Monthly Agricola: Regular opponents Terry and Sara were joined by ringer Oliver as Sky and Kevin were scared by all the practicing Ive been doing (or so I claim). Freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, small plums, and tea were served. Ive spent a month practicing and evaluating the cards but it was all for naught as Terry has a bunch of European decks so I only really knew half the cards. And from what I could tell, nearly all the improvements we were drafting were awful. And the occupations werent leaping out at me either. So I decided to draft cows. Im awful at ranching - the Civ in me keeps building rooms instead of saving up for some fences and so my farmyard is often low on animals. I vowed that this would not happen - I had Animal Dealer to get extra animals for a food, Cowherd to get extra cattle, and Animal Farmer to get points off all these animals. So, of course, I built exactly 0 fences all game and had 9 empty farm spaces. Early on Oliver pointed out that if I got unlucky, Id miss the early Fireplace despite grabbing 2 Clay. I looked at my cards and realized that Travelling Salesman would let me get around that and veered off the cattle highway into the build lots of improvements path. Except that my improvements were awful (though I did have Stone Exchange to help get some majors). Meanwhile, Oliver was showing the wonder that is Mushroom Collector, especially when married to Pieceworker. Sara had all the baking to herself (and the Housegoat). And Terry was bemoaning his poor luck in sitting to my right when I kept taking SP while simultaneously playing an excellent game that included Woodcutter, putting a lot of pressure on Wood. It was clear to us all that Oliver was going to win with his endless resources...right until the final turn when Terry slammed down his first pick Mansion! That was a big surprise - we though the 3 Stone were for the remaining Oven. Oops. Final Scores: Terry - 45 Oliver - 42 Matt - 31 Sara - 30 Animals were always available so ranching would have been a solid strategy. Terry enjoyed having a solid challenge, Oliver analyzed his game to figure out where he went wrong, Sara wondered what the heck happened that she scored less than me, while I was just bewildered at how badly Id messed the game up. It was a great learning experience. I look forward to the next one!
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 00:55:14 +0000
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