Agricola Six-Player Variant: The Genius of Three Contributors

Unlike many of the entries I've written for this blog, this post does not relate to first-hand nostalgia (1HN) or anything from my past. Instead, I am writing about Agricola, the superlative game created by Uwe Rosenborg. It burst on the Euro boardgame scene in 2007 and has garnered numerous awards, namely the 2008 Complex Game Spiel des Jahres, which is the German Game of the Year award -- the Academy Award of board games. It's a game that involves placing workers on action spaces to plow fields, build fences and pastures, grow crops, raise livestock, expand a family, and improve the farm to score points. All the while, players have to worry about feeding their families during each harvest, which is nerve-wracking, and developing their farms in a diverse and balanced fashion, since diversity is emphasized as people who score in the most categories often do well. I'm not doing justice to Agricola, but there are numerous reviews out there that strive to explain this game. Of course, if you are too busy to read those reviews, I can sum up Agricola with one sentence: it's a wonderful mental exercise that causes headaches and is certainly worth your and your family's time.

That said, in this post, I am consolidating the contributions of three different Board Game Geek members who have produced resources that make it possible to play Agricola as a six-player game. Out of the box, Agricola allows one to five players to play, which is really cool because you can play solo if you have no one around or you can play with four other family members or friends in a game that truly absorbs over two hours of play time. However, thanks to the genius of Agricola fans, you can play with a sixth player. To do so, here are the steps I took to play six-player Agricola:

1) Go to the Lookout Games website and order items

Lookout Games is the German manufacturer of Agricola and the brainchild of Uwe Rosenborg and others. At that site, you can order most of their products with English text or language-independent products, such as game pieces. When you go to the website, navigate to the Shop webpage and click Agricola to narrow the results to display Agricola items only. Surprisingly, it was at this website that I ordered the following items at the best prices I could find online:

• One set of Resource pieces
• One set of Grain and Vegetable pieces (if available)
• An extra player board
• Pieces for a sixth player

Including shipping, all of these items (at the Euro exchange rate at which I bought these items) cost me about $27 (US). As of May 2, 2014, all but the Grain and Vegetable pieces are available, but you can find these pieces under another category on the website if you search for them. I highly recommend you buy extra resource, grain, and vegetable pieces because six players will gobble up the pieces that come with the game rather quickly.

By the way, the Lookout Games website is in German, but German is translated into English easily by most browsers.

2) Register for membership at Boardgamegeek.com

To download the items that I mention in the following steps, please register for a free membership to Board Game Geek. Once you have your membership, not only can you download anything at any available file size, but you can also comment on people's reviews and even write board game reviews of your own.

3) Print out stickers for multiplier pieces and paste them to your default discs

A Board Game Geek member named ScottE created stickers that act as multipliers. For example, instead of having three wood tokens to signify three wood, you could take one 3x wood piece. What I did was after I received my extra pieces from Lookout Games, I printed out this user's multipier stickers, cut them out, pasted together two of the discs that represent wood in the Agricola box, and then pasted the cut sticker to the top of the stacked disc. Now, I have a 3x wood multipler token that saves the nicely-card wood pieces for those who have smaller amounts of wood.

To make the stickers fit on top of the default wood discs, I printed both pages of ScottE's PDF onto one 8.5 x 11 in. piece of paper. As it turned out, each sticker was sized perfectly to fit on the default discs out of the Agricola box. Moreover, when I played six-player Agricola, I found that having these  multiplier tokens were extremely useful and helped my friends and I not run out of any resource pieces during gameplay.

4) Download the Six-Player Variant board

A Board Game Geek member named patox created a six-player variant board that looks very much like the boards that come with Agricola. If you are a member of Board Game Geek, you can download the largest version of the six-player board file. I downloaded it and played a six-player game recently with it. Though I am relatively inexperienced with the game, I was more than impressed with how the board addressed player needs without making the game easier. My only observation is that there are only two Build Fences action available to six players: one is on the main actions board, and the other one is part of the Renovate action that comes out during the last round of the game. The six-player board does not provide another action space for building fences, so gameplay can be very challenging for those who want to use farmyard spaces at the end of the game and not get penalized for unused spaces (which is a -1 point penalty for each unused farmyard space).

In any case, this board is absolutely awesome, but keep in mind that you'll have to print out the board on 8.5 x 14 in. paper and then paste it on large, thick cardstock.

5) Download the Major Improvement card image

A third Board Game Geek member named Tinkerer created images to lay over three Minor Improvement cards that are used as Major Improvements on the Six-Player Variant board. Understandably, the three Minor Improvement cards (Simple Fireplace, Cooking Hearth, and Wood-Fired Oven) do not have the burgundy border that denotes Major Improvements. However, if you print out the image to which I linked and size the image to a height of 3.63 inches, you can then cut out each card and slide them as overlays over the Minor Improvement cards in card sleeves. You now have three new Major Improvement cards that work with the Six-Player Variant board and look pretty close to how these cards would look if Lookout Games had manufactured them.

6) Get five friends together to play.

As it turned out, not only did I get six co-worker friends to play, but I had to teach all of them how to play the game! Also, since I was the seventh person, I decided to sit out the game and help my friends learn Agricola... with the Six-Player Variant board. After three lunch breaks of play, each of my friends walked away from the game stating that they liked the game and felt that, for a fan-created board, the Six-Player Variant board was well-crafted and effective. As for me, I was very pleased that, with some well-placed orders, some Internet hunting, and some cutting and pasting, I could make Agricola playable for six players and not have the game feel ruined.

To Lookout Games, patox, ScottE, and Tinkerer, thank you for making six-player Agricola a reality. Also, to those of you who have yet to play Agricola, just know that if you're ever interested in learning the game, there are fine fan-made resources out there that can enhance your gaming experience without depriving you of too much money.