Caverna: The Cave Farmers review

Mayfair Games | Worker placement | £85.99 | 1-7 players | 30 minutes per player | www.mayfairgames.com 

Harvesting crops, tending to livestock, running an efficient mine or going on adventures - life as a cave dwelling dwarf is tough. Taking control of this small family of dwarfs you can cut down the forest outside of your cave and dig out the mountain in which you reside to create more living space. Caverna: The Cave Farmers is Uwe Rosenberg's heavy farming worker placement game following on in the same mould as its predecessor Agricola.

Players each start with a game board and two dwarfs which count as actions, and can spend those actions either by cultivating the land outside their cave to build pastures and plow fields ready to be sowed, or by digging tunnels and rooms inside the mountain to increase their living space and mine for treasures. 

Increasing living space is an important option as having more bedrooms will allow you to increase your family size and therefore gain more actions.
One of the key features of this game that makes it different from Agricola is the adventure aspect, players can mine for ore to build weapons and then go off adventuring to find gold, animals or even pumpkins. Yes the excellent reward of a pumpkin, I know! The more ore you mine the more powerful you can make your dwarf and the greater the rewards will be. 

The game is played over 12 rounds with more options to place your dwarfs available with the more players you play with. There is also a solo variant that's just as challenging with the game board made smaller. At the end of the rounds you will have a harvest phase where you are required to feed your dwarfs or pay a penalty, so spend too long adventuring and not enough time growing crops and your dwarfs will starve that round and lose points at the end of the game. 

Caverna can seem daunting at first glance with a big game board, player boards and hundreds of tokens and tiles, but its simple worker placement mechanic makes this game easy to learn and teach to others. The most difficult aspect of this game will be deciding whether you want to add an extra dwelling and increase your family or build another pasture for yet  more sheep. (Greg Hughes)

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Finish the game off with a quality, lightweight insert from 

 Compatible with Caverna®, and The Forgotten Folk® expansion.

19,00 €

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