This going to be a partial review so far, because I started the game at midnight and was unable to hang in there till scoring.
Plot: You are running a medieval farm.Goal: its a game about victory points. Going by my very untrustworthy memory, you get them by filling in your tableau with fields and building additions and by also having a variety of resources at the end of the game.
Mechanics: It's influence control and resource gathering. You start with 2 influence doobers and you place them in one of about 10 spots. The amount of spots increase as the game goes along.
A lot gather resources, some allow you to play an 'exception' style card, either called a occupation or a minor upgrade, and finally some allow you to upgrade your basic infrastructure.
The occupations and upgrades lead to some synergy on your action tokens. For example, my first occupation allowed me to plow a field automatically when I picked the get a grain role, saving me an action.
A round consists of everyone playing every influence token they have, gathering resources and playing these actions. At known times, a food upkeep is held. This is very important, failure to feed your doobers leads to -3 VP, and JC, who taught the game, said that losing those VPs guarantees you will not win.
Review: Another game I don't know if I like. I sure hope it goes faster if/once people learn how to play. 4+ hours is unacceptable to me. There were a lot of good decisions to be made but it was a struggle for me just to feed my people in game #1.
Tips: Are you F#@%ing kidding me? I didn't last till it scored! It seems like getting lots of the wood resource was important, and you really didn't want to add new guys until your infrastructure was well set up to feed them. Other than that, no idea.
I hate this game. By the time I am ready to get my synergy going the game is over.
ReplyDeletei played once. i had awesome synergy in my cards, played about as good a game as could be expected and lost to jeremy. i hate him.
ReplyDeleteI am still earning this game. There are a lot of moving parts, and I still make early mistakes that slow me down in later rounds. I am going to give it another try or two. There is a bidding/picking component that confounds me in this game and in Goa. I just never now if/when it's a good idea to go first.
ReplyDeleteI do not hate this game, though. I probably hate Eurorails, but not Agricola.
no no no, i never said i hate the game either. hate the player, not the game.
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