by Adam Karnes

Created on: February 10, 2009

Agricola has consistently topped the charts at boardgamegeek.com, the trusted site of board gamers world-wide. What makes this farming-themed strategy board game so popular? Agricola does a beautiful job of balancing difficulty, time investment, and and replayability-three key elements that most board games fail to offer in good proportion.

The game comes out of the European board game movement, which has steadily gained representation in the North America since the tremendous popularity of the Settlers of Catan series. The title "Agricola" is Latin for "farmer," and in the game each player takes the role of a farmer who must balance resources and make the best use of land in order to grow crops, breed animals, expand the farmhouse, feed the family, and increase family size. Agricola is played for a set number of turns, which means that unlike strategy games of the Risk variety, Agricola will always last a predictible length of time, typically about two hours. Additionally, Agricola offers two variations of game complexity. The introductory variation is well-suited for beginners, families, or players not accustomed to strategy board games. The advanced variation adds cards, tiles, and additional rules that deepen the complexity and challenge of the game. One to five players can play Agricola.

Agricola is played in fourteen rounds. Each round consists of six turns. One player is designated the starting player at the beginning of the game, and play moves clockwise around the table (the starting player changes during the course of the game). Players take turns selecting jobs which are available on the game board. No job can be taken by more than one player, and the number of jobs is limited. As a result, part of the game strategy is to wisely choose jobs at the best time. More jobs become available as the game progresses, but the newest jobs are frequently the most desireable.

At the end of a set of turns (anywhere between one and four depending on the round) the round ends and all farmers must harvest. This is a sort of "day of reckoning" for all players, because everyone must be able to feed all the members in their family (represented by the same pieces used to claim jobs). Feeding is accomplished by consuming either bread, vegetables, or animals. Obviously, all of these foods had to be produced by the player at some prior time in the game, so the basic challenge of Agricola is to master food supply by producing a given food or combination of foods. If a player

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