I think I saw them on the John Peel stage in 2006
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Quick opinion - is Ark Nova any good as a 2 player game?
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I’ve been obsessively playing it on BGA that way for the last couple of weeks, so I feel I can weigh in. There’s a few cards and effects that are less powerful, but it does save you time. I think it’s a fair tradeoff, but give it a whirl on BGA and see what you think. 
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We’ve been playing Ark Nova exclusively two-player since we got it early this year, and it hasn’t gotten old yet. It’s fantastic.
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It’s grand as 2 player. It can be quite cut throat since dictating the pace of rounds has a lot more aggression to it. It’s very different from a four player game where you can take your time most the time.
With 2 player you can get into a rhythm where one player does what they want, and forces a break (the name for the reset and income phase) before the other player is ready. Do that a few times and the aggressive player can really capitalise on their momentum - getting more done and getting more income, which then lets them get even more done next round. It is possible to play to compete with that if you know it’s happening, but can certainly catch you off guard in the first few games.
Pace is a weird thing in ark nova in general. Some new players tend to force lots of breaks for really quick rounds, some like to stretch the round out as long as possible because they like having a nice time doing little things. The game is quite flexible in that regard if both players are in the same rhythm, but can get mean if one player wants to go faster than the other.
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imo it’s best at 2
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(FWIW, I’m a big fan of ark nova at 3 or 4. The meanness of competitive Ark Nova at 2 is quite brutal - but fine if non-competitive)
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These types of games tend heavily to do well at low player count. I had AN owners in the club who adamantly refuse to play at 4
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Thanks for all the responses, there’s obviously a lot of love for the game! I have only watched it played but I enjoyed it regardless. Took a while though! Does the 2 player game go more quickly?
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I massively prefer 3 player Ark Nova to 2, but I only have a little 2 player experience.
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Now that we know what we’re doing, we can knock an Ark Nova game out in 60-90 minutes. We’ll quite often have best-2-out-of-3 tournaments in one evening.
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Worth bearing in mind that one of those people in that three player game you observed was an utter novice. (And I think the other two like to take their time and think about their actions, not to the point that it’s annoying, but in a game like that with a lot of decision points it adds up.)
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Okay, I’m convinced and happened to get a £50 voucher from work at about the same time… I have ordered it! Thanks for all the advice!
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The bga implementation of ark nova is really good too.
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Agricola is my favourite game of all time. Knocks all subsequent Rosenberg games into a cocked hat, and puts modern euros to a relative shame. If I remember when I’m at a computer I’ll post why.
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Why Agricola is my favourite game, from someone who has introduced the game to people who have then enjoyed it so much they’ve bought it as a wedding present for someone else.
Agricola gets a lot of unfair accusations of being a depressing game of misery and being unable to achieve everything you want to do. And at first that can be the case, because the game is so tightly tuned that euro players who expect to be able to do anything and everything they want to do no problem will run into a brick wall. But that’s not the case. Instead it’s people ideas about what’s possible that need to be changed. Players who have a plan about what they want to realistically acheive, and when they need to deviate from that, will do well. We always tell first time players, try to build a happy little farm without starving, and because the theme is so strongly threaded throughout the entire game, that’s normally enough.
The theme in Agricola is in fact so strong the teaching of the game becomes straight-forwardly intuitive. And the game itself packs as much joy into two hours as more modern behemoths do in two or even three times that. Everything is clear and makes sense, early enough to be original without needing any worker placement twists. Just a simple go there to collect the goods/ do the action.
The player interaction in Agricola is much more pronounced than Ora et Labora or Le Havre (not played Gates of Loyang), no, you’re not using other players buildings, but the taking of essential spots can be brutal. If you haven’t got embroiled in a first player war for a delayed family growth space, or taken a stables action just to delay another room being built by an opponent, you haven’t experienced the absolute subtle bastardry taking a simple action space can do. The tension of leaving an essential food gathering space until your second worker because there was six wood worth taking is something to be savoured. And it’s not just blocking spaces- I lost my last game when I didn’t deviate from a bread baking strategy despite my two neighbours also baking bread. It’s a game in which you need to know what your opponents are planning, what resources they have etc. And unlike a lot of tableau builders that’s actually something really easy to see and check. They’ve got 5 wood and 2 reed? They want to build a room. And then they swerve and build a pasture instead. I have never played a game of Agricola which has felt like multiplayer solitaire.
The cards are the reason for me why Agricola isn’t just great but the best of all time. The game is a tight struggle, and then at the start you draft 7 cards which suddenly reveal it won’t be. And if some of those synergise it feels like winning the lottery. “Everytime I go this space I get this AND this AND can do this” etc. Impossible to play with the same hand of cards, so each game is a new possibility in how you are going to break Agricola. And they are wonderfully mad some of them. But they still need intelligence to be played- a bad player with a good hand will not beat a good player with a bad hand. It’s a game of infinite opportunites.
The scoring is superb (and one of the reasons I dislike Farmers of the Moor). It’s a point salad done right. Everything you do will get you points, but some more then others, and only up to 4. But unlike a disappointment where it doesn’t matter what you do, here everything matters Anything you focus on will inevitably be where you food and points come from, but you need to do a little bit of everything else as well. So each player will have their focuses and independance, but still with sparring over key actions.
On a Rosenberg scale, only Caverna matches it in charm, and that falls down with the lack of cards- without dreamt of synergies coming to fruition it’s just a very good pale shadow. I really like all the following games, but in comparison Feast is multiplayer solitaire patchwork, Ora et Labora is tiny town planning until it comes time to just churn out religious VPs, Le Havre is a bunch of players efficiently shipping steel whilst trying not to get in each others way and Nusford feels virtually weightless. And of the non-Rosenberg games, they all lack either the elegance, theme or possibliities. Honestly, the only other Euro that comes close to Agricola is Keyflower.
To summarise: best game of all time.
Whilst writing this I also decided to start a game on BGA because it just is that good.
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Can we be friends
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Let me open by saying I respect your opinion (although I disagree with it on several points). You are, of course, allowed to love a game I dislike. You are even allowed to love a game I earnestly believe is the worst game Uwe Rosenburg ever made (“worst” doesn’t mean “bad,” for one thing, and even if it were somehow possible to prove that Agricola is objectively bad, which it isn’t, people are still allowed to enjoy bad stuff. I enjoy the new Star Wars films! They’re trash! But I love them!).
I don’t want to, in any way, try to make it seem like your opinion isn’t valid, or that you are “wrong.” We’re just talking opinion here.
And in my opinion, the statement above you made isn’t unfair. Agricola is, in my opinion, a depressing game of misery and being unable to achieve anything (much less everything) you want to.
The rest of the things you say can be credited to being better at teaching it to new groups of players (which, I admit, I’ve only done five times) and having a deeper, more patient dive into the game itself. I’ve only played it a dozen times, and half of those were with new players. I can respect that you love the cards for many of the same reasons I dislike them (too random, too many of them, too varied in power, too many that are "almost the same but slightly different, etc).
Everything Agricola attempts, I think Feast does better. The worker placement elements are more intuitive and are easier to teach. The ability to interact with players but have them not miserable as a result is stronger. The depth to the strategies and the variety of ways to win are way higher. And, although I would never argue that Feast is a less complicated game, I do think it takes about the same amount of time to teach players, and at the end of it I tend to have tables with people who are happy with how they did, even when they lost, where in my experience Agricola ends with tables full of people who are miserable at how they did, even when they win.
The best thing I can say about Agricola is that it’s the best signpost Uwe game. Play it once, maybe twice, and then decide where you want to go from there (or, in your case, plant yourself by that signpost and continue to have fun with it!). But this feels a little like the people who come in and argue that Catan is objectively the best game ever made. Mate, it’s over 25 years old… game design has come a long way since Catan (including things like Agricola! Which is still way better than Catan!).
I started by saying that I respect your opinion and that I disagree with you, and I hope you don’t take anything I’m saying as commentary on you or the way you play games or the games you enjoy. I’m just trying to highlight why my perspective is different than yours as a way to provide contrast and colour to whoever might be looking for insight.
There are only two things I can’t stand in this world: those that mock the game choices of others, and anyone that plays Monopoly.
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It’s just reached meme status now where people who haven’t even played it will say its a game of misery. I’m sure your comment is not unfair, but I don’t think I’m being disingenuine when I say a lot of people do say such a thing based upon one poor game, or even without playing, and painting its fans as masochists just isn’t true.
Also your opinion is welcomed by everyone, even myself, I’m just always going to advocate for the game.
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Nowt wrong with trash per se.
And aren’t all Star Wars films trash? They certainly aren’t high art. There’s good trash and there’s bad trash.
(I also love the new ones, and some of the less new ones!)
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