Paul Lister
United Kingdom
London
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The title of this review came to me when playing Agricola with an old Magic (The Gathering) playing buddy last weekend. Ten years ago I was an obsessed Magic player– travelling up and down the country to play in tournaments, getting together every weekend with fellow addicts to invent and tweak decks. For five years the game took my life, wallet and imagination. Then life intervened in the form of career, marriage and gardening. The appeal of spending all Sunday in a smoky pub back room battling with elves and wizards waned. Last weekend the pub had been replaced by my friends (Half-timbered
 ) Manor house surrounded by fields, MTG by Agricola. The intensity and excitement of playing two player Agricola threw me right back to the days of White Knights versus Millstones. My game preferences have moved towards the historic and prosaic, such as those created by Martin Wallace and the Ragnor Brothers. The theme of Agricola - the need to feed our families and grow the homestead is compelling. In my first few games I found the attraction of developing my farm and feeding my family so strong I did not take much notice of the victory points awarded at the end of the game.
So how goes it work? Each player starts with a board on which sits a two wooden rooms and thirteen additional empty plots. Each room of the hut contain contains a member of your family who you will use to take actions on the main boards and turn your small holding into a functioning farm. The main play boards are divided between fixed actions available from the start and spaces for additional actions cards that are turned over as the game progresses. The actions allow you to collect resources, use the resources to improve your farm or home, play occupations and improvements, change turn order and grow your family. Your aim is to gather, build and grow as efficiently as possible so that by the end of the game you have (hopefully) filled the empty plots with fields, pastures, stables, extra rooms for your expanded family and a store of grain, vegetables and live stock.
The game is divided into 14 rounds with 6 harvests (harvest grain, feed family, and breed animals), the first coming after round four and coming progressively faster as the game moves towards its finish. Victory points are awarded at the end of the game. However, feeding your family at each of the six harvests is essential to avoid heavy penalties. A starvation strategy does not work in Agricola – there are almost no actions which will compensate for the minus three points awarded to anyone who has to beg for food. And that is one of the beauties of the game. The victory point conditions steers you towards doing a little of everything. You want to be a pig farmer? Fine but you gain no victory points after your 7th porker. Vegetables your thing? No points after the fourth. Hate vegetables? Minus one point for none. Specialising in one type of food production helps feed your growing family and an efficient farm is a prerequisite to winning but of itself will not win you the game.
The hundreds of Occupation and Minor Improvements cards give the game its breadth and depth. Divided into four decks of varying complexity each deck can be played on its own or mixed with others. The cards really scratch a CCG itch, the combinations available in the fourteen hand cards are, for all practical purposes, limitless. The very thorough play testing is obvious. None of the cards seem broken, powerful cards are difficult to get into play before the end game (“Craw Wurms” a friend calls them), and rigid adherence to an opening hand based strategy will require tactical changes as the game progresses.
In my opinion the game scales perfectly from one to five. The solo game is a great way of learning the interactions and intricacies of the cards and reminds me of solving chess problems. I wonder how long it will be before we see a daily Agricola puzzle (“What is the highest possible score you can achieve with an opening hand of….?”). With two or three players it is possible to follow a strategic approach, with four or five Agricola becomes much more tactical.
Upon opening the box for the first time the number of components, cards and the set up of the board can appear overwhelming. Geek users have voted Agricola a Heavy-Medium game, which is true for the game play but not for the rules which are well written. The text on the cards is crystal clear – I have heard very few “how does this work?” questions when playing which is a credit to the designer, and Melissa’s translation. Most of the actions in the game are intuitive and because of the theme are quickly understood by new players. The ‘family’ game (played without Occupations or Minor improvements) is a great introduction to new players and enjoyable in its own right (My wife likes the family game but finds the cards daunting)
The box says half an hour per player and in my experience that has been the case – even with a table of new players who quickly grasp the concept of harvesting fields, feeding the family, building fences and breeding animals The game is less prone to analysis paralysis than most other games of this complexity despite the agonising choices and scarcity of resources available.
Some posters have described Agricola as another multi-player solitaire. Maybe it is for the first few games. As you play more you become aware of other players strategies and play becomes a fine balance between progressing your farmyard, thwarting other players and opportunistic resource grabbing.
Given the random opening card draw the game is well balanced, and this again is a credit to the lengthy play testing process. Some cards are a little stronger than others, some become stronger or weaker depending on the state of the game and some combinations of cards can be very powerful. The luck of the draw tends to even out with very few games solely decided by the strength of the opening hand.
I have two personal, and very minor, niggles with the game. The first is that an opportunity was lost by not making the components look more like the resources they are representing (think Hamburgum) and whilst you don’t need Animeeples to enjoy the game it’s a shame they were not standard. The second is that the Occupations are literal translations of the German originals and I would have preferred them to be a little more anglicised.
In conclusion I believe this game is a masterpiece. It is not perfectly balanced and none of the mechanics are revolutionary, however they just seem to come together to create a perfect gaming experience. I hope that I have managed to convey my passion for the game and that if you are yet to play it you will enjoy it as much as I have – it really will be worth the wait.
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Rich P
Colombia
Sheffield
United Kingdom
I didn't know what to do with my UberBadge, so I left it as a GeekBadge.
I'm on a world tour right now, with limited access to BGG. My microbadges will spell out where I am at the moment.
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Sorp222 wrote: Geek users have voted Agricola a Heavy-Medium game, which is true for the game play but not for the rules which are well written. The text on the cards is crystal clear – I have heard very few “how does this work?” questions when playing which is a credit to the designer, and Melissa’s translation.
I enjoyed your review. The M:tG comparisons are apt - I read that Hanno of Lookout Games was involved in translating Magic cards into German, so he's certainly familiar with the precise language required for multiple complex card interactions. But I'm sorry to say I found the rulebook a bit hard-going. We couldn't really get a grasp on the game from reading the rules, we had to run through it before it fell into place. You made the comment that some of the Occupation cards were too-direct translations from the German. This hasn't bothered me as much as the parts of the rulebook with the same problem. But these are minor niggles in a fantastic game.
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John Owen
United States
Lisle
New York
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I love the word "niggles."
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stephen
United Kingdom
Burton on trent
Staffordshire
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I really like the review, a good overview of the way the game works.
I must admit too that I thought the rulebook was not as good as it could be. Sure everything you need is in there but there were times when I wished they made it a bit clearer. For example I still dont know what all the backs of the boards are for, I know a bunch of them are simply storage spots for cards and stuff but I still dont know what they are all intended to do and this slowed down my understanding of the rules because I was looking to see how all the boards came into play. A picture of all the boards with a line explaining their intended use would have been nice. (In fact many of the boards are unnecessary for the most part.)
Having played everything becomes much much clearer, but from opening the box to playing I felt that I could have done with more help. The game is actually easier to play than the rules suggest.
A lot of the issues I had were solved by the appendix, so that my advice to anyone having trouble with the rules, if its not in the main text, then its almost certainly in the appendix.
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Matthias Kortleven
Netherlands
Enschede
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emmersonpoole wrote: I must admit too that I thought the rulebook was not as good as it could be. Sure everything you need is in there but there were times when I wished they made it a bit clearer. For example I still dont know what all the backs of the boards are for, I know a bunch of them are simply storage spots for cards and stuff but I still dont know what they are all intended to do and this slowed down my understanding of the rules because I was looking to see how all the boards came into play. A picture of all the boards with a line explaining their intended use would have been nice. (In fact many of the boards are unnecessary for the most part.)
Having played everything becomes much much clearer, but from opening the box to playing I felt that I could have done with more help. The game is actually easier to play than the rules suggest.
I completely agree with this. The only reason I'm not just thumbing the quoted post is to state that I'm talking about the Dutch translation in my case. Since I've translated some rulebooks myself, I do appreciate the fact that it's one hell of a job to translate this game, though  .
EDIT: thanks for the well-written review btw!
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Erin Sparks
United States
Hazel Park
Michigan
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I felt the rulebook was pretty good but could have used more pictures. A few things would have been clearer if I had been reading the rules with the game spread out in front of me, but I maintain that a properly-written book doesn't need you to do that. Off the top of my head, it doesn't tell you that "The family board" is marked with an icon on it - yes I figured it out, but a small sidebar that said "family game components have this icon:" would have been nice, or just a labeled picture of all the different boards. Also, it referred to Action card spaces...again, I figured this out but an arrow pointing to the action card spaces on the board in the book would have made it easier to visualize. The biggest problem I had was the lack of a picture where it explains that actions with an arrow fill every round - we played our first game without adding resources to those actions!
There have been far worse rulebooks (Theophrastus, Phoenicia, Reef Encounter off the top of my head) but a few more pictures would have helped this one.
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Richard Hutnik
United States
Poughkeepsie
New York
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trawlerman wrote: I love the word "niggles."
RACIST!
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rockhpi wrote: The biggest problem I had was the lack of a picture where it explains that actions with an arrow fill every round - we played our first game without adding resources to those actions!
I really want to hear the session report of that game...
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Erin Sparks
United States
Hazel Park
Michigan
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We did OK and I think I even managed to upgrade my house to Clay (we were just playing that you took 1 clay when you selected the action) but we were baffled as to how anyone could build a new room!
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Dennis Sison
United States
Pasadena
California
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docreason wrote: trawlerman wrote: I love the word "niggles." RACIST!
Perhaps he should have used Agricolan-American?
dennis
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Posted Mon Aug 4, 2008 4:13 pm
