by lincudine
dont know what the official answer is but I'd have a hard time believing "start of the round" didnt include all the stuff which happens before the start player puts down the first worker. I wouldn't even think to question you dropping Plow Driver then using it as you described.↧
Reply: Agricola:: Rules:: Re: scholar and plow driver
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Reply: Agricola:: Rules:: Re: scholar and plow driver
by pijll
itung wrote:
Hi,
Yesterday I played the scholar -'...at the start of a round you can always either pay 1 food to play an occupation card...'
and used it to play the plow driver- '...you can pay 1 food at the start of each round to plow 1 field'
my question is, since when I played the plow driver it is still start of a round, can I plow a field immediately?
I think the answer is yes, but just want to verify.
Thanks
Yesterday I played the scholar -'...at the start of a round you can always either pay 1 food to play an occupation card...'
and used it to play the plow driver- '...you can pay 1 food at the start of each round to plow 1 field'
my question is, since when I played the plow driver it is still start of a round, can I plow a field immediately?
I think the answer is yes, but just want to verify.
Thanks
I don't know what the official answer is either, but in the version of the rules that I own, 'start of the round' is the name of the first phase in a round.
After you've used the Scholar to play an occupation, you're still in the 'start of a round' phase, and you can still use any other card in that phase, including the Plow Driver you've just played.
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Reply: Agricola:: Rules:: Re: scholar and plow driver
by sandswoll
You are allowed to use any "At the start of a round" actions in the order of your choice. So yes, you may immediately plow for 1f.(You're allowed to use all things with same text in the order of your choice, not just start of round things)
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Thread: Agricola:: General:: 2p game fix?
by ryusora
I heard once that when playing a 2p game of agricola you should do something more to setup. Is this true? Where can i find the official text about this? And what is the change?↧
Reply: Agricola:: General:: Re: 2p game fix?
by Bernaar
I think it is perfect as it is. Only advice I can give you is to do a draft and pass with the occupations and minor improvements.Oh, and buy the Farmers of the Moor expansion once you a familiar with the base game of course! :)
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Reply: Agricola:: General:: Re: 2p game fix?
by vradipous1
ryusora wrote:
Is this true?
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Reply: Agricola:: General:: Re: 2p game fix?
by corkysru
The games is a great two player game. One of the few that don't need lost of special rules or dummy players to anything like that.↧
Reply: Agricola:: General:: Re: 2p game fix?
by s1eep
ryusora wrote:
I heard once that when playing a 2p game of agricola you should do something more to setup. Is this true? Where can i find the official text about this? And what is the change?
You can read about it here. It involves adding one more action space, and it's made our 2-player games much more pleasant.
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Reply: Agricola:: General:: Re: 2p game fix?
by ryusora
s1eep wrote:
ryusora wrote:
I heard once that when playing a 2p game of agricola you should do something more to setup. Is this true? Where can i find the official text about this? And what is the change?
You can read about it here. It involves adding one more action space, and it's made our 2-player games much more pleasant.
Thank you!
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Reply: Agricola:: General:: Re: 2p game fix?
by Brianrlarsen
Is this "fix" recommended only for the Farmers of the Moor expansion or also the base game?↧
Reply: Agricola:: General:: Re: 2p game fix?
by elucidarian
Brianrlarsen wrote:
Is this "fix" recommended only for the Farmers of the Moor expansion or also the base game?
via the link: "it not only fixes the expansion 2-player game, but also the basegame which suffered from extreme denial strategies."
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Reply: Agricola:: General:: Re: 2p game fix?
by chopkins828
There is also a variant action tile from the Revised Edition for two-player games. I prefer this to the "Take any two resources" action card.On the tile, there are four actions:
1. Copse (one wood, accumulating)
2. Resource Market (+1 Stone, +1 Food)
3. Modest Wish for Children (From Round 5 only, Family Growth with Room)
4. Animal Market ([+1 Sheep & +1 Food] OR [+1 Boar] OR [+1 Cow & -1 Food])
This seems like a lot of actions, but once ANY ONE of them is taken in a round, ALL of them are blocked for the rest of the round.
We like to play this way, even though we don't have the Revised Edition. We just use action cards from different player counts.
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Reply: Agricola:: General:: Re: 2p game fix?
by elucidarian
Bernaar wrote:
Only advice I can give you is to do a draft and pass with the occupations and minor improvements.
As ever, I recommend the Dark Draft format for 2p.
Modified for 7 card hands: Draft from 5 twice as instructed, then draw 3 and keep 1.
[o]That, or go crazy and draft a 9 card hand. I won't tell anyone.[/o]
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Reply: Agricola:: General:: Re: 2p game fix?
by Brianrlarsen
elucidarian wrote:
Brianrlarsen wrote:
Is this "fix" recommended only for the Farmers of the Moor expansion or also the base game?
via the link: "it not only fixes the expansion 2-player game, but also the basegame which suffered from extreme denial strategies."
Thanks! Somehow I missed that as I looked over the thread.
Edit: And it was right there in bold! (Feeling sheepish).
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Reply: Agricola:: General:: Re: 2p game fix?
Yeah we play with the Take 2 different resources action available. That way you can get stone in the game earlier which opens up some strategies depending on your cards. Some people say in that case just make it a 1 stone space but that just seems kinda weak. I haven't played Farmers of the Moor yet but sounds like stone is really important in that one. Base Game plays fine without the "fix", we often end up not using the space, but its nice to have the option available.
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Reply: Agricola:: General:: Re: 2p game fix?
by MisterG
SwanseaStephen wrote:
...I haven't played Farmers of the Moor yet but sounds like stone is really important in that one.
Nah, not really. It's nice, but no more important than the regular game.
Base Game plays fine without the "fix", we often end up not using the space, but its nice to have the option available.
The Ugoi like to call it "the wussy variant." :whistle:
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Reply: Agricola:: General:: Re: 2p game fix?
by lomdr
chopkins828 wrote:
There is also a variant action tile from the Revised Edition for two-player games. I prefer this to the "Take any two resources" action card.
On the tile, there are four actions:
1. Copse (one wood, accumulating)
2. Resource Market (+1 Stone, +1 Food)
3. Modest Wish for Children (From Round 5 only, Family Growth with Room)
4. Animal Market ([+1 Sheep & +1 Food] OR [+1 Boar] OR [+1 Cow & -1 Food])
This seems like a lot of actions, but once ANY ONE of them is taken in a round, ALL of them are blocked for the rest of the round.
We like to play this way, even though we don't have the Revised Edition. We just use action cards from different player counts.
On the tile, there are four actions:
1. Copse (one wood, accumulating)
2. Resource Market (+1 Stone, +1 Food)
3. Modest Wish for Children (From Round 5 only, Family Growth with Room)
4. Animal Market ([+1 Sheep & +1 Food] OR [+1 Boar] OR [+1 Cow & -1 Food])
This seems like a lot of actions, but once ANY ONE of them is taken in a round, ALL of them are blocked for the rest of the round.
We like to play this way, even though we don't have the Revised Edition. We just use action cards from different player counts.
Though, Uwe also mentions in the Appendix of the same edition that you can (also) add in a space that is 2 wood [accumulating], but dunno how well it plays with the 4 way tile. I'm pretty sure it's easy to add in any edition of Agricola.
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Reply: Agricola:: General:: Re: playing with 5 year olds
by archivists
Inspired by this thread, I took the plunge and played Agricola with my 5 year old yesterday. We played the family game with only one change - she started with one occupation chosen at semi-random - I went through the deck until I found one that wasn't too complicated and didn't require other occupations or minor improvements.We've played quite a lot of games together - (current favourite is Thebes) but this was definitely a huge step up in complicated. I gave some gentle guidance as we went through and when starting out suggested that it is good to build rooms and grow a family (as I tell any new players I'm teaching) but largely let her get on with it. It wasn't exactly competitive (rarely is when playing with kids) but she had a great time, absolutely loved it and can't wait to play again.
Initially I gave some targets as suggested above (4 room house, family of 4, 2 types of animals and a Veg and Grain). She did that lot, plus renovated to stone, had a single fenced stable and plowed a few times - she poo pooed the simple scoring and asked for the full points. Ended up with 36.
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Reply: Agricola:: General:: Re: 2p game fix?
by Simonjohn
chopkins828 wrote:
There is also a variant action tile from the Revised Edition for two-player games. I prefer this to the "Take any two resources" action card.
On the tile, there are four actions:
1. Copse (one wood, accumulating)
2. Resource Market (+1 Stone, +1 Food)
3. Modest Wish for Children (From Round 5 only, Family Growth with Room)
4. Animal Market ([+1 Sheep & +1 Food] OR [+1 Boar] OR [+1 Cow & -1 Food])
This seems like a lot of actions, but once ANY ONE of them is taken in a round, ALL of them are blocked for the rest of the round.
We like to play this way, even though we don't have the Revised Edition. We just use action cards from different player counts.
On the tile, there are four actions:
1. Copse (one wood, accumulating)
2. Resource Market (+1 Stone, +1 Food)
3. Modest Wish for Children (From Round 5 only, Family Growth with Room)
4. Animal Market ([+1 Sheep & +1 Food] OR [+1 Boar] OR [+1 Cow & -1 Food])
This seems like a lot of actions, but once ANY ONE of them is taken in a round, ALL of them are blocked for the rest of the round.
We like to play this way, even though we don't have the Revised Edition. We just use action cards from different player counts.
We have the original version but would like to give this a try, I tried to dig out the cards from different player counts but could only find exact matches for (1) and (4). For (2) and (3) I could only find approximate fits, for example Reed/Stone/Food but not Stone/Food, am I missing something, or do you just make do?
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giving Agricola Family Ed a try and Ancient artifacts a second chance
Gamesssssss!!!!! Last night at The Portal in Manchester, CT
Played: Agricola Family Edition, Crokinole, Ancient Artifacts, BentoBlocks
Agricola Family Edition is meant to be a more streamline, simpler and faster version of Agricola... I'm a huge fan of Agricola, especially the revised edition so I was very curious to see how this one plays. I think the family edition game mostly accomplishes its goal. There are no occupation or minor improvement cards; the new actions that open up each round are set - there's no hidden information at all. The scoring is much more simple with no negative points at all. Building your farm is much easier as there is no home board and you can add any improvement in any way you want. It's still hard to grow and feed your family and the available action and resource spaces are tight as always.
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The rule book is written in a more casual and almost conversational way - I don't really like this unfortunately. It's hard to find things and leaves a few annoying ambiguities.
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I think the strategy in this game may be significantly different than normal Agricola with cards - usually I focus on getting more family members in Agricola. It can be tough to feed them at first but usually by ten last few rounds you're able to do so many high-points scoring actions that I usually win with a mm early, big, family. I tried this strategy with Family edition and it didn't work out very well. I was 1-2 family members ahead of everyone for pretty much the entire game but I got second place and, actually, when I double checked grain scoring later, might have even gotten third. The winner and 3rd place (maybe 2nd) focused on animals early, especially sheep. Since this game has no limits on scoring animals and no negative points for not doing other things - they were able to do very well with just 2-3 workers most of the game and getting more animals. While focusing on growing my family I also tried to farm grain - which was very difficult without occupation or minor improvement to help create combo actions. Unless full Agricola, I couldn't find good points-scoring opportunities towards the end with my big family. I was also purposely, hatefully, beaten to 2 big-time improvement tiles that would have paired well with my strategy. That was very frustrating but ... welcome to Agricola... the scoring in FE feels a bit like All Creatures Big and Small - there's more flexibility to "so what you want." game length was a bit more than I was hoping or expecting. It was over an hour - close to 1.5 hours, with 2/4 players who had never played any version of Agricola. So certainly shorter than Agricola but unlikly to hit the 45min mark the box promises, not with 4 players at least. Maybe 20-25min/player would be a more accurate representation of play-time.
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Overall I'm on the fence about this version. I want to play again with 100% correct rules - we got a couple things wrong. And I want to find a strategy or two that secures a win or at least makes it very close. 7/10 for now - this could go up or down with more plays!
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Before A:FE I won a 2-player game of Crokinole. After A:FE we started a 4-player game with all decently skilled players. We played a full 3-game match! Each game was played best out of 5 rounds! That's a lotta Crok! It was great! I didn't play especially well, nor did my partner, haha. We lost the first game, won the second. We were ahead by 2 rounds in the third game, on the brink of winning the whole thing - when I made a stupid mistake and gave our opponents the third round! I should have gift-wrapped it! We lost the next round too to tie it all up at the top! Luckily I finally played pretty well in the final around, sinking some solid 20s and we pretty easily won the round to take the ultimate victory. It was stressful! 10/10.
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I played and wrote about Ancient Artifacts on Monday - but discovered that I made some significant rules mistakes. I wanted to give the game another chance since I really like roll-and-write games. I actually had a long correspondence with the designer to make sure I was getting everything correct now. Like Monday this was a 3-player game and with correct rules - it was quite fun! Wasn't too long, none of us became especially frustrated ... it worked great! I won with 31 points. Another player was in the 20s and the third player was in the teens, I believe. I was impressed by the scoring differential! I gave the game a 2/10 on Monday - with incorrect rules. I'm jumped it way up to 8/10 playing correctly! It's on Kickstarter right now and I highly recommend it!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lagniappe-games/ancient...
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Finally - a friend wanted me to try another print-and-play roll-and-write. I do love roll-and-writes! In BentoBox you're rolling and drafting dice in order to get actions that allow you to draw tetromino shapes in a grid. You score points for completely filling in columns, rows or same-color section of the grid and you get bonus points to doing these things first. When you draft you can take a "Wild" shape for increasingly negative points; some of the Wild shapes are not available in the regular draft. The mechanics and scoring remind me a lot of Noch Mal (another roll-and-wrote game I really enjoy). In this game I got stuck a couple times and took too many wilds for too many negative points - giving my opponent the win, we were both a little surprised. Solid game! I may have to print out a copy for myself! It's easy to teach and play; plays very fast! 7/10.
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Played: Agricola Family Edition, Crokinole, Ancient Artifacts, BentoBlocks
Agricola Family Edition is meant to be a more streamline, simpler and faster version of Agricola... I'm a huge fan of Agricola, especially the revised edition so I was very curious to see how this one plays. I think the family edition game mostly accomplishes its goal. There are no occupation or minor improvement cards; the new actions that open up each round are set - there's no hidden information at all. The scoring is much more simple with no negative points at all. Building your farm is much easier as there is no home board and you can add any improvement in any way you want. It's still hard to grow and feed your family and the available action and resource spaces are tight as always.
The rule book is written in a more casual and almost conversational way - I don't really like this unfortunately. It's hard to find things and leaves a few annoying ambiguities.
I think the strategy in this game may be significantly different than normal Agricola with cards - usually I focus on getting more family members in Agricola. It can be tough to feed them at first but usually by ten last few rounds you're able to do so many high-points scoring actions that I usually win with a mm early, big, family. I tried this strategy with Family edition and it didn't work out very well. I was 1-2 family members ahead of everyone for pretty much the entire game but I got second place and, actually, when I double checked grain scoring later, might have even gotten third. The winner and 3rd place (maybe 2nd) focused on animals early, especially sheep. Since this game has no limits on scoring animals and no negative points for not doing other things - they were able to do very well with just 2-3 workers most of the game and getting more animals. While focusing on growing my family I also tried to farm grain - which was very difficult without occupation or minor improvement to help create combo actions. Unless full Agricola, I couldn't find good points-scoring opportunities towards the end with my big family. I was also purposely, hatefully, beaten to 2 big-time improvement tiles that would have paired well with my strategy. That was very frustrating but ... welcome to Agricola... the scoring in FE feels a bit like All Creatures Big and Small - there's more flexibility to "so what you want." game length was a bit more than I was hoping or expecting. It was over an hour - close to 1.5 hours, with 2/4 players who had never played any version of Agricola. So certainly shorter than Agricola but unlikly to hit the 45min mark the box promises, not with 4 players at least. Maybe 20-25min/player would be a more accurate representation of play-time.
Overall I'm on the fence about this version. I want to play again with 100% correct rules - we got a couple things wrong. And I want to find a strategy or two that secures a win or at least makes it very close. 7/10 for now - this could go up or down with more plays!
Before A:FE I won a 2-player game of Crokinole. After A:FE we started a 4-player game with all decently skilled players. We played a full 3-game match! Each game was played best out of 5 rounds! That's a lotta Crok! It was great! I didn't play especially well, nor did my partner, haha. We lost the first game, won the second. We were ahead by 2 rounds in the third game, on the brink of winning the whole thing - when I made a stupid mistake and gave our opponents the third round! I should have gift-wrapped it! We lost the next round too to tie it all up at the top! Luckily I finally played pretty well in the final around, sinking some solid 20s and we pretty easily won the round to take the ultimate victory. It was stressful! 10/10.
I played and wrote about Ancient Artifacts on Monday - but discovered that I made some significant rules mistakes. I wanted to give the game another chance since I really like roll-and-write games. I actually had a long correspondence with the designer to make sure I was getting everything correct now. Like Monday this was a 3-player game and with correct rules - it was quite fun! Wasn't too long, none of us became especially frustrated ... it worked great! I won with 31 points. Another player was in the 20s and the third player was in the teens, I believe. I was impressed by the scoring differential! I gave the game a 2/10 on Monday - with incorrect rules. I'm jumped it way up to 8/10 playing correctly! It's on Kickstarter right now and I highly recommend it!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lagniappe-games/ancient...
Finally - a friend wanted me to try another print-and-play roll-and-write. I do love roll-and-writes! In BentoBox you're rolling and drafting dice in order to get actions that allow you to draw tetromino shapes in a grid. You score points for completely filling in columns, rows or same-color section of the grid and you get bonus points to doing these things first. When you draft you can take a "Wild" shape for increasingly negative points; some of the Wild shapes are not available in the regular draft. The mechanics and scoring remind me a lot of Noch Mal (another roll-and-wrote game I really enjoy). In this game I got stuck a couple times and took too many wilds for too many negative points - giving my opponent the win, we were both a little surprised. Solid game! I may have to print out a copy for myself! It's easy to teach and play; plays very fast! 7/10.
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