Designer: Mike Keller

• • Publisher: Quined Games
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 12+
  • Time: 30 minutes per player
  • Times played: 3, with copy I purchased

 

INTRODUCTION

Agra is a worker placement, pick up deliver game and area control. Your goal is to produce, upgrade, trade, gift, sell and deliver goods in order to be the wealthiest landowner. Sound like there’s a lot going on there? Well, that’s because there is.

OVERVIEW

There is a very large main player board with 3 distinct areas; an upper area that contains action spaces, a middle area that contains production and processing buildings and a lower area that contains the river, where goods are shipped.

 

 

There is also a second board that tracks the three guilds and the emperor.

 

Each player has a home board that tracks their production values and abilities, a pool of workers and a pool of markers that are used for various functions and a bag in which to hide their earnings. There is a chart that shows your production value of each good; everyone starts with the same setup but different actions allow you to adjust your farmers’ positions and remove tiles to increase your production over the course of the game.

 

 

Where to start, because there is so much to describe? I am going to go through a turn. (Please note that, due to the number of actions available, I am going to summarize the actions and may omit some of the finer points and subtleties that are not key to an overview).

On a player’s turn, they start by deciding if they want to take an optional Meditation Action. There is a Meditation Chart at the top of the board that shows several actions. One of those actions, moving a farmer, is always available; moving a farmer allows you to increase the production value of one of your goods, but to the detriment of another type of good. The other actions – process a good, exchange a good, trade a good and remove a cover tile (which increases your good production) are available, but the last action taken by a player is covered up and not available until the next player takes a medication action.  

Why wouldn’t you take a meditation action? Well, they aren’t free. You must pay the cost of the action in Meditation Points (MP). On your player board you have a meditation chart that indicates your workers’ worth while they are meditating. Everyone starts at 1, but you can increase the value up to 3 during the game.  In order to have a worker meditate you take one or more workers you have previously played on an action space and lay them down.  The first worker you lay down will generate MPs for where your marker is on the chart; the second will generate MPs equal to the next space to the left and so on; workers always generate at least 1 MP.  It’s great that your workers are meditating, but now they won’t be able to help you curry favor (more on that later) so you’ve got think about the present and the future here.

Once a player has taken a meditation action, they begin their action phase. To take an action, you place your worker on the appropriate space on the board. If another player has an upright (non-meditating) worker on the space, you return the worker to that player and they get to take one of the markers in their supply and put it in their favor pool; favor allows you to perform special actions on your turn. If the marker is laying down/meditating it is still returned to the other player but they do not receive favor.

The top of the board has 4 action spaces.

• The Architect allows you to build a processing building anywhere on the board that is not built yet. You spend the specified construction materials, remove the under construction marker and take a building bonus tile, which you must use immediately. You place a worker and make immediately process (upgrade) up to 3 goods you have already generated lower down in that line (for example, if you built a plank processing building you could upgrade up to 3 wood you had already generated to planks. If you didn’t want to build a building, you could choose to move up one space on an influence track (more on that later) instead.

 

• The Sailor allows you to deliver goods. You can deliver goods to one or more of the notables on boats on the river, each seeking 2 or more goods. Each notable is a card that indicates what they are looking for. Delivering at least one good gets you one influence on the guild track that matches the color of the card; you also get rupees for each piece on the card. If you delivered the last good on a card it is scored; the player with the most pieces on the card gets the card; each card has a bonus/benefit that now belongs to that player.

That influence you earn on the guild track is important; the guild tracks gives you bonuses as you move up as well as victory points at the end of the game. The guilds are also looking for goods; each guild has a chart of orders of 2 goods that they are looking for, with a marker indicating which goods they currently seek. If you already have at least one influence in a particular guild you can make this delivery in full in place of or in addition to a delivery to the notables. If you are in first place on the influence track you get the indicated number of rupees, otherwise you gain the indicated number minus one. You mark the order with one of your markers as complete and move the guild marker to the next available order spot.

• The Trader allows you to exchange up to 3 of your goods for any other goods you desire. All goods on the board have a base value of 1 to 3. When you take the trader action you may raise or lower the price by 1 rupee before you make your transaction. The goods you take must equal the value of the goods you exchanged.  

 

• The Botanist allows you to take 2 of 3 actions she offers. You can spend the required goods to move your meditation marker up one space, you can remove one of your cover tiles, permanently increasing your production options or you can move one of your farmers two spaces or two farmers one space, increasing production of one good while reducing production of another.

Where do you get all these goods that you’re producing and delivering? That’s where the center of the board comes in. The buildings on the far left of the board are Production buildings. You place a worker in a production building and generate as many goods as you are currently producing of that type. This is determined by counting the number of open spaces between that good and the farmers on either side of it. You get one good per open space. In the picture below you’d be getting two cotton, because there are two open spaces.

The rest of the buildings are Processing Buildings. Even if they are not yet built you can place your worker on one of these spaces and upgrade up to 3 of your already-produced goods. Other players may choose to follow you and upgrade one of their goods on the same path; each player who does so must move pay you one favor (we’ll get to what favor is soon – I promise!).

If you place your worker on a building where the Merchant marker is, you will receive 2 favor after you take your action there; the Merchant then moves based on a die roll. If you place your worker on a building where the Builder marker is you can build that building at no cost; you do not get a bonus tile but you do get to process goods. The Builder marker then moves based on you die roll.

That’s a lot of actions, but guess what? There’s more! What else can you do?

• At any point on your turn you can take a favor action. You accumulate favor in various ways throughout the game – having workers returned to you, visiting the Merchant space, having other players copy your processing action etc. On your player board there are 3 actions each available to you once per turn if you have the requisite favor – you can gain the indicated good, process one good or move up one step on a guild influence track.  Reaching a certain point on the influence tracks will get you the change to gain additional favor action tiles; you choose one from 3 available face up tiles.
• At any point on your turn you may spend one oil or one curry to stand a worker upright or spend both to stand 3 workers upright; you’d most likely do this just before the meditation phase so that the workers can be used to generate MPs.
• Once during your turn you can spend a luxury good (the final processing step) to take its related benefit.

But wait  – there’s more!

Your turn isn’t over yet. You are now entering the Order Phase. During this phase you may either:

• Deliver one good to Emperor Akbar (or Admiral Ackbar, as I keep calling him – too much time spent watching Star Wars has warped my brain). It’s his birthday, after all, and that’s why we’re all here. He has a list of goods he would like for his birthday; you can deliver one good to him by placing your marker on that spot, blocking any other player from going there. At the end of the game you get rupees based on the number of goods you gifted him.
• Fulfill one Guild Order, just like you would with the sailor action

The game ends when one of the game end conditions is met – a level IV notable’s contract is filled, a player reaches the top of one of the influence tracks or one guild order column is full. . At that point you finish the round and then each player gets one more turn. During final scoring you get rupees for completed guild orders, removed cover tiles, goods you delivered to Emperor Akbar and being on the last space of the meditation track. Some notables also give you rupees at game end. The player with the most rupees wins.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE GAME

I want to love this game. I am a fan of both worker placement and pick up and deliver games, so this one piqued my interest. The board is beautiful, the components are well-made and the rules are long but well-written and mostly clear. However, there are enough things that concern me that drop my rating to like.

The good: I enjoy the gameplay. You have lots of choices on your turn and there are numerous interesting decisions to be made. There are so many resources (16!) that you have to find the balance between under and over representation for each.

The mechanism of worker placement and use of your workers is very cool; having to decide between guaranteed meditation points or potential favor is often a tough decision. You can always place a worker, even if someone else is on that spot, but you might be giving them a bonus. Being able to use favor and luxury goods to manipulate your turn and make it more efficient is fun and allows you to take advantage of more of the myriad available options.

There also seem to be several paths to victory, all of which seem to work equally well; all of our games have been relatively close and there never seemed to be a runaway leader, meaning actions towards the end of the game were especially meaningful.  

The bad: You have lots of choices on your turn and almost all of the actions you take have associated additional actions or components that adds to the complexity, sometimes unnecessarily; some of these seem to be there just for the sake of being “gamery”. Playing this game with someone who is prone to analysis paralysis could lead to a very long game; I think the 30 minutes per player would only apply with experienced players.

The board is beautiful, but some of the graphics are hard to see at a distance, and distance is bound to happen due to the size of the board. A few of the resources look too similar to others, and some of the processing arrows are hard to see. In addition, the separate imperial board has a few problems. While the structure itself is relatively sturdy the guild and player markers are precariously placed; one bump or dropped piece and havoc could ensue. Also, the pieces are columns, so they block the guild orders from some angles. It’s pretty, but it’s not the most functional.

In the end, I do like the game and am happy to have purchased it. I think with repeated plays and experienced players the stream of actions will flow much better; we played our third game of this less than 12 hours after the second and everything moved along much better than it did in the first or second. We also moved the imperial board to a separate, slightly lower table and that helped with being able to see (I was still nervous placing and moving pieces on it, though.

THOUGHTS OF OTHER OPINIONATED GAMERS

Dan Blum (1 play): I agree with Tery to a large extent. I liked the game well enough and agree that with experience it will not take too long; in fact our game went at a reasonable pace despite everyone being new to it. However, it definitely is overstuffed with mechanisms which I am not convinced add much to the game, and these are a likely source of AP. We managed to play quickly by mostly ignoring some of them, e.g. the special luxury good actions; if every time you have one of those good you stop to analyze whether you get more benefit from its special action or delivering it, it will slow the game down (and this is just one example).

 

I also agree that the graphics are detrimental to the game. It’s good that all four goods processing paths are exactly the same, because if they were different the game would be just about impossible to play given how hard it is to make out the lines on the board.

 

My rating is “like it” for now but that’s mostly because I want to play it a second time; after that play I could easily see it dropping to “neutral.”

 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Tery, Dan Blum
• Neutral.
• Not for me…