Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 15-30 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

The Components

Agora comes with a couple of components in a plastic bag:

• 36 cards
• 1 rulebook

Cards: The cards are medium-thick printed, I think, in black-and-white. (I say I think because the cards look quite classy, and either made really good use of grayscales or else used an ink color other than black; I can't really tell which.) They're also slightly glossy.

Each card has some fairly simple geometric shapes, defining walls that outline shop stalls. There are also spaces for control markers, as well as a special effect marker on each card.

Overall, these cards are good looking and easy to use.

Rulebook: Typical for the Hip Pocket games, the rulebook is a four-fold black & white sheet. It's got quite a few examples and illustrations & is overall pretty easy to follow.

Other Components: You'll also need approximately 20 markers for up to four players and some way to keep score. For the markers I used the Cheapass microchips (though glass stones would have been more evocative). Since score is measured in money, I decided to use money from my copy of St. Petersburg. In future games, however, I'm just going to record it on a piece of paper instead, since it's important to see how much money each player has, as a sum, since when they get to 50 they win.

The rules also suggest a tablecloth for play, to keep the cards from sliding around. After a game stubbornly played on a table-cloth-less tabletop, I can say, they're serious. The cards are slick, and their precise alignment is very important, so you don't want them moving around--and they will.

Overall, the cards for Agora are generally attractive and easy to use. Given the price I give it a high "4" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

In Agora you're trying to open up & maintain valuable shops in the Greek market.

Setup: Each player chooses a letter from A-D and takes all the makers in one color. They're also given $10 (or 10 points or 10 pennies or whatever you prefer).

To start play, one card is placed in the middle of the table.

The Cards. As already noted, the cards in Agora each depict market stalls. Each market stall is divided from others by internal walls and has external perimeters which allow buyers into the stall. Each shop also has ownership circles, which are used to mark who owns the shop (and also the shop's size).

Order of Play: Each player takes the following actions during his turn:

1. Take Income
2. Draw a Card
3. Build the Market
4. Buy a Shop

Take Income: The active player takes income from all of the shops that he owns. Each shop has income equal to $1 per unblocked perimeter segment (as this is how shoppers get in).

Perimeters can be blocked by: another card being built along the edge of the card (which probably increases the size of the shop and thus gives access to more perimeter); another card's point touching the perimeter segment (thanks to those idiot architects who build with no thought toward urban planning); or when the area beyond the perimeter ends up boxed off, forming a blind alley. Finally, the edge of the table can also block off commerce (and, in fact, any perimeter less than a card's width from the edge of the table should probably be considered blocked, though it isn't clear in the rules).

Clearly on the first turn a player doesn't earn anything; he's going to have to put that initial $10 to work for him.

Draw a Card: Next the active player draws a card. Each card has a special effect marked on it, along with a letter from A-D. If the special effect's letter matches the player's letter, the special effect happens. There are three types of effect: fire; flood; and festival.

Fire. The largest shop (which is the one with the most ownership markers in it) burns down! All of the cards which made up that shop are removed (which may cause some adjacent shops to be partially or entirely removed too--which is what happens when you build next to the firebugs).

(In case of a tie, there's no fire. No doubt, there's some lesson here about working together to form a better community, or some such balderdash.)

Flood. All of the ownership markers are removed from the largest shop. It's now up for grabs.

(In case of a tie, there's likewise no flood.)

Festival. Everyone earns income from all of their shops (presumably, thanks to a festival to the ancient Greek god, Lucre.)

Build the Market: After any special effect is resolved, the active player then places the card he drew. Here's what really makes the game special: cards can be played anywhere. They don't have to touch, they don't even have to be played in the same orientation. In fact, if you look at the picture up at the top of this review, you'll see in our first game we ended up with cards in three different card orientations. This allows you to do clever things involving blocking (or protecting) perimeters and at the same really makes the game look like it's really about constructing a weird, sprawling urban mess.

There are a few rules for card placement:

1. Cards can't overlap.
2. You can't join shop owned by different players.
3. Cards touching edge-to-edge must be on the same grid pattern. (The card sides are actually broken up into two or three segments each and it's those segments that have to line up, not the entire card; again, if you look at the picture you'll see situations where either 1/3rd or 2/3rd of a card edge are touching.)

If a card expands a currently owned shopped, the owning player adds ownership markers to the new shop area as appropriate.

Buy a Shop: Finally, the active player can buy an shop not currently owned by someone. He pays equal to the expected income for the shop. Only one shop may be bought a turn, and you should almost always buy a shop.

As you might expect, when a player buys a shop, he places his ownership markers in it.

Winning the Game: The game ends when someone saves away $50 or more. That player wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Agora is a tile-laying game. To a certain extent I could call it an edge-matching tile-laying game, like Carcassonne or the even simpler Safari Jack, because there are some rules about how the cards must be placed when they're adjacent to each other, but the true beauty of the game is in the fact that cards don't have to line up and that the tabletop itself becomes an element in the tile-laying play.

Agora is also a pure economic resource game, like recent release St. Petersburg: you must expend money to earn valuable goods which in turn should earn you money.

Although simpler than most games in either category, Agora still allows a high degree of thought and strategy, and thus should appeal to fans of either genre (but particularly to tile players).

The Game Design

Agora is a highly original tile-laying game. Here's some of the best parts:

Tile Laying is Creative: The tile laying allows for a high degree of creativity, with players thinking about blocking perimters and creating alleys, and thus there are a lot more options than in a typical tile laying game and they can be very meaningful.

Multiple Levels of Strategy & Tactics: Closely related is the fact that there are multiple levels of strategy & tactics. There are always useful things to do, whether you're trying to improve your own position or hurt that of your opponents', and there's also a lot of variety in your options.

Special Events Add Good Randomness: The special effects do a lot to control the people ahead in the game without giving them too major of setbacks. They also interrelate nicely with the tactics of the game, as you sometimes consider increasing the size of shops to protect your own.

Surprisingly Thematic: As you play the game, it feels amazingly thematic give the rather abstract cards. It really does feel like a good model of urban sprawl in an ancient city.

The game is ultimately somewhat simple, but that goes right in hand with its play length. Other than that comment, I have nothing bad to say about the game.

Given its originality, its creativity, and its enjoyable tactics Agora earns a full "5" out of "5" for Substance. It may not have the same depth as a more complex game, but for its class, gameplay doesn't get much better.

Conclusion

Agora is a fun and original tile-laying game. If you like Carcassonne or other similar games, you should definitely pick this up as a short filler.

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