Agricola Expansions (WizKids)

Agricola is one of the most beloved games among modern board gamers. Uwe Rosenberg introduced this classic back in 2007 and followed it up with popular expansions and even a two-player version of the game called Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small. In 2016, Mayfair Games published two different versions of Agricola, a Family version and a Revised version of the game. As you can deduce from the titles one is more for families and casual gamers and one has a bit more meat to it. What I really liked about the Revised version is that there is a separate expansion that adds the ability to play 5 or 6 players. Recently Mayfair Games partnered with WizKids to produce six expansions that effectively replace the meeples in your game with miniatures.

Pros
1. The miniatures are high quality, detailed, and really make the game pop.
2. Each set comes with 20 unique and exclusive cards (11 new occupations and 9 minor improvements) to add variety to the game.
3. You can buy as many or as few as you need to. If you play with six, you're going to want all six. If you only ever play with two, just buy two and not have four other sets you don't need.

Cons
1. Did this game really need miniatures? I say no, but I also am a sucker for making games I love look even better.
2. With the cards being exclusive to each set, people will complain that they should have just made booster decks of cards and not paired them with miniatures. See Con #3.
3. This has potential to be EXPENSIVE if you want all six sets. At a retail price of $25 per set, you're looking at $150.

I was provided a red set and a blue set to review and I have to admit they were awesome to play with. One of the red player's cards was a Trident, and it gave you some food (depending on the round you played it), which would help your people from starving. It wasn't overpowered though, because as soon as you played it, the card was passed to the next player. Thus, you had to decide when to use it to benefit you the most and your opponents the least. The blue player had a card called game trade, which effectively let you trade two sheep for one cattle and one wild boar. This improves your points and also diversifies your livestock so you don't lose points at the end of the game. In addition to serious cards, there are also some humorous cards that were included. My personal favorite of these cards was the "cube-cutter," which is just the right amount of tongue in cheek humor that I've come to expect from Uwe Rosenberg. In summation, these packs aren't essential, but if you play Agricola all the time and have the money to get them, do it!

These expansions were provided to me for free by WizKids in exchange for an honest review.