I got to play Agricola for the first time today at the board game day at my local library (that I organize).

At the table were myself, another person who is quite good at strategizing but it was his first time playing too, a player who is vegan/vegetarian so didn't want to have any animals besides a pet pig, and a teenager who decided all he wanted was to get all of the sheep and didn't care about anything else. The final scores had quite the spread.

It was really great fun. I thought I had a good grip on the rules, but I messed up the "baking bread" rule, thinking it was "any time" like most of the other foodstuff conversions. And since I had profited myself from my mistake before it was discovered, we decided to keep it that way for the first learning game (i.e. not enforce the correct rule on the others after I had profited from the mistake). Hence most people were absolutely drowning in food by the end.

I was the only one who actually expanded the home and the family, and with the absolute glut of food, there really wasn't a need to. But now I know the correct rule and I hope the next time there will be more subsistence in the subsistence farming!