"Agricola" Review

Agricola exists to me as a restless game. It is constantly changing its place in my mind, swinging from infuriating me to making me grin with delight. This will make this review especially hard to write, but let's see how the game stands when subjected to my inspection.

Gameplay
Agricola has a simple set of game rules: deceptively simple. Don't let the friendly farmer box art and simple rules fool you: agricola is anything but a light game. Gameplay is estimated at around 30 minutes per person, which proves to be a large mouthful for an average gaming group of only 3 or 4. Playing with 5 players may as well not be an option: players will quickly loose interest after 2 and a half hours of this game, it really isn't meant for long-term play like Arkham Horror, for example, is.
          But this is where the game starts to surprise me. I played this game with a group of only 3, but the time seemed to just breeze by. The game is well structured enough to allow people to be constantly thinking, being engaged, an planning ahead: there is never a moment of waiting. In this respect the game flows smoothly and captivatingly, starting off slow and gentle and then beginning to ramp up the content for an exciting finale. With an ever changing world, new options constantly arising, several things to multitask, there is never a quiet or boring moment.
          The game is essentially about worker placement. You are a farmer, and on your turn you are going to move your family (basically workers) onto spots and perform actions, ranging from just collecting resources to sowing and plowing fields, building new  tools to help you farm, and even to grow your house and family. You begin the game with a modest two people in your house, but every turn, another option is going to become available. At some point, you are going to have to expand if you want to get everything done. With harvests and the need for food ramping up nicely towards the end of the game however, it is important to plan ahead and not expand too quickly. The gameplay is beautifully integrated with the theme and the game flows nicely once you have a firm grasp of the rules.

Design and Theme
The theme may be intimidating to some, I would think. The game is about being a farmer in northern europe towards the end of the 17th century. Most of the theme, however, may as well be non-existent. The game is about being a farmer, and that will work for most, with the exception of the blood-thirsty war-gamer types.
          I must admit, I do not like the design. Although I jumped for now when I say the game's included "animeeples," the game has the look of a cheap children's book. I can understand trying to keep the tone light, especially because the game can be so heavy, but I am more of an advocate for the Catan painted and realistic style artwork. I would also argue that the game suffers from its components. An odd statement, as you would think that I would jump for joy at its wooden painted pieces and sacred animeeples. But no: the game is too large for its own good. Although giving every player a board is alright with me, you will struggle to fit the game on even a large table. Whatever way you do it, players with still have to get up, reach over, and ask other players to pass them the cards, pieces, or place their figures. The garish and cartoony art style does't help with this either: things are often not very clear and the game feels very messy at the end of the day. The game also suffers from trying to be TOO NICE to us. The game provides 3 decks of cards, ranging from easy to intermediate to advanced, depending on your group. As well as this, the game also includes cards within this that you remove or add depending on how many people you are trying to play with. Top this all off with an alternate set of rules and a "family" version, and you have one heavy box. The game will take you over half an hour to set up, and more than that for the first time playing. I would certainly say that the game is in desperate need of some trimming.

Final Thoughts
I really like agricola, I just wish it could have been done a bit more justice. Some redesign, clean up, graphic improvements and streamlining could make this game an instant classic even with extremely young children. I can't wait for a reprint in the future, and I am eager to see how my opinions change. The game would get a 8, however the poor design and annoying kinks of the game bring it down heavily. I will have to give the game a worthy 6.5, but I would strongly recommend you get the game nonetheless.

Glory to Boardgameistan

"Munchkin" Review

Munchkin is a game that is "cool to hate." But, I must confess, it has a place in my collection, alongside 6 of its expansions. Yet day by day I find my like of the game diminishing, so, whats the verdict?

Design
Munchkin prides itself on its so called "quirky" art style. This it owes to John Kovalic, who has a web comic called "dork tower." And you can see the influence: the cartoonish, almost rushed drawing may work well for small-scale imagery on a webcomic, but on a card they have no text to hide behind: the design falls flat and leaves a messy looking game overall. I also hate the components, well, the cards. Other than a d6 (thats a six sided die for all you outsiders out there) the game provides little in the way of anything else. Not even a way to keep track of levels, a key feature of the game! For God's sake! It really feels like a ploy to sell you their stupid life-keeping stuff like dials and boards. The cards are uncomfortable to shuffle as well - not glossy enough.

Gameplay
The aim of the game is pretty simple: get to ten levels first. You do this by fighting monsters drawn from a pile of cards: you beat them, you get levels; you lose to them, bad stuff happens. This treasure and bad stuff varies. You are fully allowed to team up, trade with, and screw over other players on the board, however this sometimes falls a bit flat as the game seems to be extremely pro "cheating" and "double-crossing," however is extremely strict on some rules. Its like saying "Go crazy! Whoa whoa whoa! Trading a race card? Lets not get a little TOO crazy."
       This is where I disagree mostly with people on Munchkin. Although, as you can see, I have a huge problem with the look of the game, the gameplay I think is actually a bit better than people take it for. I believe, although definitely not hard-core strategy, the game encourages alliances, showing restraint and holding onto cards, and making decisions, and I do think that there is a certain amount of skill involved. The problems do arise in some areas, that mostly being that the game is... too easy. On reaching a high level it is too hard to bring people down again, and the game is too short for any real interesting things to occur. But, overall, I don't think the gameplay is too bad.

Theme?
Well, I...*shudders* Enjoy the theme. As a Dungeons And Dragons player, I find the references highly enjoyable. The jokes are, believe it or not, actually very funny in places. They definitely reminded me of DnD, and they are well thought out. They raise a chuckle with the right players, but with no help from the artwork, I must say.

Opinions
Well, I like Munchkin. I think it gets a lot of crap that it doesn't really deserve, but I will agree on the fact that it is definitely overrated. It really doesn't deserve its number of sequels, for instance. However, I think its a good game to play with new players, and can be enjoyable under the right circumstances. 7 out of ten.

Glory to Boardgameistan.

Rebellious Thought - How Important is Art Design?

In my reviews I like to assess, along with mechanics and gameplay, the design of a game. That is, the artwork and look - this might include the pictures used on the cards, the size and scale on cards, and the fonts and layouts. All this comes together to make the game fit a theme better, as well as make the game easier to understand in places.
        In most cases, people take it upon themselves to judge the design of a game up there with the gameplay and with the themes. What I find interesting is that some games appear to be exempt from this rule. Whereas people are happy to scrutinise more "middle-of-the-range" board games, things like the German game Village, "megagames" like Settlers Of Catan and Ticket to Ride seem to have some wall of "famous immunity" protecting them from having their design elements questioned. Is this because that are just that good, or because they're not important at their level?
        The interesting thing to point out in these cases is that, it may be said, Settlers and Ticket have both, in my opinion, fairly good design. At least, impressive design - wooden or plastic pieces (no card), well made cards, clearly expensive painted artwork. However this is not the interesting aspect: the main point is that these things are almost always overlooked when talking about these games - it is the mechanics that people look towards and the gameplay that people remember or praise them for specifically.
        So, why is this? Does design take a back seat to gameplay? Should it? Well, on the one hand, I suppose it should in some cases. Design, at the end of the day, does not effect your playing experience as much as the gameplay does. Games like Agricola have excellent gameplay, however the design is average at best. 
        What I think is that good design is a RESULT of popularity, not the other way round. The reason that Settlers Of Catan can afford to have painted artwork, large numbers of painted wooden components, large game boards, many cards etc. is that it has the money and influence to do so. You don't often see things like that in lower-budget board games.
        So, Munchkin. Well, I don't want to turn this into a rant of any sort, and I intend to do a review of the game ASAP, but it is interesting to me that a game like that can have such poor elements and yet be highly popular.
        This is quite a new idea I believe, that having nice design can actually effect the gameplay. But, being able to distinguish between things at a glance, being able to help players locate things, even practical things like shuffling cards, storing them in boxes, all makes a difference as to how people play the game.
        Good design can also be the icing on the cake: tipping your opinion just enough over the edge to make you favour one game in particular. I own, in my collection, two of the Ticket To Ride games, although I am just about to purchase the Nordic Countries expansion. My favourite, between the Classic and the Europe Set, is the Europe, its sequel, simply because it has larger cards that are easier to hold. That is seriously what I like more, well, that and that it has my continent on it...
        Anyways, all I wanted to raise awareness to today was how important design really is in a board game, and how seriously it should really be taken. Thats all today!

Glory to Boardgameistan.
        

"Revolution!" Review

Revolution! just happens to be the most recent game that I have played. I wanted to do a quick overview of the game, as well as my thoughts on it.

Theme

The game has slight confusion with the theme, although the initial premise is sound. Revolution is about to break out, and you want to have the most influence by the time it arrives. To do this, you are going to have to bribe, blackmail and force different members of the community onto your side. Now, if you squint at the background of the box above you will make out, what appears to me, to be something resembling revolutionary France. The gunpowder bomb taking place of the "O" also fits this assumption. Characters such as magistrates and printers definitely place this game somewhere in the 18th? century. However, on playing, you will notice that the board contains a large number of roman soldiers. In a tavern? I don't think so. Anyway, its just a nitpick worth mentioning.

Game Rules

Revolution! is essentially a bidding game. Players, behind closed screens (which I must point out was a well-implemented and well-designed component) place their gold coins, black coloured letters and red fists onto a collection of characters (printer, magistrate, captain etc.). Some characters cannot be forced, or blackmailed, or both. Then, all players reveal what they have, and you hope that you have bided on things that nobody else did, or bided higher on a specific character than someone else.

         Winning over a character has certain advantages. Winning over generals and captains will give you some manpower that you may use to beat up a bishop onto your side, or buying out an innkeep might get you some nice gossip to blackmail the merchant with later. This all ties nicely in with the theme and makes for some enjoyable circumstances, like every player putting ludicrous amounts of money to attempt to bribe the apothecary.

         Other than replenishing your tokens, you will also win support, as well as being able to place wooden cubes onto different areas (e.g. winning over bishop gives you influence in the cathedral). At the end of the game, you will get points for having the most cubes in an area. This is also what ends the game.

         Other than that, there are no other real rules. Apothecaries and Thieves can be used to swap or replace cubes on the board, which adds a nice touch, but other than that, there are no cards, no dice, nothing.

Components and Art

The game looks alright. Its not a particularly poetic phrase, but its the best way that I can describe it. The tokens are nice and large enough not to be lost, and are all very distinguishable and solid. I have already expressed by like for the covers, as well as my dislike for the roman soldiers. There are further problems with the board - I couldn't help feeling that a lot of space was simply wasted - in reality the only thing it was used for was having thirty-something spaces for different coloured wooden cubes. It could have been used as a place to store perhaps the tokens? Or had a more interesting visual art style (see Village).

         I like the wooden cubes (I am a big fan of wooden components in games), however I think that there could have been nicer score-markers for racing along the outside of the board. It felt a bit last-minute. The bidding board was a bit unimaginative as well, I would have liked some pictures, or icons, or even some different typefaces or something.

Opinions

The game is highly enjoyable but not a classic. I got it very cheap - only £10, and I would say that it was worth the money. I felt like the game lasted about the right amount of time, and its the sort of game that you can easily get people involved in, and don't really have to get that competitive to play.

         However, the game occasionally lacks strategy, and it can be pure luck that turns the tide. I do not deny that there is skill involved, after all, TECHNICALLY there is no chance in the entire game, but it often feels like a player can have a huge advantage by a lucky streak. This sometime works in the game's favour however as it keeps you on your toes and means that anyone has a chance of winning.

         I would have liked to see some more aspects to the game - some more interesting mechanics, perhaps some greater strategy involved as I found, although I cannot deny that the game was very streamlined, that the game became tedious and not very engaging in places. Overall, a hearty 6.5 out of ten. What that scale means we shall discover, but for now, see you next time!

Glory to Boardgameistan.