If you've ever wanted to own a farm but not the hassle of working on it, then this is the game for you. Set in Germany during the twelfth century, this game gives you the freedom to do what you like with your farm. If you want a vast array of fields teeming with crops, you can. If animals are more your thing, then you can raise sheep, boar, and cows and cook them later for food (mmm! Hamburger).
I've played several games of Agricola now ranging from the family game, to adding multiple decks. I've come to the conclusion that the cards can be a major hindrance to the growth of the farm. They do give you good bonuses at times, but it costs an action to get a card into play, and many times your actions will consist of obtaining enough food to not starve during the harvests. If you happen to have extra actions however, then by all means play a card.
For example, a game I played the other night, I was focusing on getting pottery, and the potter cards into play. The end result would yield me four food from two clay. That means feeding my family of three would not be difficult. But it took me ten rounds to get it implemented. Which meant that the expansion of my farm suffered. In the same amount of time my opponents had burgeoning farms. One player focused on fields while another focused on breeding animals. They focused very little on the occupation and minor improvement cards.
In the end of the game the begging cards hurt my score, the first few rounds I couldn't get enough food. The other players had more points than myself. The player with a lot of fields did the best, taking first with no begging cards. The player who took second had large pastures filled with many animals. What hurt me was that I really didn't have a good food engine going, while the other two players did. That's something for me to think about the next time I play.
The re-playability of the game is a debated topic online. Some see that there is only one clear way to win, that of expanding your house and family as early as possibly and establishing a food engine to support the family growth. If you take that route every single time you play then the cards will not mean as much to your strategy, since it takes an action to play a card which could be better utilizes expanding your house, or filling your farmyard. Some critics online might say that it is broken, but I think that it is just strong play if a player goes this route.
Creating more family members is essential to this worker placement game. The most important thing in the game is more actions. But this comes at a cost of having to feed the family. I enjoy the variety of the different cards which can sometimes lead to great combos being played. Although the cards are more like the icing on the cake, whereas the real substance to the cake is getting a food engine going, and procreating to obtain more actions.
The components to the game are top notch. The wooden meeples fit their role great. The animeeples give the game a lot of character since now you can see all the animals on the farm, and you get a good feeling when you have to cook them.
The game play can be a little confusing for someone who has never played a worker placement game before. But they get the hang of it after one game. The learning curve is gentle at first, but can sharply increase when a lot of cards are on the table. Then it becomes a brain burning exercise to remember what cards activate with what actions.
This one is up there in my top 10 games because of the re-playability and I can usually manage to get it out on the table.
Rating 5 Meeples out of 5!
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