Thanks for the offer! I'll be around at Xmas this year, so hopefully I'll see you, either at the Christmas Eve thing (would be rad if you and your lady could make it), and/or we should have an Action Team board game day.

Agricola is really good. My wife and I play it quite a bit. The designer did a great job picking a universal theme (building a farm, raising a family) and then integrating the mechanics into that theme. Unlike a lot of Euros it doesn't feel abstract at all. It also scales well for the number of players. If it weren't on the pricey side I would just say go ahead and buy it, but as it is you should try and borrow a copy and give it a shot. I'll bring it down at Xmas if nothing else.

Basically how the game goes is you start with two people in your family and a small house on an empty plot of land. Each family member can take one action per turn. Actions are things like plowing land, planting crops, building fences for pastures, harvesting lumber, adding onto your house, etc. Each action can only be taken once per round so there is competition when both players need to do the same thing. At the start of the game, you've only got two family members and about seven actions available so your choices are not that hard. However, as the game goes more action types are revealed and you can get more family members, so your decisions become more complex. There are a lot of things to do to build a successful (high-scoring) farm. You also have to produce enough food to feed your family or suffer big point penalties (in addition to feeling a little guilty). So it's one of those games where you have a ton of things you want to do, and not a lot of actions to do it with.

The difference between family/regular is that in the regular rules, everyone gets a bunch of cards that add abilities or let you break rules in certain ways. They're a lot of fun, but it can be a lot to take in on top of the other mechanics, so in the family version you just don't use those cards. The cool thing about the cards is that you get a TON, and only use a very small percentage of some, so it adds a lot of replay value.

It's on the long side (usually takes us 2-3 hours to get through) but it doesn't feel long.