Agricola 2016-17

[jollyork]

From Uwe Rosenberg himself:

 

 

 

Dear play-agricola.com users!

In 2017, we will celebrate Agricola's 10th anniversary. In preparation for that, I've been working on the Agricola cards for a year to get them into better shape. The card layout will remain the same, but the text on the cards is supposed to be much clearer.

• We removed most parentheses from the cards and moved them to the rule book. The phrasing of the cards is supposed to prevent any kind of chain reactions: instead of saying "each time you take action x, you can take action y", in most cases we now say "each time you use action space x, ..".
• The action spaces get names so that we can address them on the cards easily.
• And most importantly: Chris Deotte gave me access to a list of 1000 published cards and their "power values", which allowed me to strengthen underpowered cards and weaken overpowered ones. (In simple cases, I simply added "when you play this card, you immediately receive x" to strengthen a card.) We now have an Excel file with 672 minor improvements and 672 occupations, which will be published in a deluxe version of Agricola in 2017.

Credit belongs to the www.play-agricola.com community that the Excel file is now available for proof-reading. Without the "power value" data you've collected over countless of plays, we couldn't possibly justify an Agricola Deluxe to retailers. Thanks to the power values, we can realistically publish a game with a vast amount of balanced cards.
 
About the Agricola Formats
Agricola addresses different tastes. This is why we decided to publish Agricola in three versions.

• The first one is about to be published. "Agricola - The Family Game" reduces the former family version to its key elements. Still, there won't be any hand cards. Instead of placing fences, you will place pasture tiles, and instead of a complicated scoring procedure, everything on your farm will be worth 1 point each.
• The second version (which will also be published in 2016) will be a reprint of Agricola as you already know it, with fewer components so that we can keep its price tag at a reasonable level. It will be for 4 players only and will only include 96 cards. It is meant for Agricola players who play the game maybe three times a year.

Both in the second and third version, we dropped the additional action space cards for different player counts in favor of action space boards.

• The deluxe version of Agricola will be published in 2017. It will come with the exact same rules as the second version, but it will include components for up to 6 players. The 6-player game will have a few more action spaces whose structure should be well-known. The biggest difference to the second version will be the fact that it'll include more than 1000 cards. For now, these cards only exist in form of an Excel file. Guests and upgrades will only be available in the third version, cards that you pass around and competitive cards (providing bonus points for each player who accomplishes a certain goal) will already be available in the second version.
   

About the Decks
The second version of Agricola will only have a single deck, including 14 action space cards (aka round cards), 10 major improvements, 48 minor improvements, and 48 occupations. The third version will have an elaborate deck structure, which I'd like to outline a little.

• Each deck of cards will be comprised of 168 cards, including 21 "3+" occupations and 21 "4+" occupations. It is designed such that you can play each deck three times in a 3- and 4-player game, without having to see any card more than once, which is ideal for a campaign mode, for which we will provide rules.
• Every deck will have the same structure. For instance, cards #1-#9 will always be ones that you pass around. Cards #164-#168 will be "4+" occupations that help you getting animals.
• The card number will start with a letter identifying the deck. The letters of the base game decks will be A, B, C, D, P, Q, and R (and possibly S, if our budget allows it). The rest of the alphabet is reserved for all the cards you're testing on Chris' website. We'll add some card ideas that we received from fans here and there. The fan decks will no longer be called G1 to G7, as they are on play-agricola.com, but re-grouped so that they fit the 168-card structure. Also, no longer will your name be in the rule book, but on the card you came up with itself. I've changed some cards more than others. When I changed a card by a lot, you'll notice that by the phrase "based on an idea by..".

Font Size
Previously, we didn't cap the front size so that some cards had really small font. This is going to change.

• Each of the 96 cards of the second version will have at most 175 characters (including blank space). The short texts are supposed to be easier to grasp so that even less experienced players can manage their hands of 14 cards. Expansions will have the same font size, making them interesting even for players of the third version: thanks to being easier to understand and having a larger font, these cards are well suited as introductory cards.
• The cards in the third version of Agricola will have a font size of 9.5 and at most 235 characters (including blank space), which is a larger font size than we used before. The 60 additional characters, however, do indeed add a disproportionate amount of time a player is preoccupied with the card text. This is why the second version is not only justified price-wise, but also play-wise. Of course, I know a bunch of players whose favorite cards are among the wordy ones.

That's it for now. Now let's all hunt for errors and mistakes so that, in a year from now, we can present an as perfect game as is possible. Hopefully, the Excel file won't be uploaded anywhere for public access, but will only be available via Chris or myself. Just ask him or me if you can have it for proof-reading. We'd much appreciate it. There are a lot of questions that still need an answer, like:
Which cards would you remove entirely?
Which card would you never play most likely? Which are too weak or too strong?
Which name would you change?
Are there duplicates of any card?
Do the German and English card texts match as to content?
Do you have any detailed questions? In fact, I'm collecting detailed questions to answer them in an appendix as before. There are not too many of them - for now.
I'm most grateful for everything you've done for me so far. Working on that file may still turn out to be a major challenge.

Best wishes,
Uwe

 

and an update:

 

 

 

Agricola II, the reduced version with 96 cards, is gonna come out in May 2016. It has just been finalized and the product is now off to the printers as far as i know. The family game is also finished but will be printed at a later, as of now undetermined date, but still in 2016. Uwes original letter suggested the two products would be released in another order, but that has been changed. 

 

[dkieft]

Been kicking around the idea of getting this, Probably hold off for that deluxe version! Thanks for the info.

[pretre]

Been kicking around the idea of getting this, Probably hold off for that deluxe version! Thanks for the info.

Ditto.

[jollyork]

From BGG. I chose the extra zoomy size so you can read the details...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Marcalla]

woooooo...