Not convinced?

I was skeptical, too, when I received Agricola this Christmas. This was the year of the board game. Between me and my immediate family, there were probably six to eight board games given as gifts. And even though I had heard good things about Agricola, it was the least immediately appealing of the mountain of games sitting in the dining room.

But then I discovered...

The thrill of farming

Agricola is a game for 1-5 players. I played two games. One with 3 players, one with 4 players. The first game was played with two regular gamers and one occasional gamer. The second was played with two regular gamers and two occasional gamers. No one had played the game before.

This game is extremely easy to pick up. I spent 15 minutes reading the rulebook and perhaps another five minutes during the first game confirming a few rules. The second game, I was able to explain the rules to two new players in around five minutes while answering a few additional questions throughout the game.

It’s also a visually attractive game with nine full-color, heavy gaming boards, wooden player pieces in five distinct colors, wooden colored discs representing various resources, and wooden blocks representing animals. You also have full-color playing cards and a few cardboard counters.

The premise of the game is simple: to create a better farm than the other players.

Each player starts with a board representing his farm. There are 15 spaces on each board. Two tiles are placed on the board to represent a wooden farmhouse and one large round disk representing a family member is placed on each space for a total of two family members per player at the beginning of the game.

In the center of the play area, four boards are placed. One holds 12 major improvement cards that may be purchased with resources such as clay ovens or cooking hearths. One contains actions that players may play. Two keep track of round progress and also contain actions.

Each player is dealt 7 occupation cards and 7 minor improvement cards at the start of play out of a deck of 181 occupation cards and 151 minor improvement cards. The starting player receives two cardboard food tokens. The other players receive three food each.

Play begins with a player taking one of his family members and placing it on an action space contained on one of the three main play boards. The player then takes that action. The next player then moves one of his family, and so on until all family members are exhausted and the turn is over. Once a family member has been placed on an action, that action may no longer be used. If I place a family member on the sow field action, for example, then you can’t take that action (unless there’s another action space available). At the end of the turn, all family members are returned to the homestead.

The game starts off with several action spaces available. One allows a player to play an occupation card, one a major or minor improvement card. One space allows you to plow a field. Another space allows a player to go fishing and collect food. There’s a space that even allows you take over as the starting player, so you’ll get to go first next turn.

Other spaces allow players to collect reed, clay, or other resources. At the start of each turn, a card is flipped over on of the two main boards. That card contains an action space that may now be used. Turns are broken into rounds and although each action card is assigned to a certain round, each round of cards is shuffled and randomly placed at the start of each game.

The game’s resources are reed, wood, clay, stone, grain, vegetables, wild boards, sheep, cows, and food. Each is integral.

Reed, wood, clay, and stone are used for upgrading and expanding your homestead, building minor and major improvements, and fences. You’re allowed to have animal in your home as a “pet”, but if you want to raise more than one animal then you need to build fences to keep them in pastures.

One grain or one vegetables can be planted in each of the plowed fields you own by landing on the sow field action space. For every grain you plant, you place two additional grain on the field. Every vegetable planted results in one additional vegetable placed on the field.

Food is very important because at the end of each round is the harvest. Rounds vary in length. The first round takes four turns, the second and third rounds take three turns, the fourth and fifth rounds take two turns, and the final round last a single turn. This makes a total of 15 turns in six rounds.

At the start of the harvest phase, and only at the start of the harvest phase, you reap what you sowed, but only one grain or vegetable may be taken from each field during each harvest. So if you just planted a field of grain and now have three grain sitting on your field, you only take one off during harvest. When a field is completely empty, you can sow it again but not before.

You’ll need your harvest, too, because the second phase of harvest requires you feed your family. Two food per family member, so you start off needing four food at harvest.

If you don’t have enough food you have to take a begging card worth -3 points. One begging card per missing food. In the first game I played, one of the players didn’t make food a priority and had to take multiple begging cards, resulting in an abysmal final score.

You can try to get your food by fishing and by taking certain other actions or by playing certain cards or you can turn to farming. One grain can be converted to one food at any time, as can one vegetable. Animals can’t be made into food without an appropriate improvement or occupation.

You can purchase improvements and play occupations that improve this, however. There’s an occupation card that lets you convert wood to food, for instance. Another lets you convert one grain to three food.

Since these two types of cards are random every game, however, the 12 major improvement cards take on much more importance. The fireplace lets you convert one vegetable to two food at any time and lets you convert livestock to food as well. It also allows you to convert one grain to three food whenever you place a family member on the bake bread action on the game board.

The layout for the 4-player game I played. Yes, farming takes up a little bit of space. Especially if you’re a slob like me and leave boxes strewn about.

During the final phase of the harvest, your animals breed. If you have at least two type of a particular animal then you gain an additional animal of that type as long as you have room for that animal. Each fenced-in square holds two animals. A shed doubles its capacity. Different animals can’t share pastures, either. If you have three spaces fenced in to create one pasture then you can hold six sheep without a shed or 12 sheep with a shed, but you can’t have sheep and wild boars. You could add a section of fence to split the pasture into a one-square and a two-square pasture, though.

You can also expand your family by expanding your home. In the later rounds, you don’t even need to expand your home as an action becomes available to grow your family without having the extra room. Having an additional family member means you get to take an additional action each turn, but it also means one more mouth to feed at the end of the round during harvest.

This makes for an interesting game. Do you focus on playing occupation cards? Try to gather resources so you can purchase that major improvement that’ll allow you to convert one grain to five food? Focus on plowing fields, raising animals, or a combination of the two? Keep your family small and easy to feed or expand it to the maximum of five family members in order to take a ton of actions per turn?

After the final harvest, scores are added up using a very handy score sheet. Each player is given a card at the start of the game that lists the point values of the farm, making it easy to glance at and determine a strategy while playing. Score is not kept of track of during play, however, unless you want to add it up in your head. In the games I played, we were aware of the general scoring but didn’t meticulously count each point, which made for an exciting end game. We were *pretty* sure who won, but the games were always close enough that we were never completely confident.

It’s surprisingly fun to go through the final score sheet and announce all of your farming accomplishment to the other players at the end of the game while you write down points next to each column.

You get points for each family member you have (providing another incentive to add members), fenced-in pasture, plowed field, animal shed, clay room, and stone room. You get negative points for any begging cards you have and for any unused farm spaces.

The various animals, grain, and vegetables provide varying points from -1 to 4. If you have between one and two sheep, then you may get 1 point. Between three and five sheep may net you 2 points. And if you have no sheep, you actually lose a point. Same thing with cows, boars, grain, and vegetables, although the numbers required for certain points vary.

Resources and food are worth nothing, so there’s no advantage to hoarding piles of either if you’re not going to use them.

You also get a varying amount of points for improvement cards. Bonus points also come into play. The tutor occupation, for example, gives you one bonus point for every occupation card you play afterwards. That card got me second place in one game, and if I had played two or three more occupation cards it would have won me the game.

The player with the highest amount of points wins the game and bragging rights as the best farmer at the table. The point system also lets the bragging rights continue right down to the last player. “Sure, I lost, but at least my farm’s better than yours!” Even if you’re feeling the sting of defeat, you’ll have a little twinge of pride as you look down at your final farm, no matter how modest if may be.

Behold my farm in all its glory. From left to right, home and family, pastures with sheep and wild boars, plowed fields with grain.

Farming... now with wood and cards!

A bit on the bits of the game. They’re excellent! The cards are full-colored and have wonderful illustrations. The wooden pieces are all very solid and the color scheme is excellent and makes it very easy to distinguish pieces at a glance.

Wood is a light brown disc, clay a dark brown disc, reed a white disc, stone a black disc, sheep a white cube, wild boars a black cube, and cows a brown cube. Player pieces include five family counters, four animal sheds, and a handful of rectangular fences.

There are a few cardboard counters used, most notably for food. These counters are very sturdy and colorful, but they are cardboard so take care. One of them fell into a glass of water during play and got soaked. Although it should be said that after it set out to dry, it was almost as good as new. So they’re about as sturdy as cardboard can get.

The boards themselves are thick, weighty, and colorful. My only gripe about the boards is that the sides are open and aren’t “sealed” like with your typical Monopoly or Risk game. It’s like looking at the end of a cardboard flap on a box. So it looks like the edges could fray or tear slightly when placing the game in the box. Not a huge deal, but I would have liked to have seen the edges sealed.

The box itself is pretty darn sturdy and everything fits in it without any cramming.

Great art direction and sturdy and easily distinguishable playing pieces earns Agricola a 5 in Style.

Every farm is a unique snowflake..

The sheer amount of minor improvement and occupation cards is enough to ensure that every game plays differently. On top of that, the action cards for each round are randomized, meaning some actions will appear earlier or later from one game to the next.

The rule book provides rules for a single player game. Single-player board games are not my thing, but it looks as entertaining as it could be. One of the main boards contains spaces for extra action cards that are placed for 3, 4, or 5 player games. Each game using cards that contain different actions.

On top of the different starting conditions, you can play with a ton of different strategies. No two games will play exactly the same.

In my last game, I only had a couple of plowed fields of grain and the rest of my farm was full of sheep and wild boars, so I lost points for not having cattle or vegetables . But thanks to my improved and expanded homestead and a few occupation cards, I was able to clinch second place and come within striking distance of the winner, who spent most of the game accummulating massive amounts of resources and then spending them all in the final few turns to build a ton of fences, sheds, and upgrade his house to stone.

Agricola is simple to learn but offers plenty of deep play, making it a great game for veterans and newcomers. The set number of turns means you’ll never be left wondering how long the game is going to take – the end is always in sight. The box states it’ll take around 30 minutes per player and I found this to be fairly accurate. But the game moves at a brisk pace. The longest we had anyone mull over a turn was maybe a minute.

This is the most fun I’ve had with a board game in years and Agricola earns a very strong 5 in Substance.

Grab your pitchfork...

Roll up your sleeves, and get ready for some farming.

Agricola’s replayability, production values, and easy-to-learn and fun-to-use rules make this game a must have for any gamer’s collection. Whether you’re a hardcore board game enthusiast or a family man looking for a game to play with the kids, you’ll have fun with this game.

Agricola goes out of its way to make the game work for any age and any number of players. Rules are included for a family mode in order to simplify the game even more, and there’s a single-player game just in case you get snowed in your apartment or want to try the game out before playing with other people.

What really makes Agricola stand out, however, is the sheer amount of fun had in playing. With a large number of actions available, you never feel like you’re without options. Sometimes the pressure mounts when you have no food and your fields aren’t planted and harvest is coming up, but if that happens chances are it’s because you had your priorities on something other than food.

Even if you’re forced to beg one harvest, though, there’s opportunity to mount a comeback. And since you never feel cheated or like you’ve lost before the game is finished, you always have a vested interest in playing.

After playing my first game, I found myself smiling and shouting “Agricola!” like a lunatic.

It’s not exactly a cheap game, retailing at around $70, so if you’re still not sure this would be a good purchase bully your buddy into buying it. Play it. Build your farm. Smile and shout “Agricola!” like you’re a lunatic. Buy Agricola. Play Agricola. Repeat.

In consulting DriveThruRPG we've come up with a number of products which we think might be related, but some might be inaccurate because the name, Agricola, is so short. Nonetheless, take a look, as purchasing through the RPGnet Store helps to support RPGnet.