Introduction
With quarantining and/or social distancing limiting your choice of opponents, you may find it currently easier to get two player games to the table. If you’re finding this not only just as pleasurable and diverting, but in some ways, better than playing at higher player counts, there are many reasons for this. While an increasing player count shifts the focus of a board game to table interaction, as the player count decreases, each player has more time to appreciate the game. Moreover, with fewer players waiting on your move, you have more time for decision-making and strategic experimentation.
While two player games are quite different than four player or six player games, they aren’t any less of a board game, and in some ways are even more of a tabletop gaming experience. Those board games that have stayed with us for centuries or millennia–chess, checkers–are no doubt two player games for this reason, as two player games enhance the opportunity for strategic focus.
While you may wait a while for future installments–my last post was in November–this post is the first in a series on two player strategies, not only for games that are specifically two player games, like today’s spotlight game, but for games that are best at two players, or games that become highly interesting at two players.
My choice of game for the first installment is Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small. While it is neither the highest ranking two-player game (that would be Twilight Struggle), nor my favorite dedicated two-player game (that would be Fields of Arle), nor my favorite game at a player count of precisely two players (that would be A Feast for Odin, of course, which you have likely guessed if you’ve been following my blog), nor my favorite quick game at two players (that would be Barenpark), Agricola All Creatures Big and Small is a fascinating game with immense replayability that should hit your table dozens of times after you buy it, and will scratch a particular itch that no other game can in its circa thirty minutes of play. What makes Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small so mesmerizing is its intense compression: while you will have a more or less satisfying farm at the end of the game, you only have 24 actions by which to get there.
Your First Rule of Thumb: You Only Have 24 Actions
As you’re deciding what to do in Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, always remember it is one of Uwe Rosenberg’s fastest worker placement games. With a knowledgeable opponent, you might be done in fifteen or twenty minutes. Even when two people are learning the game, don’t expect it to last more than 45 minutes.
Always remember that you only have 24 actions in Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small. Unlike many of Uwe Rosenberg’s games, you have no way to expand this number of actions–other than building a few of the buildings that give you free actions. (Rosenberg enthusiasts will know that adding on free actions and finding action savers in his games is of immediate importance when you are playing to win.)
Because you only have 24 actions in Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, you want to familiarize yourself with the available buildings for purchase, pick those that you will aim at building, and plot out the quickest path to accomplish this. Because buildings are such an important component of your strategy, your first focus is grabbing building materials.
Your First Focus is Building Materials
Other than the single animal you can store in your starting home, you can’t do anything in Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small without lumber, stone, and reed. If you never grab resources in this game, your score will probably end in the single digits. So don’t be tempted to let accumulating spaces accumulate goods–they won’t accumulate, as your opponent needs them as much as you do, and there is a very limited resource supply in this quick, eight-round game.
In round one, grab building materials. The best action spaces for this are “3 lumber” and “1 lumber + 1 stone + 1 reed.” But “1 sheep + 1 reed” is good too, especially if most available buildings have a reed building component. Player two may want to seriously consider grabbing the “2 lumber + 1st player marker” as their second move, if player one hasn’t already taken it–which he very possibly will. It is much better to be player one in Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small than player two.
Other than grabbing building materials, the other extremely powerful round one action is “one farm expansion + 1 fence.” While you’re only getting one fence, rather than letting fences accumulate, grabbing farm expansions is much better earlier in the game than later, as you will definitely need the space to outscore your opponent, and the animal action spaces become increasingly valuable. Taking a farm expansion round one will mean not having to take that action later, when you could have had 4 sheep + 1 cow. As you often want not one, but two farm expansions, by endgame, getting the first one in round one is a great opportunity.
Your Primary Tactical Focus is Animals
Whereas strategy defines long-term objectives, tactics defines short-term objectives. In board gaming, tactics defines what you do round to round, or action to action, whereas strategy defines the shape of your decision-making over the whole game. In Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, your primary tactical focus is animals.
That is, round to round, you should be grabbing breeding pairs of sheep and pigs when they’re available, or grabbing that horse or cow you need to start or complete your breeding pair of those animals. The sooner you have all four animals breeding, the faster your animal victory points will accumulate. With all four breeding, you’re making 4+ victory points a round, so long as you have the pastures, stables, and buildings to accommodate your animals. I write “4+” points a round, because the animals become worth more as your animals pass the thresholds for bonus points. Obviously, the sooner you have all four animals breeding, the faster your animal bonus points will accumulate as well.
You may occasionally want to grab accumulated animals to deny your opponent points, although it is generally better to build your own strategy than to sabotage your opponent’s strategy in Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small. That said, if four sheep and a reed are built up, and you don’t have a place to put more than one of them but your opponent does, it is good to deny your opponent those four points and that valuable reed needed for strategic buildings.
Your Primary Strategic Focus is Buildings
While animals are the primary component of your score, buildings represent your most strategic decisions of the game, as each building provides not just an extra ability or bonus resources/animals, it also provides up to four walls for your farm, depending where you place the building. Buildings are extremely important strategic decisions that affect not only the shape of your farm, but the shape of your strategy, in the long term.
Your first buildings should be in central locations on your board, perhaps bordering where you will place your first farm expansion, so that you can use it and your starting house to create some large pastures cheaply and easily.
As you’re only going to build around three to four buildings in a game–remember, you only have eight rounds to acquire materials, expand your farm, build, and breed animals–you should have an idea of what buildings you’re shooting for from round one. While you may occasionally be able to build as many as five or six buildings, or there may be the occasional game where you may prefer a more or less straight stall, stable and fencing strategy, three to four is probably the average number built in a game. My highest scoring game (66-48), and my best scores, have been with three buildings.
You don’t want to overthink placing your buildings. While placing four buildings in a star formation creates a free pasture, and is a decent action saver if you can accomplish it, focusing on this can delay your points from breeding. I did this one time, and it did not pay off like I thought it would. The main things to accomplish with buildings is 1) raising capacity for animals, and 2) “pre-fencing,” or dropping a few building tiles onto your farm, so that their outside walls can be used to abut the fences you are about to run.
Fill In Your Farm With Fences
While beginning players often see a heavy lumber/fence strategy as being a good way to create space for a lot of animals, you will soon find that it is better to have a farm expansion and build a few strategically placed buildings first before you do much fencing. Not that you’re occasionally taking an early fencing or walls action when it’s the best thing for you to do, but generally, the first rounds it is better to grab building materials, build buildings that can house animals, and start a few breeding pairs.
Once you have a few buildings constructed, you will find that your few starting fences, and those you grab on the farm expansion action space, go a lot farther.
Which Buildings?
As it is important to have a flexible strategy in Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, it is of little use to list all the buildings. There are certain kinds of buildings that are good for most strategies, however, and the key things to look for here are buildings that save you actions and buildings that provide you space for animals (technically, another action saver). That is, buying a building which can make stables (there are a few of these) will ensure you never need to stop on the build stables action space, and this will give you a strategic edge in a game in which you have only 24 actions. Buying a building which can hold three animals, even if they have to be one particular type of animal, is a great move, as it means you have less fencing work to do. A building that houses three animals, plus gives you a free animal–especially if it is a horse or a cow–is a much better purchase than a stable.
Generally the stalls are the weakest buildings available for purchase, but they may look more attractive if the special buildings available don’t have capacity for animal storage, or aren’t desirable action savers.
Endgame
By round 7 and 8, the end shape of your farm’s structure should be more or less visible. Certain action spaces are less useful then, particularly taking a farm expansion, as you only have a handful of actions less to develop it. Ideally, you want to focus on 1) stables, if there are any left, for while they aren’t points in and of themselves, they’ll allow you to add more animals, which are not only extra VP, but extra bonus VP; 2) adding animals when you have capacity for them; 3) denying your opponent animals if you don’t have room for them; 4) grabbing a building for VP if you have remaining resources; 5) filling in farm expansions to get their bonus VP.
If you have focused too much on buildings, and not enough on animals, then you may be in the lead going into round 8, only to lose in the last breeding phase, when your opponent outdoes you in animal VP and animal bonus VP. To prevent finding yourself in this situation, tweak your capacity wherever you can, and, if you don’t yet have all four animals breeding, make sure you do by the end of round 7. Two horses breeding round 7 will become 4 horses by the end of the game, which avoids the -3 VP penalty for horses. Even in round 7, it is not too late to focus on a new breeding pair of an animal you haven’t yet added to your farm.
Hopefully, I have inspired you to bring Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small back to your table. If you’ve never played it before, I highly recommend it as minute for minute, being just as fascinating as any of Uwe Rosenberg’s worker placement games. Unfortunately, it is out of print, which makes it a bit difficult to acquire at MSRP prices. (For the Amazon product page, click on the image below.)
<a target=”_blank” href=”https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DY9K4WS/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B07DY9K4WS&linkCode=as2&tag=boardoflife-20&linkId=c9fe2d3c57bd3c5223e9af5e763a1c62″><img border=”0″ src=”//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&MarketPlace=US&ASIN=B07DY9K4WS&ServiceVersion=20070822&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&Format=_SL250_&tag=boardoflife-20″ ></a><img src=”//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=boardoflife-20&l=am2&o=1&a=B07DY9K4WS” width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”” style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />
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