Agricola is a Euro-style board game where players are farmers in 17th century Europe, starting with a wooden shack and spouse. Players use worker placement to take actions like plowing fields, planting crops, fencing pastures, and breeding animals to develop their farms over 14 rounds with periodic harvests.
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The Verdict
based on 29 reviews
“Agricola is both streamlined and very concise in its approach. All players are competing for the same limited resources in a game that is often decided by only a few points. Every round, every turn matters.”
“Agricola is one of top 5 board games of all time for a good reason. It is thematic, has great component quality, and it provides an intensive strategic worker placement for the avid board gamer.”
“Well, I can’t think of anything else to say about Agricola than this – stop reading this review, go find a copy of the game (pre-order it if you haven’t already!) and try it yourself!”
Ryan Metzler considers Agricola a highly recommended worker placement game, praising its tight design, scalability, and immense replayability, making it a must-have for serious Eurogame enthusiasts despite its challenging nature where players constantly feel the pressure of not being able to accomplish everything they desire.
“Agricola is a masterpiece in the world of board games, combining strategic depth, thematic immersion, and endless replayability. With its engaging gameplay, versatile strategies, and immersive theme, it has rightly earned its place as a favorite among board game enthusiasts.”
The reviewer expressed pleasure in finally playing Agricola, noting its lasting popularity among board game enthusiasts and its continued relevance today.
The reviewer highly praises Agricola: All Creatures Big & Small as a tightly designed, streamlined, and enjoyable two-player game that she prefers over the original Agricola due to its faster setup and play, despite acknowledging a potential loss of strategic depth over many plays.
The reviewer considers Agricola a thrilling and deeply strategic game that, despite its stomach-churning pressure and challenging nature, delivers "perfecto fun" for players who appreciate a demanding worker placement experience.
The reviewer highly praises Agricola as Uwe Rosenberg's crowning achievement, noting it as a demanding yet rewarding worker placement game that remains unparalleled and feels modern due to its timeless design, tension, and replayability.
The reviewer highly praises Agricola for its tight choices and engaging worker placement mechanics, noting that it remains a standout even among modern worker placement games, despite its potentially overwhelming rulebook for new players.
“The reviewer considers Agricola a highly replayable and strategically deep worker placement game, appreciating its challenging and sometimes punishing nature as a core feature that makes the game a rewarding experience.”
The reviewer considers Agricola an absolute solid game that transformed the gaming hobby and set the benchmark for many future titles, despite personally preferring some of Uwe Rosenberg's later designs.
The reviewer regards Agricola as a classic and one of the best games, highlighting its engaging engine-building and challenging, tight gameplay, even with its demanding food mechanics.
“Agricola is a modern-day classic board game. But those willing to accept the burden of hard work and providing for their family will be rewarded with a challenging farming experience.”
The reviewer highly praises Agricola as a fantastic and efficient worker placement game, emphasizing the challenge of balancing various farm development aspects with the constant need to feed your family. They appreciate the game's replayability and depth, stating they have no complaints.
The reviewers highlight Agricola as a challenging yet rewarding worker placement game that emphasizes diversification and resource management, particularly the constant need to feed your family. They note its enduring classic status and depth within Uwe Rosenberg's body of work.
“Agricola deserves its place as a seminal worker placement game alongside the likes of Lords of Waterdeep. Agricola is simple to learn, but also incredibly deep as you immerse yourself in the possibilities that it offers, and as such it’s a good game to introduce to someone who has lots of experience of a game like chess, for example.”
“Agricola is a game tailored for advanced players who enjoy deep strategy and complex gameplay. The game’s ability to punish inefficiency while rewarding diversified and efficient strategies makes it a classic in the board game community.”
The reviewer highly praises Agricola as a fantastic and solid game with no complaints, highlighting its ever-changing nature due to the cards and expressing a strong desire to play it often. They describe it as a challenging yet rewarding 'puzzle of efficiency'.
“It’s utterly satisfying to play, it’s engaging, and exciting, even 17 years after its original release. There is always room on my table for another game of Agricola.”
The reviewers consider Agricola a classic worker placement game that is both challenging and rewarding, highlighting its tight gameplay, meaningful decisions, and engaging card interactions. They praise it as a truly great game that holds up exceptionally well against modern titles, emphasizing its distinctive character and the satisfying feeling of building something from nothing.
The reviewer engages with Agricola as a challenging yet rewarding worker-placement game, acknowledging its 'misery farming' reputation but emphasizing the strategic possibilities and ways to overcome difficulties in feeding one's family and developing a successful farm.
The reviewer found Agricola to be a wonderful and quintessential worker placement game, particularly appreciating the strategic depth offered by its unique cards, despite acknowledging the significant amount of reading required for new players and expressing some apprehension about the game's difficulty in multiplayer settings.
“If you enjoy worker placement games with multiple strategies that can be utilized, we highly recommend Agricola.”
“Agricola is a very well-designed game, one that is deserving of its awards and high rank on Board Game Geek. So why do I say I admire it more than I like it?”
Agricola is lauded as a well-crafted and challenging worker placement game that offers immense strategic depth and replayability for seasoned board gamers, despite its initially tight constraints and high-pressure gameplay. While the reviewer personally leans towards Atiwa for its accessibility, Agricola is recognized for its well-designed mechanics and evolving gameplay that opens up more options as the game progresses.
The reviewer highly recommends Agricola, giving it a 4/5, praising its immense replayability due to the variety of cards and strategic options. While acknowledging a confusing rulebook and potential card imbalance, they believe it's a unique and enduring farming simulator.
The reviewer found Agricola to be a game with top-notch components that offers an enjoyable farming simulation, though they personally felt rushed and desired more time to develop their farm. They appreciated the simplified family rules but noted the manual could be clearer.
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