Awaken Realms and Lookout Games are teaming up to create an updated special edition of classic worker placement game Agricola, in which the art, graphic design, and even meeples are given as much love and attention as Uwe Rosenburg's timeless rule set. It's a fresh lick of paint for a revered board game that will no doubt be extremely popular - but is it really Agricola if it actually looks like a game a human being could play and enjoy?
Agricola is one of the best board games ever made, and is in contention for being the best heavyweight worker placement game outright - most of the competition being other Uwe Rosenburg games. It also has the most laughably miserable theme imaginable: each player is a subsistence farmer in medieval Germany, where your highest ambition might be to 'get a new pig' or 'build a granary'.
Agricola Special edition is currently raising funds on Gamefound until June 26. Pledges start at $90 (€79) for a basic cardboard version with the Farmers of the Moor expansion and an expanding pool of stretch goals, or $125 (€109) for a version with wooden meeples and tokens.
In the new cover art, everyone is smiling. Not just the humans - the pigs and sheep are smiling too. Inside the box, the new pseudorealistic play boards, printed meeples and animeeples are works of art. There's an optional miniatures expansion pack that upgrades the game further with plastic miniatures. It's gorgeous. Alluring.
That's not the Agricola I know. Not the Agricola where another player takes the last action spot you can use to harvest crops, guaranteeing that this winter you will have to slaughter your only cow to feed the child you thought you could afford to raise, or force you into the ignominy of begging for food.
Agricola's original art and graphic design by Klemens Franz isn't bad per se, it's just not very appealing. Despite having a cartoony simplicity, it's also serious and mundane, and extremely functional. It's almost a stereotype of the whole eurogame genre, and it loudly announces what you should expect from the play experience - you have to meet the game on its own terms, because it sure as shit isn't coming to meet you.
The only part of it that looks genuinely bad is the box cover. The orange and grey palette looks like a nasty bruise, and there's a prominent focus on a sheep who stares inscrutably out at the player. What does she know? What is she accusing us of? Where did she bury the bodies?
That art is now a relic of an earlier set of design sensibilities, but - just like the original Monopoly board, or '70s interior decor - a design only has to spend a decade or so being an eyesore before we can consider it a timeless classic. It's a perfect encapsulation of Agricola's spirit - the best bad time you'll ever have.
What do you think of the new version of Agricola? Is this long overdue, or a novelty that you hope doesn't last? What other heavyweight worker placement games do you prefer to Agricola? Come and let us know in the official Wargamer Discord community!
If you love heavyweight games, check out our guide to the best strategy board games, which is packed with great recommendations.