Farmers like nice boards, too
Agricola – Kennerspiel
A newly ploughed field
2007 produced a good board game vintage. But one game outshone all others: Agricola. Uwe Rosenberg moved himself, after Bohnanza in the mass market segment, also into the front rank of designers in the segment of games for experienced players and has since then busily cemented this status. Lookout has grown into an established player in the German publishing community, albeit no longer an independent one, and for graphic designer Klemens Franz the game was a breakthrough, too - he, too is established firmly in the board game community.
Now, not even ten years after the first publication date, there is a completely revised new edition. The game itself has remained the same. If you are familiar with the original, you will instantly recognize the game and can start to play immediately without consulting the rules. I noted that the boards in the game are not square anymore, but rounded out and must be puzzled together. The graphics have been revised, but hat lost nothing of their charm which comes from their rather comics-like simplicity. The symbols have been somewhat modernized, which here and there has also resulted in shortening of texts.
Theme and topic have remained the same as well. We still govern the fate of a peasant family, send its members out to collect raw materials, to plough fields, to provide progeny or to any of the numerous other action cases so that we will own the most beautiful, biggest and most varied farm. All this under constant pressure from other players, who are keen on the same rare action cases and also with an eye on the next threatening harvest time, when we will have to feed all family members.
The biggest difference as to game play comes from the cards. Is in the original, each player is dealt, at the start of the game, seven Minor Improvements and seven Occupations, which are available only to him. This provides lots of variety, there is rarely a game where you would start with the same cards as in a previous one. The original game featured three decks of cards - Introductory, complex and interactive. A disadvantage of this multitude was, that balancing was not perfect and that some of the cards were banned my many gaming groups. But don’t get me wrong - given the sheer mass of cards, an excellent job was done in development and the main body of the cards could be played without any problems.
The new edition features only two decks: A and B. Those decks were reassembled completely and are not differentiated as to user groups. There are obviously a lot less cards than in the original, but the balancing is supposed to be better. But less cards also means that the same combinations could be drawn more often.
Over the years, a great many new decks for published for the original game. This can also be expected for this new edition, and there is nothing to prevent you from playing the new game with the old cards.
Components are only sufficient for four players. The original provided for five players. This has been established as a standard in the board game community, but for me is the biggest disadvantage of the new edition. At least for me, Agricola has always been one of the few outstanding strategy games that could be played by five players without problems.
The problem has already been remedied by an expansion for a 5thand 6th player, which means that in the end the new edition allows for one more player than the original.
Furthermore, the original featured rules for a streamlined and downgraded and therefore simpler family game. This has been taken out and a stand-alone Agricola Family game has been published instead to replace those rules. I can forgive this easily, because despite having played many games of Agricola, I never did play the family rules.
To acquire the full content of the original Agricola, you need to buy several boxes and invest a lot more money, but for this you receive the added value of a 6th player option and a somewhat more beautiful game with optimized cards. For most playing groups, the basic game will suffice.
However, all this does not change the fact that Agricola, in this new edition, still is a grandiose game, that can be called a classic among the modern, complex, strategic board games.
Markus Wawra
Players: 1-4
Age: 12+
Time: 30/120+
Designer: Uwe Rosenberg
Artist: Klemens Franz
Price: ca. 45 Euro
Publisher: Lookout Spiele 2016
Web: www.lookout-spiele.de
Genre: Worker placement
Users: For experts
Special: 1 player
Version: de
Rules: de en + others
In-game text: yes
Comments:
New edition
Markedly fewer cards
Only four can play the basic game
Extension for up to six players available
Revised design
Compares to:
Agricola, Caverna
Other editions:
Mayfair (en) and otherwise too many to list
My rating: 6
Markus Wawra:
Agricola is an ingenious game. Always was an ingenious game and still is an ingenious game. If someone asks me to name a game that I like to play, I still say Agricola. However, naturally, a re-edition must be compared to the original edition and, as a potential customer and owner of the original, I ask myself: Why should I pay for fewer cards and one player less? In a direct comparison with the original, the new edition easily comes out the worse, which is the reason that I have reduced my evaluation by one point, from 7 to 6, because, when there is a clearly better game, a maximum score is not justified. Which leaves the advantage that six players can play if you use the expansion. But for this rather rare occasion I still have Caverna on my shelf, which is very similar to Agricola and works for seven players.
Chance (pink): 1
Tactic (turquoise): 2
Strategy (blue): 3
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 2
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0