The 10 Best Farming Board Games of All Time, Ranked

The best farming board games make ❀cultivating the land, harvesting crops, and constructing new buildings an absolute blast. They often rely on engine building and worker placement mechanics, and will typically require you to think carefully about how you’re going to spend your resources. In this list, we’re highlighting the best board games with farming as a central aspect of both theme and gameplay.

10. Stardew Valley: The Board Game

The board game adaption of brings just about every mechanic from its source material to the table, including fishing, mining for ore, and making friends in town. Players work together to grow crops a🦩nd raise animals around their farm and must attempt to complete the objective cards that their grandfather has assigned them. When you befriend people, you’ll get heart tokens that you can take to the community center to reveal end-game goals. There’s significantly more urgency in the board game than in the video game since there’s a turn limit for each season. Up to four players can join the fun, but the ♛solo mode is equally pleasant.

9. Fields of Arle

is one of the most complex farming board games out there, and requires you to plan how you’re going to use and develop your land very carefully. Resource management is particularly vital since items such as flax and timber will come in handy for a wide variety of building projects. You’ll also need to think c♉arefully about where you’re going to keep your animals and how you’re going to ship your goods. If you enjoy challenging decision points and games with a ton of different scoring opportunities, then Fields or Arle is definꦡitely for you. A solo game typically only takes about an hour and can be an immensely satisfying experience.

8. Photosynthesis

Interested in trying a board game with a slightly different theme from classic agriculture and livestock farming? is a great tabletop title that makes planting and growing trees a competitive puzzle. The game begins with each player putting down two small trees from their arbor along the edge of the board. As the rounds progress, the sun will move around the center area, and everyone will collect light points for the trees 💖they have that aren’t sitting in the shade. The best places to plant your trees depend significantly on what everyone else is doing since your trees can prevent your opponents from collecting points, and vice versa.

7. Fields of Green

If you’re looking for a farming board game with a card drafting mechanic, then might be the perfect addition to your tabletop collection. At the start of each round, you’ll only be able to draw from three of the four availa꧙ble stacks of project cards, which are separated by type. Livestock, constructions, buildings, and fields all offer different benefits for your farm. The trick is finding the best available combination of them. The player with the most economic success by the end of the fourth round is the winner. The short play times and mid-weight complexity make this one a perfect choice for family game nights.

6. Red Outpost

follows the destiny of a Soviet colonization effort on a planet in a remote solar system, far from Earth. There are a handful of workers that everyone will collectively control and a number of interesting spaces for the players to send th🍌em to throughout the game’s two multi-phase rounds. When you produce crops and other resources, the happiness of the worker you set to this task will decrease. If the worker has aღ negative happiness score at the end of the round, and you have the most influence over them, you’ll lose victory points. In addition, the crops will go to the grain storehouse rather than to your personal supply. The unique mechanics of Red Outpost make it a farming game like no other.

5. Takenoko

In , players grow plots of bamboo, build irrigation systems, and feed the panda that roams across the game’s tiles. Each round after the first, they’ll also roll the weather dice to determine how the sun, rain, and wind will affect everyone’s prospects. Your goals in the game can shift completely depending on which objectives you draw. These cards reward you for things like your tile placement and the height of your bamboo stalks. You can hold up to five of them at once, and in order to end the game, you’ll need to complete between seven and nine of them, depending on the number of players. The variability and relaxed pace of Takenoko make it a great farming-themed board game.

4. Clans of Caledonia

is a classic engine-building board game that starts players off with a small plot of land in 19th-century Scotland. Over the course of the game’s five rounds, players will increase the size of their industry, sell their goods, and invest in the game’s various scoring opportunities. In keeping with the Scottish theme, Clans of Caledonia also lets you set up your very own whiskey distillery, which helps the entire game feel more unique. You can also change up the board’s arrangement each time you play, which adds further replay value. You can complete a solꩵo game in as little as 30 minutes.

3. Caverna: The Cave Farmers

In Uwe Rosenberg’s , players take on the role of a dwarf family that dwells in a humble mountain cave. Over the course of two to four hours, they’ll develop the forest outside their home, mine deeper into the hills, and complete expeditions with the help of their newly forged weapons. The worker placement mechanics work perfectly here, and draw from the game’s predecessor Agricola, which was also designed by Rosenberg. You can play Caverna with up to seven people, but there can be a lot of waiting time between turns if your group is larger than four. There’s also a solo mode that lets you place completꦚely different furnishings in your cave.

2. Viticulture: Essential Edition

Build your own vineyard in the Italian countryside, grow grapes, and craft the best casks of wine in , an exceptional worker placement game with gorgeous thematics. As the seasons change, you’ll expand your crush pad, increase the capacity of your cellars, a🎃nd construct farm buildings, such as the cottage, windmill, and tasting room. In order for your vineyard to be an economic success, you’ll need to complete lots of wine order cards and accomplish your objectives before the other players. There’s also an expansion that flips the original game on its head and makes it a cooperative experience instead.

1. Agricola

is an immensely satisfying engine-building euro board game that makes expanding your farm an absolute blast. When you start the game, you’ll have two workers who represent a farmer and their spouse. You can send the🃏m out to till the fields, construct fences, and pick up building materials. There are also tons of unique cards you can use to upgrade your land. As the game progresses, you can get livestock or extra workers to aid you. Agricola also comes with a variable difficulty system that lets you remove the more complex cards whenever you need to make the rules a bit easier to understand. As far as farming board games go, it doesn’t get any better than this.