Agricola

Of course, this reminds me of one of my favorite games and one that I've played on the table a few times, but online many, many, many times.

And this is Agricola.

Agricola is really fun because of that brutal Consideration at the beginning of how do I feed my people and players who aren't able to get the engine going end up spending way, way more actions than they would like over the course of the game, just gathering food for their families.

Whereas if you get lucky or.

are careful and skilled and you're able to get a engine in place that generates food then your turns in the later rounds are about improving your farm and getting more stuff which gets you more efficiency but there is a really compelling fight for those food tokens and the penalty for being short on food tokens is dramatic in a game where a good score is 50 a very good score is 50 if you miss one food token you lose three points And it's pretty uncommon to just miss one.

Often you're missing three or four.

And then, you know, you've taken a third of your score away or a quarter of your score away.

So Agricola is difficult because of that really tight boundary.

And what's interesting is I write a book about Eurogames.

And in this chapter about Eurogames, with Agricola as its focus, but in this chapter about Eurogames, I talk about, very briefly, the difference between American and German game design in the 80s and 90s.

And one of the things I say is that German games focus more on economics.

And I say this is not just the Second World War, but it's also reflective of the Wirtschaftswunder in the 50s and 60s and kind of the country Germany was.

For sure, it has resource systems because...

By the very nature of these games, they kind of have to have.

But I think Agricola is absolutely not a capitalist game.

Agricola is about subsistence.

And I think in terms of its impact on the hobby, I feel like Uwe Rosenberg comes along and says, oh, trading, I'll make Bonanza.

Oh, farming, I'll make Agricola.

It's almost like he looked at some of these things that people liked and said, hey, I'll take that and riff on that.

And then that leads to this whole German sort of board game thing.

But I think one of the big impacts is that it just put Rosenberg on the map.

And in fact, you know, it wouldn't be for 10 more years that Agricola would come out.

And Agricola... completely changed how we thought about Rosenberg as a designer because up to this point, he was the Bonanza guy.

Like, he was the...

A little how Klaus Teuber became, like, the emperor of the Catan Empire.

It reminds me a lot of Galaxy Tracker in a different way, because that's another game that starts off being really fun and then isn't for me.

I know we talked about it in a previous cast.

We talked about Agricola in a previous cast.

It's worker placement, polyomino, puzzle.

When people think of Uwe Rosenberg worker placement, they're thinking of Agricola, they're thinking of Caverna, and they're thinking of A Feast for Odin.

I've played all three, and this is my favorite of those three.

I know a lot of other people have played Newsford, and I forget, there's another one out there that people love.

Patchwork comes out before A Feast for Odin does.

But anyway, I think I would like it.

I think Agricola, I enjoy it more every time I play it.

But I feel like I would have more fun with A Feast for Odin, I think, truthfully, if I'm being honest.

... that you haven't acquired yet.

Uh, okay, so the one that I put on my list was Agricola.

This is a game that I picked up as part of a collection early in my hobby, in my introduction to the hobby back in like 2016 or 2017.

I had played it once before and thought it was very interesting, but it felt very heavy to me at an early introduction.

So yes, uh, I have sold or traded a game, then later decided I wanted in my collection again.

I have another, like, 7 to 10 that I could list that I regret selling and probably will never acquire again, but kind of regret moving on.

Those I'll save for another episode, but Agricola's my one for today.

Well, Tim, that's interesting.

yes i am something of a What I like, I do tend to like sort of, I like a lot of medium heavy stuff, but actually specific things.

I like Agricola and I keep being disappointed that no other Euro is Agricola.

I'm in the minority camp who think that Agricola is way better than A Feast for Odin, but A Feast for Odin is just still an amazing game.

These

are

Yeah,

go ahead.

But if Uwe Rosenberg had read your blog and taken your advice, Agricola would never exist.

If you wanted a second sheep-based game, a game that has sheep in it but it's not a significant part, well, any Uwe Rosenberg game has lots of sheep.

You got your Agricola and whatnot.

But I would also point to Tipperary, which has a mechanism where the person who gets the most sheep, uh, wins, or the most connected sheep gets a sort of longest train type award.

Next up, we have Swimming with Men.