Sometimes we desire a simpler life. A time before the internet. A time before we knew everything, and by extension, being constantly aware of how awful things are. All. the. Time. Wouldn’t it be easier if we lived in say, Central Europe around 1670 A.D. All you had to worry about was waking up, tending to your crops and checking on livestock. You wouldn’t be getting pocket alerts about the latest outbreak of barbarians, or plague for that matter. Honestly when either hits, you’re dead before you could stress about it. Thing is, when you crack open a board game like Agricola, you’ll soon discover you’d prefer to be dead by sneeze-rat.

Agricola. One of the more celebrated games by game design titan Uwe Rosenberg, this thing really deserves its lofty position in the top-100-boardgamegeek-games pantheon. I mean first of all:

Guys listen. If the idea of little wooden sheep, cows and boar don’t sell you on this game you should probably just leave now. I mean come on:

SO CUTE! Anyway. For the rest of you: Agricola is a 1-4 player worker placement game about trying not to be the worst farmer. You grow your farmhouse, family, furniture, foals, and fields all in the name of victory points. You achieve this through placing your farmers at key spots on the central board each round. Doing so earns you resources you need to make your farm betterer.

So here’s the deal with a worker placement game. You put a dude in a spot. You get whatever that spot says. No one else can now use that spot until the next round. Next player repeats this process etc etc until everyone’s farmers have been placed. Then your peeps get recalled, a new round starts (with a new spot added to the board). You don’t just grab wood or grain, however. In Agricola, EVERYTHING you want to do has to be enacted by a farmer. Want to play one of your ‘job’ cards? Gotta hit up that schoolhouse. Want to fence in some piggies? You gotta get that fencing spot. Tired of not getting any spot you want because jerkster mc spot-taker keeps farmer-blocking you? Go to the meeting place and literally take the first player token for the next round

So here’s how you start the game:

And heeeere’s what you want your farm to look like by the end:

You want all your farm tiles used, as any unused ones count against you. As do missing livestock and crop types. And heeeere is what your board looks like when you ignore all the rules and try to just go minecraft on it:

I don’t know how he domesticated the living grain, but I won’t argue with a man who can squat a whole cow. But to add to your farm are the improvement cards, both minor and major. The minor ones can give you small benefits like a little food over time. Job cards work more like victory points. You get dealt a hand of jobs and minor improvements at the start of the game, which help shape how you are going to succeed. What you DON’T get dealt are the major improvements.

These ovens and workshops are ominously placed in the middle because if someone buys one, you know what happens: no one else can haaave oooone. And though you get to have a sweet clay oven to feed your family better, you now have to deal with all your friends inviting themselves over and just ‘accidentally’ bringing a sack-load of grain that they shrug at and say “well while we’ve got it here, can we use your marvel of medieval engineering?” And I don’t blame them. Because every 2-3 rounds, there’s a harvest.

During a harvest, players must... harvest any available crops, and remove stocked food/animals to feed their family. And if you like to aggressively, as the game likes to put it, “wish for children”, you need to feed them, too. Sure, more people in your farm means more actions, but you need to be damn sure you can handle the upkeep. But at least your animals get to breed, which is nice. And here we see the true stress of Agricola. It’s all well and good to look at little cardboard renovations so you and your little wooden spouse can look at getting a little wooden kid to help around the little wooden farm, but can you little wooden afford it?

Each round is spent figuring out how best to deal with the resources you can access. Remember, everyone else at the table has mouths to feed too. Mouths, and spot-taking farmers. You need to figure out how best to position yourself for success. What job cards and minor improvements do you have at your disposal? Can you afford to avoid grabbing boars this round, given that Jereziah across the muddy road is being hounded by his new daughter for one? Every questions is another stressful layer of complexity. And believe me, this game can give you a lot of analysis paralysis.

But where does that leave my opinion of the game? Well don’t break it out as an opener... or as a party game. Agricola is a board gamer’s game that needs to be experienced in the right environment. The cards you get dealt are numerous but you won’t pursue them all. They are there to make the game replayable, and adjustable to more players. There is a variant where you play without cards as well, if you need more ‘easing in’.

It’s a simple game to play but by no means a simple game to reliably win. Don’t let the LITTLE WOODEN ANIMALS fool you. Agricola is a merciless arena of wool, grain and economic strategy. You need to be ready. Ready for the

CUTE WIDDLE WOODEN ANIMALS.

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