Each player is a farmer and begins with an empty farmyard and 2 family members. Each player is dealt a hand of 7 Occupation cards and 7 Minor Improvement cards. There are 360 cards in the game and every one is unique! Therefore, each player needs to make the best use of the 14 cards that they have been dealt. As their are only 14 rounds before the game ends, it's quite likely that you will not get all 14 into play. Once the resources are set up, play begins.

Each round has the same phases, except for 6 extra Harvest rounds.
First a round card is revealed, which offers a new action. Next, materials and animals are replenished on the various actions on the board. Then it is time to put your people to work. Each family member you have can do only one action per round, and each action can only be used once per round, making game order important to you if there is a particular action you want to do in a round.

Once all the actions have been done, the family members return back to their huts and the next round begins, unless it is time for the harvest round.

The harvest round has three phases, collect your harvest from fields you have planted, feed your family, which costs 2 food per family member, then animals breed. After 14 rounds, their is a final harvest then scores are calculated and the player with the best farmyard wins. It is important to know exactly what gets scored at the end. Every area that can be developed is scored, so if you do not have any vegetables for example, you lose a point. No sheep? lose a point. All your fields not put to use? You lose a point per field! All these negative points quickly add up, so you really do need to try and develop a good all round farm to win. Whatever you do don't let your people go hungry as there is a big penalty to pay and it could well cost you the game.

A word about the cards. There are two decks of cards, Minor improvements and Occupations. These decks are further divided into a basic, interactive and advanced section and you can play with one section or all 3, your choice. The Occupation cards tend to affect the actions you can do in some way, for example, if you gather wood, one occupation lets you gather an extra wood. Minor Improvemnets do things like letting you renovate from wood to clay without needing to do the actual action, or giving you extra resources.

Something about this game has certainly caught the imagination of gamer's out there, maybe because it's so well themed or that no 2 games will ever be the same. If you get a chance to get hold of an English version of this then you will not be dissapointed. It has simple gameplay but many decisions to be made each round and yet it is very much an enjoyable game to play. With 5 players there is perhaps very little chance to plan ahead, but if you are 5th and can grab that start player action, then you are back in the planning.

Review by Brian