It seems like Agricola may be to bgg con 07 what Notre Dame was to 06.  Last year Imissed ND when you were showing it off.  Not making that same mistake again (ND is in my top 10 at this time).

Looking forward to trying agricola out.

OK Valerie, now I’m torn. Agricola or Shoe Shopping? It’s quite the choice.

The first major difference between Agricola (this year’s BGG.Con), Notre Dame (last year’s BGG.Con) and Caylus (the first BGG.Con) is that we knew that Notre Dame and Caylus were definitely going to be released in English language editions. We don’t know that with Agricola…

The second difference is that I did not get plays of either Caylus or Notre Dame in at the first two BGG.Cons. My schedule just did not mesh with the myriad of Caylus games at the first BGG.Con and I was suffering through a nasty cold at the second one and did not get it in before I got to the point where I felt so bad that I did not want to game. I do not intend to let this happen with Agricola and this year’s BGG.Con.

I look forward to seeing you there, Valerie.

Zev (Z-man games) should have an English prototype available to play and your reaction to the game at BGG.con might be the deciding factor for whether or not he publishes an English edition.  I’ll be demoing Rio Grande games this year and I can’t wait to try the new Alea title, In the Year of the Dragon.

Valerie

Valerie, I can’t wait to give In the Year of the Dragon a try, either - in fact, I already have a copy reserved. It may not be the first game I play when I get to BGG.con, but it will be played there!

Valeries,

Agricola may be Zman’s (at least for now), but trust me, there are plenty of RGG games I want to try out includen Des Drachen, Hamburgum, Race for the Galaxy, Amyitis, etc.

Nice analogy, Valerie, although I can’t relate to being drawn to shoes sales, the Berlin flea markets tempt me with used board games in the same way, and I’ve still got unplayed stacks of them in my basement.

I do recommend giving In the Year of the Dragon a try.  It has all the elements of a good Alea game, with agonizing choices galore.  What’s different is a feeling that you’re constantly fighting an uphill battle.  Instead of the rats that Stefan Feld gave us in Notre Dame, he now gives us 10 other negative events (almost one for each of the 12 rounds!). 

Like a typical Euro, you’re trying to find the right combination of building palaces and hiring workers that will give you the most victory points, but the negative events ensure that you will have to give up some of what you’ve built/hired--there’s no way to protect against all of them! 

The decision of what to give up and what to protect is the most important, and there’s a neat mechanism to determine the important turn order.

For those who don’t like to lose what they’ve built up, this game could be a bit depressing, but for strategists who can “let go,” it’s worth a try.  It’s a shoe sale that guarantees you’ll lose some of your shoes eventually!

After spending the last hour printing off the card translations into nice sized booklets. I am ready for some Agricoloverload this week at BGG! And Hamburgum, and Brass, and TtA, and galaxy trucker, and....and.......and........ I’ll sleep when I’m dead! ;)

As Jeff said a game sale might be more appropriate.  Nice article though.

You know, I’ve been thinking about this analogy quite a bit, and it fits for me too, but in a different way. Let’s say Agricola is a specific brand and style of shoe. And that shoe can currently only be purchased in, say, Germany. And I like the look of the shoe, but boy it’s a hassle to go over there to look at them, and then you have to deal with sizes that don’t quite match up to American sizes and even converting the cost from Euros to Dollars. So I try on the same shoe that someone else has (who isn’t all creeped out with me trying on their shoe), and it fits really well, and I think “Gee, I’d like a pair of these” but then I realize the big hassle of getting them and breaking them in, and decide that I’m going to petition my local shoe store to stock them so I can just go to the mall and pick up one that’s my size (no conversion math needed), I benefit the local economy by doing so, and I am paying in dollars.

And since I already have lots and lots of shoes that I haven’t even worn yet, I’m not really desperate to get this new pair of shoes, even though those are really snazzy nice shoes. I’ll wait, and meanwhile I’ll wear some other shoes I have yet to break in. And I’ll wear old favorites. And maybe I’ll even try to throw out some old, stinky shoes that I have a strange attachment to.

And I’ll convince myself to stop buying other shoes until this new pair that I really want is available. Well, that might be wishful thinking…

Agricola was played constantly during EuroQuest this past weekend, from the very beginning (I think it was the first game that I saw out on the table when I arrived ~20 minutes before the convention was officially to start).  I had missed out on 4 games of it until I finally got a chance to play, thanks to Zev who was very gracious and enthusiastic in teaching it back to back.  I would love to play it again during BGG.con this week.

I estimate my copy of Agricola got between 12 and 15 plays at EQ this weekend. Zev’s probably got 10 to 12 (he came later, and left earlier). I got to play in 5 of those, including one with the “I” deck.

Other than Settlers of Catan, which was one of the first three modern games I played, I have never done that with any other game. I am totally awed by this game.

Your analogy with shopping makes a lot of sense, Valerie. I am one of those who likes a bargain, but prefers sticking to my plan. One of the things I like about Agricola is the inadvertent screwage that can go on, as people grab the four reeds just to have them for later, and the one who was counting on getting them (they had the oven, or played the Basket Weaver occupation) no has to jump through hoops. I like being on both ends of that. It’s fun when you have to make the best of a bad situation.

Ahhh, Valerie.  Your stories regarding the superfluous explanations of board games call to my mind (quite fondly) an explanation of investment strategy during a UP game that you attempted to spring on my professor of Finance wife....  Good times!

The whole “you mean like Monopoly” thing strikes a chord. I’m still trying to come up with the good and concise answer to that. I think the right answer is something like, “yes, but shorter, and you don’t get knocked out”. Maybe something about how the pacing is better.  It seems like when I mention boardgames, the follow-up is often “you mean like Monopoly?”, and so it would be good to have a good answer. I always used to go into that whole spiel too, about how much better and more advanced euros are, but I think that’s not the right thing to do ... because eurogames aren’t that much different from Monopoly, fundamentally, so it’s good to work from how they are the same and focus on just the one or two crucial differences - no player elimination, plays in an hour, and faster pacing.

.....’and better mechanics’.  Sorry, but had to add the thing that really drew me to this hobby.

Although, I didn’t really know about this concept until I got bit by the euro and wargame bug 3 years ago (so maybe scratch that.... ‘better theme?’).

I usually go with “yeah, like Monopoly but everyone has fun… “ :)