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A Heartwarming Agrarian Adventure
I am a man of simple pleasures.
Give me the countryside, board games on a sunny Sunday, nearly anything by Uwe Rosenberg that involves land development, resource management, and a peat-bog-load of tokens, and…well, ok, maybe my pleasures are not ‘that’ simple, especially in Wales where a lottery win is more likely than a day without rain, but as you might have guessed…this review of Uwe Rosenberg’s 2 player farm builder could be a little biased.
What is it in a nutshell?
Are you like me and get frustrated at seeing online food recipes buried beneath a sea of the author’s life story? So am I! How about that. So, here’s an immediate simplification of what Fields of Arle is all about for your convenience:
- Fields of Arle takes place in Arle, a village in East Frisia, Germany. It’s a 2-player game (with a solo option) centred around the theme of upgrading your farmland for end-of-game victory points.
- It’s a big box with lots of wooden animals, lots of tiles representing goods to acquire and buildings / farmland spaces to develop.
- Each player gets a large farm board, 4 workers, and a storage barn to hold ploughs, boats, and carts.
- Both players share a main board containing a huge list of actions the players can assign their workers to do. The main board also offers an array of unique buildings they can develop on their farm.
- Everyone gets 9 rounds, alternating each round between Summer and Winter. Players take turns each round assigning workers to the main board to perform specific actions (actions in the summer rounds are different to those in the winter rounds).
- The winner is the one with the most victory points at the end of the 9 rounds. Points are gained through acquiring resources, building buildings, getting animals, making trades to different villages, expanding your farm, clearing the negative points your farm starts with, to name but a few.
Sprinkle in some upkeep between rounds: feeding workers, gathering peat in preparation for winter, rearrange your animal stables for breeding, sending off your goods to be upgraded, and that’s the essence of Fields of Arle.
How does it play?
Assuming you aren’t familiar with Rosenberg worker-placement games, it’s a game with multiple routes to victory that (mostly) leaves you alone to do what you want. There’s no defector mechanic, no potential for your opponent to destroy your barns, burn down your crops, or steal your cows, no random event that causes your barns to collapse after a storm (I’ve been playing too much Nemesis for my own good).
No, Fields of Arle is all about effective use of your workers each round with very little interaction between you and your opponent. The main board’s various actions are the crux of the whole game, it’ll be your fixation, planning out what everyone will do this round while praying that your opponent doesn’t occupy that one action that you desperately wanted to take (because more than often, they will….they always do!)
Resources can be traded for other resources, and goods can be upgraded by shipping them in carts between rounds. There is no ‘currency’, no ‘market’, only toil and victory points. The game wants you to plan ahead, to ensure you get the most out of summer before those actions are locked out while you head into winter.
It's easy to feel overwhelmed as you do not know the best routes to win, but as with a lot of Rosenberg games, it’s fun to just experiment and see what you get. There’s no ‘punishment’ for trying things out, they just might not be as optimum as others in terms of achieving points.
How does it look?
Fields of Arle has a comfortable, warm design aesthetic that will be familiar to similar games in the Rosenberg wheelhouse (Glass Road, Agricola, Hallertau, etc.) It’s a simple design that thematically fits in well. Design consistency is one of Rosenberg’s greatest assets, Fields of Arle has clear visual signage to denote costs vs acquisition, signposts what you start the game with and where you place those tiles and helps remind players of end of round effects through iconography, a huge welcome over games that are predominantly textual.
It's all just so nice to look at, with common tiles having easter-egg levels of variations between them to have players say, “Oh look my dyke has a few sheep in its image!”, functionally useless, but aesthetically pleasing (the image, not sheep in general…well…).
Speaking of sheep, wooden animals! Lots of wooden animals! Wooden cows that give you stickers to put on their sides to show their patches, and yes, their patches are of different varieties! Again, functionally useless, but it’s such a lovely detail to include. Whenever we play, we inevitably name all our animals that go onto our farms…and nearly always with alliterations, “Here are my horses, ‘Jet’, ‘Jonas’, ‘Jimothy’, and ‘Jeramiah Junior…the third.’
My only disappoint is the lack of visual fidelity on the main action board. I wish there was some artwork to make the main board stand out a little, given that it represents the crux of gameplay and will get the most attention from the player. It doesn’t look bad it just looks…bland; still, I’d take bland over unreadable.
What’s awesome about the game?
What stood out for me was the implementation of worker actions. As stated earlier, summer actions can only be taken in summer, and winter actions can only be taken in winter; well, that’s not strictly true, as each round lets one player forgo the first player token to utilise an out-of-season action, and that’s not the best bit, you can upgrade those actions!
You see, there are two types of actions you can take, ones that give you a guaranteed result, and those that give you a specific result based on how far you’ve upgraded the tools associated with that action. This adds so much depth to the game, forcing you to consider upgrades over actions that give you returns, just so you get more bang for your buck in later rounds.
I also love that you can upgrade goods or trade goods for food to other villages between rounds if you have a cart. Carts are kind of a necessity, trading with various villages allows you to ‘claim’ that village and place it on the travelling section of your board, building a route that provides you with additional victory points.
It's a comfortable game that can feel overwhelming, but it’s not too bad once you get a grip of it, and my heart goes out to the provided reference sheets, they were certainly welcome.
What’s not so great about the game?
Rally your pitchforks because I’m going controversial…
The lack of ‘some’ randomness!
Yes, you heard me, I know, I know, it’s a Rosenberg game (take a shot every time I say ‘Rosenberg game’) why do I feel like it could be improved with, of all things, randomness?
It’s not so much the Randomness itself, it’s the lack of any form of any variation that sways your direction and prompts you into an end quest goal, let me explain. When you start the game the only variation available is the types of buildings you can build, that’s it, there are no cards, no events, no occupations (i.e. A Feast for Odin) that can focus your gameplay towards, something to throw in some differentiation between the players.
There’s just something…missing…for me, at least. I feel that over time I would be able to refine the most optimal way to spend the first few rounds, always ensuring some form of advantage, and there’s nothing encouraging me to sway from that. You may relish the idea of having no set direction other that ‘gain victory points by any means necessary’, and while the strategic depth is there, I wouldn’t have said no to one or two shake-ups.
What’s the verdict?
I really enjoy Fields of Arle, I’m in love with the theme and I feel it has the right mind behind it, with a solid worker placement mechanic to give you tonnes of enjoyment. The question is, would I recommend it? Yes…after you’ve tried Agricola and Hallertau first… Fields of Arle is a solid 2 player game, it has counter measures to prompt you into investing into different aspects of your farm (I didn’t even get to talk about how your most-owned animal doesn’t count to your score, and your least owned animal is worth twice the points!) it sits up there as worthy of being in your collection, functional, challenging, but fearing some mild repetition with the lack of altering strategies.
It’s a game I’ll proudly have in my main display case in the living room, and sometimes we’ll consider giving it another try…maybe after a game of Hallertau first, but hey, more cake is more cake, and Fields of Arle is a very delicious cake, if only a tiny bit dry.
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