Board Game Arena

As part of the patch that went live today is a new Living Hand variant, released in alpha for playtesting.

Each player drafts a hand of 4 occupations and 4 minor improvements. After every turn in which you play a card from your hand, you draw back up to 4 of each, by choosing one from two drawn from the deck (more than once if necessary).

I'm very interested in any feedback/comments people have from these games: good, bad or ugly!

In particular, the variant has its own card banlist, which currently is just three cards:

- Lantern House
- Civic Facade
(These two don't make sense when hand size doesn't vary)

- Illusionist
(Obviously busted in Living Hand)

There are various other cards which might be too strong in the format, or not make sense which we haven't thought of. Please feel free to use this thread to give feedback.

Note: this variant was discussed by cranesflyhigh here: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46083. There is one change from those rules: we didn't build the "decline passing minors" mechanic. I started a new thread for feedback just so the thread title matches the name of the variant we landed on, so hopefully people find this thread

Little sad the passing minor decline is not implemented, as I do think it adds a strategic layer to the game, and buffs minor playing cards like Equipper (much stronger in this format than the regular version) even more by junking other people's hands, that said I am obviously super hyped about this game mode! It is very fun and changes the dynamic of the game in a really fun way! :3 Lesssgooooo!

I think I probably will implement it at some point. My current list of ideas is:

- Allow passing minors to be declined.
- All players should refill their hand in the refill phase, not just the player whose turn it was (to cover Puppeteer and things like that)
- Hand refills to happen whenever cards can be played (to cover Begging Student, Seed Researcher, Task Artisan etc). Currently you only refill at the end of your turn, and it feels a bit weird if you start a turn without already having refilled.

I found out today that when I played a card with Market Master, and another player played an occ with Puppeteer, I did not get to refill my hand until after my NEXT turn!

fiscused wrote: ↑21 February 2026, 03:35 I found out today that when I played a card with Market Master, and another player played an occ with Puppeteer, I did not get to refill my hand until after my NEXT turn!

See my last post in this thread!

alexwjb wrote: ↑18 February 2026, 15:40 I think I probably will implement it at some point. My current list of ideas is:

- Allow passing minors to be declined.
- All players should refill their hand in the refill phase, not just the player whose turn it was (to cover Puppeteer and things like that)
- Hand refills to happen whenever cards can be played (to cover Begging Student, Seed Researcher, Task Artisan etc). Currently you only refill at the end of your turn, and it feels a bit weird if you start a turn without already having refilled.

Just to update this. The next patch is likely to have the following:

- Refill happens at both start and end of your turn, if you have cards to draw. This means you always have a full hand of cards on your turn, even if you have played cards off-turn with Begging Student / Seed Researcher / Elder / Task Artisan / Puppeteer etc

- At the start of your turn, you can choose to keep or decline passing minors you have received.

No plans yet to update the Living Hand banlist, though Equipper is number one on my watchlist as possibly broken in this format.

I have now made this update. So these are now live:

alexwjb wrote: ↑23 February 2026, 14:58 - Refill happens at both start and end of your turn, if you have cards to draw. This means you always have a full hand of cards on your turn, even if you have played cards off-turn with Begging Student / Seed Researcher / Elder / Task Artisan / Puppeteer etc

- At the start of your turn, you can choose to keep or decline passing minors you have received.

I had an Equipper in a Living Hand game - got a 93, but better players than me would probably have got more. Equipper was only a part of the story though (also had a Tutor and Patron early and went from there...) https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=807875428

Living hand is just silly...

Here is a 2 player game with Tutor for 11 points (12 occs played)
Using beggin student and Sour Dough plus replacement effect.

https://boardgamearena.com/12/agricola?table=821573656#

I don't have premium so I just oin watver games are beign offerend. Don't think I would say this is how the game was intented...

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=823683932

Clay pipe had a bug in this living hand game. Right after being played it counted wrongly, somehow came to ten, and gave two food where it should not have. The player was fair though and discarded the food. Could this be checked?