Agora
If you’ve read many of my past reviews, you’d know that I’m certainly not a fan of cheap, component-lite games. I owned a couple Cheapass games, but they never really gave me the desire to own many more, despite their cheap price. However, a recent trade netted me about ten Cheapass games – and when you own a game, you have to play it, right? So slowly, I’m playing through them, finding some nice gems, and some real stinkers. I had read in GAMES Magazine that Agora (Cheapass Games, 2002 – James Earnest) was a fairly fun game, so I had higher expectations for it. As usual, I was annoyed about the lack of components (people do care about that!) but was able to find a place in Korea where I could get small wooden blocks. So I slapped them and the game in a nice plastic container – and presto!, I had a fairly nice board game.
And after playing it, we found that the game play was fairly fun – certainly more fun than I’ve had playing any other Cheapass game, with the exception of Lightspeed. The game scales well from two to four players, and has a good deal of interaction – not to mention it has a certain aesthetic appeal once the game is finished, not totally unlike from Carcassonne. Everyone who played the game agreed that it was good, with a tinge of surprise (we usually don’t expect much from James Earnest). For it’s price, and as long as players are willing to put a little work into accumulating components, Agora is an excellent choice.
Each player is assigned a different letter: A, B, C, or D. Each player also starts with a certain amount of points, or dollars, etc. We found that keeping track of points was a lot easier than handing around money all the time. A deck of thirty-six cards is shuffled, and one of them placed face up in the middle of the table. Each card has a different symbol and letter on it, and a different layout of “stores.” Each side has nine “doorways” on them, with various walls also on the cards; so that when the cards are placed together, they form several stores with various entrances. One player is chosen to go first, and then play proceeds clockwise around the table.
A player’s turn consists of four phases, beginning with the income phase. In this phase, the player receives one point (gold, coin, etc) for each doorway to every shop that they own. Only doorways which touch the perimeter of the area (marketplace) count, if doorways are cut off, or touch an isolated area in the middle of the market (called alley), they generate no income. Quite simply, a customer to that store must be able to walk to the doorway without passing through any walls or other cards.
The next phase is the draw phase, in which the player draws the top card of the pile and checks the letter on it. If the letter matches his own assigned letter, the symbol tells what action immediately occurs.
- Fire symbol: The largest shop (shop with the most player counters on it) burns down, removing from the table all cards involved in that shop.
- Flood symbol: The largest shop is flooded, removing all counters from that shop, but leaving the cards on the table. In case of ties for largest shop in Floods and Fires, nothing happens.
- Festival symbol: Every player immediately collects income for their shops, starting with the active player.
If the letters do not match, then nothing occurs and play proceeds to the next phase.
In the third phase, the player places the drawn card down. They can pretty much place the card anywhere they want on the table, as long as they follow a few simple rules, such as not overlapping cards, making sure that shops owned by different players are not connected, etc. A card doesn’t even have to touch any other existing card in play. If any shops are enlarged by the placed card, the shop owner(s) expand their shops, placing tokens on each new circle in their shops.
Finally, the player can buy one shop – any open shop on the board. The price of the shop is the amount of income it would currently receive. The player subtracts the amount of points equal to the shop’s value from their score, and place one of their counters on each circle in the shop. Play then proceeds to the next player, who follows the same four phases. As soon as one player reaches 50 points (coins) at any point in the game, they are the winner!
Some comments on the game…
1.) Components: Well, can’t really cheer too loudly here – this is Cheapass, you know. Agora is part of their “Hip Pocket’ line, and truly does come packaged in a small plastic bag that can easily fit in one’s back pocket. However, after I added some paper and a writing utensil (for keeping score), found some nice (inexpensive too!) 10 mm cubes of four colors, and packaged them all in a plastic container – the game really didn’t fit the “hip pocket” category either. This was more work – but it’s a lot easier for me to entice people to play a game with nicer components. And it really wasn’t that much more expensive, but did add a nice level to the game. Card quality was a little lower than I would have liked – but the graphics, while simple, were extremely functional, and since the cards aren’t handled excessively, it shouldn’t pose much of a problem.
2.) Rules: The rules are on a small sheet, both sides, that folds up nicely into the bag the game is packaged in. There are some illustrations, showing how several shops are scored, which is a nice visual aid to understanding that part of the rules. However, the rules aren’t that hard to understand, and most people will not have a hard time picking them up. The only thing that could cause some trouble is the card laying rules. Not because they are hard, because the opposite is true – but because people aren’t used to being able to throw a card anywhere on the table.
3.) Tile-Laying: I really enjoyed laying down the cards in this game. Unlike most other games, the ability to lay the cards down any way you want to really makes the game interesting. At first glance, I thought that the millions of combinations possible would cause for some serious analysis paralysis, but there are really only a few excellent choices, so the game doesn’t bog down as much as it seems. Laying the cards also adds a lot of strategy to the game. Whose shops will you expand? If you expand your opponent’s shop, he may make more money, but at the same time be vulnerable to fire and flood. At the same time, you can expand your own shops – but at what price. Cards can also be used to cut off the entrances to other shops – and oh the joy when you can place a card that lowers a shop’s income, while making it larger. This is possible by lowering the amount of doors, but increasing the amount of circles – and really can be fun to play on an opponent.
4.) Time and Players: A two-player game is fairly fun, but three and four player games are where it really shines. No matter how many players, the chance of drawing a card with your letter is still 25%, so the odds are the same, and everybody often waits with baited breath to see if a fire or flood will happen each turn. The game flies by, as 50 points isn’t that hard to reach – and can often be completed in only half an hour.
5.) Fun Factor: The game really was a lot of fun – more than I’ve had with most games of this type, and the replayability factor was quite high. Even the theme, which is thin – I’ll admit – did okay, and living in South Korea like I do, I can see how the shop structure really mimics some of the markets over here! When the game is over, you can look at the board, seeing all the tokens and shops laid out, and it looks pretty neat! When first playing, one player built one shop that was immediately destroyed by a fire. He was almost turned off to the game, but realized that it was only a minor setback and came back to win the game. Soon afterwards, he was hoping for a fires and floods to destroy his opponents, and everybody had a blast!
For it’s price, you really can’t beat Agora. Getting a good game for less than $5 is a great deal. Now, once you add in the other components, it comes up to around $10, but still a reasonable price. And unlike other games of this genre, Agora seems to be a game that will be pulled out fairly frequently. I enjoyed it, as it was a fun filler, but one that had some good strategy available. Not all of James Ernest’s games are worth one’s time, but Agora is certainly an exception to that rule – fast, fun, strategy-filled, and cheap.
Tom Vasel
"Real men play board games"
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