Caverna: The Cave Farmers (English)

Board Game Geek Reviews

1. 10 out of 10

   4Corners

   An Agricola variant, which means a high strategy, option-filled, "thematic", feeding-tension, worker placement game with great components and great scalability. If you know Agricola you practically know how to play this game. There are 12 instead of 14 rounds and each round you select an action (once chosen no one else can choose it), and periodically (with increasing frequency) you have a harvest where you get crop yields, feed your people and have animal husbandry. This time you're a family of dwarves (odd yes) carving out a home in the mountains and growing a farm outside. There are a set number of actions to choose from that differ based on the number of players and a fixed set of actions that come into play each round like in Agricola. The main differences from Agricola are: 1) there are no cards. Instead the variability/special abilities/special point generators are in the form of rooms that can be built and these are ALL in play and OPEN to all players from the beginning similar to Agricola: all creatures big and small 2) there are now quests. Quests involve forging weapons using a new resource, ore, and selecting action spaces that allow you to choose free goods from a menu of items. The better your weapon the better the choices and the more you use your weapon the better it gets. 3) scoring is more open. There are no minimums or maximums for scoring for example 20 vegetables is worth 20 points instead of being capped at 4 points and you don't get minus 1 point for not having any (caveat: you still lose points for having empty spaces on your board and for missing animal types) 4) there is another new resource, rubies, which are like a wild card. All rubies are worth 1 point each, but they can also be used to purchase almost anything at any time 5) family growth is not essential. You can go for growth but since family members are only worth 1 point instead of 3 points but still cost the same amount of food and there are more opportunities to grow and the game rounds are less, yes you can certainly win with only 2 players (after over 250 face to face games of Agricola I don't believe that is true for that game) 6) feeding is more flexible. Notice I said more flexible but contrary to what some people are saying it is NOT easy it is still a grind mainly because harvests occur nearly every round! 7) the game is 2 rounds shorter and scales from 1-7(!) players I love Agricola it's my favourite game so naturally I really enjoy Caverna it gives me the same/similar flavour and feel but it's different enough that it feels fresh. If you enjoy one you will enjoy the other and most likely vice versa. Is it worth owning both? Absolutely. I imagine that eventually there will be building expansions similar to how there are the card expansions for Agricola. Own the [boardgame=245932]Forgotten Folk[/boardgame] expansion, the [boardgame=166187]mini-expansion[/boardgame], the [boardgame=183531]Water Features[/boardgame], the [boardgame=248951]Halflings[/boardgame] and [boardgame=272699]Adventurers[/boardgame] promos, as well as homemade [boardgame=154204]Christmas Chamber[/boardgame] and [boardgame=160803]LARP and Cosplay[/boardgame] promo tiles.

2. 8 out of 10

   AaronCRdz

   A really good game, I miss some things from Agricola, but willing to play it and recommend it to other players.

3. 7 out of 10

   AdmiralGT

   My worry about this game is that by removing nearly all the randomness, you're left without much of a game and instead you just choose which strategy to follow and there just isn't enough replayability here. Wouldn't want to play this with more than 5 and I've yet to try it solo. It's a shame because he's made some nice improvements but has he left enough?