This looked intriguing. No idea if it’s a good game or not, but I’ve been trying to find a way to use a chess set for fortune-telling for years and just can’t make it work, so anything that uses it as a base is interesting to me.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/onlythenstudios/darkleaf-gambit
So this is live:
https://gamefound.com/en/projects/awaken-realms/agricola-special-edition
$180 to the US, for wooden edition + 5th player + $34 of shipping. All, of course, pending currency fluctuations and tariffs. And the odds are not “ever in our favor” there.
Torn. It’s largely a nice package and pulling all the cards together in a coherent way is great.
I don’t like the exclusion of EIK, though I remain optimistic that they will solve that. They listened to the comments and included the rebalanced tiles for Puerto Rico at the last minute. EIK would require just some supplemental cards (those not in ABCD) and a QR code for us to build our deck.
I also don’t like the art. I like it as itself. I like it as La Granja. But we’ve lost the “your family is going to die, ha ha” aesthetic of Klemens Franz and made an idyllic, impressionistic view of subsistence farming where everyone has a petticoat and two baths a day, the sun is always shining, and the chickens are getting along.
It don’t feel right.
I know I’m going to back this eventually. I can’t help it, not for the new expansions and for the change to have ABCD as an alternate play style without needing vocabulary mapping printouts for each player.
I’m not done grumbling about it yet, though.
That price is for the 3d model edition, yeah?
Wooden edition without the 3d models is cheaper, I believe
No, that’s the wooden edition.
Cardboard edition is less (but EVERYTHING is cardboard, including your workers and animals, no thanks).
Miniatures (also no thanks) are a lot more on top.
In Euros:
All x 1.14 for USD.
Yeah. That checks out. Sadness.
Saw some discussion online about the lack of artist credits for this and from their FAQ it seems like they’re using generative AI for an undisclosed amount of the art… Feels more and more likely that we’ll be seeing this kind of thing, particularly in Kickstarter projects where buyers can’t know until it’s in their hands (at least here they’re disclosing it, despite doing their best to obfuscate the answer)
Up to individuals whether that’s a dealbreaker, but disappointing to see.
Until the AI companies stop charging 0.1% of their running costs and start actually trying to make a profit, of course.
if only instead of replacing man made art, gen ai would write better rulebooks.
Had a look at this, and it sort of isn’t. It’s a new game into which, you will be able to import Flash Point content.
Perhaps it is unreasonable of me but I actually like Flash Point as it stands. I’m happy with occasional new maps or new rules and an unchanged core game. I don’t desperately want to customise my firefighters. Yeah, I like the idea of custom events per map, but… this really doesn’t appeal to me the old hand the way it ought to for a game that’s presented as “you’d best play the original first”.
(Also I was off US kickstarters even before the recent madness. I may pick up Legacy of Flame if I make it to Essen this year, mostly because I want the new map boards.)
Nah, you need actual correctness there. Employ me! 
Rulebooks are kind of an odd beast. In a way they need the person I think.
I’ve seen so many styles of rulebook and each one achieves a different ideal at the cost of some other ideal. You can have a chatty thing that wins on comprihensibleness but stumbles on edge cases and you can have perfect clarity without getting a sense of play.l I think in most cases you need a person or judge to smooth the cracks.
Feels like if you tried to get a model to write a rule book you’d probably end up with something that feels like a generic mush of “here’s a normal rule book”, rather than something that is intentional in relation to the unique properties of the game.
In order to get it to write the rules you would need to teach it the intricacies of the game, via text, in a precise way to make sure it doesn’t make mistakes. And if you can figure out the best way to explain the rules yourself… 
Right, so an AI that is trained to teach other AIs the full nuances of a ruleset.
That AI can be trained… uh, by another AI…
Which is silly since the game already had ideal art.
The thing that attracts me is, mainly, being able to get all the stuff I’m missing. And I’m missing a lot.
The extra decks etc. are just icing.
I’d really like the Legacy version too, but MONEY!
Yeah, I do have all of FPFR classic already.
It’s such a good game! And so replayable and!.. I never really play it? So, why do I want it all? Meh, I think half of us have that problem!
I’m probably going to go in on Agricola. I can sell my A, B, C, Fr, and Farmers of the Moor to offset the cost, which should cover over half of it. That is, if the market hasn’t tanked since this was launched.
I’m going to hold onto my Zman and the Wm deck with the original publication.
That said, I’m still waffling. EIKWmFr is enough for anyone, and I already have Farmers of the Moor. I guess I would like ABCDE, but I could get those with a much less expensive second copy of revised. More on this later, I’m sure.
Separately, Bitewing just annouced two more Mythos games. Iliad and Ichor haven’t gotten played yet but I’m excited about both. I was absolutely going to pass on these, I don’t need more duel games and I don’t need more games but then I saw that Moytura is area control in Ireland by the designers of Undaunted and War Chest. So maybe just one…
Oh, Azure is by the designers of Mandala and Great Plains.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
I had the opposite idea: I bet I can pick up original collections on the cheap close to fulfillment time.
— I feel like a bit of a hypocrite because I was pretty quick to point out that the Awakened Realms Castles of Burgundy crowdfunding was an economical way to get a complete collection of the original expansions.
That’s probably true here too; I’ve just never felt bothered to get a full collection of the Agricola decks.
Maybe I should? I guess time will tell
And then CoB ran a reprint for close to half the original cost. I’m very happy to be patient if I KNOW that’s coming.
Regarding complete Agricola, I’d recommend EIK (comes with the old editions), Wm, and Fr. Maybe G if you are really gunning for everything. And then Farmers of the Moor. Those are the best decks and more than any sane person can play out.
Or get revised + ABCDE for a simpler game. People tend to swear by A,B, and E and poop on D. C goes both ways depending on who you talk to. But, generally, the newer decks are more generous and the synergies are more blatant. This makes it much easier to pick up and play, in the modern sense. But IMHO you lose the infinite replay since your hand will often tell you how to play - there’s an obvious set of 2-5 cards you want to lean into. The old game had more RFTG style trade-offs, where you could play a hand multiple ways and make a card your centerpiece or just a sideboard depending on what path you wanted to take.
Also, the generosity of the new decks has people (sigh) playing into their tableau and milking it for food and resources, de-emphasizing the tight worker placement in the middle of the board.
This is just a matter of degree, Agricola is still Agricola. But there’s a small move toward nu-Euro on these axes with the newer editions.