Finally got my copy on Tuesday, so last night the wife and I laid it out and gave it a go. She was a little nervous at first, as there are a lot of boards, moving parts, etc that gives it the appearance of a heavier game, but I assured her that it's a lot more intuitive than one would think.

I was the start player, and took the Woodcutter occupation as my first action (+1 wood whenever you take wood with an action). She ended up scooping up the 3 wood. I in turn plowed, and she grabbed a grain. Looked like a decent start.

As the first few rounds played out I collected wood and reeds for a house improvement, built a fireplace (and upgraded it with a minor upgrade from my hand) and dumped a few sheep in the oven from the sheep card that had been accumulating since turn 1, keeping 1 as a house pet. The wife had just built a rather large pasture with her accumulated wood, and was a bit put off by my sheep-blocking . Instead, she went fishing and took several of the accumulated food tokens from there. So by the time of the first harvest we were both golden.

As the game played on I focused on animals. I eventually built 2 pastures, an easy feat with the second occupation I played, which let me play 3 free fences whenever I bought at least 1. This let me start accumulating sheep and eventually cows, while I kept a lone boar as my house pet. I also ended up with 2 fields, one with veggies and the other with grain, a 4 bedroom house (that, on the last round, I upgraded to clay with one upgrade action and stone with another one) and 5 family members (having taken the 'expand family without space' action on the last round).

The wife was attempting to go with an animal strategy as well, but I aggressively kept the start player position and took any and all accumulated animals I could. This hurt her quite a bit as she had built an oven, but had an occupation that let her cook animals and veggies in the oven. She was surviving pretty well by baking bread, but also failed to grow her family until several turns after me, which put her farther behind.

In the end the score was 33-12, but she had said that after the first game she felt much more confident going forward and was already planning some other strategies. So I very much look forward to further plays, which will most certainly take place tonight. (That is, if I can get her away from the Rattlesnake game she got addicted to at Gen Con)