I'd appreciate if some good players could share their insights.
I think the difference between a good player like me and a great player like Lumin is that I can draft good cards and execute a static gameplan, while a great player can draft synergistic cards and execute a gameplan based on their cards.
For me, Agricola is slightly boring, because my gameplan is pretty much the same every game: build early wood room, fight for growth. Maybe build another wood room, depending on how much wood injection is in the game, and if it looks like fencing will be a problem later.
I've seen Lumin pull off things like early farming, big mandoline, and 2 room lover, and how he makes it work is beyond me.
I tend to draft high PWR cards, which tend to be those that assist with wood and plowing.
The "draft archetypes" I've loosely identified are as follows:
Day Labourer: This one is the only one I've made work. Some day labourer cards (looking at you, hardware store) are so powerful that it's worth playing on its own, and the DL cards in general provide a huge benefit to an otherwise terrible space to make it okay, so two benefits makes for an amazing space! I find that with DL strategies, it's often worth building to 4, so you can contest the rest of the board and use DL, and many of your cards inject resources.
Grain Seeds: This is a similar terrible space that has cards that make it much better. I think among them, only Field Watchman, Private Teacher, maybe Swagman are playable on their own. These cards tend to not get passed in draft, so if they aren't my opening pick, I end up not going grain seeds. For example, a lonely Greengrocer IMO is quite terrible, playing a Greengrocer and a grain seeds action is 2 actions for a grain and a vegetable, and I'd much rather playing another card that provides grain and taking the Vegatable seeds action once manually if need be.
Clay Rooms: I think this has potential if you get multiple ones, especially if it includes a powerful one like Clay Supports. However, I've found them too rare to get a critical mass of them. Even with Clay Supports in hand, upon seeing R5 growth flip, I've found myself just building first wood, taking first growth, and leaving the powerful minor unplayed.
I think the problem with something like a lonely Rustic is this:
- you need to reno before building (without a helpful minor, this can be as late as round 7!)
- you need 7 clay (nontrivial to get early, especially if other people are grabbing clay for cookeries)
- you need 3 reed
- if you're renoing, you probably want to play an improvement, which might cost more clay, or force you to go get stone as well
- you need to then spend an action playing rustic before building.
To me, all of this seems like a recipe of getting 5th growth (that is, another person grows twice before you do) and last place. The payoff just doesn't seem worth it.
Stone: I think this has a similar critical mass issue. The way I see it, you have two choices:
A. Renovate to stone on 2 rooms.
This means you will be stuck on 2 actions for a lot of the game (5 stone for a room is hard to get!), and I think that sucks because the marginal value of the 3rd action is significant. Ideally your occs are strong enough to make up for this (Scholar is kind of like a lessons action), but using Scholar as an example:
- Renoing to 2 stone and playing scholar might take more time than building a 3rd wood and growing.
- You'll eventually run out of good cards to play.
- You're leaving a lot more for your opponents on the board.
B. Build to 3, then reno to stone.
I think the issue of this is that this takes a long time to do. Many of the stone occs provide value over time, and with the exception of Plow Driver, I don't think there is enough time to get the payoff.
Early Farming:
To farm early without cards, you need to spend an action on farmland, an action on grain seeds, and an action on grain utilization. The "payoff" is that your grain utilization action gets you TWO grain seeds for the price of one action, at the cost of taking up your field until stage 4. This sets you way behind on the growth queue.
I'm not saying that this is what a farming strategy involves, but I'm trying to give a picture of how bad it is without card support. I think the card support has to be very good (young farmer gets you a grain and a sow action) to make up for it. Even with an opener like cultivator/cesspit, I often find myself letting the fields sit idle while I fight for growth. (You could say I use it as a setup for a growth strategy, the trickle of clay and boar solving the food problem growth strats have.)
However, I know that better players than I can and have made sowing strategies work. What are your secrets?
