Plays: 6 at player counts: 1 - 2
Appearance
The front of the box is colourful and shows a man going to work in a village with people working in fields with sheep. The back of the box is very well laid out and shows a game in progress and describes the theme. It also explains what is unique to this game compared to other games by the same designer. The box contains lots of different components: player boards, cards and wooden components. There are lots of player specific components including a field board, stable board, community centre board, craft buildings, jewel box and an overview tile. These are all well illustrated although it would have been nice if the craft buildings had some artwork on them to show what they produce rather than the resources they require.
The main action board is very cleanly laid out with the actions shown by clear iconography, with small artwork on the actions such as sheep on the sheep market. There are 11 different types of wooden resources included representing 9 different goods, sheep and workers. The wooden goods and sheep are all different colours and shapes and are easy to recognise what they represent. The workers are a little disappointing as they are just wooden cubes and it would have been nice to have a little more detail on them. Finally there are 336 cards spread over 10 decks and 6 cards to use for clearing the action board at lower player counts. The decks come in 4 types: gateway (4 different decks), farmyard (4 different types), bonus and points. The back of the gateway and farmyard decks are different to make sure they aren’t mixed, although the differences are a little subtle for my liking but are well illustrated. The cards themselves are well laid out with a mainly green background with the top of the card showing various effects such as have the listed goods in your supply or pay goods and the bottom half showing the reward for meeting the above condition. Overall the components are excellent quality with simple colourful artwork.
Gameplay
The aim of the game is to have the most victory points after 6 rounds have been completed. Each round consists of 10 different phases although most of these are fairly simple. 336
First, workers are removed from the top row of each action on the action board in a 4 player game, or in a number of sections equal to the player count if playing with less than 4 players. Then each player takes the farmyard card corresponding to the round number from their stable board face down and places workers equal to the number in their community centre window on it from the supply. The third phase is income where you will get bonuses from the cards you have in front of you such as resources or allowing an immediate sow action.
The 4th phase is where each player will take turns placing workers on the action board or discarding workers for the same number of tools from the supply. When workers are placed on the action board you must place them on the bottom row available for that action so it can cost 1, 2 or 3 workers. You can place workers on an action and not resolve the action if you wish just to block the spaces. The actions range from gaining resources, exchanging goods for other goods or performing a sow action where you place a crop onto an empty field. You can also gain jewellery with some actions and if you do you move the jewellery marker in your jewellery box to the corresponding number.
Certain actions will also allow you to sustain your sheep, when a sheep is gained from an action it is placed on a farmyard card 3 rounds in the future (or the stable from round 4 onwards) and if you remove a farmyard card from your stable with a sheep on it in phase 2 of a round that sheep dies. The sustain action moves your sheep to the next farmyard card or into the stable if no more remain and it is safe in the stable for the end of the game. If you choose to draw cards you take the first player token are first player next round. Phase 5 happens after all players have played their workers and you draw the farmyard card into your hand. In phase 6 your empty fields move up one space and then one field moves up an additional space. In phase 7 you harvest crops from your fields with you getting the number of resources equal to the level of the field by sliding the resource to the left and the field moves down one space.
In phase 8 you gain one milk for every sheep on your stable board. Phase 9 is the progress phase where you move your craft buildings to the right by spending the listed resources on them with the number corresponding to the round. Your first advancement costs the resources listed and if you want to move the building an additional time that round you must use a tool (not spend unless it is the final round) to move a boulder to the right. If you wish to advance the craft building more to the right it now costs two tools to move the 2 joined boulders. Each craft building costs different resources and restrictions. 50