Theme : In Agricola (Latin for "farmer"), players take on the role of a farmer in a wooden shack settling into his new farm land with his wife. You will need to grow your farm as quickly as possible, as the harvest and feeding seasons come quickly and time on the land is hard.

A smash hit at the Spiel des Jahres, Agricola stands as one of the most anticpated games of 2008 with its easy to learn mechanics, fast game-play and immense replay value.

Gameplay : In Agricola, players are striving to use their land (depicted on a separate game board) as efficiently as possible while using a variety of 'occupational' cards and actions available.

Agricola is a very fast playing turn-based game with only 14 major turns. In these turns, there are six harvest phases where your family will need to be fed and any animals available will breed.

Each turn, players have as many actions as they have family members (in the beginning, 2). Using these actions, they may choose to take an action as depicted on the board, with a new action turned over each turn. These actions depict the various possibilities on a farm including expanding the residence, tilling a field, sowing it, learning an occupation or gathering wood, stone or clay as an example.

As each action can only be taken once per turn in Agricola, players will be struggling against one another to pick the best actions for themselves. Furthermore, to gain additional actions, players will first need to expand their huts before expanding their families.

Lastly, each player starts with a hand of 7 Occupation cards (with more than 160 providedl) and 7 Minor Improvement cards (with an additional 140 in the deck) that he can deploy during the game. These cards along with his particular turn order will dictate the strategies that he takes during each game, as such offering a large replay value.

Agricola comes with an additional set of rules for beginners that removes the deck of cards, making the game easier to introduce to casual gamers.