Agricola

My first encounter with Agricola was few years back on one of our annual board game sessions at our cottage. Some people in the back were playing it, I quickly glanced in their direction and was told that the game is fun but it's long and has sheep in it. That sparked my interest (I like sheep, I think they're funny), however I didn't play it.  Fast-forward to last year's April 26th when I bought the game. It was on sale in an internet shop, I had the money and BoardGameGeek ranks it as the third best game in their list.

In Agricola you play as a head of a family taking care of a farm in Europe of the 16th century. You have a small house for you and your spouse and a large lot to expand. Each member of the family is capable of performing one action during a turn and next to a choice of default actions at the beginning, a new action is added every turn.
Actions could be anything from fishing, building a stable, collecting resources to baking bread, sowing seeds and plowing fields. There are many choices of what to do but in general, there are three ways of expanding: first it's building and upgrading your house and multiplying the family members, then it's collecting animals and breeding them in pens and lastly it's growing wheat and vegetables on your fields. The winner at the end is decided by points and to succeed, one usually must pay attention to all 3 branches.

the game has just started

That, however, is not an easy task since all the other players are attempting to get the best (the most useful) actions for themselves, as once an action was performed in a turn, it cannot be performed again. So you as a player usually struggle with other players for getting the right actions for yourself or at least the second (third-, fourth-) best and somehow still manage to prosper. There is one useful action for this - "being the starting player next round" action that holds an immense strategic power iut f timed well with gradual accumulation of resources.

So not only you clash with you opponents' plans but with the time itself as well. The game lasts only 14 turns and you NEVER have enough time (enough family members) to do everything you need. The obvious solution for that is adding a family member as soon as possible, since there is a great difference between being able to do two or three actions per turn. A very good example of the gameplay system follows: For a new family member, you need one more room in your house which costs wood and reed - 4 actions if you are lucky and gather all the resources needed in one go each - one to get wood, one to get the reed, one to build the room and one to procreate - 4 actions which in early game mean 2 whole turns. Of course you can be stalled by other players performing the actions that you need, thus prolonging your slow progress. Procreation is an action that appears sometime in the second round of the game, which means turns 5 to 7. So you have whole 4 turns to collect your resources and spend some extra time on developing your farm and then perhaps you take a chance, acquire the starting player position and hope that the next turn will bring a procreation action.

More family members does not only mean more workforce, it also means more hungry stomachs. Every once in a while (at the end of turns 4th, 7th, 9th, 11th and 12th) comes Harvest when you gather production from your fields, your cattle has babies and you have to feed your family. Food is perhaps the most important resource of the game. Feeding your family is an important event so you usually count if you'll have enough food for everyone when the Harvest comes but since you manage a farm, food is easy to obtain (in theory). After trading some resources for an improvement for your house (like a hearth or an oven) you can "exchange" any animal or vegetable you own for a certain number of food tokens (carnivores eat the animals, vegetarians can found their peace in this Vegan version of the game thread on BGG). So not only you are expanding your farm, multiplying your family and devise devious strategies to get as much points at the end as you can, you also must think about feeding your family now and then. "Is eating this cow good as it will feed two family members, or should I keep it for points at the end?" is just one of the questions you'll be pondering while playing Agricola.

noone's making babies? I wonder why

There are two versions of the game - family version which focuses on building the farm, and a full version which adds an extra layer of strategy in form of two sets of cards for every player - professions and minor improvements - that can be played as an action and they will affect your gameplay somehow. You can gain extra food with every wood you get, or you might get more points at the end for some resources or something like that. The family version is truly a great game for cool parents, the full version is great for a gaming group sessions.

Agricola is a really good game. Its rules aren't exactly easy to explain but they are grasped very soon by new players (the family version's at least) and the game has an expansion which I haven't played yet, but I heard it adds to the complexity and the decision making process greatly. There's a lot to the game, a lot of board and pieces, the box is actually quite heavy for its size... Which is good I suppose, at least you get a lot of worth for little money - the game's out for some time so don't expect to pay much for it nowadays (if you still don't own it, that is :)). Don't be put off by the bad quality boxart, the game is gold inside.