In 2007, the classic and complex Euro game Agricola came out. It was the first "heavy" board game I ever played, and it hooked me in deep. Caverna(2013) is essentially the sequel to Agricola.

Both games are about farming, worker placement, indirect competition with your peers, and tons and tons and tons of little pieces. Except Caverna has dwarves. And beer. 🍺

Let's dive in.

🐄 Setup and premise

Here's a picture of the game quite near the start. We actually forgot a section of the board (the rules are complex, okay?) for a few rounds, but added it later.

🌽 Top area: Common resource and action zones. All players have access to these cards. If you place a dwarf on a card, you get what's on it. No one else can go there. Resources replenish, and more options reveal themselves as the rounds carry on.
🏠 Middle area: Upgrades and buildings. If you can take a build action and pay the costs, you can improve your little farm / cave. Buildings range from space for more dwarves, animal pens, buffs, end game scoring, better resource production.
👩‍🌾 Bottom area: Personal farm / cave. Your scoring and building space. No one but you interacts with this space. You're trying to cover empty tiles and build out efficient and balanced buildings / rooms / farms / fields.

When it's your turn, you place a dwarf (shown here as little discs) out onto the common area to work the fields or whatever. At the start, everyone only has two, so it goes pretty quick at the start.

At the end of every harvest (happens after three rounds at the start, then more frequently later), you need to feed your family of dwarves. Fail, and suffer a big negative point penalty.

There are... so many paths to scoring and victory. You could...

🐷 Go heavy on animal breeding. Score points for pastures, grab buildings that convert animal byproducts to food.
⚔️ Spam the adventure mechanic. Train up and arm your dwarves, and rush the action spots that let you gain points and adventure spoils.
😘 Procreate like mad. Strive to max out your family from two to six. That means more actions per round for you, but also much higher food demands.
⛏️ Carve out the mountain for riches. Get industrious, building out ore and ruby mines. Rubies act as wild resources and score points at the end.
🌾 Go classic and focus on farming. Tons of fields and a good sense of timing turns into an engine of overflowing wheat and vegetables every harvest. Pair this with the right buildings and it could be a dominant strategy.

Generally, you need to partake in a bit of everything, but find at least two of these things to score big on. It's a lot of thinking, especially as the options on the table begin to grow (and as your opponents force you to change all plans when they steal the spot you really wanted).

How our game went + scoring example

The first picture on this post shows the end state. Yellow (bottom) ended up winning by comboing the big family with a solid animal game. Purple (bottom left) had a more balanced approach but ended up in last place by overplaying the adventure system. I was blue (bottom right) and landed in the middle.

Here's a better look at my board.

My approach was to go heavier on rubies and wheat, as I had the Beer Parlor building and the Treasure Chamber.

The shields with numbers 🛡️ on the board are all points, I believe there's 26.

🐮 Every animal is a point. I have a bunch of sheep, two dogs, a cow, a boar. (12)

🥕 Each vegetable (pumpkin) is a point: 4

🎑 Every two wheat is a point: 2

👤 Every dwarf (blue disc) is a point: 3

😟 Each uncovered tile is -1 points: -3

💎 Each ruby is a point, but for me each is 2 points thanks to the Treasure Chamber: 16

🍻 My Beer Parlor turns two wheat into either three gold or four food. At the end I got 15 gold out of it, bringing my gold total to 17. Each gold is worth a point: 17.

Grand total was 77. A good score, but I think Yellow had me beat by at least 15 points. If you zoom in on that board in the bottom of the first picture, you see so many animals, a ton of points in shields, and some rooms that give hefty bonuses (e.g. Broom Chamber = 10 points for having six dwarves).

The wood-cow controversy

There are flaws in this game, but the enjoyment outweighs them. Perhaps the worst part of it is how the cows and wood look very similar. We got them mixed up a lot! 😉