Rochester Gamers Community

Are you one of those players who is growing tired from the worn out theme of trading in the Mediterranean? How about role selection? Do you hate having lots of options, but only one being the best? Do you love lots of bits and cards like the present offerings that are usually seen in "Ameritrash" games but dislike the long setup and play time? Well, if you answered "yes" to the previous questions, Agricola (Latin for "farmer") is a game you should try.

The theme of this game is a bit out of the ordinary as it is described as a game about agriculture and development. So, you can loosely consider it to be an "empire building" game if you can consider a farm to be your empire. You start out the game with a field of 15 spaces, two start out occupied by your wood huts to house your two people. Your objective in the game is to make the best use of these spaces to earn victory points during the next 14 rounds of the game.

Agricola is chocked full of bits! I was surprised upon reading that the shipment for the game was six pounds! In addition to the 193 wooden bits and nine thick game boards, Agricola comes with a whopping 302 game-changing cards, split into three types of decks, "E" - basic game, "I" interactive game and "K" - Complex game. After choosing which deck to use (in my games, I chose the "I" deck as I prefer games that the players actions can interact with each other) each player receives nine "minor improvement" cards and nine "occupation" cards to which you can use to your benefit if you satisfy the prerequisites. In addition to these 302 cards, there are 10 "major improvement" cards available to all, 14 round cards determining what actions are available, 16 action cards of which a subset are used depending on the players. The combination of all these cards changes the game a fair amount to the point that a strategy that worked your last game may not work so well the next if you do not have similar cards. Simply put, the cards determine your possibilities in the game. You could get some great cards and you could get some worthless ones as well. Your first games will be spent getting to know the cards. With three decks consisting of 302 cards, it will take awhile to get some cards that are familiar to you. You may spend so much time reading the cards initially that it will be your turn to play quicker than you might expect!

As I stated earlier, the game consists of 14 rounds and these rounds are grouped into five stages. These rounds go pretty quickly as all you do on your turn is place one of your "family members" on one of the available action cards. As each new round starts, another possible action is added to the board. Once a player places a family member on an action space, no other player may use it (like role selection in Puerto Rico). At the end of each of the five stages, there is a harvest in which you have to feed your family. If you didn't plan well to generate food for your family, you need to take a "begging" card which subtracts three points from your VP total at the end of the game. Don't worry, once you know what you are doing, you will plan appropriately and it will not be likely that you will need a begging card. However, you will notice that gathering food to feed your family may be a setback for you in your quest to win the game.

At the time of this writing, I have only two games under my belt, but I am very familiar with how the game works as this is a very easy game to understand. The hardest part of the game is learning the cards, but because there is so many, it is likely that your fellow players will be on the same level as you. Both games I played used the "I" deck, so I cannot comment on the other two decks. In addition to a solitaire option (which again, I did not play), the game can also be played without the cards and is billed as the "family game". So, if the cards are intimidating to your non-gamer friends, start out with the family game.

The first printing of the game included a small deck listed as a "Z" deck which provides some interesting minor improvements and Occupations, but with all the ones available already, in my opinion, it's not a "must have" (no, you're not getting mine though..). In addition, to those willing to pony up the cash to pay retail price ($70) plus shipping last November, they were rewarded with what is called "animeeples". Animeeples are simply wooden animal shaped pieces rather than the wooden blocks that came with editions not pre-ordered in later 2007 from Z-Man. While they are available in Europe, they are difficult to get if you live in the US. There is a rumor that Z-Man will make them available in early 2009. While the animeeples add a nice touch to the game, they do break a card from the "K" deck in which a player is supposed to put the animals in a cup and draw one. Being that the animeeples are distinctively shaped, it is pretty easy to determine what is what. If they were wooden cubes, there would be no way to tell. So, there is some disadvantage to having the animeeples.

Because this game is easy to teach, has excellent components (check on boardgamegeek.com for downloadable graphics to make the game look even better), has lots of bits and has lots of cards to provide a fresh game for quite some time, I am very pleased with my purchase. My only gripe is that the stickers I downloaded from the Agricola entry at boardgamegeek.com weren't included in the game. One other small gripe is that the cards are a bit thinner than I would like (they are similar in thickness to the cards in Ticket To Ride: Switzerland). Being that the cards aren't handled much, this isn't really that big of a problem. I have no complaints with regard to gameplay at this time and give this game an 8 out of 10 rating.