[This review originally appeared on my blog at http://gaming.powerblogs.com/posts/1208227086.shtml]

I like Agricola. It’s fun. After playing, I don’t regret pre-ordering, I’ll play more when my copy arrives, and I may even try to upgrade my set ala David Fair (and others). I’d play it at the next game session (if I had a copy).

But I do not think it is a great game.

Agricola joins a long list of games that I enjoy despite obvious flaws. I’m thinking of Age of Renaissance, 7 Ages (although my mood on that swings around), and the like. Still, I’d play those instead of great designs I don’t enjoy (Diplomacy, abstracts, etc).

I’m not going to describe mechanisms or details. Dale Yu has written more than enough to enlighten. Just to make things worse, I’m assuming you know the basics. To recap – I like Agricola. I’d play it again at the next game session (if I could). It will likely hit the table another 5-10 times at a minimum. Having gotten that out of the way, I’m going to focus on the negatives.

I’ve played several times now. How many? Well, that depends on how you count. I’ve played four games by any definition. Another four ‘to my satisfaction’, but I suspect most readers will only count one or two of those. “To my satisfaction” means (in this case) that everyone agreed on who would win if the game was played out. Most of these were quickly adjudicated between the first and second harvest.

One was called after the opening deal.

There is a whole class of games where the opening setup determines the likely winner. Card games. They have a few other characteristics (at least for good ones): 1) they are short, 2) you play many hands to reduce the luck (or determine the better player). Good players will win more than their ‘fair’ share of games, but won’t win every hand.

Agricola is a single deal card game that takes 90+ minutes to resolve.

I’ve seen arguments that the cards are individually balanced, and I generally agree (with at least one glaring exception). Some are better, but the range isn’t bad. But cards aren’t just assessed individually. Take Bridge. The Space Ace is worth one trick. The King values usually takes a trick. With the ace, a full trick (assuming no trump). Without it, it depends on where the ace was dealt, how many suited cards each hand has, etc. The deuce of clubs may be a full trick in some hands … if they have enough clubs, but usually it’s not that important.

Each of Agricola’s 350-ish cards adds a new twist on a rule. That makes 60,000 two card combinations that are much more complicated than the relationship between the King of Spades and deuce of Clubs. When you confine things to the E deck, I suspect most two card combinations have been seen. Are there three card combinations? Undoubtedly. Assuming 100 cards (for E decks only) there are 160,000 3-card combinations. You start with seven cards and seven occupations. Five hundred (or a thousand) games is enough to smooth all single cards, but doesn’t begin to assess the combinations … (and how many of those games involved new players)?

I could argue which cards I think are problematic (and I will, but not now). A fair response is that I (or others) missed a counter to that card. I may well have. But we’re still playing a card game. Now, the question is – how many routine hands do we have? For now, call a routine hand one that “Given reasonable and competent players, the ‘better’ hand will win barring mistakes.” You can have routine good hands and routine bad hands, it may be exciting to take 13 tricks with thirteen of one suit, and it’s rare, but it doesn’t require skill. Likewise, it takes little skill to lose all 13 tricks with a flat yarborough.

Apart from routine hands you can have routine games. In card games like bridge, one side has a bad hand the other one often has a good one. These routine hands lead to routine deals. Games where you deal a subset of the cards may see multiple players have very good (or bad) hands.

Race for the Galaxy, which I love, has routine games. I estimate roughly 3%. If you picked a number from 1-10%, I’d be fine with that. I’d argue if you went much higher (or lower). From my (admittedly small) sample of Agricola, I’d put its “routine game” percentage at 50-75%. My estimate may be high since every game I’ve played had new players. I think everyone will agree that this number exists above 10%, and that’s problematic for a game thats 4-8 times as long as Race. (Even if you discount routine ‘good’ hands, you’ll occasionally see a routine ‘bad’ hand, such as one that has no useful early minor improvements, which makes several of the actions much worse).

Only once have I been unsure of the winner after the second harvest, and it that game I had picked two people (out of five), who came in 1st and 2nd. I publicly predicted the winner of my second game (which we finished) during turn 3. He botched the endgame (never building a single fence, so earning -1 for enclosures and something like -5 for unused spaces) and won handily.

[Tangentially, this is why I stopped playing Cosmic Encounter for years … everyone wanted to play with 2+ power combinations. I now prefer playing with single powers, they are reasonably well balanced].

I hope scores will tighten as players get better, but the cards have a huge impact.

Agricola has other issues, as well. These aren’t nearly as important, but exist.

1. The ‘family increase’ mechanic (which moves you from two actions to three) is very important, and provides a positive feedback mechanism. Feeding does produce a negative feedback as well, but not nearly at the same effect. Assuming no occupations (and no player manages to get a 4th action before anyone gets a 3rd) then the last player to grow his family will miss out on 4 actions (in a five player game). That’s effectively giving the first person an extra full turn. This effect is so important that ignoring everything to focus on family growth seems to be a dominant strategy. Worse yet, growing your family is a strong source of victory points. If growing your family cost you resources, and earned actions but no victory points, it would be a more interesting tradeoff.

2. [1a, really] – The extra action from family growth is so powerful that the ‘family game’ (without cards) is simply an exercise in getting your home ready for your first child. With two players, even one extra turn seems dominant. [The family game is still a card game, but now the deal is the ordering of the rounds.]

3. Because of the card interaction and family growth issue, I suspect every 4+ player game will have at least one player ‘eliminated’ early on, with a score of roughly half (or less) of the winning score..

4. Livestock seem a much superior form of food & victory points than farming. Like family growth, this makes the best “resource” path also the best “victory points” path (since there are four categories for livestock, vs three for agriculture … and stables makes a fifth, arguably). You can delay your plowing until the very late game and still get good agricultural points, but you can’t put off breeding.

5. Turn order effects. When the start player is passing back and forth between you and another player, it really matters if you are sitting besides each other. Also, some cards improve certain spaces, and again order matters. Caylus’ “Inn” mechanism works much better than Agricola’s blunt “Start Player.”

With all that, I think Agricola is worth trying and playing multiple times. And I enjoy it. But, from a critical standpoint (meaning “looking strictly at the design”), it’s not good. A good game should take as long as required to determine the winner, and no longer. Bridge (a great game) would be farcical if you spent 30 minutes playing a hand. Agricola is chess between even players where you may be randomly up a knight or down a queen, but don’t know until halfway through the game.

The good news? Often the game conceals this from you. Most hands have something, and monstrously good hands may be hidden (until the end). There’s enough going on that even a good hand can be misplayed.

Agricola took several great ideas (a Caylus-like placement system, a Cosmic-like special power system, a complex resource management system) and then shoved them together. It’s enjoyable but, like most cross-breeds, an odd beast. I suspect that, like Age of Renaissance in particular, I'll eventually get annoyed playing around with all those fiddly pieces to decide a card game. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though.

Update May 13th, 2009 -- I still think the cards are unbalanced, but decided it really doesn't bother me that much.

You're a brave man.

And one I agree with on all counts, including that Agricola is fun to play and I will buy it when Z-man's version comes out. But it is deeply flawed and that does hurt the experience and not just a little bit.

The other problem that I have with it that is not mentioned here is more or less the same problem I have with Race for the Galaxy. In order to play effectively, I must track not just all the cards I have played to my tableau but those that all others have played. Not even taking into account trying to deduce from this what cards they might have hidden in their hands. That is a lot to track for me, and perhaps it is more a weakness in me than in the game, but it really is not my preference to have to consider all of that information when trying to decide on an action. Maybe more experience and more knowledge of the cards and card combinations will mitigate this, but there sure are a lot of cards to learn.

Ok, I'll bite.

Is Agricola's worker placement that different than Puerto Rico's Role Picking? If the former can be solely decided based on "cards dealt", then the latter can surely be decided solely on "plantations dealt".

If a occupation/improvement gives a player an edge on an action, is it worth getting in there first? This can be weighed differently in 2-player vs. 3+ player games. And like any Role Picking/Worker Placement game depends on who's at the table. I'd hardly call any game I've played 'decided by turn 3'. Sure, I would place bets on the best 'player', not on the cards shown.

Animals better than Plants? Does everyone in Puerto Rico ship Corn?

Consequently I find your whole review, if not in jest, seriously flawed.

PS - In a 5-player game there are 2 Family growth squares. Also, in our last 4-player game, the first player to get that 3rd member actually came dead last.

I don't care if you don't like Agricola (FWIW, I give it an 8/10, so I'm not a 10/10 fanboy either). But I do find your comments to contain misconceptions/misleadings that are clearly unjust/untrue.

What's up, I thought all reviews of Agricola, good or bad, came with 37 thumbs out of the gate?

I'd give your review a thumb, but I don't think you took into account the opportunites the OTHER players have to ruin a superior hand of cards. It is NOT multiplayer solitaire. Just because you got a great set of cards, does not mean that you will 1) be able to get them to the table effeiciently, nor 2) the other players aren't going to take actions that might give you big bonuses (e.g., last game a player played a card that gave her +1 cattle when she took cattle - our first actions were to always take cattle; she only managed to get ONE extra cattle, which effectively made her waste the action she used to play the card.)

Nice review.

Yeah. It's a card game.

If we take serious issue with "routine hands" and luck in card games, we're better off looking elsewhere for enjoyment. It seems to me that plenty of other card games share these same "flaws" with Agricola's cardplay. Comes with the territory, IMO. I would assume that part of the point of the sheer number of cards in the game was to assuage some of the perceived problems, but... it's still inescapably a card game.

I really liked the observations about family growth. That is a significant concern to me, but I suppose it's going to be an area where players will have to compete aggressively so as to avoid being left behind.

Thumbed!

I like your review, as it points to an aspect of the game that definitely exists and that some will consider a flaw. I would consider it a flaw if I thought that it was as influential as you say, but after about a dozen plays I'm still unconvinced that the winner is decided by the cards as often as you suggest. I've seen a game where one player had a killer combination that blew everyone out of the water (1 game out of ~12); I've also seen killer combinations lose, and twice I've seen a player win without using any cards.

At the end of the day, I've simply seen the better players do better most of the time (much more than 25-50% of the time, as you implicitly suggest). Not to toot my own horn, but just as an example: I have either won or lost by 1 point all of the games I've played, with the exception of one game where I lost by 2 points (and Agricola is not a game of necessarily close scores). Note: I don't attribute this to some superior intelligence, but rather simply that I have lots of experience with this type of game- even a monkey will eventually learn to play Mozart.

So although your arguments on the surface seem convincing (clearly there will often be a large discrepancy between the quality of players' starting hands), my personal experience suggests to me that there is at least to an extent a built-in opportunity cost to bringing occupations into play (minor improvements are generally not as influential). Is it enough to make the game as balanced as games like Puerto Rico or Caylus? Of course not. And this is why I praise your article, because it brings this issue up so that people don't build up false expectations. But I don't think this is a game that is preemptively decided by the cards- to call a game after the deal without even starting to play seems like a rush to judgment and on the whole a little pretentious after just a couple plays. But hey, you are a great reviewer- maybe you see these things early on and I'll be agreeing with you after I play another 20 times.

Actually, I'm not convinced of the importance of family growth. The last game that I played was a 4-player family game. I had played about 10 times before, two others one or two times, and there was one beginner. The first-time player collected enough wood and reed to build two rooms at the same time, and had her second child on the 6th turn. On the other hand, I didn't build any rooms during the game, and only used family growth in the last turn, so I didn't have any extra actions at all. That means that she had at least 17 extra actions compared to me. She won in the end, but I was second -- with a difference of just 1 point!

Of course, part of the reason was that this was her first game. Against more experience players, I don't think I could have done that well with two actions per turn less... But this game makes me think that the benefits of a child are much less than you would think. Note that there is more than one kind of negative feedback here: you mention the food, but there is also the cost of building the rooms; also, when it's your turn to play your third action, the best actions are already gone. Even when I'm last in the playing order, I sometimes cannot find a useful action to take with my second family member, so a third action has less effect than you think.

Against experienced opponents, it should cost you 3 or 4 actions to collect the necessary resources for 1 room, and 1 action to build it. That's half of your actions in the first phase, for a benefit of 7 to 9 actions later in the game; a net profit of around 4 actions. But you have to feed the child 5 times, 10 food; I would count that as 2 or 3 actions at least (probably more, since the third action will seldom give you more than 2 food). If everyone in your group competes for early family growth, costs will go up, and it may well be profitable to ignore family growth entirely.

I agree about the unfairness of the seating order, but I don't feel that that is getting in the way of my enjoyment; it's just one more factor to take into account. I haven't played enough with cards against experienced players to say anything useful about them.

The importance of cards and card combos will become the classical complaint against this game. I have played four games of Agricola during the last three weeks. Three of them were played against beginners and the last one against average players. Of the eleven persons involved in all these game three of them thought that the the cards in the game are not only important for the way the players should develope and improve their farms but also that are (more or less) the key of the final result. So we could say that, in their first game, these three friends completly agreed with the reviewer.

Of course, the cards are important. Combos exist and some of the cards are very dangerous in the hand of an experienced player (wooden oven and bakers oven for example). But in my own opinion, based in my experience with this board game (about 10 seroius games and 5 solitaries) there are almost no unstopabble hands. I have said almost, so there are some, but you can also have a combined 37 points hand playing bridge and go for the Grand Slam withou oposition.

We always deal the normal hand of 7/7 cards for each player, but we use the rule (included at the end of the game annex) in which every player is allowed to discard up to three cards of his/her hand, and receive the same ammount of new cards in the discarded class. This reduces the chances of having players with extremelly poor hands (but I admit that can also produce even stronger combos for the ones that already had good cards in their hands).

Anyway, the key for me, as other fellow boardgamer said, is that there are luck involved in every card game and that this is something you have to admit and accept in order to enjoy these kind of games. I get the point that luck is less important when the game is short, and that in longer games luck could be, and usually is, a devastating element, a game killer. But in my own opinion luck and powerful hands are not that important here. I think that the killer hands are present in -10% of the games. But I also admit that you are not isolated in your opinion and that, may be, even mine will change with more and more plays.

By now I love this game, I accept the amount of luck that are involved with the card dealing, and I think that almost any hand (not all, but the majority) could be fight by the other fellow players with care, attention and their own hands.

Disclaimer: I have not played Agricola, but it is on my wishlist. My comments here are solely to get more information about the game, not to be argumentative.



It would seem to me that the biggest difference is that in Puerto Rico you aren't stuck with just your opening plantation. You get to add plantations of your choice (within the limit of what's available, which affects all players). Plus, the plantations you get at the outset are based on your position in the turn order as a means of compensation for those later in the order.

In Agricola, from what I understand the only random factor is your hand of cards at the start of the game, which is hidden from other players. This seems to imply two things:

1) If some hands are better than others, some players will have a concrete advantage before the first move of the game.
2) Since hands are secret, players will not know who has the advantage and thus will not be able to determine whom to block until the game has progressed a fair amount.

I can't comment on the OP's other criticisms, but this one appears valid to me. I'm certainly happy to hear opposing views since I'm still strongly considering this game.

Yes; this is undoubtably true. But there is room for disagreement how large this advantage is. In the opinion of the OP this advantage is game-deciding in a large percentage of the games; some others say that that situation is much more rare.

(Note that luck in a game is not a problem for most people, as long as there isn't too much; and in my opinion, the amount of luck in Agricola is small enough to be enjoyable. If you prefer games with complete information, you need to decide if just the family game (without the cards) is worth the price.)



If you have a killer combo in your hand, you have to play them before you can use them. The later you play a card, the less influence it has on the game. So it's generally not a good idea to hide your best cards; I mostly try to play my most useful cards in the first or second turn.

There are some cards that influence the end-of-game scoring; many of these have an incentive to play them early, others are expensive (the holiday house, for example), and people will have to prepare for them, and other players may recognize that. Of course, you need to have played a few games to even be able to take the cards of the opponents into account.

If you're still making up your mind about buying the game, it would be best to try before you buy. While I don't share most of his complaints, the OP is not the only one who has them, and it's possible that you would agree with him.

I guess you're a cynical man.

I have no problem with luck in games. I rate Memoir '44 a 10, and between the dice and the cards there's a hell of a lot of luck in that game. It seems the concern that some people have is that there is the only bit of luck comes at the beginning of the game, and thus there's no chance for it to "even out" as the game progresses.



That's very helpful, thanks. As long as there's a real chance to compensate for the effects of the opening deal of the cards it won't be a problem for me or my group.



Trying before I buy is rarely an option for me. Fortunately, discussions like these keep me from making unfortunate decisions the vast majority of the time.

I think it's ton different. If you choose a role in Puerto Rico I still get to do the action. That makes all the difference to me.

I'll play games with "Variable Phases" any day. "Worker Placement" is just a pile of frustration for me.

Very different.

1) As noted above, selecting a role in Puerto Rico gives everyone the action, and just gives the selector a small privilege. If I select Wood (etc) in Agricola, nobody else gets zip.
2) Some cards completely modify the spaces. If you got an indigo plantation, and I got a "Coffee and get an extra dollar everytime anyone selects Craftsman" plantation, that would be much closer to Agricola. And much less balanced.



And I have successfully called games by turn 3, despite not knowing what was in anyone's hand but my own, and noting only the cards on the table. It was made easier by the fact that I have a pretty good idea of my opponents ... I wouldn't have called a game if a weaker opponent was sitting with the good hand.



Did you miss the part where I said I liked the game? I rate it 7/10.

I never used the phrase multiplayer solitaire. I said the card combinations were unbalanced. I've seen the exact same result you describe (on the grain space). And, even then, the player won despite only getting one use of the action. Spending one action to make your plays more efficient and to force other players to make inefficient plays is not a terrible result. And I specifically said I thought most individual cards were balanced.

But suggesting that blocking will work well is problematic in a 4+ player game (even in 3), in that there is always a strong temptation to defect and leave the blocking play to the last moment, unless it is a good play for you. Suppose that the Cattle player goes forth ... Player 1 and 2 will skip the cattle space, unless it is a good play for them as well, this leaves player 3 in a bind. Should player 3 blindly lose an action? What happens if they do it next turn?

There can probably be an agreement as to who should block when, but I dislike negotiation games and certainly didn't expect one when I started playing Agricola (or Caylus, or Puerto Rico, etc etc).

A fair point ... but I suspect that most hands are going to want to play at least one (or two) occupations fairly quickly. It's a fought-over space. (Apart from the reason you gave that you want to get the card out early to use it, in the late game there are many more great spaces available, Certainly on the last turn I want to hit Renovate + Fences or Family Growth, Plow + Sow, etc. In contrast, on Turn 1 I'm always happy to defer the first turn stuff another turn). By definition, you won't know if someone has a combo until they get their 2nd (or 3rd) card out. If people grab these spaces fairly evenly, you are probably at turn 3-5 before you can tell. (Although some of these combos involve occupations and improvements, which could happen faster).

I echo your thoughts that you should try before you buy, but I break that as much as anyone. I'd also remind jeffk (and others) that most of my criticisms are sort of "long term." I'm still enjoying the game, I expect to play it 10+ times. If you have to buy games without playing them, and this is the sort of game you like, then you'll probably get a good amount of value for your money. (I pre-ordered this based on comparisons to Caylus, which reached 100+ plays. I'm mildly disappointed, in that I want games I can play 25+ times, but I'm hardly rending my clothes).

Converting Grain to food costs half an action if you use the "Bake Bread and Sow fields" action space.
It does not cost anything the instance you bought your improvement, as you get a free Bake action with the purchase.
The Grain strategy is stronger than most players think. Just one hint: to get the full score on grain and veggies, you need to work several turns for it. On the other hand, you can get your full score on animals using one action in the last turn. Playing the solitaire version helps to get the picture.

And my 2 pennies on the "card luck" discussion: I'll trade you my hand of cards if you're not happy with yours. No questions asked. I'll even trade it back if you like mine even less than yours.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong ... but in addition to the fact that a beginner did this, the four actions spent on family growth also directly gave 4 VPs (3 for the family and 1 for the empty space covered). If the player later goes on to upgrade to clay, that's another VP. Four VPs for 4 Actions is pretty good (not great, but quite reasonable) ... and these come with bonus actions.

And I agree that some of the bonus actions will be spent on food or sub-par actions (although by the time the first baby is born, the board will have added 5-6 actions, so they won't be that bad) but even counting each new worker as 1/2 an action still makes the first growth a great deal.

It makes complete sense that a large family would be a good source of VPs, I just wish the negative feedback was a bit larger.

You do get a free bake-bread when you get the improvement, but that requires making a choice then about how your food situation will be come harvest time. If you get that in Turn 5(ish), I'd rather not sacrifice VPs if I suspect I'll have the food. If Baking Bread were an "anytime" action (like slaughtering) I'd be happier with it.

Can you really get full points on animals in a multi-player game with one action on the last turn? (I wasn't really considering the solitaire, which I can see).

Brian -

Well, you knew i was gonna chime in here eventually, right?


I, too like it, and i do think it is a great game. I think perhaps we might differ in our opinions of what, precisely, a great game is. For me, a great game is one that I enjoy playing over and over, offers new challenges and tough decisions while rewarding skillful play. I think Agricola does that, in spades.


I think you are shortchanging the game here. It is a complex interaction of multiple layers and you call the game after the deal? to me, that's nucking futz.


I disagree. Cards help form your strategy, they help focus your overall plan, but it is a very tactical game (just don't get distracted by things that don't work into your strategy!).

I am going to throw a statistic at you. I have played 63 games of Agricola since November. 21 of those are solo. The rest are all 2-5 player games. Lets say that I have an average of 3 opponents in those 42 games (I tend to play 5 player more than anything else). In each game, there will be a best hand, and a worst hand. I have a 25% chance in each game to get the best or the worst hand. My winning percentage in the game, if it is all about the hands should be about 25%.

OK, lets say it isn't all about the hands... let's say it is 50% your hand, and 50% skill. And let us say that i am the best damn Agricola player on the planet. I should still lose 25% of the time, when i get that worst hand and can't make up for it.

Well, looking back, I have lost exactly 4 of those 42 games. That's less than 10% of the games I played. I have to believe that I am not the luckiest card rack on the planet, but that there is more to the game than the cards, and that skill is way more than 50% of the game.

Some of the people I play with regularly have told me at the beginning of the game that they thought their hands were unbeatable. They lost anyway. I know this sounds like I am bragging, but i just get this game. I do really well no matter what my cards are. I have looked down and seen hands with Minor Improvements that were all virtually unplayable until halfway through the game, and no two occupations providing any synergy. I played for the Major Improvements and still won (eating reed, clay, and wood at each harvest).


Can't you find some portion of skill in their play that helped them to this victory? recognizing which cards in your hand can help you to victory and playing them at the right time is just as important as having them there to begin with.


I agree there is an impact. i think it is moderate rather than huge.


I agree. This is why I tell new players that there are 3 crucial aspects to the game. The first is to feed your family, the third is to grow your house (because without a larger house, you can't do #2), and the second is to grow your family. I make it a point to say this at least 3 times while teaching.


I agree, but i don't find that to be a fault. i find that to be a reward for the player who manages this aspect of the game well.


My glance through my journal tells me that in 4 or 5 player games, with players who have at least 2 plays, this is true only in about 25% of the games.


Livestock is easier to make work, and easier to see working, but it is not better. I have found that early plowing and sowing actions pay off far longer than early wood/fence actions. I have migrated away from early animal and pasture actions since this discovery and noticed a markedly easier time of getting the actions i want when i want them, and that can be very important.


I agree. i have thought of experimenting with a turn order track and allowing multiple players to go to the start player space on a given turn, with the first player there becoming start, then the next second, etc. I think that the action weakens with the more people who are already there, however, so i was going to give the 2nd-5th player 1 food for each prior player on the spot. This might make it too powerful. I am still on the fence about how much i think this needs to be fixed...


I gave my definition of a good game earlier. This definition to me would be more of a "clean design" than a "good game". I will admit that it is not a clean design. I don't think that a clean design in a requirement for a good game.


My wording: "Agricola took several great ideas (a Caylus-like placement system, a Cosmic-like special power system, a complex resource management system) and then merged them together. It’s enjoyable and a deeply rewarding game that usually has you wishing for just a few more actions. You will often find yourself thinking about the game for a long time after having just played it. The game takes some time to play, but I find it is time that passes quickly and enjoyably."

I regret that we did not get a chance to play Agricola together. I think i would have really enjoyed that.

Wow! You've lost only four games out of forty-two? You must've played dozens of opponents. I imagine that each time you lost, you lost to a different opponent, right?

Bob, of course, writes this because he is the only person to garner 2 wins in Agricola against me. The others are Bobby4th and Caesarmom.

Woo hoo! Go me! Go me!

Seriously, I think Agricola is a great game even though Dave has won every game I've played against him but two.

My only concern with the game was mentioned above in that it's hard to keep track of what cards other people have played. I once delayed choosing an action because a quick scan of the resources indicated that no one else could take that action. When the guy to my right took the action because a minor improvement allowed him, I almost lost it. But that problem has become less problematic the more I've played.