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My Farm Shop from Rüdiger Dorn is a dice-based action card game akin to Machi Koro or Space Base. However, it has a uniqueness and as I learned from my son last night, you can create an efficient engine that can decimate your opponents. I have taught him well.
Don’t Let The Sweet Cover Fool You
I initially passed over this game after seeing the cover. I know, I know you should never judge a book, or game, by its cover but I did. Due to its bright kiddy-looking cover, I thought it was a breezy children’s game. As it turns out My Farm Shop has quite a bit going for it. It keeps everyone at the table entertained and moves at a very brisk pace.
As usual, most points wins. You get points for selling your farm-based goods which you must first produce. You have two boards of your own. Your farm and your shop, I can certainly see where they got the apt name from. There is also a shared board that contains cards you can add to your farm.
On your turn you roll three dice. One is used to select one of the randomly placed six cards in the shared board. Which you can immediately add to your farm. The other two are added together to activate one of your fields depending on their value. Each of your eleven fields function can be changed with the cards acquired from the main board. You can even activate the card you just picked up if it suits you and you put it in the correct field. All other players also get to activate the two field dice you choose too. So be wary you are not giving them too much.
A Farming Engine Builder
Hidden in My Farm Shop is a little juicy engine builder. Your field can contain a mixture of fields that produce goods. They then go on your little shop board and fields that let you sell items from your shop. How you arrange them, how you create a supply and selling chain is up to you. The deck of cards that make up the main board and your fields are set in a certain order to make sure they slowly improve throughout your game and this deck is also tailored to make the games random and to suit all player counts.
So that's the basic fundamentals of My Farm Shop, however, it is not just buying and selling goods. You can also gain burlap sacks on your farm which allow you to adjust any dice roll by one. Whether it be the dice you choose for collecting a new card for your fields or the combined dice you roll to activate your fields, they give players a bit of leeway when selecting your actions and do a little to mitigate the randomness of your rolls. They can also be used on other players turns to maximize your farming productivity.
You can also gain sunflowers from certain card abilities too, these sunflowers can be placed above some of your fields, not all of them but some of them, to upgrade them to provide better benefits. For each sunflower you have above a field you can pick one more of the good it produces or items you get from selling. On cards with multiple items, you get to pick what extras you get which provides a nice wrinkle in people strategies and gives you ways to try and ring those vital few points out you need to win.
You can see with taking new cards, buying and selling goods, upgrading card abilities and using sacks to change dice rolls, you have a fair few options to make your farm into a money-making machine. As I said earlier my son managed to create an unbeatable coin producing nightmare of a farm last night and he is only nine. I tried my damn hardest to keep up with him but even with my gaming experience, I still finished a few points behind. A testament to how a good strategy can definitely be used to win My Farm Shop, by someone of any age.
The game also comes with three extra modules for you to try out. A goal module that provides random, in-game goals to all players. A jump start module that gives players a more varied start and a farmer module that really mixes things up. I recommend starting with just the base game and adding in modules when you are familiar enough with the rules.
Card, Eggs, and Sacks
Everything apart from the scoring counters in my Farm Shop is made of card of varying thicknesses. It's good quality, well made and thick enough where required, the boards are especially sturdy. The goods, counters and all included components, while not being amazing, are perfectly serviceable. I perhaps would have liked wooden good tokens in the shape of the good they represent but that may have made them not line up on the board as nicely as the card circles we have now.
The art style is very cartoony, the box and components, as I mentioned earlier give a very breezy, childlike vibe to the game which initially made me overlook it. The art style is very attractive, bright and bold but I feel some may overlook it thinking it is a lighter game than it is. Don’t be put off, the game has just enough depth for the type of game it is. Everyone, even young kids can get stuck into a bit of supply and demand.
The rulebook is very concise, short and straight to the point. It is only a few pages and does a perfect job of explaining the game and turn structure. I never once had to look up anything or get any rule clarifications. Everything is as described and easy to follow. Even down to the extra modules which are all explained in their own sections at the end.
Final Thoughts
Everyone in my house loved My Farm Shop. It suited all age groups from the adults right down to my nine-year-old who beat me in our last game. It's easy to learn but does have some strategic and tactical depth in picking what cards to take, where to put them and how to upgrade efficiently. There's a bit of luck with dice rolls but bad or unwanted rolls can be changed with your burlap sacks.
My Farm Shop is quick, fun and very bright. It has very little downtime and everybody’s turn matters to everyone around the table. It will not take up a lot of your time and has meaningful decisions all the way through. It’s very inexpensive, well designed. When you have a well-oiled engine pumping out those victory points, or coins as they are in this game, it feels great. Right, get out there, make some honey and cash it in for those sweet sweet coins!
