Caverna: The Forgotten Folk

In Caverna: The Forgotten Folk, publisher Lookout Games have created asymmetrical player powers to the base game. You know Caverna, the sequel of sorts to Uwe Rosenberg’s farming smash hit, Agricola. Caverna is a worker placement game where you manage a family of cave dwarves. On one half of your plot of land you’ll try to build a blossoming farm – grow crops and breed animals. On the other, you’ll try to dig a cave network, build mines and furnish cave dwellings.

What comes in Caverna: The Forgotten Folk, then? Well, you can substitute out the ‘dwarves’ part of it, for starters! Here you can play as one of eight different fantastical races. Each has their own asymmetrical offerings. All species, no matter which on you pick, have special advantages or disadvantages. Each race also has four unique rooms (‘furnishings’ that you can place inside your cave). These enter the game instead of the some of the rooms in base-Caverna.

The races you can play as are:

• Humans – they prefer farming over caving. You can ‘overhang’ farm tiles off your mat, but when caving, you can only place single cave tiles. They don’t lose points for empty spaces in their cave.
• Elves – also prefer farming. They can plant and keep animals without clearing the forest. They love sunlight, so can’t cave unless they pay rubies.
• Pale Ones – in many ways, the opposite to Humans! They prefer caving over farming. They can visit worker placement mining spots that are already occupied. Their cave tiles can overhang. And they can sow mushrooms in their caves!
• Mountain Dwarves – also prefer caving. They’re not as interested in farming, but they can swap wood resource payments for stone or ore, instead.
• Trolls – due to their big sacks, Trolls get more loot when they go on adventures! But they have to pay more food during each harvest. Lucky that they can eat dogs, sheep and donkeys, then…
• Dark Elves – come with Goblins, who they can place out when they go on adventures of 10 or more. They also locate more rubies in their mines.
• Cave Goblins – these guys are clumsy (picking up less goods). They’re incompetent (they go last in turn order). But you get lots of them, so can you make the extra numbers count?
• Silicoids – these rock creatures eat stone instead of food! Each time you build furnishings you get stone discounts. You can also convert food into points and then points into stone each turn.

Player Count: 1-7 Players
Time: 30-210 minutes
Age: 12+