It’s entirely possible that I am the last to know about Agricola
, but I am making up for lost time because it has become my obsession!
Here’s how the game’s maker describes it:
“In Agricola (Latin for “farmer”), 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? Agricola is a turn-based game. There are 14 game turns plus 6 harvest phases. Each player starts with two playing tokens (farmer and wife) and thus can take two actions per turn. There are multiple options, and while the game progresses, you’ll have more and more: first thing in a turn, a new action card is flipped over. Problem: Each action can be taken just once per turn, so it’s important to do some things with high preference. Each player also starts with a hand of 7 Occupation cards (of more than 160 total) and 7 Minor Improvement cards (of more than 140 total) that he may use during the game if they fit in his/her strategy. This amounts to countless strategies, some depending on your card hand. Sometimes it’s a good choice to stay on course, sometimes you better react on what your opponents do. Agricola can also be played without cards (family game) and can even be played solo.”
The game is beautifully produced, with truly lovely illustrations and even tiny wooden sheep, cow, and pigs. It’s impossible not to fall in love with it the moment you open the box!
It must be said that the instructions are a bit daunting at first and it definitely takes some time to get set up the first time. If you’re buying this game to play with kids, I highly recommend reading through the rules on your own during some quite time first before presenting them with the game, and maybe watching this video on youtube. (When I was a kid, I would have wanted to start immediately!). Speaking of kids, Agricola is rated for 12 and up, but I guess I just know a lot of bright kids because Neve (Amy’s 9-year-old) would have no problem with this game once she played through it once.
Now that I think about it, this would be an awesome teaching tool for all the home schooling moms I know. A commenter on Amazon described it as the game of real life, which is fairly apt. Each action has consequences, some of which can be unforeseen.
You can play with as many as 5 players but as few a 1, which rocks. It take about two hour to complete the game, but you can easily walk away and come back to it, so long as you set it up on a table where it can remain till your finished.
There are all kinds of expansion packs available for Agricola but I would recommend waiting until you’ve master the original before adding new decks and locations. There is a lot of depth here, and learning to master the game is a big part of the fun.
If you’re looking for a gift for the geek in your life, the home schooling mom, the board game lover, the husband who played seemingly endless (and VERY SERIOUS) games of Risk in college, you can’t beat this game!
Currently $46.95 on Amazon and if you buy it through this post, our affiliate dollars with go to Heifer International’s Gift of a Sheep program.
*This is not a sponsored post. I don’t know the game makers or anything like that. I just really, really like this game!
, “a popular series from the BBC, follows four members of the Women’s Land Army–women who worked on British farms during World War II for the war effort.”
