| | |  | Toy Figures & Playsets | Home » » » Agricola | | | | | | | Description: | | Agricola | | | Features: | |
• For 1 to 5 players
• Play time of 120 minutes
• Agricola is a fun family game
• Contents: 360 cards, over 300 wooden components, 50+ tiles, 9 boards, tokens, scoring pad
| | | Product Details: | | | Product Length:
| 8.9 inches | | Product Width:
| 2.83 inches | | Product Height:
| 12.44 inches | | Product Weight:
| 4.0 pounds | | Package Length:
| 12.5 inches | | Package Width:
| 9.0 inches | | Package Height:
| 3.0 inches | | Package Weight:
| 4.0 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 97 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 97 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
240 of 246 found the following review helpful:
 I may have found my new favorite board game!Jan 11, 2009
By Alan Holyoak
I have been an active player of board games for at least 35 years. I've played games at all levels of complexity, ranging from tournament level Avalon-Hill bookcase games to family and party card and boardgames. For the past five or so years my favorite board game has been "The Settlers of Catan" (and its variants), that is, until I played "Agricola".
OK, first, a bit about the game...
Each player in the game (up to 5 can play) represent a farmer in 1670 AD and his spouse. About now you may be thinking, "yawn," but just wait, there is some real strategy and fun to be had here. Play progresses as players use their farmer and spouse each turn to do different things including the possibility of building a larger house, raising crops, fencing in pastures, collecting food, collecting animals, having children (that can also work each turn), etc. All the way through the game there is a real challenge when it comes to feeding your family, and improving your lot in life. You can improve your chances of success by playing occupation cards that give your players different capabilites, and by playing cards that represent a variety of differing improvements to your house, fields, etc.
The neat thing about this game is that every occupation card and every improvement card is unique, and because players are dealt only a limited number of cards at the beginning of the game, the game is never the same twice.
This game takes about twice as long to play as a round of "The Settlers of Catan", but the time flies when you play.
Many websites that rank the popularity of games are seeing this game climb rapidly to the top of those rankings.
If you enjoy a game that employs a small element of luck (the cards you are dealt), and a large degree of strategy (what to work to have your family members do each turn), then this game may be for you. So, if you have taken games like "The Settlers of Catan", "Ticket to Ride", and "Carcassone" as far as you can and you are ready for a bit larger gaming challenge then you will not be disappointed with this offering.
OK, one last experience - my wife and I were playing this game recently when our 9-yr-old daughter came up and asked, "Is that game like the 'Game of Life'?" After a moment's reflection I told her it was more like the game of "real" life. You know, working hard, scrambling to feed the family, accumulating different commodities to improve the house, etc.
When I opened my copy of the game I was impressed that the game company had the foresight to go so far as to include a bag of small reclosable plastic bags that can be used to separate the different pieces and types of cards from each other, thus helping keep the game better organized in the box and making for quicker set-up times whenever you want to play. Thanks Z-Man Games!
This game is worth far more than 5 stars!
I believe that this game will remain a favorite of mine for many years to come.
I hope this review was helpful.
Note: One last thing, it is WAY easier to learn to play this game if you can hook up with someone that already plays the game than by reading the rules on your own.
79 of 81 found the following review helpful:
Excellent Complex Euro GameSep 04, 2008
By J. Brown
"arcbat"
I had the opportunity to play Agricola over the past weekend and I must admit, I was impressed. First of all, this is a VERY weighty box. You get a lot of bits for your money. The game has 9 small boards (one for each player and several that create the shared interaction area), about 200 wooden pieces (representing people, resources, animals, etc.), several sheets of high quality cardboard tiles and several hundred cards. When you open it, the box is really full which is decidedly satisfying.
There are two versions of the game. The Family version (which I played) does not use most of the cards, but is still a very complex game. I recommend reading the rules and setting aside ample time on your first play to figure out the flow of the game. Also, definitely take the suggestion of starting with the Family game first. And this may be a good one to play 2-3 rounds of and then start over since the strategies only really become apparent after digging into the game. The length of the game is such that if you find yourself behind in early rounds, the rest of the game may be a major drag if you play it to the end.
The game play is not atypical of many Euro games (Puerto Rico in particular) with aspects of resource management, role selection and territory management all coming into play together. However, they are brought together in a very nice way that makes for a unique and challenging gaming experience.
One final aspect of Agricola that is appealing is that it can be played as a single player game. Although, I haven't played the single player version, I've heard that it is very challenging and satisfying which is delightful given the dearth of good solo games.
All in All, this is a top notch Euro Game. I would not recommend it for someone who is new to Euro style games as there are better gateway game choices (Carcassonne, Catan, etc.) but it is an excellent way to take your Euro gaming experience to a new level.
62 of 65 found the following review helpful:
View from a new board gamerNov 18, 2008
By M. I. Jeanneau
Just this year I was introduced to a game that chances are you know by now: Settlers of Catan. It was my first experience with European-style board games; up until then I only knew about Monopoly and Clue (granted, I have owned and enjoy Scotland Yard which I consider on a different league than those two, but not as good as Catan). After playing Catan for half a year, I decided to go for something else. I've had read good things about Agricola on Boardgamegeek (it's number one, after all) so I decided to almost blind buy, enticed by the idea of being a farmer (a dream of mine). So I've played this game enough to say that it's the next logical step from Catan to a "deeper" or more complex gaming experience. As a person who just got into complex board games, I can say that this game is deep and complex, but not difficult, which is a plus because people from different ages and non-gamers are more open to play. There's also no dice involved, so it's less a game of chances and more a game of choices (making the right ones). I can see this game is gonna consume a lot of my time. Highly recommended.
48 of 53 found the following review helpful:
 Not as much fun as I'd hoped.Jul 25, 2010
By Ana Mardoll
Agricola / B001C7617Q
I bought this game for my husband - he loves European games and has all the big names and many of the little ones. I really like quite a few of the European games now, thanks to him, and I love farming games, so this seemed like a no-brainer.....but it wasn't actually as much fun as we'd hoped.
To start with, it's a little disappointing that the game pieces for animals and crops are just different colored cubes. We'd been expecting ani-meeples and vegie-meeples, but you have to buy those separately. I'm not sure why this was so disappointing - we're perfectly used to the cubes in Puerto Rico - but maybe the difference is that in other games, the cubes are supposed to represent huge 'lots' of meat and vegetable for exporting, whereas here the cubes are actually supposed to represent crops taken directly from the ground and animals interacted with on a personal level. Whatever the reason, the cubes made the game distinctly less fun, so I highly recommend you buy the separate meeples if you do get Agricola.
The instructions are, unfortunately, what I've come to expect from European games - labyrinthine, overly-complex (as in, the game rules are complex, but the instructions make them seem even MORE so), and probably having enjoyed many adventures through the translation process - veterans will know by now that it's usually wise to cross-check informal player instructions online.
Once we started playing, I was surprised to notice how tense the game feels. I was expecting a more leisurely experience - like the gentle climb for dominance in several of the trading games, but with a more "Harvest Moon" feel, but Agricola seems determined to mimic reality by making you constantly aware of the finite moves left (the game feels intensely "short" in terms of moves), and the tension between worker supply and food supply. I can imagine a lot of players being as pleased as punch with the intense feel of the game, and I think my husband enjoyed it fairly well, but I personally frequently felt frustrated at how much of the game seems to be missed in favor of base survival. There's a lot of layers for extra functionality, and I very much wanted to experiment with owning all the animals, and farming all the crops, but too often the shortness of the game and the constant issues of needing to increase worker and food stores meant that there were only a few "correct" ways to play the game.
I'm giving this product 3 stars, because I don't think it's a bad game, or a poorly designed one - I just think it's not for everyone. If you're considering buying the game, I would recommend trying to find a copy to play through once, or perhaps looking for a recorded game to watch online - this isn't the leisurely "customize an awesome farm" game that I'd personally envisioned.
~ Ana Mardoll
19 of 20 found the following review helpful:
One of my two favorite games ever!May 05, 2010
By E. Lambeth
I LOVE Agricola! I'll explain why later, and try to break the game down for those who enjoy that type of thing:
OBJECT OF THE GAME:
Score more points than your opponents! But there's no point scoring during the game. Points are tallied at the end. The object is to build the best, most complete farm. What goes on a farm? Fenced pastures with stables, animals in those fences, fields of grain and vegetables, and your home, which starts as a two room shack that you'll want to build into a more solid house. With end-of-game scoring, you're penalized if you're lacking any type of animal, if you're lacking fields of grain or veggies, if you've got unused acreage, and if your house is a pathetic embarrassment that a homeless cowboy wouldn't bother sleeping in on a rainy evening. You've got to consider everything!
GAME MECHANICS:
The Mechanics are simple: The game is broken into 14 rounds, and in each round, you have a minimum of 2 turns. At the beginning of a round, you furnish the "action" board with a round's worth of supplies. Put a reed disc on the Reed area, put 3 wood pieces on the wood area, put a couple pieces of food on the Fishing area, put a sheep piece on the sheep action area, etc. When it's your turn, you take your family member (represented by a colored disc) and put it on one of the action spaces on the board. For that round, that action is yours and yours alone. So if you put your piece on the Wood action space, you get to collect the three wood on that space. You put the three wood pieces in your supply area. When the next person has a turn, they have to pick a different action other than taking wood, because you just took that one. Maybe they'll take the Clay action (which is a commodity needed to buy a fireplace or build other things). When it gets back to your turn, you now have one more turn this round. Perhaps you choose to plow a field. That allows you to put a field marker on your personal farm board. Now your opponents cannot use that action in this round.
When the round is over (when everybody has had their two turns), you begin the next round (unless there's a harvest), and the start of the round, again, has you filling the action board with supplies. 3 more wood, 1 more reed, one more clay, etc. If nobody took a wood action in the last round and there were already three wood on the wood space, now there's 6 wood on that space. Every round, things like wood, sheep, reed, stone, etc keep getting added to until somebody takes them. So on your turn you have to decide: Do I want to take those 3 wood, or can I risk not taking them and waiting till the next round, hoping nobody else takes it and I can grab 6 wood with just one turn?
STRATEGY:
You start off with two people (farmer and spouse) which gives you two turns. You can add a kid to your family, which gives you an extra turn (each family member gets one turn, so a family of 4 gets you four turns per round). But early on if you want to add that kid to give you that third turn per round, it's going to require you build another room on your shack. That's going to take some wood and some reed. But you also need wood for building fences. You need fences to hold more than 1 animal in your field. You need a stable to hold many of one kind of animal in a fenced area, and that's going to require some wood to build, too. Using up action after action just to get 3 wood per shot isn't going to cut the mustard, because you also have to plow fields (there's one action), fill it with grain (there's another action) or vegetables (another), and you still have to feed your family, because come harvest time, each family member needs two food to survive. The way scoring works, you really don't want to be caught at harvest time without enough food to feed your family. There are actions (turns) you can waste on grabbing food, and there are also actions that allow you to convert grain into food, and actions that allow you to buy a fireplace or hearth to cook animals and make them into food for your family. So what do you do with your turns? What will your opponent do? If there are a few sheep on the Sheep action and you're the only one with a fenced area on their farm, you can wait out taking that sheep until somebody else adds a fence, and that might get you extra sheep for that one action. So each turn is a big decision. What can I do to improve my farm, and if I don't take this action, will that action be available to me in the next round, with greater value?
It might be nice to snag the reed action when there's a couple reed sitting there, but wouldn't it be nice to spend the same single action on that reed when there's four reed on the reed action spot?
You cannot waste moves in this game. When you waste a move or make a bad move, it will end up costing you in the end. You'll have situations where you need food come harvest time which will require you bake bread, but you've only got one turn left and you still have to add grain (1 turn) and sow/bake bread (another turn). Damn, if you only had another kid!
You need bargain moves, and you need to anticipate what your opponent needs, so you can pass up actions now and take them later at a better bargain.
SCORING:
You get negative points for having unoccupied farmland, a lack of a certain type of animal, a lack of a veggie or grain, etc. The more kids you have, the more animals, the better the house, the more fenced stables, the more plowed fields, the more improvements on said houses, the more points you get.
WHY I LOVE THIS GAME:
When you finish the game and you have filled your field (sometimes you wont) and you've converted your little shack into a 4 room stone house and you have fields filled with grains and vegetables and you have cattle, pigs, and sheep roaming in fenced areas, you feel pretty damn good about yourself and all that time thinking and banging your head against the table and taking 5 minutes to think of the best move possible and saying "I know I know. I'm almost ready. I'm thinking!" ends up being worth it. It's a frustrating game when you've taken some bad risks and find yourself behind the 8 ball so to speak, but it's so much fun when you see your last 4 or 5 moves on the horizon and feel like you've got a great chance to make an impressive farm. And then when it's over, you just want to sit there and look at all you've done. :) Don't clear the board yet. I want to look a little longer and talk about why I just kicked ass at this game. :-p
I love this game because even after I've played what I consider to be a decent game, I feel like there's SO much more intricacies to learn about this game and better strategies to play. Every game requires a lot of thought and nervous tension while you wonder what your opponent is going to do, what you're going to do, and how you're going to feed your family.
THE RULEBOOK:
The rulebook is useful as a reference AFTER you know how to play. Visit youtube and look up the Agricola Review from Board Games with Scott in order to learn how to play.
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