Because Boardgame Geek has a new #1…

For the last six months there has been quite a bit of buzz brewing on boardgamegeek about the “hot” new game from Germany.  That game has only really made it into retail channels in the U.S. in the last week or so.  Is it worth all the hype?

Puerto Rico has finally stepped off to the side.  Most of the hardcore BGGers still love the game, though most will admit that they don’t play it very often anymore, because they’ve played it to death.  So, it was inevitable that something would eventually rise up and de-throne the all-time BGG champ.

What does it mean to be the #1 ranked game on BGG?  Well, it means that the average rating, among BGG users who have rated that game, is higher than the rating for any other game.  Most games require something like a minimum of 100 ratings to really count, and there may be something like 100 “dummy” ratings of 5.0 factored into the math to help control rating inflation.  Since an awful lot of people on BGG have rated Puerto Rico over the years, and since many of those ratings were 9 or 10, with very few “bad” ratings, the game was able to hold the top of the averages.

The rise of Agricola in the ratings has been driven by hype to a large extent.  You don’t have to own a given game in order to be able to rate it on BGG.  After all, you may have been able to play it a couple of times at conventions, etc., and that may have been enough for you to rate the game.  The current Agricola ratings bloom is due in large part to an influx of 9s and 10s by people who have played it and who have liked it, while a lot of folks who might not normally go for such a game haven’t really weighed in yet with “mediocre” ratings to pull the overall rank back down a little.  In fact, as you can see by clicking here, Agricola is #1 on the basis of less than 3000 ratings, while Puerto Rico has more than 12000 ratings.

Is Agricola really a “9” or a “10”?  Is it worth the hype?

I’ve played it about three times now, and I have a copy on order.  The short answer, based on my experience, is that Agricola is a pretty good game if 1)you are the sort of person who spends way too much time on boardgamegeek, and 2)you dig the whole “farming” theme.

Agricola is a fairly “pricey” game at $70 retail.  For that, you get a LOT of bits and a lot of cards, even though only a small selection of the cards are in use for any given game.  Setting up all the bits can take a few minutes, and the game LOOKS complicated to people walking past the table, even if they can sort of relate to the whole “farming” theme.

Agricola falls into the genre of “worker placement” games.  There are 14 total rounds in the game.  You start with two farmers (husband and wife) who each get to perform a single action every round.  There’s only 1 space on the board for “plow a new field”, and the first player in the turn sequence to select that action is the ONLY player who gets to do that action that round.  Turn order doesn’t actually “pass”, but you become the new start player by using one of your actions to grab the start player token.  Usually it is good for you if the player to your right wastes an action to grab start player, but bad if the player to your left is the start player (because then you act last in the round).

The basic flow of the game is that you are trying to make life better for your two farmers.  Anything that you do will probably get you a few victory points at the end of the game, but some things get you there a little more efficiently.  Anything that you completely ignore will make you lose points.  Thus, having four or more cattle at the end of the game gets you +4 VP, while having no cattle gets you -1 VP. 

Because of the “race” for available actions, you have to find a way to “zig” when the other players “zag”.  That means concentrating on plowing fields and planting crops if the other players are grabbing all the wood, building fences, and raising livestock. 

The big catch to the game is that your farmers need to eat.  Each farmer token in your family eats two tokens worth of food during harvest season.  Harvest does not occur after every single round, but occurs more often in the second half of the game.  It’s not that hard to get food, but it is a challenge to balance your food production with your drive for victory points.  Adding new family members gets you more VP and gives you more actions each round, but also more mouths to feed.

You can play Agricola as a “family game” without all of the super-special occupation and improvement cards, but is by playing the “gamer’s game” that you begin to see the real universe of replayability here.  There are several different decks of cards from “Easy” to “Complex” to “Interactive”, and the players agree on which deck to use at the start of play.  At the beginning of the game, you get 7 occupation cards and 7 minor improvement cards.  At no point do you get to draw new cards.  Yes, some games you may just get lucky and draw some cards that have good synergy and play well with one another.  Paradoxically, all of the added strategy and complexity that comes with these cards also increases the randomness and thus the luck factor in the game.  If you hate boardgames with too much of a luck factor, then you may actually prefer the slightly more “dry” family version. 

Agricola scales nicely from 1–5 players.  The game includes playable solitaire rules right out of the box.  As the player volume increases, additional actions are placed on the board at the start of the game.  A four player game will definitely play out differently than a 5 player game because the pool of available actions at the start has a few key differences.

So, once again the positives… Agricola has lots and lots of wooden bits, and hundreds of cards.  It has a fairly logical “economic simulation” built in.  Lots of action management and resource management.  Lots of different paths to victory.  Tough, agonizing choices on each and every turn, without sliding into total analysis paralysis.  The theme does work.  Do you want to eat Dolly the family pet this turn?  It will help out with your food shortage, but if you keep Dolly alive you might be able to raise a big flock of sheep later in the game.  Baaaa!

No doubt the shiny newness will wear off after a while.  Maybe a few grumpy folks will play this game once or twice and submit mediocre ratings that will drag Agricola down and put Puerto Rico back into its #1 spot on BGG.  On the other hand, maybe the old king is dead forever.  If you are at all interested in “heavy” Eurogames, then this one probably does deserve a place on your shelf.  Get it now while supplies last.

If you care about being at all trendy when it comes to boardgames, then you owe it yourself to at least try the game.  As busy as the board looks, it’s really not that hard to learn the basic rules, though it will take you quite a bit longer to learn what all the cards do.

Comments are welcome, especially from those who have joined the Agricola fraternity and have actually played the game.