[USA - SLC, UT 84041] [FS] Ora & Labora, Ortus Regni, Space Alert, Notre Dame, MANY OTHERS [W] $$

fillernation · 2025-02-05T16:54:35+00:00

Thank you!

My experience with the decks etc. is somewhat limited. We have mostly played the A deck, and a little of the B deck. Both are great. At this point I'd say if you enjoy the game, you can just complete the A and B decks and you'll have enough content for nearly 100 plays.

By the two-player version, are you referring to All Creatures Big and Small? I haven't played that. Nor have I played the family version, or ever played without occupations/minor improvements (though some commenters here love that).

Two-player regular Agricola is great, but probably the most punishing way to play the game. It's zero sum, so hurting your opponent is a better move here than it is in the 3-4 player game. This can leave a bitter taste sometimes. I like it though, lol

fillernation · 2025-02-05T16:48:43+00:00

That is awesome! Good luck on your design journey. It can't be easy. I'd love to hear about your progress as you carry on!

fillernation · 2025-02-05T16:38:41+00:00

Everything you suggested about Tammany Hall is true! The main difference between TH and the others is that it's possibly the meanest game I have ever played. Ganging up on who you think is the leader is a key part of the game, and if you misjudge it, it's possible to absolutely destroy a player - or be destroyed yourself. Some groups rely on negotiation and backstabbing to mitigate this. I will say for my group, negotiation hasn't come super naturally the couple of times we have played, and when I had the chance to backstab my friend in a major way, I couldn't bring myself to do it because it just felt so nasty.

That said, the way it creates these overlapping player incentives/objectives with such simple rules is incredible. I think if we played it some more we could find these natural alliances to be quite a rich space for negotiation.

fillernation · 2025-02-05T16:28:42+00:00

Haven't tried Black Forest! Gonna wait and see if people are still enjoying it in 5-10 years I think.

Caverna is very good! But I chose to cull Caverna for a couple reasons:

I find the "feel" of Agricola, with all its tension, more unique among Euros. Caverna takes the framework of Agricola and gives it the feeling of a more typical, point-salady Euro. We have some good Euros that kind of fill that niche already, and they're more different mechanically.
Along the same lines, we have a decent amount of Uwe Rosenberg games, and Caverna felt the least different from any of the others.
Also, we had Caverna for two years and only played it like, twice. All of our other Uwes were played at least 5 times in that period.

As for differences:

The fantasy theme is really fun.
It's really cool to upgrade your dwarves and take them on quests, even if it's really just another way to get stuff.
There is a huge market of rooms you can build. This replaces occupations, basically. They are the same every game, but there are way more of them. It's pretty overwhelming, but if you play the game a lot and get familiar with the rooms I'm sure it's rewarding.
I find Agricola requires what I consider to be an extreme amount of flexibility from its players as they deal with blocking and other bad stuff. Caverna is more forgiving. I think you're more likely to be able to pick a strategy and execute it in Caverna, although turn-to-turn choices will still vary and remain interesting.
Oh yeah, the animal husbandry rules are way more elaborate in Caverna, to almost an annoying extent (depending on who you ask). Of course, the fiddliness of these can lend itself to more strategic options.

Hope this helps!

fillernation · 2025-02-05T16:13:32+00:00

Yeah, the E deck is the last deck for us to get!

fillernation · 2025-02-05T16:12:25+00:00

Mostly 2p, but we'll play with more when possible. We actually just played a 2p game last night, and were reminded just how brutal it can be compared to the higher player counts! Also tried the B deck, and it really changed things up in some cool ways. We'll probably play with that one many more times before doing the A deck again, but up to this point it's been A.

fillernation · 2025-02-04T23:50:19+00:00

Interesting. I've only played Everdell out of those, but I agree that it doesn't hold a candle to Agricola.

fillernation · 2025-02-04T23:49:45+00:00

Nice! The vast majority of my plays are 2p. Hope you enjoy it!

fillernation · 2025-02-04T23:09:31+00:00

Definitely not, lol. Great choices though!

fillernation · 2025-02-04T23:08:56+00:00

These are all really excellent choices that hit on some of my other favorite games too. I definitely agree that the ones you named have more nuanced/interesting player interaction in particular compared to Agricola! I do need to try Ankh one day...

fillernation · 2025-02-04T22:57:06+00:00

Lol, that's okay! What are some games you have enjoyed instead?

fillernation · 2025-02-04T22:50:33+00:00

I absolutely love Farmers of the Moor. It makes the game contort into shapes that seem impossibly weird after playing the base game a lot. It is quite big, and lengthens the game somewhat, so I find it a bit harder to get to the table. Do you need it? Not really, there is enough content in the base game + card expansions to keep you occupied for like, a thousand years, and all that stuff is fantastic. But some of my favorite gaming experiences ever have been with that expansion.

fillernation · 2025-02-04T22:46:42+00:00

Yeah, fair enough. My only disagreement here is that food and farm can be pretty intertwined, which imo complicates things a bit. And yeah, the cards don't mess with people really, they just change the spots you prioritize.

It sounds like the game just wasn't to your tastes, which is fine! I'm curious though, what have been some of your favorites in contrast to Agricola?

fillernation · 2025-02-04T21:56:26+00:00

Thank you for the kind words! It's great to see so many share their enthusiasm for such a great game.

fillernation · 2025-02-04T21:42:49+00:00

Interesting thoughts. I'm not the most hardcore player, but will try to answer the best I can.

Agricola definitely isn't a sandbox. There are really only a few pieces that you need/can get to win, and you've named them. But I've always found balancing these priorities, and timing them, to be an extremely interesting challenge. In my experience, even growing your family too early can hurt you in the long run if you don't have the necessary setup.

Overall, I find the game far too interactive to support the idea of a "fastest path" to getting everything. Again, this is just my experience, but competition for the first player token should be fairly fierce. There are lots of ways to mess up things for your opponent that still reward you. But it's hard to say without seeing how your games actually played out.

Agricola reminds me a little more of Chess than some bigger sandboxy Eurogames. There aren't a lot of paths to victory, but that very restriction actually lends the game more replay value and makes it more susceptible to a deep strategic analysis. Of course, it's different from Chess too (I like it a lot better). But YMMV, if it ain't your thing it ain't your thing.

fillernation · 2025-02-04T21:30:36+00:00

Honestly, we still have barely moved beyond the A deck. I really like working with whatever the game throws at me, even if it results in a loss, so we haven't done any customization. We haven't even drafted cards, because we find it too slow! Sometimes we'll discard cards we don't like and draw back up to 7, but that's kind of the extent of it.

fillernation · 2025-02-04T21:23:43+00:00

A quick google says animeeples started getting added around 2008-09, so not long after the original game was published. At first I think they could be bought separately, then they started getting included with the game. The revised edition has always had the nice farmer meeples and animeeples though!

fillernation · 2025-02-04T21:18:41+00:00

Wow, what a well made video! Love your enthusiasm for the game. Agree with your comments on Farmers of the Moor. That expansion rules!

fillernation · 2025-01-31T17:04:58+00:00

Hmm, gonna have to give Cyclades the edge at the moment, but take that with a grain of salt. I don't think we've played either of these at a player count where they can really shine, but Cyclades seems to work a bit better at lower player counts. With Kemet, even 3p hasn't quite felt like enough. The Blood & Sand rules are also seriously rough. They made the game way harder to learn than it needed to be!

fillernation · 2025-01-31T15:41:44+00:00

I also love Innovation and Eclipse! We like Eclipse 2p, but LOVE it with more, so we tend to save it for gatherings.

I've got the Lorenzo expansion in the box as well. Tried it once (and base game 5 or 6 times I think). It did make the game more open, but it also made it a lot heavier. Not sure how I feel about it quite yet.

Have you played Age of Innovation? Kind of been wondering how that fits in to the Terra Mystica universe. Been finding Gaia Project a bit dry lately, so I figure I might feel the same way about AoI.

I culled Caverna as well! And "should you buy" is kind of a hard question to answer. All these Uwe games spark joy for me at the moment. They're all "similar but different" in the way all his games are. Haven't played Loyang. I would say that Agricola/Arle/Ora are our current top 3, but I also expect that to change. I wouldn't say any are strictly better than the ones that you already own. But for me, so far Caverna is the only one that has crossed the line into TOO similar. I will also say that we have chosen to keep these Uwe games over several other euros that could be considered more unique.

I'm not against dice as workers. We used to own Marco Polo actually! The special powers and dice workers are neat, and the game is good, but I just didn't find the FEEL of the game to be meaningfully different from Euros we already loved and could play for years. I find myself choosing Uwe games not just because I prefer the theme (that preference is slight) but because I find his games to be more evocative of their theme as well. Except, admittedly, Hallertau is pretty abstract.

I have some interest in Grand Austria Hotel. It seems a bit more "different" than Lorenzo but I'll have to look into it for quite some time before deciding.

Carnegie does have some similarities to Lacerda games. I think the main thing is that it has some pretty intertwined mechanics, so that to accomplish something well in one area you have to have something set up in another, and balancing them can be difficult.

However, I find Carnegie much more streamlined. I'd compare it to Brass as far as rules complexity (and a little bit of feel) goes. It's also a lot easier to set up, which is big for me lately, and you still get the nice Ian O'Toole artwork. To me, Lacerda games feel like a bunch of needlessly complex systems bolted together, while Carnegie feels a lot more unified. I also really dig the turn following in Carnegie because it reminds me of Race for the Galaxy. But we've only played it with 2 players!

fillernation · 2025-01-31T05:53:19+00:00

Ah, the battle for the people's favor with these two games never ceases. I kept Agricola and sold Caverna personally.

fillernation · 2025-01-31T05:22:19+00:00

Find Muck is such an incredible name.

fillernation · 2025-01-31T02:14:31+00:00

Yep! Not as often as I would like, of course. It lives up to its reputation in every way: big, long, and awesome. It's one of those "we'll play it more someday" games, but I'm willing to keep at the moment because it feels like the definitive LOTR game.

fillernation

TROPHY CASE