In 2011, I saw an ad for an upcoming movie with the terrible title “We Bought a Zoo”.
I was expecting it to be some direct to DVD animated kids show but, no, it was a regular studio release staring Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson, Thomas Hayden Church and Elle Fanning and directed by Cameron Crow. Of that treasure trove of talent, someone had to have raised their hand and said “Could we, just maybe, call this movie something less literal?”
I have to think someone said a similar thing at Pegasus Spiele before releasing My Farm Shop. This is a really good game saddled with a pretty bad name (and cover art).
While not a overly complicated game (it’s currently rated 1.94 our of 5.00 at Board Game Geek), there is enough strategy involved to keep most gamers interested.
The game was designed by Rüdiger Dorn, the man behind such titles as Goa, Jambo, Las Vegas, Istanbul, Karuba and Luxor, and is for two to four players, running about 45 minutes.
How to Play
The goal of the game is to sell the most product out of your farm shop which is represented by a personal board with sixteen spaces. You start the game with one each of the four products your shop sells, honey, milk, wood and eggs, along with two burlap bags (more on them later).
Also in front of you is your Player Board that has ten spaces, one for each number that can be rolled on two dice (one of the spaces is for both 2 and 12). These are seeded with some basic actions, including acquiring new product and selling existing product for points.
In between the players is a Market Board which has six improvement cards place on spaces marked 1 through 6.
On a turn, the active player rolls three dice and breaks them into a single die and a pair of dice. The single die is used to buy one of the improved actions off the Market Board. That action is then put on the Farm Player Board over one of the lesser abilities.
The other two dice are used to activate the action on the Farm Player Board equal to the total of the two dice. This happens for ALL players at the table so, if an 8 is rolled, all player activate the ability in area 8.
If the player doesn’t want to activate the area that was rolled they can choose to use their burlap bags to change the dice total by one.
Finally, a card is placed on the Market Board to replace the one that was taken and you move to the next player.
As the game goes on, the actions that you can draft from the Market Board become more valuable and a bit more complicated. In the Early game, you might pick up one item or have the chance to sell an item or two. There are also wild card actions that allow you a choice of what to buy or sell.
Later in the game, the actions become more complex, up to something like sell two sets of two identical goods for a burlap bag and seven coins (points). There are also a few action cards that are one-time only, giving you things like one of each of the four commodities before the action card is discarded and the space reverts to the starting action.
Finally, certain spots on the board give you sunflowers which can be placed on certain spaces on your Farm Player board. From that point on, anytime that number is activated, you get an additional item and a few of the spaces can take two sunflowers, increasing the production (or sales) by two.
The game ends when a player can no longer put a new action card onto a space on the Market Board. Each player then gets to activate one of their cards without rolling the dice before the final score is locked. The person who has earned the most coins (points) wins the game.
…But Wait, There’s More
My Farm Shop includes three expansions:
- The Jump-Start Module lets you start with a variable set of cards on your Farm Player Board, some of which are more powerful then the standard “one commodity” of the standard game. These are chosen in a draft which can give you a chance to start with a bit of a strategy.
- The Farmer Module gives you special farmer abilities along with the choice to select transportation tiles which are used to activate those special abilities.
- The Goals Module sets challenges for the players such as having six or more identical goods in your shop, eight or more burlap bags or filling all sixteen spots in the shop. The first to meet each gets six points while the second gets three.
Strategy
There are many different ways that you can take your game and you always need to be readjusting your strategy based on what comes out on the Market Board. At the most simple, you need to get a good mix of obtaining vs. selling your goods. It’s always tempting to load up on those big selling abilities but, if you don’t balance it with acquisition actions, you could end up with nothing to sell.
Also keep in mind the odds of rolling each number on two dies. While the burlap bags do help you mitigate a bad roll, they may not always be available so you want to carefully consider which of the more active numbers should have you most desirable actions.
Finally, there are actions you can “buy” that have arrows on them pointing up or left/right. These give you the ability to increasing your chances of activating a particularly good action.
Components
The components for the game are fine. The various boards are of a nice thickness as are the various tokens (commodities, burlap bags, sunflowers, etc.). The cards are an average thickness with a moderate sheen.
In Conclusion
For me, My Farm Shop firmly replaces games like Machi Koro in the “roll to activate” mechanism. The constantly changing array of actions that can take place based on roll, along with the ability to somewhat mitigate the roll, puts the game firmly above the rather basic play of Machi Koro.
Add in the three variations and you have the a game that should have a great amount of replay value. Now, if they just could have given it a name and cover that would have drawn in more serious gamers….
Rating: 7.5 / 10
