Farming games

I hope everyone that went to Blog-Con is enjoying the weekend and happy birthday to James!

While I couldn't make it, I did have a gaming related encounter this afternoon. My wife works in MERL, a museum about the countryside. Everything in it is somehow related to farming or the countryside, so it was amusing to see a few boardgames appear in their latest exhibition about Collecting 20th Century Rural Cultures. We really want to play them to see quite how weird they are.

Grade Up to Elite Cow seems to be the farming equivalent of Monopoly, but you have to upgrade 4 of your 6 cows to Elite status in order to win the game. BoardGameGeek seems to imply that it's not quite so family friendly because of it's various references to bull semen on the event cards. You can't really complain about that though as it *is* about building the perfect herd of cows. Plus it comes with some neat looking cow counters.

The other game that they have is Agri-Hazard, a game released by the Ford motor company in the 70s that has you buying and building up a farm, growing crops, raising herds of animals and then selling them. Each turn around the board is one year... According to BGG, it doesn't seem to have a proper ending in the rules...  it sounds as if you just carry on playing it until you get bored. Shame really as the name made it sound like you were having to farm in some post apocalyptic world.