Review #18: Agricola - All Creatures Big and Small

# of Players: 2
Playtime: 30-60 Minutes

Core Mechanic: Worker Placement

Theme: Farming

Type: Euro

Weight: Medium

Year: 2012

Rating: 8.5*

When I first heard that there was going to be a two-player version of Agricola, I was the first to question why this was really needed - you could play the full version of Agricola with two players perfectly fine and the game wasn’t too long because of the reduced player count.  Add to that the focus on animals in this game when my preferred strategy in regular Agricola was to work the fields, this didn’t seem like it would be a winner for me.  I’m glad to say that once I gave it a chance, I did end up enjoying it after all - it felt the same but different and I realized that the smaller form factor was a blessing in disguise.

Similar to its bigger brother, the player with the most victory points in the end wins.  You have a personal farm that can be expanded as the game proceeds where you will be building pastures, buildings, and feeding troughs to hold animals, all of which are worth victory points. With the focus just on animals, you don’t need to worry about plowing fields and sowing vegetables and grain.

The game lasts for a total of eight rounds, which each consist of four phases - refill, work, home, and breeding.  During the refill phases, the action spaces on the game board are filled with resources, which may accumulate from previous rounds.  During the work phase, each player places each one of their three workers on an action space in alternating fashion to take that action.  Then on the home phase your workers are returned followed by receiving more animals if possible in the breeding phase.

It is a quicker and more streamlined game than Agricola.  There is a bit of a steeper learning curve in a way, however, because there are so many actions available to you from the start, rather than building over rounds like Agricola.  It definitely takes a few games to develop a strategy, but luckily the games are short.  The highlight of the game is the variability of the special buildings, which significantly increases with the addition of the expansion packs, More Buildings and Even More Buildings.

So here is a game that plays similar to Agricola, but much quicker and with a smaller box.  Like I hinted at before, this smaller form factor is fantastic because this makes it a game that I can take when I travel because it isn’t in a giant, heavy box like Agricola.  There is some strategic depth, but nothing too daunting or that requires long-term planning.  This was a fantastic introduction into Uwe Rosenberg’s small box two-player games, which would continue with Le Havre: Inland Port and the amazing Patchwork.

I would likely never pick this over Agricola if time permitted for a longer game, but if you have only one other person available to play and you are looking for something quick but strategic, this fits the bill perfectly. This is a good game for the Middleweight collection as a strategic and short two-player game. In fact, I think that this will replace Agricola: Family Edition as the middleweight farmer worker placement game. With Agricola being an essential game, I don't think this will be as well, but I do see it as part of the Collector collection.