act as a nerf to Possession, but now players keep VP chips they earn via Possessing their opponent - had those rules stayed the same, I am not certain that the card would've been removed, even with the possibility of stalemates.

Well, that change was already reverted (only debt tokens go to the possessing player now), and the card is still banned.

Fair enough; I didn't know that.  I still dislike Possession a lot and was quite glad it was banned, but can we at least agree that to an extent, new rules/cards changed the way that Possession interacted with the rest of the cards in the game, even if the rules governing VP chips were changed back?  I'm arguing that Black Market has undergone a similar, albeit smaller, transformation, and that while none of my points are compelling individually, taken as a whole they're at least a reasonable case.

[RTT]

there have been some stats gathered from high level play. Black market increases the average turn number from 15.4 to 15.7.

those turn are possibly a lot longer of course.

[Titandrake]

I don't think any of your points are arguments for why Black Market should be banned, they're arguments for why you don't like Black Market. For example, I actually like strange rule interactions.

As others have said, and as you point out yourself, the reason Possession is banned is because it leads to stalemates much more often than any other card. I don't believe there's ever been another official reason for the ban.

[JW]

Black Market favors the more skilled player far more than most cards, based on an analysis from 2012. I'm not sure how Black Market was implemented at the time (I believe 25-cards, and you get to see them at the start of the game). Given the increase in player skill (so that players are better at building decks that can take advantage of it) and the 60-card Black Market in the current implementation, I'd assume that Black Market favors the skilled player even more in the current implementation.

This is from sample of 2.5 M iso games. 

The measure is how hard a time trueskill had at predicting the winner, measured in conditional entropy given a card was in the supply. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_entropy

Goons 0.689 ± 0.002
Colony 0.694 ± 0.001
Platinum 0.694 ± 0.001
Bishop 0.695 ± 0.002
Ambassador 0.695 ± 0.002
Grand Market 0.696 ± 0.002
Black Market 0.696 ± 0.002
...
Cache 0.714 ± 0.003
Jack of All Trades 0.714 ± 0.003
Embassy 0.714 ± 0.003

[Chris is me]

I don’t really want to interact with most of your argument because I both disagree with it and believe the premises themselves are not really valid or compelling reasons to remove a card from competitive play. I do want to clarify though that Possession wasn’t banned from the ladder because the rules got too complicated. Not at all.

Possession got banned, officially, because there will eventually be a system where players can ban five cards from appearing in their rated games, and until that is implemented, it is widely understood that people would almost always put Possession on that list.

The reason most players would be putting Possession on their ban list isn’t because of rules complications, but because of the overwhelming tendency for Possession to lead to degenerate games where both players cripple their own decks in order to lock the other out of the game. With Debt tokens in particular, it is not even especially difficult to cause stalemates or near-stalemates.

Black Market doesn’t really have any of these problems. It’s like, a little swingy and that’s it. So is Tournament or Swindler.

The rules governing victory point chips and Possession was changed for Empires - the alt-VP cards in Prosperity used to act as a nerf to Possession, but now players keep VP chips they earn via Possessing their opponent - had those rules stayed the same, I am not certain that the card would've been removed, even with the possibility of stalemates.

Tournament and Swindler are swingy but generally lead to early resignations, at least in my very long experience with those cards.  Black Market can often do the opposite - a player may avoid resigning despite an overwhelming disadvantage because there might be that miracle card that saves the game.

To put it bluntly, you don't understand why people are banning Possession at all. It has nothing to do with VP tokens not being as viable of a "counter" to Possession, or whatever (keep in mind cards like Groundskeeper and Wild Hunt still didn't work with Possession). It is absolutely because the card is dreadful to play with and the winning strategy on boards is to play a long, miserable game nobody likes at best and stalemates at worst. It's not about "power level" or how "countered" it is.

You're just not in the loop with this decision, and using it as precedent for Black Market actually undermines your argument.

[Triumph44]

Black Market favors the more skilled player far more than most cards, based on an analysis from 2012. I'm not sure how Black Market was implemented at the time (I believe 25-cards, and you get to see them at the start of the game). Given the increase in player skill (so that players are better at building decks that can take advantage of it) and the 60-card Black Market in the current implementation, I'd assume that Black Market favors the skilled player even more in the current implementation.

I'm glad you dug this up, but I really don't see what it has to do with the game today.  Dominion in 2012 is a different world and Black Market's implementation was also totally different.  Seeing what was in the Black Market deck and also being able to track the Black Market deck meant that you could plan for what was in there - is there a Possession or Scrying Pool?  Maybe get a Potion mid-game if it hasn't showed up yet in the Black Market plays.  This made the card even more fiddly and reliant on deck and log tracking and I'm not arguing for a re-introduction of the 25 card BM deck.  I get why it was expanded to 60 and I supported that at the time.

To put it bluntly, you don't understand why people are banning Possession at all. It has nothing to do with VP tokens not being as viable of a "counter" to Possession, or whatever (keep in mind cards like Groundskeeper and Wild Hunt still didn't work with Possession). It is absolutely because the card is dreadful to play with and the winning strategy on boards is to play a long, miserable game nobody likes at best and stalemates at worst. It's not about "power level" or how "countered" it is.

You're just not in the loop with this decision, and using it as precedent for Black Market actually undermines your argument.

I thought that and the introduction of Donate were the final nails in the coffin of that card.  If it was just about being dreadful to play, it should've been gone ages ago.  But I'll concede that I must be misremembering what I read here.

[heron]

According to some stats markus (I think) compiled, black market is still one of the cards that most favors the more skilled player today.
Also, I'm pretty sure that there are no potion cards in the black market unless a potion card is already in the kingdom. Similarly, you don't find travellers and a few other cards (not quite sure which) in the black market.

[Donald X.]

According to some stats markus (I think) compiled, black market is still one of the cards that most favors the more skilled player today.

Correct.

[Donald X.]

Possession finally got the boot because new rules made it too unwieldy to have in the game.

Incorrect, as previously noted.

The intention is to someday have small personal ban lists - you put a card on the list and it won't show up in your rated games. But we don't have that and who knows how far off it is. In the meantime I was seeing people playing games where Possession showed up, and they both agreed to just not buy it. They were playing with 9-card kingdoms due to this card. So I personally asked Stef to preemptively ban list it for everyone. At such a time as the personal ban list feature appears, it will be unbanned - you will need to put it on your ban list if you want to make sure it never shows up.

I am not going to ask Stef to ban Black Market - which incidentally is his favorite card. It is not causing problems. It's a high skill card that sure has people who love it or hate it, but whatever, there can't be cards people love without being cards people hate, and there have to be cards people love. If I had to pick more cards to be banned for everyone, Black Market would be nowhere near the top. It's not the most hated and it's not doing anything like Possession was. We would get way more out of banning e.g. Harvest.

[RTT]

Oh yes please ban Harvest. It has come so far nowadays that i dont even have to ask about banning it. we just both mutually agree not to pick it up.

[ThetaSigma12]

Oh yes please ban Harvest. It has come so far nowadays that i dont even have to ask about banning it. we just both mutually agree not to pick it up.

I second this, it's about time Donald did something about the Harvest + Patron meta.

[Triumph44]

Possession finally got the boot because new rules made it too unwieldy to have in the game.

Incorrect, as previously noted.

The intention is to someday have small personal ban lists - you put a card on the list and it won't show up in your rated games. But we don't have that and who knows how far off it is. In the meantime I was seeing people playing games where Possession showed up, and they both agreed to just not buy it. They were playing with 9-card kingdoms due to this card. So I personally asked Stef to preemptively ban list it for everyone. At such a time as the personal ban list feature appears, it will be unbanned - you will need to put it on your ban list if you want to make sure it never shows up.

I am not going to ask Stef to ban Black Market - which incidentally is his favorite card. It is not causing problems. It's a high skill card that sure has people who love it or hate it, but whatever, there can't be cards people love without being cards people hate, and there have to be cards people love. If I had to pick more cards to be banned for everyone, Black Market would be nowhere near the top. It's not the most hated and it's not doing anything like Possession was. We would get way more out of banning e.g. Harvest.

Thanks for responding - I'll note that I don't think I ever argued it wasn't a high-skill card, but that it's also quite swingy and to me, somewhat tedious.  Obviously you know better than me where it's acceptable for a card to land on the skill/fiddliness axes.  I'm not surprised it's Stef's favorite card as I know he put a lot of thought into how the card would work on his implementation of the online game. 

I'm also not surprised that the vast majority of responders disagree - if more agreed, this would've likely been more discussed.

[Donald X.]

Thanks for responding - I'll note that I don't think I ever argued it wasn't a high-skill card, but that it's also quite swingy and to me, somewhat tedious.  Obviously you know better than me where it's acceptable for a card to land on the skill/fiddliness axes.  I'm not surprised it's Stef's favorite card as I know he put a lot of thought into how the card would work on his implementation of the online game. 

Black Market significantly increases the chance that the better player will win. I don't think that's what people mean by "swingy." Black Market *feels* swingy but is not.

I'm sure what Stef likes is the gameplay, not the work he put into the programming. Here's his article on it from before ShuffleIT existed and there before he had programmed it: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11896.0