First Draft

In this entry you will find a very loose description of the early game more detail on rules will be found in future posts (partly because the rules have changed so much from past versions)

My game started with a focus on area control and ability management. The game starts with several smaller boards being joined together and a few obstacles and areas of interest added in.

A look at a larger 6 player board

The green area in the center is 3 different "starting" boards, depending on the number of players there are additional square boards are added (represented by different colors) On the colored player boards everyone would take turns placing 1 large mountain range, 1 small mountain range, and one treasure. After setup players would take turns adding either positive or negative items to the row or column to effect each castle in that row or column.

At it's most basic you are adding or subtracting to other players score. When you complete a row or column you get those points. You can build walls to protect against bad tiles and keep other from benefiting from your positive areas. Get gold from mines to buy new items (more castles, knights, walls, etc...) What do the knights do? Well that varies on how you have managed your court.

the initial design for a players court board

Knights were items you could lay on the board and depending on what Knight card you had active would cause that Knight piece to do something like add 10 points to all adjacent castles, cancel out all negative points in a row, etc..
Besides Knights there were also Advisor cards. These would effect different actions such as, when another player collects gold you also receive 1 gold, no other players may place a knight adjacent to your castle, etc...
In Agricola you start with a selection of occupations and improvements and you are stuck with them for the whole game. If you get good cards that work well together you're already off to a good start. If not...well you better have a good strategy. In my game you start with a smaller number of cards but you are able to gain new ones through the course of the game. One advisor may have immediate benefits at the start of the game but a couple rounds in you may want to swap him out for a guy with a better late game strategy.

different actions available to player

Each round players take turn choosing what action they would like to take. If one player selects an action all players also may participate in that action. The person to actually select the action would get the biggest boost while other players would have much more limited ability or may even have to pay to take part.

Fortify:
you don't get to take part in any actions this round, either positive or negative, but next round everything can be done twice
Court:
get more advisors & knights
Event:
play a random special event card that changes or limits the rules for the round
Territory:
Randomly get tiles to lay on the board
Battle:
Place knights and attack castles
Expansion:
Place area tiles
Treasure:
Get extra gold
Market:
buy action cards either from a stack of random cards or 3 revealed cards

Actions would be selected in turn order, which rotated each round. So say player 1 chose to take the Territory action, player 2 chose the Market action, and player 3 chose the Treasure action. Then actions would be resolved in game order, in this case Territory first, Treasure second, then Market. Player 1 would have received the most new territory tiles, player 3 would have gotten the most treasure, and player 2 would have had the best discount and buying power at the market.

the board after a couple rounds of play

The game would end after a certain number of turns passed, whoever had the most points from completed rows/columns would win the game.

Next time, the results of the first few playtesting sessions (hint, a lot needed to be changed)