new game: Agricola

[cellio]

At Origins Dani played Agricola and found it worthy of more exploration, so he bought a copy. We've played several two-player games and yesterday we played a four-player game. The game is evocative of Puerto Rico and Caylus and plays in about half an hour per player. I've found it a lot of fun so far.

The description from BoardGameGeek starts:

In Agricola, you're a farmer in a wooden shack with your spouse and little else. On a turn, you get to take only two actions, one for you and one for the spouse, from all the possibilities you'll find on a farm: collecting clay, wood, or stone; building fences; and so on. You might think about having kids in order to get more work accomplished, but first you need to expand your house. And what are you going to feed all the little rugrats?

In each turn you can take one action per person in your family. Each action can only be taken once per turn, so there is competition for certain spaces (not always the same ones). A new action becomes available each turn. Some actions provide resources, some allow you to plow and sow fields, some let you build things (which consume resources), and some let you acquire skills, and, later, some let you expand your house and then grow your family. You start the game with a hand of two types of cards, minor improvements (these are things you can build) and occupations (skills). Both give you some sort of advantage and there's a great variety. For example, the fishing pole (cost one wood) lets you take extra food from the "fish pond" action. The woodworker (occupation) lowers the cost of building wood improvements. The oven (costs three clay and a stone) lets you bake bread (one grain becomes five food).

At set points during the game there are harvests: you take grain or vegetables from your sown fields, must feed your family (if you have a fireplace you can cook animals or vegetables for this), and then can increase your flocks/herds (if you have enough fenced pastures to hold them). As you increase your family you need more food and as the game goes on the harvests get closer together.

Scoring is based on how well you did in several factors, and, like all optimization games, you have to choose which ones to pursue and which ones to accept lower scores for. You lose points if you didn't touch a category at all (for example if you had no plowed fields or no grain). Points are given for plowed fields, fenced pastures, three different types of livestock, two different crops, upgrades to your house, and number of family members, and some improvements also give points. So you'll find yourself facing quandries like "if I don't get a vegetable to sow I'll lose points for that, but if I blow that off I could build this improvement that'll be worth points, but it requires materials I might not be able to get in time".

I find that the cards add a lot of variety to the game without adding a lot of complexity. When I play Puerto Rico I'll probably settle into one of the established strategies (corn king, builder, variety, etc), depending on what the other players are doing. In Caylus (which I have not played as much) there also seem to be some basic strategies that players fall into, again depending on what others are doing. All of that is true of Agricola too, but the occupations and improvements in your hand can play a big role in this, so, at least so far, it feels like there are more strategies available. Or maybe it's just that the tactics are more varied. Either way, I'd like to play more.

Comments

[cellio]

Caylus is very tight, yes, which I sometimes find a little frustrating because I'm not as good a strategist as some of the other folks I usually play with, and feeling doomed halfway through a game isn't fun. I feel like there are more chances for recovery in Agricola.

Mind, I like Caylus too; I just need to be in the right mood to play it.