![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Agricola: A Mini-Review
Nov. 10th, 2008 11:01 amI've now played Agricola three times, and since I don't currently plan to spend the time to write up a full review at RPGnet, I thought I'd put together a mini-review here.
In essence, Agricola is an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink game that follows in the footsteps of the worker-placement/resource-management game that's become so popular in recent years with games like Caylus, Pillars of the Earth, Cuba, Stone Age, and several more.
Like the original role-selection/resource-management game, Puerto Rico, Agricola makes all choices exclusive: each work place is only available to one player. However, like the later worker-placement games, it gives players multiple chances to place workers, and thus there are a lot more options, many of which largely duplication functionality. Even more notably, the number of options gets bigger as the game goes on.
I call Agricola a kitchen sink game, because it goes far beyond its worker-placement roots. You'll have somewhere in excess of 25 work placement choices by the end of the game. Besides that, you have a hand of 14 cards which you can choose to play (using resources and/or worker-placement choices) to give you additional choices. You also have a personal game board filled with houses (with limit your worker numbers), fields (which allow you to get involved in a grain- and vegetable-creation engine), and barns and fenced areas (which allow you get involved in a livestock-creation engine).
There's a lot you can do, and ultimately all of it's somewhat needed for victory, since you win by having the most workers, the least unused space on your board, and the best combination of all the things you can grow on your farm.
I find the combination very intriguing. There are multiple paths to victory, with grain and livestock engines probably being the two most obvious, and those 14 cards you're dealt make each game quite different, since they'll help to guide your strategy.
The only thing I don't like about Agricola is the way that it's being distributed, with multiple premium items that you may or may not be able to get ahold of. Here in the US, you may or may not have received a copy of the game with nice wooden animals (rather than wooden cubes) for the livestock* and you may or may not have received the special "Z" deck of cards. Beyond that, there are at least one or two other premium decks of cards already available and there's special postcard which gives rules for seasonal play.
I don't think that the collectible mentality has any place in regular board games, and this sort of premium giveaway is even worse, because it quickly becomes almost impossible to get older giveaways. That's not a way to respect your players, especially ones who come in later.
Nonetheless, it's a great game. At RPGnet, I've give it a 5/5 and on BGG I'd be stuck between a 9 and a 10.
* I've now played the game with both the "animeeples" and the cubes, and in the game that we played with the cubes, people regularly reached for the animal cubes when they meant to grab regular resources like grain, reeds, etc. Thus, if you didn't get the premium animeeple giveaway, you've got a game that's more difficult to play, which is even less nice to customers than the concept of premium giveaways on its own.
In essence, Agricola is an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink game that follows in the footsteps of the worker-placement/resource-management game that's become so popular in recent years with games like Caylus, Pillars of the Earth, Cuba, Stone Age, and several more.
Like the original role-selection/resource-management game, Puerto Rico, Agricola makes all choices exclusive: each work place is only available to one player. However, like the later worker-placement games, it gives players multiple chances to place workers, and thus there are a lot more options, many of which largely duplication functionality. Even more notably, the number of options gets bigger as the game goes on.
I call Agricola a kitchen sink game, because it goes far beyond its worker-placement roots. You'll have somewhere in excess of 25 work placement choices by the end of the game. Besides that, you have a hand of 14 cards which you can choose to play (using resources and/or worker-placement choices) to give you additional choices. You also have a personal game board filled with houses (with limit your worker numbers), fields (which allow you to get involved in a grain- and vegetable-creation engine), and barns and fenced areas (which allow you get involved in a livestock-creation engine).
There's a lot you can do, and ultimately all of it's somewhat needed for victory, since you win by having the most workers, the least unused space on your board, and the best combination of all the things you can grow on your farm.
I find the combination very intriguing. There are multiple paths to victory, with grain and livestock engines probably being the two most obvious, and those 14 cards you're dealt make each game quite different, since they'll help to guide your strategy.
The only thing I don't like about Agricola is the way that it's being distributed, with multiple premium items that you may or may not be able to get ahold of. Here in the US, you may or may not have received a copy of the game with nice wooden animals (rather than wooden cubes) for the livestock* and you may or may not have received the special "Z" deck of cards. Beyond that, there are at least one or two other premium decks of cards already available and there's special postcard which gives rules for seasonal play.
I don't think that the collectible mentality has any place in regular board games, and this sort of premium giveaway is even worse, because it quickly becomes almost impossible to get older giveaways. That's not a way to respect your players, especially ones who come in later.
Nonetheless, it's a great game. At RPGnet, I've give it a 5/5 and on BGG I'd be stuck between a 9 and a 10.
* I've now played the game with both the "animeeples" and the cubes, and in the game that we played with the cubes, people regularly reached for the animal cubes when they meant to grab regular resources like grain, reeds, etc. Thus, if you didn't get the premium animeeple giveaway, you've got a game that's more difficult to play, which is even less nice to customers than the concept of premium giveaways on its own.