Agricola rules refresher

Read the refresher

Your goal is to finish fourteen rounds with the most victory points from the most well-rounded farm. You get there by placing your family members on action spaces to gather wood, clay, reed, stone, grain and animals. You then turn those into rooms, fields, pastures and a bigger family, all while making sure you can feed everyone at each harvest.

For setup, each player takes a farmyard and places two wooden hut room tiles on the two building spaces, with one family member in each room. Your other three family member discs, your four stables and your fifteen fences wait off to the side. Sort the blue round cards by stage and shuffle each stage separately. Stack them so stage one is on top and stage six is on the bottom. With three players, lay out the four green action cards for that count. With four or five players, lay out six. With two players, use none. Remove any occupation cards that don't match your player count, which is shown by the symbol on the card's left side. Deal everyone seven occupations and seven minor improvements. Put the ten red major improvements face up on their board, and set the grey begging cards nearby. The starting player takes the starting player token and two food, and everyone else takes three food.

The game runs fourteen rounds grouped into six stages, with a harvest after rounds four, seven, nine, eleven, thirteen and fourteen. Every round has four phases. First, flip the top round card onto its space. That new action is open to everyone from now on. Also resolve anything that happens at the start of a round, and hand out any items that cards placed on this round's space. Second, replenish by adding goods and food to every space marked with an arrow. These pile up with no limit if nobody takes them. Third comes the work phase. Starting with the starting player and going clockwise, each player places one family member at a time on an unoccupied action space and takes that action. This continues until everyone's people are placed. Each space holds only one person per round, and you can never occupy a space without performing its action. Fourth, everyone returns home and takes their people back. The starting player token does not rotate. It only moves when someone takes the starting player action.

Now the actions in more depth. Arrow spaces give you everything piled there. Resources go into your visible personal supply. Animals can never sit in your supply. They go straight onto your farm, or get cooked immediately with an improvement that has the cooking pot symbol, or go back to the general supply. Day Laborer gives two food. The starting player space gives you the token and lets you play one minor improvement.

Build rooms extends your home. Each new room costs five of your home's material plus two reed. New rooms must be orthogonally adjacent to existing rooms and must match your home's material, so a wooden hut only grows with wood. The same space lets you build stables instead or as well, for two wood each, up to four stables total in the game.

Renovation becomes available in stage two. To go from wood to clay, pay one clay per room plus one reed. To go from clay to stone, pay one stone per room plus one reed. You always renovate the whole house, and only one step per action. The stage two renovation card then lets you buy a major or minor improvement, and the stage six card then lets you build fences. You can't skip the renovation just to take the bonus.

Family growth arrives in stage two, and you must have more rooms than family members to use it. Afterwards you may play a minor improvement, but you can't take that space only for the improvement. Place the newborn on the action space. It moves into your home at return home and works starting next round. In stage five, a second card allows family growth even without room. Your family can never exceed five.

Plow one field places a field tile on an empty space, orthogonally adjacent to your other fields if you have any. You may use at most one plow improvement per plow action. Take one grain, and later take one vegetable, only put the crop in your supply. You can't sow it that turn. Sow and bake bread lets you plant any number of your empty fields. For grain, put one grain from your supply on the field and add two from the general supply. For a vegetable, put down one and add one. A field that still has crops on it can't be resown, but an emptied field never needs replowing. Baking converts grain from your supply using a baking improvement. A Fireplace makes two food per grain and a Cooking Hearth makes three. A Stone Oven bakes up to two grain at four food each, and a Clay Oven bakes one grain for five food. You also get one free bake right after buying an oven. In stage five a card lets you plow a field and then sow.

Fences cost one wood each and may only be built to fully enclose a pasture. The board edge, rooms, fields and stables don't count as fence. All your pastures must be orthogonally connected, fields and rooms can't be fenced in, fences can never be removed, and you may subdivide existing pastures. Each pasture holds one animal type, at two animals per space. A stable inside a pasture doubles its capacity. An unfenced stable holds one animal, and your house holds one pet. You can rearrange or release animals at any time.

Occupations are played from your hand. On the printed occupation space, your first is free and each later one costs one food. The extra occupation spaces in bigger games have varying costs, as shown on them. Improvements show their cost in the upper right and any prerequisite in the upper left. Grain or vegetables paid as costs must come from your supply, not your fields. Read every card aloud when you play it. Cards with brown arrows pass to your left after use, and upgrade cards require returning an improvement you own. You can upgrade a Fireplace to a Cooking Hearth, which returns the Fireplace to the board. Cooking improvements convert animals and vegetables to food at any time. The Joinery, Pottery and Basketmaker's Workshop each turn one resource into food per harvest and give bonus points. The Well gives food over five rounds and is worth four points.

At each harvest, first take one grain or vegetable from every sown field. Then feed two food per family member, or just one for a baby born this round. Each raw grain or vegetable can become one food at any time, but live animals are worth no food unless cooked. For every food you can't or won't pay, take a begging card. Finally comes breeding. Anyone with at least two of an animal type gains exactly one baby of that type, but only if there's room for it. Newborns and their parents can't be cooked right after birth, and a baby with no room simply runs away.

The game ends after the harvest following round fourteen. Fields, pastures, grain, vegetables, sheep, wild boar and cattle each score minus one if you have none, rising to a maximum of four. For fields, that means minus one for zero or one field, up to four at five fields. Pastures score one each, up to four, no matter their size. Grain scores one point for one to three, up to four at eight, counting both your fields and your supply. Vegetables score one point each, up to four. Sheep reach four at eight, boar at seven, and cattle at six. You lose one point per unused farmyard space, meaning any space with no room, field, fence enclosure or stable. Each fenced stable scores one point. Clay rooms score one each, stone rooms score two, and wooden rooms score nothing. Each family member is worth three points. Add the points printed on your improvements plus any bonus points from cards, and subtract three for each begging card. Highest total wins, and tied players share the victory.

A turn, played out

It is round 7, and a harvest follows it. You live in a 3 room wooden hut with 3 family members, so the family growth space is closed to you: you need more rooms than people. You own a Fireplace. You have 2 plowed fields, both empty, 3 grain and 3 food in your supply, and 2 sheep in a pasture of 2 spaces. Your first two people have already taken wood and reed. The player to your left grabbed Day Laborer, so that easy 2 food is gone. You place your third person on Sow and bake bread. You put 1 grain from your supply on each field, and each gets 2 more from the general supply, so both fields now hold 3 grain. Your last grain goes into the Fireplace and becomes 2 food. You now hold 5 food. Everyone finishes placing, then returns home. The harvest begins. You take 1 grain from each sown field, so each field drops to 2, and 2 grain land in your supply. Feeding costs 2 food per person, 6 in total. You pay your 5 food and turn 1 raw grain into 1 food to cover the last one, keeping the other grain. No begging card. Then breeding. You have 2 sheep, so you gain exactly 1 lamb, but only if there is room. Your 2 space pasture holds 2 animals per space, so up to 4 sheep. The lamb fits, and you now have 3. You could not cook that lamb or its parents right now even if you wanted to. Your fields still hold crops, so they cannot be resown yet, but they will feed you again at the harvest after round 9.