Agricola: A Mini-Review
Nov. 10th, 2008 11:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aI'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.
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-10 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-11 12:46 am (UTC)Hmm. Well, that's only partly true with Puerto Rico, Shannon. Most roles can be selected only once per turn, and provide their bonus power to the selecting player, but every player partakes in the basic action for the role (or, potentially every player: game circumstances can squeeze out players from acting, depending on the "state of the board": if there's not enough goods to go around, for example); and, the Prospector action can be selected more than once, depending upon the number of players in the game. I think Agricola provides the same sort of "near exclusivity" by providing more options to choose from, with some being clearly better than others; but nonetheless, the "I determine the action that everyone performs" mechanic of Puerto Rico is nearly entirely absent here.
I don't think the collectible mentality has any place in regular board games
I take your point about the collectible "giveaways" but in this particular case, I think the argument cuts both ways actually: I pre-ordered Agricola about a year ago, paid more money than I would have in the store, and shipping on top; additionally, my payment was made months ahead of actually receiving the game, so the publisher got to make interest on that paltry sum while I did not--which, admittedly, could only have amounted to a few pennies. It seems to me more like I paid a premium for a first limited edition of the game that came with the extra bits, most of which are now available to subsequent consumers at prices below what I paid for them (http://www.germangames.com/game.asp?gameID=1497). But I like the game enough that in the end, I don't feel too hard done by.
In general, though, I heartily agree with you about the relative odiousness of "collectibility".
you've got a game that's more difficult to play
I'm not sure I really agree there; the only cubes that would be in the regular game are the livestock cubes, as the other markers are round disks, are they not? I'm not sure I see how reaching for a white sheep cube in Agricola should be any harder than reaching for a pink food cube in Caylus...
Nonetheless, it's a great game
On that point, I think we're in hearty agreement. I ranked it a nine along with: Civilization, Diplomacy, Indonesia, Magic: The Gathering (the game, not the collectibility aspect), and Puerto Rico. I think it's status of BGG#1 is slightly inflated perhaps, but only slightly: I think it certainly deserves to be ranked in the same breath as Puerto Rico, Civ, Tigris & Euphrates, El Grande and other modern boardgame classics. If one owns only five boardgames, Agricola could probably argue its way onto one's shelf.
I'm interested why you don't want to submit Agricola to the full Appelcline treatment on RPG.net, complete with your customary wryly-captioned photos... 8)
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Date: 2008-11-11 01:05 am (UTC)When we played last Thursday, I saw enough people reach for cubes when they meant to get disks and for disks when they meant to get cubes, that it was obvious that the confusion was there, even if it wasn't a big deal.
I'm interested why you don't want to submit Agricola to the full Appelcline treatment on RPG.net, complete with your customary wryly-captioned photos... 8)
At least in part because I don't own a copy yet, and thus can't have it sitting by my side to make sure that everything is correct as I play. Heck, I haven't even read the rules, so I'd be a bit leary of trying to explain how they work, since there are doubtless some gotchas that I don't know of.
It's on my list to get, but my only free money for games lately when to Witch's Brew, mainly to keep my Alea collection attractively complete.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-11 12:43 pm (UTC)