by Surya Van Lierde is pure Eurosnoot and proud of it!
Caverna: The Cave FarmersFew, I finally got to play the big one, the perceived nr 1 from last years Essen.
Let me start by reminding you that I like Agricola, but I prefer to play it without the cards. My favorite Uwe Rosenberg game is actually Le Havre. And I chose that last tile over Agricola every single time. Which is why I don't play Agricola almost ever. Which is why I didn't get Caverna. I wasn't ready to fork out all that money for a game that is based on a game that I like a lot, but never play because an other game just pleases me a lot more.
Caverna does away with the cards and replaces them with a fixed set of buildings that are available to everyone. This will reduce the variability between games, but since I don't play with the cards in Agricola that often, that probably won't bother me in the long run. The biggest difference for me, therefore, was the vastly simplified scoring. A few other things have been streamlined as well.
At heart this game is very similar, but it's not just more of the same. It is a very solid game in it's own right. And the buildings and different strategic possibilities, still offer a very good amount of replay value I expect.
So, do I like it more than it's predecessor? One play isn't enough to know that, but I do like it quite a bit. I don't expect this game to kick Le Havre from it's nr 1 spot for me though.
Production wise this game is top notch, just like all Lookout titles. But why oh why did they include all that material that I'll never use? We play with mostly 3 or 4 players, almost never more. So I'm paying a lot of good money for cardboard that is of no value to me. That is a very sad thing, because I expect this to be the case for most people.
Initial rating: 8.5
Suburbia Inc
Suburbia was one of my favorites for Essen 2012, so I had to get this expansion.
Don't ask me why it took so long to get it to the table, I don't know :)
This expansion adds a couple of different modules, but in the end you can simplify it to
- more building tiles
- more building tiles of a new shape
- more bonus tiles
- more bonus tiles that are scored in a different way
So it's more of the same. But the new elements do make the game a bit richer without adding a lot of complexity or play time, and some of the new buildings are very cool.
Not ground breaking, but very solid. It's what I hope most expansions to be: more of what you love without requiring more time and rules. Nice job Ted!
Initial rating: 7.5