Review Details

Agricola (Revised Edition)

Product Review (submitted on October 9, 2018):

My newest game purchase belongs to Agricola. I had played the iPad digital version for awhile and liked it quite a lot so I figured I would just nab the fully legit board game version. In this game you are a farmer! Don’t worry it’s a lot more fun than getting up at 4AM and spending an entire day tending to your crops and animals I assure you. It is a worker placement game where you and up to 3 others ( 1- 4 player game) take turns placing your little wooden meeples on the board in varying locations to collect the specific resource on that location.

Each player starts with 2 meeples and there are a ton of things to do and this leads into my one negative about the game, which I’ll get into in a bit. There are a number of cards that you place down after every turn that reveals a whole new area to place your meeple and sometimes unlocking new resources to collect and put to use. You place your meeple and collect your resources, then the next player does it and so on. You cannot place your meeple on the same spot that another player uses. That is the basis to the game however the game moves FARRRRR too quickly to really allow you to take advantage of everything the game has to offer. There are a TON of items here to utilize. As far as resources go we have grain, pumpkin, food, stone, wood, reed, clay, cattle, wild boar, sheep…uhmmm I think that’s it….but that’s a TON. Now it wouldn’t be that bad if the game was spread out a little more, like had longer rounds.

You see at the end of the phase you have to harvest your crops, feed your family and…well…your animals breed and multiply. Each meeple you control require 2 food and if you don’t have enough food then you have to collect a beggar token for each food you lack. Each beggar token is worth -3 end game points which is huge and there is no way to get rid of them once you have them. The first phase you get 4 rounds to collect the required food and the other resources you need to do whatever you want to do on your farm. So it’s easy, plus you only have 2 meeples to feed, easy peasy. There are 6 total phases and as you progress you get less and less rounds to collect this stuff and yes as you get further along you do collect more (sometimes) but also there is more to do. Bottom line, the game feels a little like it’s rushing you. You don’t want to have to worry about food to feed your family because dammit I want to build a stable and fences so I can raise hogs. And not just normal hogs mind you, WILD BOAR!

There is a very delicate balance to be played in this game that is for sure. The way the scoring is set up you have to focus on everything at least a little to not get any negatives however the speed at which the game is played makes it to where you really should only focus on 2 things if you really want to take advantage of all they have to offer. I feel like the game was made like this to create interesting strategies but for me and the other people I played with it just came off like the game was just a little too rushed.

As far as the tokens and other game components go everything looks really good. Everything token wise is made of wood and painted and also shaped like their corresponding materials. The wood looks like twigs and the pumpkins look like pumpkins. Best of all…..the wild boar LOOKS like wild boar, makes it that much more satisfying when I’m raising them and forgoing feeding my family. The card stock is a good quality for the cards that the game has for different professions and improvements. The board itself is rather unique and has a different sideboard that attaches for the different amount of players which is neat.

I will say it is the best farmer worker placement board game I have ever played however not the best worker placement game in general I have played. If you are looking for a different theme and love worker placements then this is the game for you.