Expansion Review #1: Agricola: Farmers of the Moor

# of Players: 1-5 (unreleased for Revised Edition)
Playtime: 3-4 Hours

Core Mechanic: Worker Placement

Theme: Farming

Type: Euro
Weight: Heavy

Year: 2009

Rating: 9.5*

When I found out there was an expansion for Agricola, I went and bought it right away. Agricola was my favorite game at the time, so I was really interested in seeing what new mechanics the expansion brought to the table. In the end, it is a great expansion and any person who loves Agricola needs to try it out, but it might push Agricola a bit too far into the heavy end, which may be why even though I will recommend it, I have played it many more times without it than with.

There are several new things that this expansion adds. My favorite of these are the moor and forest tiles that get added to your board at the start of the game through a random Start card. The spaces these tiles are located now count as occupied, so they won't be worth negative victory points, but they also significantly block expansion of your farm. Each Start card is different as well, and combined with the different ways each player will remove these tiles, will help create farms that visually different from each other and require some extra spacial thoughts and consideration.

Removing these tiles requires taking one of the new special action cards. These special action cards can be taken instead of a regular worker action, provided you still have at least one regular worker available. Special actions include removing moor or forest tiles, taking horses, and other ways to obtain food and improvements. Once a special action card is taken, it can be taken again by a second player who needs to pay 2 food to the supply. If a special action card is taken twice, it can no longer be used for the rest of the round.

These special actions definitely slow the game down a lot, and I mean a lot. It gives each player an extra action or two per round, so considering you normally have two actions to start, it increases the amount of actions you have to take and think about significantly, which also adds to the game length. I would only recommend this to people who are interested in the heavy experiences as even I found this to be incredibly taxing, but it was also incredibly rewarding and adds a lot more depth.

What else does the expansion add? More major improvements! These ones get covered up by the major improvements in the original game and only can be added to your farm once one of the original ones are used. As previously mentioned, horses are introduced as a new animal and are worth 1 VP each with no maximum point limit, compared to the other animals which maxed out at 4 VP. 

Finally, fuel is a new resource which can be obtained by removing peat and burning wood. During each harvest, fuel is needed to hear your house at the rate of one fuel per room. If you have a clay or stone house, you pay one or two fuel less respectively, providing another incentive to renovate. Similar to begging cards for not having enough food, for each fuel you cannot supply a family member will become sick and the only action that can be taken by that family member will be going to the infirmary to get healthy. If you're not able to heal your family members, they will only be worth 1 VP instead of 3 VP at the end of the game!

There are a lot of interesting mechanics that the expansion adds, enough that I feel it definitely changes the experience more than the typical expansion does. However, players need to be prepared for all the extra decisions they will need to make and the added game length. If you are a fan of Agricola, I think that you will really enjoy this expansion, but it is not an expansion that you must have to enjoy the game because it augments the game so much. I would gladly play Agricola without this expansion when looking for a simpler game experience. This is in contrast to something like the Expanded Board for Viticulture: Essential Edition which I consider necessary. In this instance I will say that this expansion should be part of the Heavyweight and Collector collections but cannot classify it as essential. One thing to note - I believe it still has not been reprinted for the revised edition of Agricola, so if you don't have this yet you'll just have to settle for regular old amazing Agricola.