Agricola is usually the first or second ranked board game of all time according to Board Game Geek.
In Agricola (Latin for "farmer"), you're a farmer in a wooden shack with your spouse and little else. On a turn, you get to take only two actions, one for you and one for the spouse, from all the possibilities you'll find on a farm: collecting clay, wood or stone; building fences; and so on. You might think about having kids in order to get more work accomplished, but first you need to expand your house. And what are you going to feed all the little rugrats?
Agricola is a turn-based game. There are 14 game turns plus 6 harvest phases (after turn 4, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 14). Each player starts with two playing tokens (farmer and wife) and thus can take two actions per turn. There are multiple options, and while the game progresses, you'll have more and more: first thing in a turn, a new action card is flipped over.
Problem: Each action can be taken just once per turn, so it's important to do some things with high preference. Each player also starts with a hand of 7 Occupation cards (of more than 160 total) and 7 Minor Improvement cards (of more than 140 total) that he may use during the game if they fit in his/her strategy. This amounts to countless strategies, some depending on your card hand.
Sometimes it's a good choice to stay on course, sometimes you better react on what your opponents do.
Agricola can also be played without cards (family game) and can even be played solo.
Board Game Contents
- 9 double-sided game boards
- 138 goods tokens
- 36 food tokens
- 54 animal cubes
- 25 person tokens
- 75 fences
- 20 stables
- 24 hut tiles
- 33 stone house/field tiles
- 3 guest/ claim markers
- 9 multiplication tokens
- 1 scoring pad
- Games rules
- 1 starting player marker
- 360 cards
- 2 deck cards
- 169 occupation cards
- 149 improvement cards
- 14 round cards
- 16 action cards
- 5 begging cards
- 5 summery cards
Agricola Awards
- 2009 BoardGamer.ru Game of the Year.
- 2009 Lucca Games Best of Show (Italy), Side Award Best Game Mechanic
- 2009 Nederlandse Spellenprijs 2009, Winner
- 2009 Ludoteca Ideale 2009, Games of the Year
- 2009 Jogo do Ano 2008 Spiel Portugal (Portugal), Winner
- 2009 Gra Roku Game of the Year (Poland), Winner
- 2009 Gra Roku - Gamers' Choice (Poland), Winner
- 2009 Gra Graczy - Gamesfanatic.net (Poland), Winner
- 2009 Golden Ace (France), Special Jury
- 2009 Les 3 Lys (Canada), Hobbyist Game Winner
- 2008 BoardGameGeek Golden Geek, Winner, Game of The Year
- 2008 Spiel des Jahres (Germany), Winner, Special Prize for Complex Game.
- 81st game to be added to the Austrian Hall of Games.
- 2008 J.U.G. (Portugal), Winner, Game of the Year
- 2008 Deutscher Spiele Preis (Germany), Winner, Game of the Year
- 2008 International Gamers Award Winner, General Strategy/Multi-player Game
- 2008 Hra roku (Czech Republic), Winner
- 2008 Spiel der Spiele (Austria) Spiele Hit für Experten
- 2008 Tric Trac d'or (France), Winner, Game of the Year
- 2008 Jda "Juego del Año en España" (Spain), Winner http://www.premiojda.es/
- 2007 Meeples' Choice Award Winner.
