Agricola

Welcome to Replayable, where we go into depth on our favorite tabletop games that keep us coming back again and again. I'm the start player Todd, and today I'm joined by David and Paul. For our 22nd episode, we'll be discussing the modern classic Agricola. It was designed by Uwe Rosenberg and released by Lookout Games in 2007. Are you guys ready to reap what you have sown? I've been milking and plowing so long. Yeah, we'll see how this goes. I'm so hungry. I had to beg for food for my dinner.

Agricola is a strategic board game where players become farmers striving for success. It is a cutthroat worker placement game, balancing resources and family growth. You will have to plow fields, build fences, raise livestock, and build improvements to cultivate a thriving farm with limited actions and ever-growing needs. It's hard to believe this game's been around for, what, 16, 17 years now.

Yeah, when you said you wanted to do this episode of the podcast, I was like, oh my God, I've played Agricola once in the last 10 years. I need to refamiliarize myself with this game. Right? And it's interesting because it's the game that dethroned Puerto Rico as number one on board game geek. But then in August of 2008, Agricola took that position. So obviously it was really popular back then. Paul, you were saying that you had to refamiliarize yourself.

What has stood out to you about this game after being away from it for so long? I have forgotten how to play well. It is very difficult. And I don't remember feeling it was difficult back when it was popular. So I think there's been a generational shift in board games. And this happens all the time. But in my mind, you know, Agricola more or less defined a generation of board gaming. Yeah, I'm finding that too in the games that we've been playing recently.

I always knew it was a tough game, but I don't remember it being this hard where I'm having, I was saying we were playing last night and I was saying, I feel like it's way late in the game and I'm still scrambling to get my dinner on the table for my kids every harvest. Like I feel like I used to have my feeding strategy set up and running by round two. And then it's just, you know, filling in the cracks as we go.

But now that gets late in the game, I'm like, where am I going to get this food this time? And it's I'm having a tough time. And when you say round two, you mean the second harvest stage two? Yeah, by the second harvest. First harvest, I'm, you know, picking up food where I can, maybe fishing, things like that. But by second harvest, I usually I like to have a plan in place. I know what I'm doing. Whether you're a vegan or carnivorous carnivore. That's it. Yeah, vegan or carnivorous.

Well, I think of it as baking or ranching, baking or ranching or some combo. But usually you choose one and kind of lean more that way. Yeah. So back to Todd's question. I think games today are very different. Board games are largely about efficiency, at least this style of board game. And that has not changed. But today, I think the efficiencies come from specialization, like economies of scale, whereas a curricula is the opposite of that.

Agricola is basically saying, hey, the first thing you get of each type is worth more than every marginal addition you get after that. So it totally encourages you to spread out, diversify and do a little bit of everything. Yeah, I was going to bring that up later, but you are absolutely right. And even unlike later games by Uwe Rosenberg, which encouraged you to specialize in something, there was just so many choices. This is you should try to do a little of everything.

And it almost feels foreign in that respect. Well, it's almost Kenesia-esque in that aspect where you're only as strong as your weakest point. That's the Kenesia bend on it. But on this one, yeah, it's diminishing returns. As you get more, if you just go get a bunch of sheep, they start to become less and less valuable for you. So you're better off getting a little bit of everything than a lot of something. Right. I never thought of Agricola like you're only as strong as your weakest point.

I'm going to have to ponder that. Well, it's not totally Kenesia-esque that way because especially like in a four-player game, you might take a couple of negatives. Maybe you didn't get a cattle or something like that. That's what happened to me last night. Yep. Yeah. And that's okay. It's only minus one. In a Kenesia game, it means your total overall score is minus one if it's doing Kenesia scoring. But in this case, it's not totally like the Kenesia game. Thank goodness. Right. Right.

So that's interesting because you mentioned it's only minus one if you don't have any cattle. That's another one of those phenomena that we have talked about on other games, the idea of focusing too much on avoiding a negative score when the repercussion of it is actually pretty low. Right? If it's minus three points because I was unable to feed a family member, right? It's minus three points for every food token you lack. That you're short.

Yeah. But it's only minus one if I don't have any cattle, then it may not be worth it for me to build out the infrastructure for cattle if I'm only going to lose a point for not having any. I think that's accurate, but I don't think you can think of it as minus one because that first cattle gets you one point. So it's a two-point differential. Right. Yeah, that's true. I think it's still minus three for every food token, I'm sure.

Yeah. So one of the little tricks I do when I'm playing is I think of harvest as a way to score six points per person because every food I turn in is worth three points. That's just a little trick I play in my brain. Right. The power of the food. Yeah, I don't think I've ever, maybe the first few games I played, I took a begging card, but that's my number one priority. I don't care if I score zero, but I'm still not going to take, like I'm going to feed my family.

It's almost like a point of pride. Yeah. So the first game I played after Todd told me we're going to do this episode, I think I took three begging cards and I was like, what is happening? The other thing that I've been surprised as we've reacclimate ourselves to it is just what a brutal game it is. So Paul, you mentioned how games have changed. One of the other ways in which they have changed is giving you other alternatives, methods of worker placement that are either a separate economy.

So you don't run into a lot of competition for them. Like there are enough swim lanes for everybody, or there are other options that are equally as good or maybe 80% as good. Like a duplication space. Right. Caverda. In this game, when you need wood to build fences or build an extra room and someone swoops in and grabs it before you needed it, especially if you don't think that they needed it as badly, it's just like a kick in the teeth. And now you're sent scrambling.

I had gotten unaccustomed to that level of conflict in a game and it was actually refreshing. Right. You know, I remember one of the very first articles, serious articles I read about board game strategy was about Agricola and it was basically talking about how the game forces you to evaluate your opportunity cost every single turn. And not only that, but if you want to play well to win, you also have to evaluate every other player's opportunity cost to accurately evaluate your own.

Yeah, absolutely. Todd and I, we were just talking about that. You were talking about clay in the game that we're playing now is you got to, you have to weigh that out. Maybe I could take the five clay or maybe I could get six clay next time. Or maybe somebody else would just yoink that clay before I get it. Exactly.

Even though it doesn't look like you may, you guys may need it or be able to use it as well as I could right now, you may still get it just because it's a lot of clay and it's there now. Yeah. Well, that was the game we played last night. There was a spot with five clay in it. There were two spots with five clay in it and I wanted to build an oven or whatever it is I was trying to do. So Paul took five clay and then there was another spot with five clay. I thought, well, Paul's got five.

Greg had four or five or whatever he had. They looked like they had enough clay. So I went and did something else. The next turn, Paul took the other clay. So he's got 10 clay. He's like built a throne of clay that he just sat on and taunted me and I didn't have an onion and I had to feed my family mush. Well, I saw that. I was like, I can renovate my house and then add on with a clay room. This is great. I know. You guys are taking all the wood. So I'm going to take all the clay.

That was my thinking. I hope it worked out well for you because it really hurt. I think you won the game. So I think it worked out all right. That idea of picking up or at least having the opportunity to get what you want. Let's talk about that first player dilemma. Is it worth taking a slightly lesser action in order to capture it? And how important is it for you to capture that first player and first opportunity to select on the next round?

I prioritize start player when I see something that's going to be good next round, but nobody wants now. Like early in the game, if somebody leaves the three wood, then I'll say, oh, start player means I could take it for six. Or like we're playing in a board game arena game right now and there's one cattle sitting there and we just finished a harvest. So whoever's going first has a shot to pick up two cows. Yeah, but the person with the start player doesn't have an empty pen to put them in.

So that's going to be a problem for me. Oh yeah. I really thought one of you guys was going to take start player. I haven't looked at the game, but I assumed I would not be getting start player because of the two cattle. Well, you're not getting start player, but you might be getting the two cattle. Well, I'll have to evaluate my opportunity cause that's the game, right? But I think going taking start player isn't a total, usually a total of suboptimal move.

Like you have some minor improvements that you want to get out and that spot is start player and minor improvement. So it's not just going to start player, which would feel like a complete loss of tempo, but yeah, getting into that position gets you out. You know, that's an interesting point because in our game last night, I only took start player one time because I hated every single improvement in my hand. Yeah, but you were going right after Greg, who was just super in love with start player.

So he kept snatching it back. The left right binding in the game, like where you're seated can have a big effect on how well you do. Right. So that's the other thing that I wanted to ask is, especially in a three player game, is it okay just to be in second place? It's good enough. Yeah. I think it doesn't matter in three player, four player is when you always want to be second. Right. Right. Yeah. But a three player, I'm happy to go last the whole game actually.

And is that just because there are enough spots to do things in three player? It doesn't matter. I, I feel like there is, I don't know. You want to take some opportune start players when it's going to give you a big advantage. Like we talked about two cows or a whole bunch of resources. I remember 10 years ago, never pursuing farming. I was always pursuing ranching, but I tried that a couple of months ago and I just crashed and burned.

So now I've just been doing the planting every game and it's been working out really well for me. Probably because everyone else you've been playing with has been trying to ranch. Yeah. It's a group thing, right? Let's talk about the importance of food longevity then, because either one of them, right, whether you're talking about having enough animals that can breed or you've got enough fields sown that you can have a surplus of produce that you can later re sow and be able to harvest.

Any one of those creates a food source that is going to last a while. What's the importance of that? How, how much did you prioritize coming up with a renewable food source or at least a refreshable one? Well, if you think of each food that you feed a person as being worth three points, I think it's priority number one.

It's the whole reason I play is to find the food and find an efficient way to get the food, which baking bread is far and away the best way to generate food, but there's only one or possibly two ways to do that depending on the number of players. So you could get blocked every single time. Right? Well, that constant burden of feeding your family, I mean, that's to me the crux of the game. It's a player versus player.

I'm trying to beat you guys, but it's also player versus game where the entire game, I've got a hungry toddler tugging at my leg, you know, the whole time. It's like, I'm trying to get things up and running, but we got to stop every once in a while. And like, I get to come up with this other economy, like work on this other food economy that I've got going. You're usually your cards, your, your minor improvements and your occupations at the beginning of the game.

As you parse through those, those start to point you in the direction of how you're going to be doing this. So if you've got the Baker or if you've got, what is it? The farm hand or who helps you build the fences or you've got cards that's going to help you focus on one or the other. That certainly helps. And then hopefully the other players will start to fall into line where not everybody's trying to do the same thing you're trying to do.

And in that case, then maybe you'd better take that start player. Right? Yeah. That makes me think about how you have to do everything anyway. So what the cards are actually doing is they're, they're saving you actions. Yes. Yes. Right. And there's another way to save actions.

And that would be a very friendly, like collusive table where you just all plan out, okay, nobody take the Grove except a player one can take it on turn four player two can take it on turn eight and then player three could take it on turn 12. And so everybody, if they collude would maximize what they got, but that's not how we play. Who are you talking to? This is us. We don't do that. It just, it makes me realize how deep in psychological the game is.

You know, that's almost like a prisoner deliver there where you cooperate or not. There's enough resources for all of us to build our farms and get everything we need. If we all just do it in order, like Paul saying and play nice. Yeah. Everybody could like score 60 points if we all did that. Yeah. And then there's six Reed sitting there and I don't really have a plan for Reed, but I know Todd needs it. I I'll just take it off the body use for it later. Just in case that is how I play.

Yeah. The tragedy of the comments. It's, you know, there's enough in this farm to feed everybody. As long as everybody takes only what they need. As soon as somebody takes too much, now we've got a problem. It's not that it's too much. What I'm saying is they're taking it too early. Yes. Oh yeah. So if we have the automatic resource growth, we could be super efficient with our actions if we colluded, but we don't play that way. And then someone goes and takes 10 clay. Mea culta.

This game is supposed to be set in central Europe in 1670. Let's assume living conditions weren't all that robust and it's understandable why your priority is feeding. Is there a plot to this game? Does it generate a narrative? Do you feel like it does? They tell you right up front. I don't know when you were reading your intro in the beginning. Did you talk about the subtitle? It's a Greek law, the 17th century, not an easy time for farming. I did not know that.

I saw it when I was reading the second edition rules and I thought there was no way my first edition rules say that. So I went back and read it and sure enough, it's there. It's not on the box, but it's on the rules. Okay, I'm looking at my box right now. Thank you. Yeah, not an easy time for farming. They told you up front. This is not an easy game. Although I mean, it makes me wonder when was an easy time for farming like, wow, 14th century, that games for beginners, right? I don't know.

21st century seems to be pretty darn good. You know, you've got automated driving combines and you sit back and, you know, watch your fields get plowed on your app. The time of the dwarves was an easy time. And if you don't have anything to do, just go adventuring. Right? Exactly. So, of course, we're talking about Caverna, which is derived from this or re-implements Agricola. Do we want to spend any time talking about the similarities or the differences between the two?

Yeah, you know, I want to say that when Caverna came out, I hated it. I'm like, this is Agricola on training wheels. That's what I would tell people. It makes things too easy. There's always a backup every turn. You can't be blocked by your opponents. Not really. But today I enjoy Caverna much more. Okay, that's pretty funny. And talking about things that have been released, I didn't realize this. I was reading an article and it said that over 1000 cards have been released for this game.

Oh my God. Amongst all of the different expansions. There's the extra decks which can run anywhere from 80 to 160 cards right around in that range.

But there's also some, aren't there just over the years, some, I don't know what you would call them, bespoke decks or decks that are specific to where you might have famous designers in the deck or famous celebrities from the board game world or something like that, where they're almost like novelty decks and not necessarily improvements on the game. There are novelty decks and then even going back like 2008, they started releasing geography specific decks.

Like there's the O with an umlaut deck for Austria or there's the CZ deck for the Czech Republic. And they've just made lots of those that get you into the cultures that were specific to a region, which is pretty cool if you want to explore those. I seem to remember the Z deck was from when Z man games got the license to do the North American board of the game. So they then came to Z deck.

Yes. Well, those cards you're talking about Todd, I think they're the answer to the question you had about plot or narrative. The game without cards, I would say absolutely not. But once you introduce the cards, they have this resonance as I talked about the dominion podcast where you say, oh yes, I recognize this object or this occupation. And that's awesome that it does this in the game, which aligns with how I would imagine it. To create a lasting narrative.

And I'm going to say this again, because this is one of the, honestly, this is one of the critiques that I have for the game is like when we're done, no one goes back and says, Hey, remember that time I grew a carrot? It's not a compelling event. No, you know, there can be compelling events. Like remember that time I built that six room mansion, but those are few and far between. Right. Yeah. Well, that's because I think this game, the destination is always the same.

You always end up in the same place, maybe further down the street or not as far down the street as the last time, but you're always going to the same place. Really the story is how you got there that I had this huge pig farm or I had, you know. Yeah. I think the stories you tell after a game of Agricola are like, remember that time I screwed you over by taking the clay? 100%. Yes. Yep. Remember that time I made you go begging on the streets? That's the story you tell. Right.

Okay. I'll buy that. So then Paul, you had mentioned there was someone who optimized the single player game by building or improving in an unusual way. Do you remember what that was? I did not find the article, but yes, this was, you know, 12 years ago or so there was a challenge on if you pick a perfect hand of 14 cards and you play the solo game, what is the maximum possible score?

Okay. And I don't remember the specifics, but I think somebody got over a hundred points by basically almost filling their board with stone rooms. It was a palace that they built. Right. Okay. That's hilarious. But when we talk about upgrading, how important do you think it is to upgrading? Is it worth the time and effort to upgrade your house to clay and then to stone? I think it depends on the cards you get.

If you have the occupation and the minor improvements that are going to make that easy, I think, I feel like the last two times we played, Greg came up with the card that you can expand your house for only two of the resource or something like that. Yeah. I had that one too less than what you were supposed to pay.

Yeah. So if you get a couple of those cards just right, and then maybe the one that gives you stone or something like that, you may find yourself in a place where you just have a ton of stone and it's very easy for you to do that or to decide, do you build five rooms and then upgrade to stone or do you build the stone and then start upgrading rooms of stone?

And I think just the cards that you have dictate if you're going to go that direction because you are its opportunity cost, you're probably not going to get there and have a full complement of animals, vegetables and grain. But if you've got the cards to do it, it'll tell you that's how you got to get there. Yeah. The stone house is really hard. I always try to renovate to clay. Okay. Yeah. Because you're just turning zero points into three or four or five points. Right.

Well, but going to stone is turning three or four or five points into what? Six, eight or 10 points, right? Yes. But the stone is much more difficult to accumulate. Yeah. Right. That's what I said. Unless you've got a card that's going to just put it in your lap, it's really hard to do. Right. Can we talk about the cards a little bit? Because you know, you make a list for our show notes of all the mechs. I think it's funny that as the hobby grows, there's some interesting mechanisms in here.

Like variable player powers. I don't know why Agricola says it has variable player powers. I don't have that expansion or I'm not sure where that comes from. Well, it's probably your occupation and upgrade cards that you start with because that's unique to you. True. Yeah. Well, is it though? So that was the main thing I wanted to talk about is I think we got to talk about the cards.

And in some ways, does Agricola have an Amon-Rey problem that all things being equal, the hand you're dealt is going to determine who wins the game. Yes. That's why most people prefer to draft the cards. Right. Right. And we've been playing recently without drafting. Like last night we were playing, Greg just kept coming up with these amazing cards and Paul and I are like, where, what is happening? Where are you getting these cards? Like everything he plays is amazing.

He did have to do some day labor because he was spending so many actions playing cards out of his hand. He did not have his cards. And his cards were beating him. Right. Right. The first edition that I have, it gives you a few variants to kind of deal with that. Like a draft, there's a mulligan variant, there's draw 10, discard three, things like that. The second edition, I was reading through the second edition rules a little bit closely.

There's an addendum booklet and it has a bunch of variants for distributing the cards that are played by some other designers and kind of celebrities in board gaming. So I saw one that looked great from Rudiger Dorn is basically says, here's how Rudiger Dorn plays. So he had some options about how he does it.

And so other designers are getting in the game and that it seems like this is a little bit of a problem in a good game and it does need a solution and there's 10 solutions out there and I don't know which one is the best at this point. So you would call these solutions or maybe technicalities and not house rules? I would call them official variants. Even the Rudiger Dorn, I guess it was a house rule. It's been upgraded. It's Rudiger Dorn's house rule, but it's printed in the rules now.

So now that elevates it. Got it. Acceptable. So Dave, are you saying you feel like there should be one draft rule to rule them all? No, but I'm saying that when you sit down to play the game and this will come up in house rules when we get that in the topics, but when you sit down to play the game, I think you need to have one of these variants in play, decide which one you're going to do. I think just getting 14 cards and good luck, I think there's just too much. Yeah, I actually grew with you.

I remember people back in the day would mix the different decks together and then just play with what they were dealt. I feel like the designer, Uwe, he split these decks into small groups for balance reasons so you could deal them out and go. Once you start mixing them together, it's complete chaos. You have to correct the chaos with drafting. Yeah, absolutely. Let's move on to the prompts. So weight in complexity on board game geek scale of one to five.

How would you rate the complexity of a Gricola? Dave, why don't you kick us off? As much as we were saying how hard it is, I probably would give it a three. I might be talked into it being a four, but the rules overhead, it's not really that difficult. In fact, in a teach, you can just teach the new cards as they come out. You just have to give a general idea, but later as the cards come out and say, well, now here's how this is going to come into play.

But for the most part, it's all straightforward. The iconography is good. It's very easy to get through a game and build some sort of farm where it is a little more difficult I think is going to come in the next category. All right, Paul, how about you? Yeah, I think it's your opponents that make the game so difficult. We played by accident the family variant of this game and gosh, it's easy and simple. The one without cards, you mean? Exactly. Without cards.

So yeah, I'm 100% agreeing with Dave. Add the cards in. It's a three. So with the cards, it's a three and without it, it's even lighter. Wow. Okay. I had it down as a four. It feels like it's a punishing game of trying to find the right synergies and that's playing with the card. So I would say, yeah, the family version is lighter. It might even be a two, but for me, I had it down as a four for weight. But let's talk about strategy.

So how much opportunity is there for strategy and long-term planning? Same scale, one to five. Paul? There is, especially with the cards in your hand, there's so much long-term planning you can do and then you have to reevaluate every single time your opponent takes an action. So for me, the strategy is a four. All right. Yeah, I agree with that 100%. It's, you know, we're all trying to do the same thing. It's very straightforward what you're trying to do.

Here's a list of the 10 categories you need to get points in, but how you're going to get there, you have to kind of zig and zag along the way, but you have to early in the game get some ideas in place, mainly for subsistence, like we've been talking about, is getting your feeding plan in place and then while you start filling in everything else. So for sure, at least a four. At least a four. Well, I'm the first to admit I am not good at this game.

And I think already we're coming up with a difference in opinion because I had strategy down as a three. And that was because, yeah, you need to have that strategy, but it's so difficult sometimes when everyone else is getting in your way and taking things that you don't think that they are going to take or in a position to benefit from right now.

And that whole idea of pushing your luck, in other words, letting a space go unclaimed because maybe there's another one that you think it's going to be more hotly contested. Strategy seems to give way to tactics and suddenly the strategy gets compromised and you're scrambling to catch up. So for me, I'd say it's a three, but I can understand. And perhaps I just need to get better, right? Get good kid. And strategy could be a four. Yeah. You know, can we talk a little about that, Todd?

Let's do it. So that decision space of whether to take what you desire now or wait, is that more tactical or more strategic? To me, it feels tactical. Okay. If I take what I need now, then I'm guaranteeing that I'll be able to get it. If I'm waiting, and it may not be just to get to another round to get more resources of that type, I mean, that's certainly a consideration.

But there are a lot of times where it's like, well, I want to get this six wood, but darn it, there's also three read out there. And I know I'm going to need the read sooner or later. So do I take the read while it's available, hoping that you guys don't need wood? Well, yeah. So, you know, some early strategic thinking that I do in the game is, do I want to try and force my way into three plowed fields before the first harvest?

Or do I want to try and build my house a third room, crossing my fingers that an early family growth is going to come out after the harvest? Right? That's all. All right. That's what you try to do. Got it. I'll jot a note down here and try to do that myself. Well, I think understanding the cards that are there, that the orders that they may come out, you have a long term or at least a mid range strategy in place that I need to get some fields planted.

I need to get a third room in my house, you know, as soon as I can. So those sorts of things. And there's very specific steps you need to get there. I'm going to need some wood. I'm going to need some reed. I'm going to need a family. It's not family growth anymore. I'm going to need to wish for children and those kinds of things. So that strategy, that sort of at least mid and long term thinking, like those steps are kind of laid out before you.

And then tactically is how you have to kind of zig and zag as you go. And you got to jump on opportunities when they're there or sometimes take a suboptimal move to set you up for the next turn or something like that. But so it's a it's a nice balance of both, I think. Yeah, I'm glad we talked about it. Then luck. How much do you think luck plays a factor? And let's stick with the same scale of one to five. I'll go first. For me, I think it's a two.

I think that the influence of luck, there really isn't a lot of room. I mean, the randomness is what in the cards that you draft at the beginning or the order in which the action cards come out during each stage, you know, we could argue that you need to sometimes be lucky and that players leave something for you that you'd like. But I have it down as a two. What did you guys have? I put a three and I think my opinion has been colored by our recent plays where we have not been drafting.

So the combination of playing with the cards you're dealt and the seating order that you're dealt seems like it had a lot of luck to it. That's why I gave it a three. Yeah, I think it's a three just out the box. But as you put in drafting variants or some way to mitigate the cards, then it drops to a two. Yeah, I agree. Do we consider sitting to the right of a player who's like first happy to get that first player all the time? Is that luck or is that just knowing your players?

I think once you draft the seating order becomes less important. Yeah, got it. Okay. Theme. How much do we think the theme has been integrated with this game? We talked about this a little bit. I think that it really resonates well and helps the player understand the meaning for everything and kind of just shortcut each action and what it does without having to spend a lot of rules or pages in the rule book explaining it. There's no real narration or stories. So I actually gave it a four.

But after our earlier talk, I'm wondering if that's too high. I don't know. I've got it as a five. I think it's a great theme. And any time the theme is informing the mechanics of the game or the other way around, then that always bumps it up for me is that I get a kid and the kid doesn't eat as much. And then now our family is growing so we can do more work and getting some cows, getting some pigs. I think it all works together very well with the mechanisms very well.

That's so true, Dave. I mean, you're just reminding me of all the modern games we play where people are constantly asking what happens in this exact situation? We're like, oh, let's look it up in the rule book. Agricola doesn't have that. You understand it out of the box. Yeah. You can have a cow as a pet in your house, but not two. That's ridiculous. And if you can't, it'll wander off. I mean, that makes sense. Oh, my gosh. Makes perfect sense. All right.

So this past weekend, we had a get together and one of my best friends after a few drinks was talking about how he wants to get a house cow. I'm not kidding. Wait, is he an Agricola player? No, no. He's like, look how cute this little cow is. It's just adorable. And I'm looking at it. It's a Highland cow. And I'm like, dude, these things get to be like 1200 pounds. That's not a house pet. He's like, they don't stay the size. We're like, no, it doesn't stay. Cute little calf.

No, I thought the Highland cows are the ones that stay small. I mean, we could look at it. We looked it up and no, they get anywhere from 1000 to like 1300 pounds. That's funny that you did that this weekend because I went to a birthday party and the parting gifts that all the people got was a little keychain with a Highland cow on it. Oh, there you go. What's with that glitch in the matrix? Highland cows. It's in the water.

My wife sent me a post about a Highland cow saying we need to get one for our backyard. Oh, so they're a thing. They're a thing. It's in the water. All right. I mean, you know how they have labradoodles and things like that. Maybe these are cow doodles. I have no idea. I don't know. Anyway, before we move on from Paul, Paul, don't you have a story recently where your wife asked if you had a game about farming? Am I misremembering this? Yes. My wife is on a homesteading kick.

And so she said, let's play a Gricola. It's been forever since we played it. And so she was looking for the theme. Yeah. And we played it and we sat side by side and I said, okay, let's let's have a friendly game so we can both do well. And by the end, she was like, I remember why I hate this game. She said she hates it because it left her feeling unfulfilled. Like she made all these plans and the game ended before she could complete them.

Yeah. Well, you should remind her the 17th century, not an easy time for farming. So Dave, I think your score of five on theme is funny because you have like the first version of the game that has like cubes, right? You mean the best version? Yeah. No, I didn't say that. I got the version. I think it was maybe the Z man games first edition where the cubes had been replaced with disks. And I even went online. I found this sticker sheet I could print out that had the little icons of the resources.

I got a whole punch that made, you know, that it was the right size. And I stickered all those disks. And then I hear that Lookout Games is releasing packs of veggie meatballs and an anipoles. And this was like the first game that I actively tricked out, right? I went out of my way to get the extra goodies and shapes and everything like that. So it's absolutely a five with all that other stuff. I was surprised you call it five with just cubes. That's that's hardcore, man.

This is this is the first game I remember the term an anipoles coming because before this we had meeples. We had cubes and disks. And that was it. That was a train. That was a vegetable. That was everything you could get building. That's all you had cubes and right. But I just love cubes. I find little cow shaped things and cheap things like super annoying. And there's some fall over some stand up and whatever. Just give me the black and the brown cube and I'm sure cubes never fall over. Right.

They do all the time. Exactly. Todd. Yeah. But I think I'm weird that way. People like an anipoles. I get that. And it's just I was so happy when we pulled my game out recently. And I was reminded that I don't have little sheepies and even my brain or little yellow disks, they're not shaped like grain or pumpkins or anything. Yeah, it was pathetic. So what's your favorite player account? What's the game best played at? For me, it's four. I think four players, the cream of the crop.

Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah, me too. Except four is a little long. But I think that's the game kind of out on the Autobahn at its best. Yeah. Yeah. It's not just because of the number of players, but it's for me, it's also the actions that are available at the start of the game, which differ for player count. And I think the suite of four player actions is the best. And it also gives you access to some of the best occupation cards as well.

Yeah. Well, that's because there's going to be more competition for spaces. So there needs to be more occupations that help you make up some tempos. So least favorite player account. This game says it plays from one to five. Yes. The revised edition goes to five. Is that what it is? The revised edition goes to five. Correct. So what's your least favorite player count? Mine would be one or five. And, you know, tough call there. I mean, if you've got five, just dust off El Grande and play that.

Like don't play Agricola at five. There's no need. And I'm not really interested in soloing it. Although this is one of the early games where you could play by yourself, solo a game. And that's kind of nostalgic for that. I've done that a few times. But at this point, I've got plenty of other games I'd rather play at one. All right. I had two. I liked the solo game and I had played it a bit, although I seem to have forgotten everything I had once learned.

For me, two player, you could play other games. I think when you get to three, it's not the zero sum problem of, okay, if I don't take it, you're going to. There's always that third person you have to think about. And I like adding that extra dynamicism to a game. Yeah, there's actually a two player only Agricola variant. Right. Well, it's a standalone game. A standalone game. Thank you. For me, it was hard to pick my least favorite player count, but I'm going to go with five player.

Okay. I can't stand the downtime. Yeah. That's a good call out. When this game first came out, I played a ton of two player and I like the two player. I think it's still good. It's just not as good as three and definitely not as good as four. Two player, you're going to max out a bunch of categories. You're not playing two player right then. Two player is a knife fight where you lose all your teeth. That's brutal. Yeah. Well, at least you stayed married by the end of it. So that was good.

Oh, no, I told her upfront, we're going to collude to make the best far as possible. So then what's the actual playing time? Boxes can lie. And this one says it's anywhere from 30 to 150. So half an hour to two and a half hours. What do you think? So they're just doing the math out on 30 minutes per player, if they say 30 to 150. Yes, that is what they're doing. Yeah. Which is what I say. 30 minutes per player sounds about right. We were a little rusty playing recently.

So I think we've played a little bit slower. Yeah, we've been taking longer. And we're more like 45 minutes a player. Yes. At least this year. All right. Which edition is the best? When we talk about editions, let's open this up because there's obviously the original and the revised. They recently or not recently, but they released a 15 year anniversary edition that's in this big hunk in box in 2022. But you have to buy the box separately. I was looking at it today.

You can buy it in the big box and then there's a separate storage box that you can buy to put it in. Oh, for real? Yeah. Yeah. I was looking at it recently. It was like a hundred and some odd dollars. I assume that was the box and the game both. Oh, maybe that's what it is. And you can just buy the box by itself separately. Right. And then you can buy everything that goes into the box and you just want the storage solution. Right. That's probably closer to what it is.

But then of course it's been re-implemented as caverna. There are a lot of adjacent games. So which version of the game or potentially adjacent game do you like the best? Paul, we'll let you start since you've... Gosh, I don't really know the answer. Like I own the Z-Man games edition with the cubes, but on BGA I've been playing the revised edition a lot. I think I would pick the revised edition because they have balanced the cards and the decks of cards.

Right. That's exactly what I was thinking. I think that revised edition, it's been tuned up just enough, though it's so close. I don't know why it has a separate entry on board game geek. It's... I mean, it's... The cards are completely different. Yeah, that's true. That's true. But I would say the revised edition, I think it's been polished over the years and really fine tuned and be much tighter than it was when it first came out in 07.

And I don't know if you noticed this, Dave, but the revised edition, the harvest actions each round you go across, whereas our editions you go from top to bottom. I don't know why they changed it like that. Yeah. That's been disorienting me actually a little bit, but I figured it out. Right. That's true. Yeah, I would agree. I like the revised edition. I didn't check to see if there were any updates in Agricola 15, which is the 15...

It's what they call the 15 year anniversary edition that was released in 022. It was not released in 2015. So that might be even better. I don't know, but I agree. I think the revised edition is the better one. And that's if I'm not playing Caverna, but we can save that for another pod. The revised edition has all of these expansions, which are just player color expansions. Okay. Did you know that? No. So you could buy a purple family or a pink family or a cerulean family. Right.

Okay. Well, there you go. Your favorite player color. You can go find it. They're still wood, right? They're not plastic or minis or anything, right? Once they come out with minis, I'm done with it forever. Right. There have been a lot of expansions. Most of them card-based. A couple of them have been component-based. The goodies had those anti-meeples and veggie meeples and a lot of the initial expansion decks all in one box. Do you guys have any favorites you want to talk about?

I'm the least favorite. Yeah, let's hear it. I remember back when we used to play upstairs, somebody brought UFO deck. The X deck. Oh, the X deck. Thank you. The X deck, yeah. It was horrible. I mean, people were abducting other family members from other players. I don't even remember what happened other than I just hated it. It was the one night ultimate alien version of it. Yes. Chaos and slowness. That's it, exactly. Yeah, no thanks.

There is an expansion called Farmers of the Moor that adds in horses. Oh, and Pete. And Pete, exactly. Yeah, heat and illness. If you didn't have enough complexity to try to cram in there, you can add more. Yeah, I remember really liking that expansion, but I haven't played it in 10 years. I wonder what your opinion of it would be now. I haven't played it, but I was reading through it. And to me, it just looks like Moor, not to pun on the title, but it just...

Oh, I've been totally punning on that title. Yeah, it looks like it's adding things to the game without adding anything to the game, as we always say with expansions. It just looks like Moor going on that I don't think that I really need. It's hard enough farming in the 17th century. My recollection is all it really did was dial up the weight and complexity. Everything else stayed the same. All right. Most recognizable comparison. What's the highest ranking game that reminds you of Agricola?

I'm really interested to hear your answers to this. I think there's some opportunity for us to collide. Yeah, I can't not say Caverna. I just associate the two games so much with each other. I just recall being so frustrated when everybody told me Caverna was a better Agricola. And now I'm eating crow. How about you, Dave? I'm going to go off the deep end a little bit here. And I'm going to say 2018's Obsession, which is a very different kind of game.

But the cards in Obsession have a similar kind of feel when I'm going through, even though that's a deck builder, I'm going through my occupation and minor improvement cards when I'm planning out, I got to play this one before I play this one. And then I can play this one and mapping that out as the hand management of it. So just planning my hand feels similar. And then there's some rounds where the stakes are a little different. We've got a courtship versus a harvest or something like that.

But you still, even though Obsession is more of a deck building game, you still have to manage your workers and they kind of go through this cycle before you can use them again. I think that's kind of interesting. So I mean, it doesn't map directly, obviously, but there are some similar feels. I don't see it at all, but I'll bring Obsession so we can play again. Yeah, I think it's on the episode list. I'm going to go with a game that came out the year before.

And I'll say that I came up with this independently, but then it's actually credited in the appendix by Uwe Rosenberg as being an inspiration for Agricola. And that's KALIS. And it was because in KALIS, those initial starting tiles and actually what gets built afterwards, they're all worker placement spots, but the order they come out with is going to be variable. And the actions you're going to be able to take will depend on which tiles the players have built along the way.

And I really like that idea, but it hasn't been implemented too many times. And so I first saw that in KALIS. And like I said, Uwe Rosenberg took inspiration from that. And so I think that led to what we see today with the cards going down and those being the action spaces for your worker placement. Well, to be honest, KALIS was my first answer, but I saw your show notes. I saw you'd put KALIS in there. So I thought, well, I'll let Todd have KALIS. Did you really? Yeah, absolutely.

Because of that, the building track where now there's more places we can go and now better stuff's coming that we can go and the board grows in front of us. So that's not in the show notes. You're now peeking in my prompts. I'm going to have to stop sharing those in the same folder. Well, that's what it was. I went to grab the prompts to go through and felt like, wait, this one's already filled out. What? KALIS? So I got rid of that and I got my generic ones. But that does bring up a question.

So you said, Agricola dethroned Puerto Rico, but didn't KALIS ever hit number one? I remember the KALIS hype was off the charts. No, I don't think so. Power Grid did, but not KALIS. Okay. You know, you could have taken my backup game for that because that was also in there. That was Russian railroads. And I thought about that for much of the same reason in that you have that one worker that's a dynamically changing worker placement spot until they get hired.

And then it becomes your personal spot that you have. And that's, like I said, that idea hasn't been implemented too many times, I don't think. I actually really enjoy that dynamic worker placement spot. So less recognizable comparison. What did you guys have for that? This was very difficult. So I'm just going to call out one of my favorite underrated worker placement games, which is Tribune. The full title is Tribune Primus Inter Paris. Yep. I looked at that one too.

It's a worker placement game where you're collecting cards that represent factions as well as other resources. And then you can use those cards to try and gain control of a faction. And you're basically vying with everyone else to meet the victory condition, which there's some variance in the game, but usually it is to take over a certain number of factions and say, I control Rome, basically. Right. Yeah. All right. Dave, what did you have? I'm at a loss. I don't really have a solid answer.

I mean, what I put, it does not match at all, but I'm going to say Space Station Phoenix in the sense that you're placing workers. It has this concept that I think we're seeing more and more recently of like the harvest. I forget what it's called in Space Station Phoenix. It's like the income phase or something like that. And lately, or like the festival with Anno 1800. And lately when we see these, it's interesting because they're elective.

It's like if Kalis had an elective festival time where like, I'm going to harvest my stuff now so I can get all my workers back. That section has that too. Yeah. Right. Also, we see it as Coffee Break in Arc Nova, which is not elective. So that is the thing. I feel like I don't remember seeing it before Agricola, but I feel like we're seeing it more and more now, these little soft resets as the game goes on.

Right. But I don't feel strong about the answer, but I'm going to say Space Station Phoenix. Just a chance to talk about it. It's a great game. There you go. Totally legit. I like that one. I had Fields of Green, so it's farming, it's engine building, but it's not worker placement. You are laying out your tableau and where you put things matter as you're building out and creating synergies between cards and hey, farms and veg and meatballs.

So it even tactically feels like a superior version of a Agricola over cubes. Today it's time for your favorite prompt, house rules. Well for house rules, like I said earlier, my house rule is use one of the drafting variants. Those are official variants. It's not really a house rule, but the house rule is use a variant. Yeah, fair. Paul, did you have anything to add on that one? No, I don't have any house rules for Agricola.

Okay. So if this game is being played at game night, what do you want to play afterwards? What's the best double feature game that goes along with it? Well, we played the other night or last night and we had a little chaser with it, which I thought I feel like a nice light filler goes well after this. We played a couple of games that can't stop and it's more of a fun game. Well, depending on how it goes for you, it's not always fun.

It's kind of a fun game, which is a good one, kind of after a hard fought brain burner. And then after that, I say keep it uve and just how about some bonanza? Oh, there you go. My favorite quote from that can't stop game was when Dave said, would you rather be last in can't stop or last in Agricola? I just got my butt kicked in Agricola, but I won can't stop. And then Greg was saying, I'm last. Well, yeah, being last and can't stop is like, yeah, the dice didn't go your way. Big deal.

Being the last in the Agricola means you just got destroyed. I went with a game that is by a designer you've already mentioned, Dave, and that's Rüdiger Dorn. So he has a game out there called My Farm Shop. So it's more farming. This is a lighter weight game. It even has the same idea of variable action spaces, but this one is so much lighter and action spaces get determined by rolling dice.

And I think you roll three, you pick two and whatever they add up to be, it's going to be the action that you take. And then you get to use the action that's on your board. And then the other players are going to get a chance to use the actions on theirs. But it's much lighter weight, same theme and great designer. For whatever reason, this game just kind of slipped under the radar in 2020 and didn't get any buzz, but it's a good one. I didn't know about that.

I love Rüdiger Dorn. I'd love to play it. All right. We will make that happen. Maybe we'll play it after Agricola. What was the name again? My Farm Shop. Oh, yeah. Doesn't ring a bell. Yeah. So for me, if we're going to play one game from UV, why not play more than one? And my favorite game of his at the same player count as Agricola is Miss Fjord. Okay. Which is about a fishing village and it has a harvest, but instead of harvesting grain and breeding cattle, you're just going fishing.

Okay. It takes about half the time as Agricola. All right. That's another great selection. I like that one too. We've played that one before two player and it's even good as a two player game. What feature of the game still stands out to you? What's aged well about Agricola? We already talked about this and I'm surprised at how it encourages diversity. I don't see that. I can't think of another game that really does that as well as Agricola.

And by diversity, you just mean all of the different actions that you can take and... Diversification. Sorry. Right. Got it. Because you're getting diminishing returns on the things, it's better to do a little bit of everything than a lot of something. Yeah. And I can't think of another game that does that.

No, most games these days you can like, well, I'm just going to forget about this portion over here and really focus on this and get a high enough score to overcome what I'm missing over there. Okay. I agree. That is a component of this game. Absolutely. Dave, what did you have? For me, it's the feeding. I really like that pressure that the tax collector shows up every once in a while in the game and says, pay up. Right. And you just... That's always in the back of your mind that here it comes.

I got it. It's like the second economy that I have to manage to keep those plates spinning while I'm trying to accomplish the other things I'm trying to accomplish. Okay. I had the variable setup nature of those worker locations. So the attribute that it shares with Kalis and to a much lesser extent, Russian railroads, I think that's a fantastic component of the game that I'd like to see more of. So cards as variable worker placement locations.

So are you saying that you like how you don't know what next turn's new action is going to be? Yes. Excellent. And how that can change from game to game. Yeah, I agree. So what feature of the game disappoints? So what hasn't aged as well? And I'm going to jump in here and just say, Paul, the thing you liked is the thing I don't like about it. So the diversification of activities. I enjoy exploring a game and recognizing, say, Great Western Trail.

And I'm going to do primarily a cowboy strategy and maybe back it up with engineers. Then there's another game out there I can play that's going to be focused more on builders with maybe a little bit of cowboys. In no way can I do all three of those effectively. And I didn't like going back to Agricola and trying to have to do a little bit of everything. But what did you have as the thing that hasn't aged well? Paul? Did we lose him? No, no, I don't have anything. Absolutely.

The only thing that disappoints me about Agricola today is how bad I am at the game. That's almost exactly my answer. It's, I mean, it's more my own shortcomings. But if you can't get your engine off the ground, it's a very frustrating experience. It's very punishing. It is. But then again, we love that in games. I mean, Age of Steam or Princess of Florence, you can paint yourself out of the game in the first two turns. And you know, that's it. You're not coming back.

So we like that sort of thing. But when you get yourself in a position in this game where you're living paycheck to paycheck and you're just begging for the sweet release of death, it can get very frustrating. Wow. You know, and you're like, I can in good conscience bring children into this dilapidated farmhouse and then make this five year old go out and tend the sheep. That's true. That's very true, Dave. Did this game replace a previous one? For me, it did not.

I recall that Agricola just created this new desire to play it. It was unlike anything before. At least that's what most people thought. Yeah, there definitely was so much buzz around this game. Yeah, it was literally it replaced because at the time I was playing a ton of memoir 44 and 1960, the making of the president. Like those two games were on constant replay, but then Agricola came out. That was all I played.

It literally replaced those games, but not because it was doing anything the same that those games do. It was just it was vying for all of my time. Right. For me, it replaced Kalis. I know I've said it a couple of times already in other aspects, but I stopped playing Kalis when Agricola came out and I'd like to go back and replay Kalis a couple of times. We seem to play it every five or six years, you know, break out a bottle of wine, play Kalis. But that's true. I'd like to revisit it.

Kalis is in that same camp, though, where I feel like I used to be good at it. But then when we play it now, like when did this game get so hard? Like I feel like I had a plan and I was building at the castle and it worked out well. And we play it now. I'm like, I can't get anything going. Like why is this so hard for me? Right. I don't know. And yes, we used to be good at it. So has this game since been replaced? And if so, by what? We've already said it.

Caverna replaced it for a lot of people. Yep. That's fair. I'm not really there with it. I only played Caverna once and I didn't really like it, but maybe I didn't give it a fair shake. I didn't like in Caverna the sea of buildings that were just everything's available to you. And I actually liked the way a brick a lot kind of meets those out to you. Like I only got to worry about these seven improvements and seven occupations in my hand.

And my memory of Caverna is just a table full of improvements. Like I got to read each and every one of these. I mean, with 10 plays, maybe I would like it more. But I found the barrier of entry kind of tough saying that just there's so much out there to kind of parse. Right. But that was years ago, too. I'm a different gamer now, so I don't know. Yeah. My answer was years ago.

If we're talking about today, if I'm going to play a work replacement game, I'm going to choose Great Western Trail or Dune Imperium. And that was my response. So it was not a specific title, but it was a game that's a combination deck builder work replacement game has captured my attention. So if I'm going to have a replacement game, it's going to have a deck building aspect of it. And it's going to be something like what you just said. Right. It's going to be Great Western Trail.

It's going to be Dune Imperium. It's going to be Lost Ruins of Ardak, something like that. That's exactly what I put the card driven worker placement games. Yep. So then what music would you want to listen to while playing? And Dave, I'll let you kick this one off. Well, this one turned out to be a routine ground ball. You read me perfectly that you thought I was going to go to of all these four seasons, right, that's where I started and then I decided to listen to it for a while.

And there's a great version by a composer named Max Richter who like recomposed it. I listen to that. Yeah, this doesn't quite fit like I thought it would. You know, the spring you would think would fit with the farming. What I think fits very, very well is there is a masterpiece TV show called All Creatures Great and Small, which is what the title of the two player version of a Grigolach comes from All Creatures Big and Small. And the soundtrack for that is by somebody named Alexandra Harwood.

She has quite a few sound or not. She has a few soundtracks, not a lot, but they have that kind of dreamy, idyllic kind of strolling through pastors feel. And I thought it fit perfectly. All right. I want to listen to that. Paul, did you have something? You know, based on the air quotes theme of 17th century farming, I will pick music by my favorite composer, Johann Sebastian Bach. Yeah. Okay. I did something similar, right?

I listened to the era that this was supposed to be set in and you wind up with Baroque music, which falls in between Renaissance and classical. And I listened to a bunch of it and it was actually a lot of fun to sample them and I'll just pick one. I went with Concerto Grosso in G minor by Archangelo Corelli. It had the right kind of somber tones, no vocals. So one of the things that you run into with Baroque music is they were starting to experiment with opera.

And so suddenly you just get big loud voices coming in and that would be disconcerting during a game, but that's the one I picked. Awesome. And I look forward to listening to the soundtrack to what was it, Dave? All Creatures Great and Small. Just think of the two player version of Agricola. It's based on a book where the title comes from. Right. So All Creatures Big and Small, that also focuses on the ranching aspect, right? I think it takes out the plowing and harvesting.

Yes, there's no cooking of animals. Gotcha. OK, so rating on BGG scale of one to ten now, what would you rate Agricola? My rating is eight. All right. I currently have it rated on Board Game Geek as a nine, but that's I put that rating in 15 years ago when I was just completely in love with this game. I haven't updated it. So you know, now it's probably closer to a seven. I think if I got my sea legs back with another five to ten plays, I could see it creeping back up to an eight. Right.

It's funny. I'm right. I'm in that same boat there, Mr. Sea Legs. I want to like the game, right. And I can give it an eight. However, for me, it's an exercise in anxiety, right? The idea of clenching and waiting to see what you guys are going to take from me or if it's still going to, you know, if the spot I want is still going to be there. So I don't like that feeling. That's a feature. Seven. That's a feature, not a bug. So and I agree with you.

If we played it more and I got my sea legs back, I could see it moving back up to an eight. Right now it's a seven. So is it replayable? And if so, how soon would you want to revisit this game? Paul? It is definitely replayable. However, you need to play a lot to get value from it. It's not the kind of game you can pull out once a year and have fun, in my opinion. Totally agree. Absolutely. Yeah. Play it five times this year or don't bother.

Well, and play it five times in close proximity to each other and then take a break. Yeah. Five times before the next harvest. Right. Wow. See, the theme works. It does. We could call that our final harvest right there. Did you manage to save a carrot? I got a pet sheep. There you go. Or a Highland cow, apparently. This has been another one. It's really nice.

We've done a couple of these podcasts where we dust off an old game, bring it back to the table and get a bunch of plays in and just kind of re-familiarize with like, wow, I missed this one. We haven't played this one in a while. So that's been one of the benefits here. I agree. It's been a lot of fun to re-familiarize ourselves with Agricola. I think I'm ready to set it back on the shelf for a little while, but not another 10 years. I'm just getting my seed legs back. Let's play Monday.

All right, let's do it. I'll bring my version and we can play with all the fun components. Or do we need to start working on something else? Are you going to tease what's coming up next? I don't even know what I've got set up. I think it's more animals for us next, isn't it? I think so. Yeah. You could do ****, but I don't know. That was the tease. So now edit, edit, edit. Right. All right, guys. Hey, thanks for staying up late tonight. I appreciate you being available. Have a good evening.

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