Our REVIEW

CORN, OATS, PIG AND HORSE

Farmerama

SOW, HARVEST, PRODUCE

In November 2009 a browser came called Farmerama was published on the Internet, which rapidly became one of the best-liked games worldwide. Currently (On April 29^th, 2012) there are 39.414.108 registered users of the game. The game has also won a number of awards, among them the Lara Award, the European Games Award for Best European Browser Game and also Deutscher Entwicklerpreis in the category Best Browser Game. The game can be played in 27 different languages and is continuously expanded by new features.

Uwe Rosenberg is one of the most successful German game designers, his game Agricola on the topic „develop your farm“ has had an incredibly successful run since 2007 and has also been expanded a few times.

So the idea seemed to suggest itself to ask Uwe Rosenberg, who meanwhile had published other successful games with an agricultural topic, to transform the browser game into a board game for the whole family.

Let’s start with an overview;

Players are farmers and husband their land; for this they need water, harvest plants and feed their animals and can then later obtain agricultural products which in turn earn them stars at the end of the game. You win the game if you have most of these stars.

In comparison to the browser game the choices and possibilities have been drastically reduced. There are only the plant varieties of carrots, corn, oats and hay and four animals, sheep, pig, cow and horse. Water is of paramount importance because without water nothing grows and no animal can thrive without water.

Each player has his personal board, which is lanced by waterways that split the board into seven big areas. On the top - independent of areas - the farm as we know it from the browser game is depicted, and on the right hand edge, again independent of areas we have the stables for the animals with notations for the feed they need and a star value, but more on that later. Each of the seven areas shows one or more acres for plants, some of them with a scarecrow, and a fenced pasture for animals, each pasture offers room for two animals. In the middle of the board there is the so called player wheel with seven areas as well, four of them are marked with one animal and one plant each, sheep with carrots, pig with hay, cow with oats and horse with corn. The remaining three areas are harvest areas; one of them carries a pacifier mark. This wheel has a beam that is marked with a water droplet and at the start of the game this beam sits on the river that runs towards the right-hand edge of the board in the lower region of the board. Next to the player board each player places his scoring board with a track for each animal, those tracks symbolize the products that you can produce with the help of the animals, and a decorative garden with room for six ornamental structures.

Those ornamental structures as stacked as stated in the rules, for the basic game some are removed. Finally we get one animal of each kind and two tiles each of carrots, hay and oats and one corn tile plus three water tiles, which we place into storage in the barn, that is, next to our board, and a set of actions cards for sowing, harvesting, feeding, seed store and water. From general stock each player takes two plants of each kind and sows them on acres that are currently marked by the corresponding symbols due to the starting position of the player wheel. 

A second wheel in the middle of the table, the action wheel, tells you how often you can do an action, it is advanced by one position at the start of each round; and at long last you turn up two ornamental structures from the stack, they feature plants, stars, water or mixtures.

Now we can give our attention to the game itself, which is played in rounds; one of those rounds comprises four different phases:

Choose action card

Allocate decorative structure

Execute actions - sowing, harvesting, water, feeding, and seed store

Mucking out - take back action cards, advance action wheel, replenish decorative structures

From our action cards we choose what we want to do and lay the corresponding card out face-down; then all cards are revealed simultaneously. Should two or more players have chosen the same action, the round is interrupted for an ornamental structure action: All players involved in this “tie” check their player board and barn to determine who can take one of the face-up ornamental structures: 1^st Criterion are ornamental structures already in the ornamental garden, if you have fewer you get the new structure; in case of tie there you check the 2^nd criterion, the scarecrows, the structure goes to the player who has more of them visible on his acres. If there is a tie, toot, the structure goes to the player with fewer plants in his barn. If that again results in a tie, the structure is not awarded. When in a game of four players, two players each have played identical cards, both structures are randomly allocated to a pair and then handed out according to the above-mentioned procedure. Who gets the structure puts it into his garden and receives the reward either immediately in case of plants or water or at the end of the game in case of victory points. Should your ornamental garden be full there is one extension available for the first player and only the first player who might require it.

What can we do with the card that we played?

If you chose water, you take water tiles from general stock, corresponding to the bigger number for water on the action wheel if you chose the action alone, and corresponding to the smaller number if water was played more than once.

If you played sowing, you take - in analogy to water - either the bigger or smaller number of plants from your stock and plant it onto a free acre. This acre must be in the area of your board that is marked with the corresponding plant symbol on the player wheel. You place the marker on an acre and top it with a marker of the same kind taken from general stock.

For feeding you take the number of plants corresponding to the markings for the animal you want to feed from your barn, put them back into general stock and place the fed animal onto the pasture in the area that is currently marked with this animal by the player wheel.

For the harvest action you can - again according to the bigger or smaller number on the action wheel - harvest plants from acres and place the plants into your barn next to your board. You can only harvest acres that lie in an area of the board marked by a green section on the player wheel. When the area marked with a pacifier reaches an animal on pasture the animal has produced: You put it back into the stable and move the marker one position up on the scoring track for this animal.

The seed store action replenishes your stores; you take one tile from general stock for each plant variety that is not present in the barn, and can then sow one plant immediately. If you are out of water, you take one water tile.

Which leaves the questions, what do we do with water? Well, water is the core element of the game, without water nothing goes, because water is the currency for moving the player wheel. For each water tile that you discard, you move your wheel counter-clockwise for one position; thus the markings move and new areas are opened for feeding/sowing or harvesting. The nice thing is, you can do that anytime during your turn, before your actions, after your actions, in-between your actions; It would be too good to be true if that would work without any but; the big but is that you can only move your beam and thus your wheel over areas that are completely empty. So that means you need to plan ahead meticulously and harvest in time so that you can move and sow/feed again.

When the ornamental structures cannot be replenished at the start of the round, the game ends and you add your stars for wool, truffles, milk and riding lessons, that is, the stars in each of the animal tracks on your scoring board and 1 star per plant tile in your barn and on your acres, 3 stars for ornamental structures with a star symbol and the stars on the animal silhouettes in the stable for animals in the pastures.  You win with most stars, in case of tie if you have more water stored.

So far so good - what do we have - best butter or only Farmer-Rama? Sorry for this pun, but that was in my mind for the whole game. To be honest, I am not sure. Seen from a craftsman’s point of view there is absolutely nothing to criticize, it works exceedingly well, each part is well adjusted and works smoothly with all others, from the horse that is most valuable and can only be “harvested” after a full turn of the wheel to the water tile which are scarce but not impossible to manage.

The graphic relate to the browser, if you like them or not is simply personal taste and why the pig produces truffles instead of ham does not matter in the end either, be is as it may be. Did we have fun? Well, yes! Can anyone play it instantly? Rather no! It takes a few rounds to grasp the correlations, how you best interlock sowing, harvesting and water collecting in order to achieve the optimum result. Just take care not to try to avoid ties in action cards in order to postpone the end of the game; you always get something and should concentrate on your own game. If you base your strategy on the more valuable animals or rather take the cheaper once and take card to have a really full barn at the end of the game. Well that is entirely your own decision. And to make a good one will take a few games.

What really needs getting used to - maybe not for those who play the browser game - is the total lack of interaction. With the exception of a tie in action cards played and the resulting ornamental structures you farm along entirely on your own and somehow it is not really comprehensible why this one and only interaction of jointly played cards is the vehicle for ending the game. But even that works well!

All in all Uwe Rosenberg has produced a very solid game, which will surely find its target in those players, who know, play and love Farmerama and would want to try the board game variant around the family tale. Expert players might find the basic game to bland for their taste, they should try the advanced version with the additional ornamental structures, which also offers the possibility to use water not only for moving the player wheel, but to spend it also on additional sowing and harvesting.

Dagmar de Cassan

Players: 1-4

Age: 10+

Time: 60+

Designer: Uwe Rosenberg

Artist: Bigpoint, Fiore GmbH

Price: ca. 25 Euro

Publisher: Ravensburger 2012

Web: www.ravensburger.de

Genre: Resources management game

Users: For families

Special: 1 player

Version: multi

Rules: de fr it nl

In-game text: no

Comments:

Graphics taken from the browser game

Reduced and streamlined as regards to the browser game

Feeling and flair nicely transferred

Well-working, well interlocked mechanisms

Compares to:

Agricola, Ora & Labora, Neuland, Dicke Kartoffeln as regards to topic

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 5

Dagmar de Cassan:

Farmerama offers a well-made and harmonious transformation of the browser game into a board game, beginners should make time for one or two training games, experts should try the professional version.

Chance (pink): 0

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 3

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0