Rochester Gamers Community

It seems like every so often, a board game arrives on the scene with a lot of fanfare. This year’s game to fit that description is Agricola. The name comes from the Latin for ‘farmer.’ Naturally, that is your role in this game. You play a farmer who is trying to develop the most successful farm, as judged by the player with the most victory points at the end.

So, how is success measured? At the end, each player scores points for:
• How many fields they’ve plowed
• How many animal pastures they have
• How much grain they’ve accumulated (sown and taken from supply)
• How many vegetables they’ve accumulated
• How many sheep they’ve raised
• How many wild boar they’ve raised
• How many cattle they’ve raised
• How many family members they’ve accumulated
• What their house is made of
• Some of their improvements (all major and some minor score points)
• Some bonus points (again, from major and some minor improvements)
• Perhaps most importantly, anything you’ve neglected or spaces that are unfilled score negative points.

This is a lot to pay attention to. Of course, it’s still not that easy; as you also have to make sure your family has enough food during the harvest phases. Any food you fail to produce on your own you have to beg for. Each time you beg you earn -3 points towards your final score. You do not ever, EVER, want to have to take one of these.

Enough about the final score. How you get there is all the fun anyhow. You start with 2 wooden hut rooms and 2 members of your family. Each round each family member can take one action. Once an action is chosen, no other player can take that action during a round, so one thing to think about is what your opponents might be trying to do, and what actions you want that no one else can do. If you’re the only one with the supplies to build a room on to your hut you don’t necessarily need to choose that as your first action. The game has cards to add on as additional action options for 3, 4, or 5 players. These are all different, so each game plays differently because of this. I’ve played 2-5 player games and I enjoy them all, I think you can have a good time with each one.

Furthermore, each round will bring a new action that is available to all players. The game is divided into stages (I-VI) and each stage always contains the same round actions, but which round each action will appear changes with each game. This also forces some strategy modification, as each game only one player will be able to choose one of the rounds actions before the harvest.
Speaking of the harvest, each player is responsible for feeding each family member 2 food during each harvest phase. The harvests happen at the ends of round 4, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 14. The exception is that a family member ‘born’ that round only requires one food. If the family member was born the round before, meaning you got to take an action with that person during the round before the harvest, they eat 2 food. I can’t reiterate enough how much you do not want to take a begging card for not being able to feed your family. There are very few actions in your arsenal that can provide you with the 3 victory points you lost from begging. To make matters worse, you take one card for each food you don’t have, not for each family member. Just make sure you can feed everyone every time.

There are 2 different ways to play a multiplayer game, with and without occupations and minor improvements. The version without cards is known as the family game. This game is slightly less complex and is a good way to introduce people to the game and the ‘role-selection’ concept, plus the concepts of accumulation (some roles, if unchosen, will accumulate more resources each turn, making them more attractive options than they were the round before). This can pave the way for wanting some more options in the more advanced game.

The advanced game adds in two additional elements, minor improvements and occupations. Each player gets a hand of 7 of each, and there are variant rules for players to draw 10 and discard 3, or to draft the occupations (which would of course increase the total time to play). Also, there are 3 different decks from which to choose the cards players get, the E (easy), I (interactive) and K (complex) decks. You can mix the decks together or use just one. With so many card combinations the game is guaranteed to have significant replayability. Naturally, this also provides a ready place for expansions.

There are many different strategies in this game which are not really the focus of this review. Your hand of cards will often help direct your strategy in the early game. The first player will often choose an occupation to play to give themselves a slight edge or enhancement. Collecting resources is always a good thing to do, provided you have some plan for what you’ll be doing with them. Building rooms and adding to your family is the key to a successful mid-late game, since more actions will usually lead to more success. Sowing crops (I know, what a concept for a farmer) will lead to more after each harvest. Building fences to secure your animals (once you collect them) can lead them to reproduce as well, giving you either a food source (with an oven of some kind) or more victory points. You still have way more things to do than you’ll ever have time for, and then there are your pesky opponents, who always end up taking the actions you want just before you do. You get the idea. The decision on which role to take when is difficult, and that part of the discovery is a lot of the fun of the game for me.

Overall this game provides choices for everyone. There is the basic (family) game, a solo game with victory point goals, different options for different numbers of players. The novelty of the game helps because there isn’t necessarily a ‘best strategy’ like there is for some of the other high rated games. The game is one I really enjoy, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. I’d rate the game a solid 9.5/10. I think its buzz, not hype, and the game delivers on all levels.