Brief Overview - In Agricola you play a 17th century farmer who, with the help of his family, builds up his farm over the course of 6 years (harvests). You get points for developing the farm, accumulating livestock/crops, and building improvements...and let's not forget building a ginormous house and a big family. It's worker placement, using each member of your family. And like any worker placement/development game, by the time you finally get things rolling, the game's over and it's time to score. I'm assuming most of you are familiar with the mechanics. The important thing to remember for the discussion below is that there are a set of spots placed to start the game, and on each of the 14 turns of the games (split into 6 harvests) a new spot is opened up. The initial spots vary based on number players, the turn based spots are always the same but come out randomly within a given harvest.
Most of my experience is in 2 player, which can be a wonderfully hateful little chess game. Once you get up on your opponent, I can't put into words the satisfaction that grows each turn you're able to keep him squarely over the barrel. And it's equally dispiriting and frustrating to be obstructed at every turn by an opponent who got just one turn ahead of you. I really love it :)
This all takes some practice, but my usual opponent and I are fairly evenly matched (you can tell because we both hate playing each other) so we have some pretty fun battles. But it's when playing the random opponent off the interwebs, and applying this style of oppressive denial, one can feel a tinge of guilt at subjecting them to this level of hate...but then you win, the guilt passes, and you're left with the warm jubilance of victory. Ahh. Makes me want to go find some sucker right now.
There is also a "Solo Series" challenge. In the physical board game, it's just 8 games, but in the iOS, it goes and goes, as long as you can reach the targets. Here's how it works: in the first game you start with 7 occupations and a point target of 50 points. If you achieve that, you can keep one of the occupations you played and start the subsequent game with it. In the next game you start with only 6 random occupations (plus the 7th one already played) and target score goes up. Eventually you have all your occupations (usually after 7 games), and just keep trying to reach every higher and higher point totals. I'm about done with this twist of the game, here's my best effort:
Thirty-five games baby! I broke 100 points in game 10 when I got the quarry and a couple other choice minors. That was about my third effort, by then I had decided the occupation combination I felt was optimal. Super fun, but not again.
I've played a couple of 3 player games, and at this point I can only comment on it in the context of 2 player. 3 Player is a certainly different, the resources that are most highly contested change. In 2 player you have 14 clay split between 2 players over the course of the game. That's actually plenty. In 3 player, you have 28 clay, which is an over abundance by the end of the game, but does allow for a nice little battle for the fireplace/sheep early food engine. Compare that to reed, where there is the same amount of reed in a 3 player game as there is in the 2 player version. The hate/denial level of 3 player is significantly less. I think this is typical of similar games.
I suspect most would agree what makes this game special is the Occupations and the Minor Improvements handed out before the game (and lots of them - each player gets 7 of each, more than they could ever play). The occupations are bit more complex in their implementation (than the minor improvements) because the subset of occupations dealt is dependent on the number of players. This means that additional reed (for example) can be made available with occupations in games of 3 or more, further tweaking the volume of each resource. And more importantly, changing the strategy of those playing the occupation and those playing against it. There's no point in denying wood if your opponent needs significantly less with Carpenter, and there's no use in denying reed when your opponent has a free supply of it with the Reed Collector.
To me, that's the dimension of the game that ranked it #1 for so long. They are enough to direct your strategy, but not typically enough to give a significant advantage. And in two player, you can let your opponent commit and contort himself to denying you one resource or another, only to surprise him with an occupation or minor improvement that turns the game on it's head. "Your turn on the barrel my friend."
4 and 5 player versions are different still, with more varied spots to open the game (and more attractive ones). Playing this online doesn't work for me personally because of the inherent latency between turns...I can't keep track of what I was up to and rethinking through it is tedious. I'll save these versions for live play. And my lack of experience in these versions should keep it more competitive between me and my usual gaming groups.
As I said, most of my experience is 2 player, so moving to 3 player (and beyond) means additional occupations are added to the mix keeping it fresh. The game currently only includes the E deck (the original deck), however the I and K decks will be coming this Fall for a small fee...and you can bet I'll be happy to pay to give Playdek my money.
Oh, and if more cards for the iOS version of Agricola isn't doing it for you, maybe THIS will make you drool a little bit:
That's a screen shot of Playdek's next humble offering to lucky board game fans, Lords of Waterderp, I mean deep, due out "later this year". TAKE MY MONEY.
