http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2960 en-us Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:10:02 -0500 Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:10:02 -0500 aldie@boardgamegeek.com BoardGameGeek features information related to the board gaming hobby <i>Looking at this card, it has 2 green stones on one shop, 1 yellow stone on another and a third area that cannot be bought yet since <i>it has no circles on it. </i> <br> <br>On a later turn, if you place a card adjacent to it that does have circles on it, then you could buy it as part of a new shop, or add it to an existing shop, even though that little corner cannot have stones put on it. </i> <br>Correct. <br> <br>And in the case of the green shop, BOTH circles must have a token on them, as Rusty explained. If another card is placed adjacent to that green shop, then any circles in the connected region must have a green token placed on them. If the connected region has no circles, no tokens are placed, but it is still part of the green shop (and thus the card is subject to fire if that is the largest shop). http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2109976#2109976 2008-02-25T17:58:20+00:00 GaryP <b>kuhrusty wrote:</b><br><i>I think you guys are both doing it wrong. <img src="http://files.boardgamegeek.com/images/smile.gif" alt=":)" border="0"> It says "cover all the circles in the shop with your counters to show that it's yours. Some parts of your shop may not have stones on them, and that's fine." Note that it's saying some <i>parts,</i> not some <i>circles.</i></i> <br> <br>Wait, wait, I've just figured out what this means. <br> <br>Look at this photo: <br> <br>]]> <br> <br>Looking at this card, it has 2 green stones on one shop, 1 yellow stone on another and a third area that cannot be bought yet since <i>it has no circles on it. </i> <br> <br>On a later turn, if you place a card adjacent to it that does have circles on it, then you could buy it as part of a new shop, or add it to an existing shop, even though that little corner cannot have stones put on it. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2108401#2108401 2008-02-25T02:50:29+00:00 Reprint I think you guys are both doing it wrong. <img src="http://files.boardgamegeek.com/images/smile.gif" alt=":)" border="0"> It says "cover all the circles in the shop with your counters to show that it's yours. Some parts of your shop may not have stones on them, and that's fine." Note that it's saying some <i>parts,</i> not some <i>circles.</i> <br> <br>In the "Price of a Shop" example below that, you see the "you can't buy the bottom shop because it has no space for a counter" shop? If there were a card placed next to that so that it were part of a shop you <i>could</i> buy, that would be a part of your shop which didn't have any stones on it. In that way, it's possible for a shop to span several cards while only one of the cards has stones on it. In a fire, all of those will burn down, but adding them to your store didn't increase the number of tokens in your store, and therefore didn't increase your risk of fire or flood. <br> <br>Another way that rule could have been written is, "cover all the circles in the shop with your counters to show that it's yours. <i>Some cards</i> which have part of your shop may not have stones on them, and that's fine." All circles in your shop have to be covered, though. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2107992#2107992 2008-02-24T23:35:02+00:00 kuhrusty <strike>We play that you just need to put enough stones on the shop to show that it is yours. Each time another card is placed and your shop increases in size, you place at least one token on the area of the card until everyone is satisfied and unconfused about your ownership. <br> <br>It really depends on how many tokens you have. This game <i>can</i> use up a lot of tokens, depending on how successful you are. <br> <br>But, yes, nice catch! Those statements are opposing.</strike> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2107254#2107254 2008-02-24T16:09:01+00:00 Reprint The rules firs state that when you buy a shop, you fill up all the spaces with your tokens. <br>Then it states almost in the next sentence that they don't have to be all covered as protections against fires and floods. <br>So which is correct, or do I misunderstand the rule? <br>thanks in advance. <br>Richard <br> <br> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2106741#2106741 2008-02-24T06:08:04+00:00 glanfam <b>gberry wrote:</b><br><i>Thanks for the introduction to what sounds to me to be an interesting little game.</i> <br> <br>Glad to be of service. <img src="http://files.boardgamegeek.com/images/smile.gif" alt=":)" border="0"> Be sure to post your thoughts when you try it out! http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2048416#2048416 2008-01-31T16:11:40+00:00 DrFaust Thanks for the introduction to what sounds to me to be an interesting little game. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2046356#2046356 2008-01-30T18:37:41+00:00 gberry To finish off that evening in the Coffee Shop of Doom, I broke out my copy of Cheapass Games' <b><i>Agora</i></b> for the very first time. I've had it for months and read through the rules several times, but this was the first time I had people willing to give it a try. <br> <br>The first game went pretty sedately. I kept score for everyone. We each of played very different games. I opted to have many small shops and close off my competitors' stalls when possible. Jon went for a very large store. So large, in fact, that Alex and I both felt comfortable enlarging our own operations, knowing that it would Jon's version of a Hellenic Wal-Mart that would go first when a fire or flood struck. Alex seemed to be going for a middle of the road approaching with a twist. He often placed tiles to turn his own small shops into larger ones, or, when possible, placed pieces to enlarge others' shops in terms of counters used, but decrease the number of income-gaining sides. He pulled that one on me several times in the evening to great effect. <br> <br>Eventually, a flood struck, wiping out Jon's superstore. By then, however, he and Alex had begun a developing some odd sort of strip mall at the other end of the table that I totally did not concern myself with. I usually found myself trying to dig out from whatever blocks Alex had dropped in my path or closing off his own stalls from the flow of customer traffic. In the end, Alex got to fifty coins first. <br> <br>By then it was almost 10:00 PM, so Jon had to bow out for the evening. Alex and I stuck around for another two games. The first was even more sedate than the first. Tile placement was surprisingly regular, given the freedom with which you're given in <b><i>Agora</i></b>. Alex continued his tactic of giving me shops with lots of counters and little frontage, hoping it would pay off with a flood or fire. I think it might have once, but I may be confusing that with the third game. <br> <br>Alex won that game handily, by a margin of twenty plus coins, I think. While clearing away the counters, I noticed how regular the tile placement had been and decided to do something about it in the third game. This time, I tried to take advantage of the fact that tiles can be placed at odd angles to previously-placed tiles, or somewhere else on the table entirely. That way, I not only maintained my strategy of having many small shops, but it also blunted Alex's ability to hose my shops by reducing the number of open spaces. He did spend an awful lot of time greatly expanding one of my shops, hoping one of us would draw a fire. I think I did, in the latter half of the game, but it didn't seem to make much difference, since I had plenty of other concerns going. <br> <br>Once that megastore burned down, we both began to play more with tangential tile placement. For three or four turns in a row, we created a series of alleyways that initially brought in a lot of money but were quickly closed off by another, equally tangentially-placed tile. At the same time, there were also three distinct clumps of stalls growing, since I had thrown down some tiles well away from previously existing arrangements, just to see how they grew. <br> <br>In the end, Alex pulled a festival effect which put me over fifty coins. His attempts to make my biggest store more vulnerable to fire or flood gave me a lot of income early on. That, in combination with my being able to keep Alex's income down with placing tiles at funky angles, kept me in a healthy lead for much of the game. <br> <br>Looking back, I really dig <b><i>Agora</i></b>, a lot more than I thought I would. The freedom you have in placing tiles is very refreshing. It can be a bit of work to remind yourself they can go more or less wherever you like. Watching the market change over turns is fascinating, too, as fires remove parts of it and new sections spring up on other parts of the table. One tactic I should have made more use of is to placing tiles just close enough to my own shops to prevent their fronts from being closed off. It's not a perfect solution, but it does require competitors to expend more of their time in countering that income by place additional tiles to block access. <br> <br>All in all, <b><i>Agora</i></b>'s really cool. I hope I get to play it more often in the future. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2045173#2045173 2008-01-30T05:35:04+00:00 DrFaust <br> <img src="http://images.boardgamegeek.com/images/pic200276_mt.jpg"> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/200276 2007-04-02T22:51:15+00:00 ZiggyZambo Sounds to me like "Listening to jazz by candlelight" might have meant...how did Bob Neubanks say it? Oh yeah, "making whoopie." And you suggest a game? Tsk, tsk...<img src="http://files.boardgamegeek.com/images/cool.gif" alt=":cool:" border="0"> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/1225626#1225626 2006-12-14T18:47:18+00:00 ixnay66 We get the kids to bed and my wife and I are both tired. Too brain-dead to do much thinking or talking. Holiday specials pre-empt all our regular shows. Our trusty last resort, PBS, fails us. (Stupid fund drive.) <br> <br>She suggests listening to jazz by candlelight. I suggest playing a game. We agree to compromise by playing a game by candlelight. <br> <br>I suggest she pick out the game and I'll find the candles. She suggests that I pick out the game and she'll find the candles. We compromise and I go pick out the game while she finds the candles. <br> <br>I bring up Agora and Carcasonne:Hunters and Gatherers. She says Hunters and Gatherers will take too long so we go for Agora. <br> <br>Like a typical guy, I try to explain the rules as if I know what I'm talking about. Even though: <br> <br> I've never played the game before. <br> I'm reading the rules for the first time since I bought it in 2003. <br> I'm straining to interpret the diagrams in the rules by the light of four small candles. <br> <br>She senses that I'm full of it. We compromise and just start the game already. <br> <br>She goes first and draws a card with a six-income shop. On my turn, the festival turns up and she jumps to an early lead. Throughout the game, we follow different strategies. She continues to build up her first shop to an immense ten-income, ten-counter monster. She only buys one other shop, preferring to save her money. She chooses mostly to build up rather than blocking off my shops. I, on the other hand, buy small shops wherever I can find them and try to block off sections of her monster. We play the entire game without a flood or fire. In the end, I'm generating more income than she is (17 - 13), but her early lead and steady gains give her the win (55 - 26.) <br> <br>Mini-review. <br>This game plays fast and presents some tricky strategic and tactical decisions. With only two people playing, though, it's tough to reverse an early run of bad luck unless you get some help (i.e. floods, festivals, and fires) from the cards. In this session, I couldn't play cards fast enough to wear down her huge shop by the end of the game. A game to 75 or 100 probably would have evened things out a little. It's a game worth playing again. <br> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/1224461#1224461 2006-12-14T04:23:48+00:00 Bigwood <i>It does seem in the few games I've played that generally one player is able to get a runaway lead, and it's quite hard to stop them unless you get a festival just at the right moment (i.e. on your last turn possible). Otherwise, if you've got enough small shops on the board, you can just take the last few turns to place cards to defend your stores and not buy anything at all.</i> <br> <br>Of course it does take several turns to get the small shops, and if your opponents let you get away with it, then that is really their own fault. There's not much variation in the cards that would make one player get a lucky break, and in this case the winner was the player who had played before - which seem like a good thing to me, as it shows there is some skill in the game. I'd be more worried if the run-away leader was someone who had never played before. <br> <br>Agora requires you to pay attention to the turn-by-turn income, once someone is at 10 income, it is probably too late to stop them. You need to keep nibbling away at the other players' income. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/1204528#1204528 2006-12-04T00:50:54+00:00 RichardV You only paid 4 dollars? <br> <br>I've owned Agora for a little while, but never had the guts to pull it out and give it a go. I have now played about a dozen times both as 2 player and 3 player. I mostly bought it because I remebered it from a Dicetower episode and had a few bucks in change left over from buying another game, so thought what the heck. To tell the truth, I didn't buy it with the expectation to really look to pull it out and play it was more of a money burner and a just maybe. I will say right now that I regret not bringing it out earlier. <br> <br>I first played a couple of 2 player games with my sister and my wife. We all enjoyed it very much. The game has actually very little luck since cards can be placed anywhere and most of them are essentially similar with slight variances. The strategy is not in the cards themself, but rather where you place them. Your decision is of much variety, i will name a few. <br> <br>1. Do you play a card to expand your entrances to increase your income, but it may increase your shops which will increase your risk. <br> <br>2. Do you play on your opponent for same to increase their shops and create a risk for them, although it may increase their income. <br> <br>3. You can even cause double edge sword on your opponnent, some placements will allow you to decrease their income and increase their shops. A smile always comes over my face when i can do this. <br> <br>There are more choices then this, but it gives an idea. I've played around a dozen times and exept when scores are close i really feel that strategy plays a big part in victory. There is one exception and that is when the festival card is pulled and the scores are close. When this card is pulled then everyone earns income at that moment starting with the person who drew, and the first to 50 wins. Well if the score is close, meaning both players are at 45 pts and let's say Player 1(the one who drew the card) has income of 10 and player 2 has income of 15, that would put player one at 55 adn player 2 at 60, but since according to the rules player 1 scores first He/She would win. This happened twice in the games I played and we decided as house rule to make it whoever is highest when festival is pulled is declared the winner. Even so this issue is not that horrible to effect the enjoyment of the game. <br> <br>I have played both 2 and 3 player contests and both are equally enjoyable. 3 players have a little more conflict and effect cards seem to be occur more often. I think as a 2 player game this is a great couple game, it plays in a sense a lot like Carcassonne where you may end up discussing diffrent areas to place the cards. <br> <br>Now for my one sentence line. I've played this game with a couple of friends (only as 2 player) and after one game, they enjoy it so much that they ask how much it costs. When I tell them 4 dollars they are floored, it should be noted that I use nice counters (which do not come with the game) but even after I explain this fact, they realize that they could easily use anything as counters (one friend uses beads that he had laying around the house, and scores by pencil and paper). My point is the cost is really in how much you want to put into it. I would easily pay 12-15 dollars for this game if it came with nicer cards and some components, and even after paying for the extra parts for my version I was well under 10 dollars. <br> <br>This game is a gem, that easily outweighs it's cost. I bought it basically to spend my chump change from another purchase, and walked away with a game that is more enjoyable then the game I bought just before it (Caesar and Cleopatra $22). I would say to anyone to look around their house, look under the couch, the bed, the car, wherever. Scrounge up some change and pick this game up, it's worth the effort. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/928863#928863 2006-05-25T21:31:22+00:00 chessduffer Our group finally got to play this tonight. I wouldn't say that the game is broken in regard to a player exceeding the 50 goal (or in our case, we agreed to play to 75) in a single turn. It seemed balanced and fair. However, I think we'll be playing with the following variants going forward: <br> <br>1) 50 is too low a score. We had 4 players, and used less than half a deck before we got to 50. We all agreed to keep playing to 75. We may go to 80 or 100 next time. We're going to experiment with this so that we get at least more than half way through the deck but not use the whole deck. <br> <br>2) The Festival rule is where I see some adjustments need to be made. The Festival says it starts with the person who triggered it and moves around the table, with the first person to make the score of 50 (err... 75... or... nevermind) being the winner. For the Festival, which hits before that player can make any tactical changes to advance their position, we felt that if more than one player broke 75 (er... 50) as a result of the Festival, than the highest score wins. <br> <br>Either way, a very fun game with lots of strategy and lots of mischief (at least in our group). <br> <br>- Nick http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/917761#917761 2006-05-17T05:20:46+00:00 nsparks I taught my brother and dad how to play Agora and played one game. Despite my demonstrations, we ended up with a game that was played entirely on the grid, entirely connected (except when a fire opened up a space in the middle, creating two large pieces). I thought about playing some angled pieces, but generally ended up using pieces to close off doors since my brother's shops were easy to block that way. <br> <br>After the first few rounds, my dad recognized that the strategy was to get stores with few counters but lots of doors (aha!), which I'd been using to my advantage already. My brother, on the other hand, kept glomming onto his OWN stores and buying fairly expensive stores (with lots of counters). I kept telling him that it was risky in case of fire or flood, and he replied, "Big risk, big rewards!" But in this game, that's not always the case, since you can get a big-counter store that gets all the doors shut down, in which case you're left with big risk and no reward. <br> <br>Strangely, though, we only pulled two events the entire game--a fire on the second turn (so it burned down the only store in the game, basically starting over), and a fire a little later on that burned a hole in the middle of the board. But after that, my brother continued his strategy of large stores, eventually having a 9 or 10 counter store. <br> <br>If it weren't for my advantage of starting a few separate small stores early on, his "big risk" strategy might actually have come close--if he had drawn a festival it would have put him over the top. But by the time they realized how close I was to winning, it was impossible to shut out enough of my stores. Final score: me 62, brother 37, dad 29 <br> <br>It does seem in the few games I've played that generally one player is able to get a runaway lead, and it's quite hard to stop them unless you get a festival just at the right moment (i.e. on your last turn possible). Otherwise, if you've got enough small shops on the board, you can just take the last few turns to place cards to defend your stores and not buy anything at all. <br> <br>Still, a fun game and an interesting play mechanic. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/878082#878082 2006-04-13T05:51:43+00:00 jhliu I played a game of Agora yesterday with Erik & Jaylene (who had borrowed my copy and played several times) and my wife Robyn (her first time). I'd played a couple 2-player games and one 3-player game before this. <br> <br>Erik & Jaylene said that their strategy was to use each turn to block entrances or reduce the other player's income, which is especially important in a 2-player game, but we wanted to see how it would play out in a 4-player game. <br> <br>We didn't have too many events for the first half of the game, so mostly it was just placing and blocking. The first few rounds all the cards were attached, and people tried to increase counters while reducing doors for their opponents. I had a 2-counter 4-door store that was reduced to a 3-counter 1 door store. Jaylene had a 3-door store that was completely shut in with another card. <br> <br>At some point we explained to Robyn about placing a card not at an angle, but parallel but not touching another card, creating a narrow hallway that has to be closed off at both ends. It's not unstoppable, but takes two cards to do it. She took that, but then started adding other cards along the openings, and eventually had a bunch of branching hallways that would take too many cards to block. <br> <br>Our scores were actually all over the place--at one point it looked something like: <br>Robyn: 36 <br>Jonathan: 26 <br>Erik: 32 <br>Jaylene: 18 <br> <br>But after a few fires and floods, things evened out a little bit. Unfortunately, we then realized that Robyn was only two turns away from winning, and had too many protected doorways that we couldn't get to. All we could hope for was to burn down some of our own stores in order to clear cards to get to her doorways ... but alas, we only got one fire in the next round. <br> <br>The scores were very close, though, with all of us within one turn of winning. We did at least manage to keep Robyn from winning by too many points. <br> <br>Robyn: 55 <br>Jonathan: 43 <br>Erik: 43 <br>Jaylene: 43 <br> <br>None of us played close to the table edge (which another friend tried doing) but clever placement of cards can have almost the same effect. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/875394#875394 2006-04-10T21:07:47+00:00 jhliu If my memory is correct, the small lead whoever had was important until the one round where the score increased dramatically. The first player had just under 50 points at that point, player two cracked 50, while the rest of us were stuck much lower. It seemed like that one turn was the most important turn that only 2 people had gotten to take. It was our first game and I thought I'd check here to see if there was any similar experiences before I tried it again. <br> <br>I'll try it again soon. Thanks for the comments! http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/788275#788275 2006-01-31T17:51:53+00:00 davidme My experience matches GaryP's. (I've never bothered to keep track of who went first, but if it <i>were</i> a problem, you'd expect the first player to maintain a lead the entire game, and that doesn't happen.) http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/787758#787758 2006-01-31T09:29:26+00:00 kuhrusty I have never noticed a first-player advantage in this game. (I've played 8+ times.) The first player is twice as likely to lose their first market from a fire or flood than to gain from a festival, although most likely no event will take place before their next turn. However, since they have placed the first card, the following players can often add their cards to increase that first shop's size while maintaining or decreasing its income (doorways) and making it further fire & flood bait. This follows for the second player, to a lesser degree, and continues until it just becomes the flow of the game. <br> <br>Also, if player two is poised to collect enough income to win the game. The others should, if possible, close up enough doorwars to prevent that. Otherwise, player two may have simply played very well. If you still think it's unbalanced, then fine, set a score threshold to trigger the game's end, and play through all players. Let us know if you like that better as a variant, but I certainly would not call it broken as written. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/787407#787407 2006-01-31T02:36:30+00:00 GaryP Seems broken if played as is. Shouldn't "last licks" be invoked, giving everyone the same number of turns? We were all close in score until Player 2 far exceeded the scores of players 3 and 4 on his last move, denying p3 & p4 a turn to compensate. Am I missing something? Are we just supposed to play "kick the leader" and try to stop the earlier players from the seemingly large advantage they have from moving first? http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/786877#786877 2006-01-30T20:45:25+00:00 davidme Why are you blocking me!? I'm losing! <br> <img src="http://images.boardgamegeek.com/images/pic102454_mt.jpg"> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/102454 2005-11-13T19:29:26+00:00 kuhrusty This past Tuesday evening, My wife (A), my friend Paul (B), and I (C) played a couple of games of Agora after the kids went to sleep and while awaiting Paul's wife to finish with an evening appointment. This is the most interesting of the two games: <br> <br>To start off - Heather acquired a 5 opening market, Paul a 6 opening market, and I a 4 opening market. It was the best I could do... Heather moved into teh next round picking up a 3 opening market, as did Paul - but he got to expand his and I picked up another 4 opening market, I also closed Heather off a bit. Next round Heather expanded hers slightly and then Paul got a B card - FLOOD! Unfortunately with his earlier expansion, he had the largest market and it flooded out. I went on to build another 3 opening market. Another round with Paul re-building out his flooded market and Heather and I expanding and building new markets. Then disaster strikes, Paul gets another B card - FIRE! Since he rebuilt his original market, he once again had he largest market. This took out his market and some of Heather's, but leaving me relatively unscathed as I had my markets spread out all over the board and I kept most of mine fairly small. Next round, Heather gets an A card - Festival - woohoo! I won as a result! Final score: Heather 37, Paul 14, me 52. <br> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/543813#543813 2005-07-07T13:36:53+00:00 pmboos <br> <img src="http://images.boardgamegeek.com/images/pic70438_mt.jpg"> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/70438 2005-03-01T21:10:47+00:00 EJKemp <br> <img src="http://images.boardgamegeek.com/images/pic70437_mt.jpg"> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/70437 2005-03-01T21:10:47+00:00 EJKemp <br> <img src="http://images.boardgamegeek.com/images/pic68384_mt.jpg"> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/68384 2005-02-15T18:03:53+00:00 jtong77 Tom <br>As always, another excellent review. The only thing I disagree about is the components issue. I agree that having nice components can make a game attractive but I think CheapAss games are aimed more at the affordability end of the market. Many of the "eurogamers" on this forum seem happy to regularly cough up 40-50$ for each new game, just to have a pretty board and artistic cards... for some of us (with third-rate currencies) that is just a litle too much. The basic premise behind CheapAss was always that you would buy *one* set of good quality components (typically cubes, money and dice) and reuse them across all the games. With this approach, you could maybe add a dollar (max) to the cost of each of their games that you own and *still* end up with each being attractive to play. I also put all their games into one big (El Grand sized) box along with the common components - there is always at least one game in there that will get played on a given occasion! http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/56911#56911 2004-09-28T18:08:32+00:00 gamesbook "Cover" of the game. <br> <img src="http://images.boardgamegeek.com/images/pic48662_mt.jpg"> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/48662 2004-06-02T15:43:06+00:00 Verkisto If you’ve read many of my past reviews, you’d know that I’m certainly not a fan of cheap, component-lite games. I owned a couple Cheapass games, but they never really gave me the desire to own many more, despite their cheap price. However, a recent trade netted me about ten Cheapass games – and when you own a game, you have to play it, right? So slowly, I’m playing through them, finding some nice gems, and some real stinkers. I had read in GAMES Magazine that Agora (Cheapass Games, 2002 – James Earnest) was a fairly fun game, so I had higher expectations for it. As usual, I was annoyed about the lack of components (people do care about that!) but was able to find a place in Korea where I could get small wooden blocks. So I slapped them and the game in a nice plastic container – and presto!, I had a fairly nice board game. <br> <br> And after playing it, we found that the game play was fairly fun – certainly more fun than I’ve had playing any other Cheapass game, with the exception of Lightspeed. The game scales well from two to four players, and has a good deal of interaction – not to mention it has a certain aesthetic appeal once the game is finished, not totally unlike from Carcassonne. Everyone who played the game agreed that it was good, with a tinge of surprise (we usually don’t expect much from James Earnest). <font color='#FF0000'>For it’s price, and as long as players are willing to put a little work into accumulating components, Agora is an excellent choice.</font> <br> Each player is assigned a different letter: A, B, C, or D. Each player also starts with a certain amount of points, or dollars, etc. We found that keeping track of points was a lot easier than handing around money all the time. A deck of thirty-six cards is shuffled, and one of them placed face up in the middle of the table. Each card has a different symbol and letter on it, and a different layout of “stores.” Each side has nine “doorways” on them, with various walls also on the cards; so that when the cards are placed together, they form several stores with various entrances. One player is chosen to go first, and then play proceeds clockwise around the table. <br> <br> A player’s turn consists of four phases, beginning with the income phase. In this phase, the player receives one point (gold, coin, etc) for each doorway to every shop that they own. Only doorways which touch the perimeter of the area (marketplace) count, if doorways are cut off, or touch an isolated area in the middle of the market (called alley), they generate no income. Quite simply, a customer to that store must be able to walk to the doorway without passing through any walls or other cards. <br> <br> The next phase is the draw phase, in which the player draws the top card of the pile and checks the letter on it. If the letter matches his own assigned letter, the symbol tells what action immediately occurs. <br>- Fire symbol: The largest shop (shop with the most player counters on it) burns down, removing from the table all cards involved in that shop. <br>- Flood symbol: The largest shop is flooded, removing all counters from that shop, but leaving the cards on the table. In case of ties for largest shop in Floods and Fires, nothing happens. <br>- Festival symbol: Every player immediately collects income for their shops, starting with the active player. <br>If the letters do not match, then nothing occurs and play proceeds to the next phase. <br> <br> In the third phase, the player places the drawn card down. They can pretty much place the card anywhere they want on the table, as long as they follow a few simple rules, such as not overlapping cards, making sure that shops owned by different players are not connected, etc. A card doesn’t even have to touch any other existing card in play. If any shops are enlarged by the placed card, the shop owner(s) expand their shops, placing tokens on each new circle in their shops. <br> <br> Finally, the player can buy one shop – any open shop on the board. The price of the shop is the amount of income it would currently receive. The player subtracts the amount of points equal to the shop’s value from their score, and place one of their counters on each circle in the shop. Play then proceeds to the next player, who follows the same four phases. As soon as one player reaches 50 points (coins) at any point in the game, they are the winner! <br> <br>Some comments on the game… <br> <br>1.) Components: Well, can’t really cheer too loudly here – this is Cheapass, you know. Agora is part of their “Hip Pocket’ line, and truly does come packaged in a small plastic bag that can easily fit in one’s back pocket. However, after I added some paper and a writing utensil (for keeping score), found some nice (inexpensive too!) 10 mm cubes of four colors, and packaged them all in a plastic container – the game really didn’t fit the “hip pocket” category either. This was more work – but it’s a lot easier for me to entice people to play a game with nicer components. And it really wasn’t that much more expensive, but did add a nice level to the game. Card quality was a little lower than I would have liked – but the graphics, while simple, were extremely functional, and since the cards aren’t handled excessively, it shouldn’t pose much of a problem. <br> <br>2.) Rules: The rules are on a small sheet, both sides, that folds up nicely into the bag the game is packaged in. There are some illustrations, showing how several shops are scored, which is a nice visual aid to understanding that part of the rules. However, the rules aren’t that hard to understand, and most people will not have a hard time picking them up. The only thing that could cause some trouble is the card laying rules. Not because they are hard, because the opposite is true – but because people aren’t used to being able to throw a card anywhere on the table. <br> <br>3.) Tile-Laying: I really enjoyed laying down the cards in this game. Unlike most other games, the ability to lay the cards down any way you want to really makes the game interesting. At first glance, I thought that the millions of combinations possible would cause for some serious analysis paralysis, but there are really only a few excellent choices, so the game doesn’t bog down as much as it seems. Laying the cards also adds a lot of strategy to the game. Whose shops will you expand? If you expand your opponent’s shop, he may make more money, but at the same time be vulnerable to fire and flood. At the same time, you can expand your own shops – but at what price. Cards can also be used to cut off the entrances to other shops – and oh the joy when you can place a card that lowers a shop’s income, while making it larger. This is possible by lowering the amount of doors, but increasing the amount of circles – and really can be fun to play on an opponent. <br> <br>4.) Time and Players: A two-player game is fairly fun, but three and four player games are where it really shines. No matter how many players, the chance of drawing a card with your letter is still 25%, so the odds are the same, and everybody often waits with baited breath to see if a fire or flood will happen each turn. The game flies by, as 50 points isn’t that hard to reach – and can often be completed in only half an hour. <br> <br>5.) Fun Factor: The game really was a lot of fun – more than I’ve had with most games of this type, and the replayability factor was quite high. Even the theme, which is thin – I’ll admit – did okay, and living in South Korea like I do, I can see how the shop structure really mimics some of the markets over here! When the game is over, you can look at the board, seeing all the tokens and shops laid out, and it looks pretty neat! When first playing, one player built one shop that was immediately destroyed by a fire. He was almost turned off to the game, but realized that it was only a minor setback and came back to win the game. Soon afterwards, he was hoping for a fires and floods to destroy his opponents, and everybody had a blast! <br> <br>For it’s price, you really can’t beat Agora. Getting a good game for less than $5 is a great deal. Now, once you add in the other components, it comes up to around $10, but still a reasonable price. And unlike other games of this genre, Agora seems to be a game that will be pulled out fairly frequently. I enjoyed it, as it was a fun filler, but one that had some good strategy available. <font color='#FF0000'>Not all of James Ernest’s games are worth one’s time, but Agora is certainly an exception to that rule – fast, fun, strategy-filled, and cheap.</font> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/32918#32918 2004-04-12T23:15:23+00:00 TomVasel Agora is a neat little territory building game in which players are building shops in an ancient Greek marketplace. Having just been to an ancient Agora in Athens, this game seemed to be right up my street... <br> <br>Players start with 10 coins (points) each. On each turn, players first collect income from their shops, then draw a card. Certain cards cause effects such as fire, flood and festivals to happen before it is laid. After laying the card the player can then buy a shop, the price of which is determined by its current theoretical income. Play then passes to the next player, and the first to 50 coins (points) wins. <br> <br>The rules are simple, easy to follow and quick to digest, as is the norm with the Cheapass and Hip Pocket titles. The effects add a welcome element of chaos which force players to think about the sizes of their shops - as fire and flood affect only the largest shop (or no shops at all if it is a tie for the largest), it is often a good strategy to increase an opponent's shop to make his/hers the largest. <br> <br>Due to the open layout of the tiles, Agora is refreshingly free from restraints, with only a few rules for laying cards next to each other (ie if cards touch, their grid patterns must match, otherwise place your shop wherever you please!). <br> <br>The humour that is apparent in most Cheapass games is rather lacking from Agora, although this doesn't hurt it in the slightest. It is a hugely enjoyable and fast paced diversion from more weighty fare, and immense value for it's small, Hip Pocket sized price. Highly recommended. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/29681#29681 2004-03-05T17:40:49+00:00 zombiemonkey The table edge rule definitely sounds like an interesting alternative to an infinite table. It might be worth extending it to include a width of a card diagonal. I will suggest this next time that I play. <br> <br>Rereading the rules I see that in one minor aspect I was playing incorrectly: there should have been a card in the middle of the table before the first turn. I can already imagine how I will exploit this rule.... <br> <br> <br> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/21683#21683 2003-11-06T00:29:03+00:00 mlvanbie mlvanbie (#21530), <br> <br>We consider that the table is bordered with a solid wall one card length deep. You can play cards next to the edge, bu anything facing the edge or int hat borderland is considered &quot;closed&quot;. Similarly cards played in that borderland are considered to have all doors automatically closed. This makes the edges something to avoid, thus forcing game play to table-center. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/21613#21613 2003-11-04T19:20:22+00:00 clearclaw While waiting for more people to show up, I explained <i>Agora</i> to new member John. (I&#039;ve gotten quite used to explaining it quickly at this point.) I mentioned the edge of table rules to John at the end as an afterthought. To my surprise, he placed his card in the corner of the table instead of the center. There was no way to block the shop&#039;s four entrances because of the table edge. He played very defensively, creating thin unblocked alleys so that closing entrances was essentially impossible. I matched his strategy and play kept to the corner of the table. Incomes climbed quickly but John had a serious (somewhat engineered) setback when his original shops burnt down and I placed a new, safe shot in the area. I managed to pull far ahead in points. <br> <br>In our second game I attempted to start just as John had, but a flood swapped our positions. I considered buying a cheap large shop in hopes of causing a fire to clear out the original shops, but didn&#039;t. We kept playing right along the edges, never able to decrease the other&#039;s income by more than $1 at a time (and usually none). Alan came in as we were finishing and we explained how we had broken the game, turning it into a random race. John hit 50 exactly, an event almost as merciful as it would have been for me to get another turn (and the win). <br> <br>We discussed the problem; playing away from table edges seems necessary, although placing obstacles along the table edges might work. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/21530#21530 2003-11-04T00:20:46+00:00 mlvanbie We were joined by a new player, Alan (Allen? - should have checked spelling) who had not been playing games recently. He mentioned liking <i>Illuminati</i> and <i>Diplomacy</i> so we tried to think of games that had interesting interactions. <i>Illuminati: Deluxe Edition</i> was resident in the office, but we didn&#039;t want to just gang up on people. I pulled out <i>Agora</i>, mostly due to my recent BGG strategy posts. <br> <br>Jake and I had played several two-player games of <i>Agora</i> in the past, so I explained rules and strategy to Alan. Discussion of technique lasted a few turns into the game. I&#039;ve never seen so many special effects occur in a single game. I think that Alan&#039;s first shop flooded as the only shop on the board just after his first turn and then Jake got a festival immediately after his first turn, again as the only shop on the board. <br> <br>I played aggressively, shutting down shop entrances (mostly Jake&#039;s) and enlarging other people&#039;s shops while reducing their income. I managed to get well-protected shops in the process and managed to create some paths out of the market that were smaller than cards (some times due to forking pathways, other times by reducing open spaces). This allowed me to take the lead early on and pretty much keep it. <br> <br>Alan rarely did anything to cripple other players. He used his tiles to enlarge his shops and increase their income without taking the largest shops. Clever placement of additional tiles allowed him to share some of my pathways, ensuring that I didn&#039;t want to block him off because my income loss would be greater. This allowed him to get high degrees of income similar to my own, getting him within a turn (or festival) of me and making me quite worried about my position. <br> <br>Jake got stuck with trying to close off my shops and (to a lesser extent) Alan&#039;s. He had to use two turns to block off both ends of the pathway behind our super-island (which also protected additional shops). Jake thought I was crazy trying to increase the size of one of his shops near the end of the game when I said that I was hoping that a fire would reopen some of my entrances. On the following turn the Fire Marshall failed to implicate me as an accessory to arson.... <br> <br>The game ended with a festival (a frequent ending situation), putting me well beyond 50 credits. Without that I believe that I would have won on my following turn but Alan would have been quite close to 50 credits himself. Jake was far behind. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/20982#20982 2003-10-21T13:05:17+00:00 mlvanbie clearclaw (#20998), <br> <br>I guess my point wasn&#039;t clear enough. I don&#039;t feel a need to redesign a game so that nobody gets ahead -- that makes the game excessively luck-based. Since players know that festivals can occur they should be leery of any player getting within two rounds of income of winning. Leaving income blocking to the last minute is a dangerous strategy, especially since it can be applied to all the players equally. (It also leads to all players having relatively large incomes, which can make the game a race to a train wreck.) I think that the game already forces (wise) players to prevent runaway leaders. Becoming a runaway leader is sort of a winning condition. <br> <br>In this case I think that players can adapt to the game, rather than making things go the other way round. Many Cheapass games really only work when players adapt themselves to the the special properties of the game. When this is part of the endgame in a race then there are often complaints. (Whether this is a design flaw or not is sometimes debated.) But if a variation makes the game more fun for your players.... <br> <br>If players work together, angled card defences can be defeated. I played a game on Saturday (session report submitted but not showing at the moment) in which one of the players shared in my defences, keeping me for wanting to shut him down because it would have hurt me more. The third player had to use two turns to shut us down. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/21018#21018 2003-10-20T19:46:49+00:00 mlvanbie mlvanbie (#20927), <br> <br>Yes, we do the screw plays that reduce door count and increase fire risk frequently, which is where angled cards becomes so useful for defending against those. The problem is that almost always an angled card compleatly prevent closing off or affecting a store as any card added would violate the &quot;no cards on top of each other&quot; rule. <br> <br>The problem with the current festivals definition is that it is identical to an additional play round where nobody places a card. Nobody is advantaged or disadvantaged, they just get to apply their income delta twice -- often resulting in an even more run-away leader. As such I don&#039;t see it changing the reasoning for tile placement, as you&#039;re going to earn that money anyway on your next turn, just like you would if there were a festival. <br> <br>Conversely making festivals negative may significantly changes the risk/reward relationship in tile placement. It could also have the affect of encouraging a more dissolute board with free-floating islands of tiles rather than one centra glob. I&#039;m interested to see how it comes out. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/20998#20998 2003-10-20T13:28:09+00:00 clearclaw clearclaw (#20893), <br> <br>I like to grow stores belonging to my opponents in ways that decrease entrances. Making sure that other people have their stores sharing cards with a fire hazard is good, too. Sometimes you can set up blocking entrances to many stores at once. For my own, I will place tiles at funny angles to split entrances so that twice as many cards need to be used to block me off. There are lots of ways to mess with opponents and defend oneself -- all reasons why I like it. <br> <br>If you make festivals negative then players will have less incentive to block opponents instead of improving their own shops. With festivals it is clear that of two choices that make the same net change in income you should pick the one that hurts your opponent. A win by festival is a bit unsatisfying when others are also within a turn of a win, so if you don&#039;t like them, maybe just awarding half income would be reasonable. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/20927#20927 2003-10-18T08:07:18+00:00 mlvanbie mlvanbie (#20808), <br> <br>Yeah, my temptation instead was to alter the effects of a festival event from being positive to being more broadly negative. The current thought is to have festivals be a fire and a flood combined. The fire burns the largest store (largest in terms of stones, ties don&#039;t protect), and the flood wipes out the largest store (in terms of doors, ties don&#039;t protect). The problem with that approach is that it is of course not controllable. The appeal is that defensive play becomes a more difficult decision and tempting decision. <br> <br>The fastest earning path is (almost) always to extend a currently owned store while buying a new store. Adding the above definition for festivals would balance that, quite aggressively, making the decision, &quot;Do I play defensively and grow my income more slowly, or do I grow income and place myself at risk of a festival?&quot; http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/20893#20893 2003-10-17T14:21:41+00:00 clearclaw clearclaw (#20647), <br> <br>I think that the runaway leader issue is a design <i>feature</i> here. Floods and fires prevent one method of gaining riches quickly, but with festivals you really can&#039;t let anyone else get close to the 50 point target. The objective in this game is to become a runaway leader -- to set up a situation where each turn you make <i>n</i> more points than your opponents, and to do so early enough so that by the time that you reach 50 points everyone is a full turn behind you (otherwise a festival will make you lose). The one nasty situation is in a many-playered game where nobody feels they can afford to slow you down because it would put them too far behind everyone else. <br> <br>Increasing the point total should have an effect just like you described -- only a few more turns because one player&#039;s income is so much greater than the others as well as being large in an absolute sense, probably 12 or so at the 50 point mark. If you want nail-biting until the end (or until a festival gives the win away), decrease the target. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/20808#20808 2003-10-16T06:19:43+00:00 mlvanbie As we were waiting for Dave to arrive, first on the table was Cheap <br> Ass Game&#039;s Agora. We started out with four, but as I worked through <br> the rules GregO showed up so I started the rules explanation again <br> only to have Stephano appear. Thusly we ended up with 6 at the table: <br> JCL (me), GregW, Eddie, GregO, Stephano and Roy. <br> <br> Bits comment: <br> <br> Agora is vastly improved by using brightly coloured high contrast <br> glass bits for the tokens such as the ones available from or good <br> crafts stores. It makes the game particularly beautiful on the <br> table and accentuates a certain zen-like element of the game. <br> <br> I was the only one who had played Agora before, tho previously only <br> with 2, 3 or 4 players (the rules max out at 4). Working off a recent <br> Spielfreaks conversation I pulled out both my decks as we launched <br> into 6 player Agora. <br> <br> Agora turned out to work very nicely with 6 players. As all cards <br> have event markers on them and the probability of an event on any <br> given turn is a constant 25% evenly spread across the three event <br> types, changing the player counts doesn&#039;t actually affect any of the <br> gross mechanics. I&#039;ve not doubt now that it would scale equally well <br> to 8 players. <br> <br> The game started with a bang: two fires within the first three rounds. <br> Stephano and GregO were the worst hurt with their entire placements <br> going up in smoke and gutting my main profit centers. <br> <br> GregW quickly caught on to the value of angled cards as a defensive <br> measure for well earning stores and lead the charge with angled cards <br> spread like land mines around his stores. Quickly his end of the <br> board became a maze of kitty-corner cards surrounding unassailable <br> profit earners that shoved GregW into the lead and kept him there. <br> <br> About this time GregO had to leave, so Larry Whalen took his place. <br> Unfortunately GregO had never really recovered from the fires at that <br> point, and was but narrowly saved from being last by Stephano. <br> <br> The angled cards grew pendulous growths of store accretions (mostly <br> from Eddie and LarryW) which suddenly turned into a huge profit center <br> for Eddie. In two turns he leapt from near the back of the field to <br> contended for the lead. The rest of us then concentrated on shutting <br> down Eddie&#039;s door count and setting him up for the next fire or flood <br> event by nailing two of his stores together into one huge 11 stone <br> store which had only three doors. <br> <br> However that didn&#039;t do much to hinder GregW. His multitude of small <br> earning and well protected stores kept his earning rate at the top of <br> the field, and he was slowly drawing ahead. In turn this revealed the <br> runaway leader design problem in Agora: the rich get richer and there <br> is little way to slow down a rapidly accelerating leader which doesn&#039;t <br> slow you down even more. <br> <br> By the fifth turn GregW pipped over 50 points with Eddie right behind <br> him. LarryW had made a huge effort on his earning centers and was <br> coming back into contention, but just didn&#039;t have the time to catch <br> up. Roy meanwhile had been beating up on Eddie and me by joining and <br> thus putting himself slightly out of the running. Stephano was still <br> working on catching up. This score sheet shows a respectably growing <br> earning rate, but one that lagged the rest of the table. <br> <br> We decided to continue to 100 points instead of the normal 50. <br> Another three turns shoved GregW over 100 points, further clarifying <br> the runaway leader problem. <br> <br> Final scores: <br> <br> JCL: 73 <br> GregW: 106 <br> Eddie: 83 <br> GregO/LarryW: 79 <br> Roy: 87 <br> Stephano: 70 <br> <br> Of possible interest is that even in going to 100 points, we only used <br> two cards from the second deck. Even with 6 players we didn&#039;t finish <br> the first deck by the time we reached 50 points. <br> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/20647#20647 2003-10-13T16:10:37+00:00 clearclaw Agora is a tile-laying game in which tiles may be placed at any angle as long as they do not overlap and tiles with a common edge conform to a grid. (Cards represent 3x2 grid squares so even grid conformance allows some flexibility.) Each turn players collect income from their shops ($1 per unblocked opening to their shops, openings into enclosed areas don&#039;t count). A tile card is drawn. About 1/4 of the time this will cause a special event (festival: everyone collects income; flood: largest shop has tokens removed; fire: remove all cards that contain the largest shop). After the tile is placed the player may buy an empty shop based on its current income. <br> <br>Now for a few details. Shop ownership is indicated by putting tokens on token icons in a connected set of open spaces on the cards. If a card is placed so that it extends an open shop then more tokens are put down for free. (This could increase or decrease the income.) Cards may not be placed such that shops owned by different players are joined in this way. Shop size is determined by the number of tokens. If there is a tie for biggest shop then there won&#039;t be a fire or flood. Putting the corner of a card against a shop opening blocks it. The object is to be the first player to $50 after starting with $10 (your wealth may go negative). <br> <br>Strategies that seem to work: <br> <br>* tie shop sizes to avoid disasters, <br>* enlarge your opponent&#039;s shops while decreasing the openings, <br>* get openings on several sides so that they cannot be all blocked off at once, <br>* place cards to make blocking existing entrances harder (splitting entrances to open spaces), and <br>* avoid having several shops on the same cards, especially on cards that are vulnerable to fire. <br> <br>In two player games players have rather high income because there are fewer opportunities to get entrances blocked. This leads to short games (under 20 minutes) with a large portion of the $50 gained in the last turn. A slight lead in income can be devastating. It might be good to set a higher target income if you want a longer two-player game, but repeated quick plays are quite satisfying. <br> <br>When I played with three other players I found that we were mostly neck-and-neck throughout the game (John and I were a bit ahead, though). It took a long time before we had appreciable profits, which lead to a much longer game (nearly an hour). I was counting on a fire to change the tide but instead the game was won through a festival. Scores would have been quite close if we had all taken our festival income, with both John and I over 50. However, it was his festival with my turn next.... <br> <br>Depending on special events is unwise. Each card is marked with an event type and a letter. If the letter matches the player drawing the card then the event happens. This means that it is possible to go through the entire deck with no events. (Diligent card counters might also get some advantage by watching which possibilities have been skipped.) In a two player game you often get only one or two events and even those can have minimal or no effect. It seems wiser to guard against the events than to count on them. The disasters provide an element of caution in all endeavours and encourage players to avoid putting all their eggs in single baskets. Festivals make it worthwhile to limit your opponent&#039;s income rather than extending your own. <br> <br>This game has an interesting balance of spatial play, pipe connecting and player interaction. The non-aligned play makes it as much a relative of tangrams as other tile-laying games. Like most of the Hip Pocket games, I always keep it in my backpack as potential filler. <br> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/20074#20074 2003-09-29T12:56:40+00:00 mlvanbie vitas (#19223), <br> <br>Thanks so much for the answers - these clarifications helped alot in maing sure I understood the rules. It was as I originally had thought of them. <br> <br>Paul <br> <br> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/19457#19457 2003-09-14T17:11:34+00:00 pmboos It&#039;s all about angles! <br> <img src="http://images.boardgamegeek.com/images/pic31144_mt.jpg"> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/31144 2003-09-10T12:30:22+00:00 vitas <br>&gt; If I expand one of my shops or an opponent&#039;s shop, don&#039;t we automatically have to put the counters down to make it bigger? <br> <br>Yes. Stores automatically expand when they get bigger. <br> <br>&gt; do the extra openings have to be &quot;paid for&quot;. <br> <br>No. Expanding a store is free. <br> <br>&gt; If I don&#039;t pay for additions, does that just block off the openings I just added <br> <br>You trace a path from your tokens to openings to determine income, even when the store changes size. <br> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/19223#19223 2003-09-09T17:49:59+00:00 vitas vitas (#2817), <br> <br>I have a question which the clarification on your graceful boot site only confused me a bit more. ??? <br> <br>If I expand one of my shops or an opponent&#039;s shop, don&#039;t we automatically have to put the counters down to make it bigger? <br> <br>Directly related, do the extra openings have to be &quot;paid for&quot;. (I assumed it wasn&#039;t, but I am suspecting I misread the rules.) If I don&#039;t pay for additions, does that just block off the openings I just added (unless no counters were needed at all); I presume I couldn&#039;t use the openings in that case. <br> <br>Thanks for any clarifications! <br>Paul <br> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/19198#19198 2003-09-09T11:31:37+00:00 pmboos 2-Player Game at the end (Blue Won) <br> <img src="http://images.boardgamegeek.com/images/pic31026_mt.jpg"> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/31026 2003-09-08T11:44:17+00:00 pmboos > This came in with two things going against it: a Cheapass game... <br> <br>Cheapass Games' line of Hip-Pocket Games (A Very Clever Pipe Game, Agora, Nexus and Cube Farm) are in a different class than the rest of the game. They are good, tile-laying games. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/6406#6406 2003-02-23T23:58:05+00:00 vitas This came in with two things going against it: a Cheapass game, and one involving geometric positioning. I came out of it appreciating many of its elements and looking forward to playing again. <br> <br>Players are taking their turns adding one card to the layout. Each card depicts a series of walls that define rooms, each of which has one or more openings onto the card edge. Players are claiming these rooms, potentially expanding them by playing adjacent cards, and scoring points at the beginning of their turns for the number of openings that spill out from the card edge onto the open table. This would normally be a very tactical geometric exercise - how can I place my next card to gain the most facings? That element is there, but there are other aspects which enhance the game. There is a lot of hosage in the game, and we exploited it to the hilt. You can, after all, try expanding your own rooms, but you're just as likely to try closing off an opponent's openings. If a card opening has only interior exposures, closed in by other cards (forming a courtyard), it scores nothing. So often you are looking for opportunities to encircle opponents' card edges, and extending your own defensively. <br> <br>Each turn, in addition to playing a card, you can "buy" another room at a cost of the number of exposures it has. Effectively you are giving up one turn of income. But since you don't get that income until the start of your next turn, other players will have a chance to diminish the value of your room before your turn comes around. <br> <br>However, the really ingenious part of the game comes from the use of claiming stones. The room sections on any given card will have between 0 and 3 stone spaces (duly marked). Whenever you are claiming a room, or extending one you already own, you must put stones of your color on all of the stone spaces in that room. Stones are bad. During the game, random events will come up which harm whichever room has the most stones in it. That harm might be a "flood", which requires the player to vacate that room, or a "fire" which causes *all of the cards* which contain that room to be removed from the board permanently. <br> <br>This creates entirely new challenges. When you expand a room, you are likely to be forced to add stones to it as well, making it more vulnerable. You might be able to add to an opponent's room in such a way as to close off some of his openings, but which add more stones to it. There is constant jockeying to avoid having the largest room. <br> <br>There is a relationship between stone spaces and openings, but it is not direct. I think that this fact enhances the game. It might be possible to find a way to improve your room's income signficantly, but only at a modest cost in stones - or you might be faced with a situation in which the only way to expand your income is to make your room much more vulnerable to fire and flood. <br> <br>We stumbled around with the game. Mike went out on a limb early on, expanding a room of his but at the cost of making it vulnerable. Indeed, fire hit and his entire strategy was reduced to ashes - and he never recovered. Dave made some nice moves which enabled him to maintain a strong and steadily growing income - and once he took a lead, he was able to take control of some far flung rooms which became immune to attack. He won easily, and the final scores were very spread apart. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/6370#6370 2003-02-21T19:05:42+00:00 Jonathan Degann Agora 1/16/03 <br> <br>Dale 53 – Bret 26 <br> <br>After the close first game, we tried Agora again. We had each had a chance to see what strategies worked, so we thought it would be another close battle. The game started out even, and both of us remained close to the initial score of 10 as we spent as much money each turn to acquire new stores as we were making at the time. The break in the game came when I drew a fire card just after Bret had played a card to enlarge his biggest store. The fire demolished Bret’s largest store (and it’s 7 openings!) and also took out two more of his stores while only destroying one of mine. This gave me a distinct advantage in scoring which Bret could never overcome. It also didn’t help that two festivals came up in the four cards drawn after the big fire to further widen the gap between us. I won easily 53-26. I can see where luck of the draw could lead to such large disparities in score, but the game is so quick, I don’t know if I would fret over it that much. <br> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/5586#5586 2003-01-17T22:08:28+00:00 yudp Agora 1/16/03 <br> <br>Bret 50 – Dale 44 <br> <br>Time for one more new game – Agora from Cheapass games. I’ve been reluctant to play some of the new Cheapass games as I’ve found them to be somewhat unsatisfying (and sometimes not playtested enough). Happily, Agora proved to be quite a bit of fun for two players. The theme is that each player is a storekeeper in a market. You gain income by the number of open entrances to your stores. The stores are represented on cards, and the unique part of this game is that there are few restrictions on placing cards – they can go almost anywhere on your playing surface. This can lead to some interesting board arrangements. The first game went along slowly as we were both searching for adequate strategies. We had very few special events in the first game, so we were able to play the game with few interruptions. Bret managed to get two or three large stores with at least 4 openings each. Each turn, I was able to block of a few of them, but never enough to make up the difference in scores between us – then on his turn, when I least needed it to happen, he drew a festival card with his letter on it and won on the extra scoring. After one play, it seems pretty interesting, but it’ll need a few more plays to see if there is enough there to keep this one around. Luckily, this took only about 10 minutes, so it’ll be easy to try this a few more times. <br> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/5585#5585 2003-01-17T22:08:24+00:00 yudp Agora is a unique concept of urban sprawl. The simple mechanic is that players do not keep cards in their hand, they must use the top card of the deck when their turn comes. This means that they cannot plan too far ahead. Another thing that prevents too much forsight but adds an element of strategy is that each card has a letter (A,B,C,D) and a symbol (Fire, Water, Sun). Before the game starts, everybody gets a letter. If you draw a card with your letter, then you get to look at the symbol. Fire and water are bad, Sun is good. The fire and water will affect ONLY the biggest store. so one tactic is to make a store bigger than yours and hope a fire burns him down... but dont purchase stores next to him because his fire will also damage the neighbors. More access to stores means more money each turn. The goal is to get to 50 coins. Buying stores costs money. A full game of Agora with 4 people can be played in about 1 Hour. Once people start picking up the strategy of it you can cut this down to 30-45 min, unless you have really good players... then the intrigue comes in. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2862#2862 2002-07-22T13:42:27+00:00 iam_emperor Agora is another clever freeform tile-laying game for two to four players. This game is a little more interesting than a regular tile-laying game in that tiles may be placed anywhere on the table without overlapping other tiles. The theme is to build shops in a plaza set in ancient times to attract customers and make the most money. <br> <br>Play like this: Each player is assigned a letter which, if drawn, kicks off a festival or disaster. You draw a tile, check if any rewards (festivals) or disasters (fire and flood) strike, then place the tile (which represent shops divided up in different ways) and buy a shop if you'd like. Income is based on access to shops. Connecting a tile to a shop automatically expands it, or cuts off its access to the public. You and opponents spend time cutting off shops, or expanding shops. Expanding shops could be detrimental because disasters strike only the biggest shops. <br> <br>Playing time is about 20 to 40 minutes. <br> <br>Overall, I enjoyed this game. I like that it playes quickly, and that an interesting pattern of tiles develops as the game progresses. <br> <br>A strategy to keep in mind: we caught on that it's better to keep a tie for shop sizes to prevent disasters and create shops with the highest scoring opportunities. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2817#2817 2002-07-15T12:12:52+00:00 vitas Agora arrived in the mail from Cheapass Games in the middle of the week and I was looking forward to our club’s Saturday get together and the opportunity to give it a try. With minimal wrist-twisting, Bob, Mike and Melissa agreed to join in. <br> <br>We broke out four colors of gaming stones, gave the rules a careful going-over (not too tricky; they’re only two pages long) and jumped on in. <br> <br>The game moved quickly, if cautiously, since no one was quite ready to be the first one to attack another’s entranceways. Bob stepped up to the plate, blocked one of my entrances, and the war was on. <br> <br>The special events that did occur had little overall effect on the game prior to the endgame. There was one flood and one fire, but the flood washed out a relatively unproductive shop and there was no single largest store for the fire to burn and so it had no effect. There were also three festivals and they did make a difference. Because festivals cause extra scoring to occur, they brought the 50-point goal much more quickly than might normally have been the case. <br> <br>For my part, I pursued a decentralized strategy by purchasing several small shops and using my cards to diminish my opponents’ shops rather than using them to build my own. This ensured that I could take a loss or two without any drastic effect on my income. That strategy would have brought home the win but Mike not drew a festival on his last turn and scored again, crossing the victory line ahead of me. <br> <br>Overall, Agora was a fun and quick game. Now that we know the rules, we could probably get in a full game in 15-20 minutes. It was heavier than most tile-laying games, but a bit lighter than Carcassonne. It would make an excellent filler between two heavy games. <br> <br>If I had to make a complaint, it would be that the end came a bit too quickly. It might be because we weren’t playing in a particularly aggressive manner. It might be because we saw so many festivals, but we were only about 30-40% of the way through the deck when the end came. Nevertheless, if I can convince my compatriots to give it a whirl, I’d like to try playing to 100. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/15584#15584 2002-02-14T22:22:57+00:00 BoardGameGeek Voids and alleyways isolate your store from disasters and prevent getting walled in <br> <img src="http://images.boardgamegeek.com/images/pic7554_mt.jpg"> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/7554 2002-02-06T20:59:12+00:00