Agricola is a worker placement game for 1 to 5 players, with a focus on resource management. It is a subsistence farming simulation game, set in the 17th century.
Place the central board on the table, set up all the other cards as described in the game rules. There are wooden room tiles, clay room tiles, stone room tiles, field tiles, food tokens, begging cards, goods pieces, livestock pieces, action cards, minor and major improvement cards and occupation cards.
Each player starts with 2 workers, a farmer and his wife, a small wooden house, a board to fill with cultivated fields, houses, or barns with fences and animals, 7 Occupation cards and 7 Minor Improvement cards. A player can take 2 actions per round.
The game lasts 14 rounds, divided into 6 stages. After rounds 4, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 14, a harvest occurs, where each player must feed their family or pay the consequence by taking a beggar’s card which makes them lose 3 points at the end of the game.
Each round begins by flipping the next round card, which offers a new action for the players. Next, all action spaces with a red arrow are replenished, for example, the wood hut gets 3 wood pieces per round which add up if no one has claimed them. Now each player takes turns placing a worker on an action space and performing the action, until all workers have been placed. 84
Only one person can be placed on any action space at a time. Actions include building fences, installing barns, collecting goods such as clay and wood, improving your house, plowing fields, having babies, breeding animals and growing food. When all workers have been placed and actions taken, players recover their workers and a new round begins, unless it’s harvest time. At the end of the 14 rounds, the player with the most points is the best farmer and wins.
The game is attractive, the tokens are made of wood and are easy to manipulate. The actions are simple to understand, with many options to pursue. The game has great replay value because so many different strategies can be used. It’s a most interesting game and well worth trying for board game night. 853