Caverna: The Cave Farmers Review

Intro

When Uwe Rosenberg decided to revisit his farming masterpiece Agricola, he didn't just tweak a few rules and call it a day. Caverna: The Cave Farmers takes everything that made Agricola brilliant and adds a whole underground layer of possibilities. You're running a dwarf family operation, balancing traditional farming with cave excavation, mining, and even sending your bearded workers on armed expeditions.

This worker placement game handles 1-7 players and clocks in around 3.5 hours for a full game (roughly 30 minutes per player). With a solid 7.93/10 rating from the community, it sits in that sweet spot where experienced gamers feel challenged without drowning newcomers. The complexity is real but approachable—think "meaty strategy game" rather than "PhD thesis in cardboard."

How It Plays

Each round, you'll place your dwarf workers on action spaces to gather resources, expand your cave, tend your farm, or grow your family. The beauty lies in how everything connects. You might chop down forest to create fields for crops, then use those crops to feed your family so you can add more workers next round.

Your personal board starts as a modest cave with a patch of forest out front. As you dig deeper into the mountain, you'll discover ore veins and ruby deposits, then furnish your new rooms with workshops, storage areas, and living quarters. Meanwhile, outside your cave, you're clearing land for pastures and fields like any self-respecting farmer.

The twist comes with weapons and expeditions. Forge some gear, and suddenly your dwarves can venture out for bonus resources and special rewards. It adds this delightful risk-reward element where you're weighing the costs of arming up against the potential payoffs.

Scoring happens across multiple categories—your cave improvements, livestock, fields, family size, and overall development. The player who builds the most efficient and productive homestead wins.

Highlights

The dual-layer gameplay is absolutely brilliant. While you're managing traditional farming concerns like feeding your family and growing crops, you're also this underground mining operation. The constant decision between going deeper into the mountain or expanding your surface operations creates fantastic tension.

Furnishing tiles replace Agricola's occupation cards, and honestly, it's a huge improvement. Instead of hoping for good card draws, you're looking at a stable market of 48 different room types. Want a weapon smithy? Go for it. Prefer a peaceful path with more storage and animal pens? That works too. The choice feels more strategic and less luck-dependent.

The expedition system adds genuine excitement to what could be a pretty dry economic game. There's something inherently fun about arming your farmer-warriors and sending them off to raid for treasure. It breaks up the farming routine and gives you alternate paths to victory.

Production values deserve mention too. The wooden components feel substantial, the boards are thick and functional, and everything has that satisfying heft that makes you want to keep playing. Plus, the solo mode is genuinely excellent for learning the ins and outs of all those furnishing options.

Criticisms

Let's be honest about the time commitment. At 3+ hours, this isn't a casual weeknight game. Analysis paralysis is real when you're staring at dozens of furnishing options and trying to optimize your cave layout. With max player count, you're looking at potentially 4+ hours, which can test even dedicated groups' patience.

The game also suffers from "more is always better" syndrome. Unlike Agricola's punishing card-driven limitations, Caverna rarely forces truly difficult choices. You can usually find a way to do most things you want, which some players find less engaging. The tension feels lower when you're not constantly worried about starving your family.

Setup and teardown are genuinely annoying. With all those tiles, tokens, and components, you're looking at 15-20 minutes just getting everything ready. The box organization isn't great either, so expect some fumbling around finding specific pieces mid-game.

Conclusion

Caverna is perfect for groups who love the satisfaction of building something complex and interconnected but want more flexibility than Agricola provides. If you enjoy games where every decision matters but you're not constantly painted into corners, this delivers exactly that experience.

Skip it if you prefer tighter, more focused games or if your group gets antsy after the two-hour mark. But for patient strategists who want to lose themselves in the meditative pleasure of optimizing a dwarf homestead, Caverna offers some of the most satisfying gameplay in the worker placement genre. Just clear your schedule first.