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It’s a farm, in a mini box, it’s Farmini! Farmini is a cute card-laying, farm-building game aimed at children and families. It works a little like a kids version of Carcassonne. Let’s dig in.
Teeny Tiny Set Up
To begin a game of Farmini give each player a farm card to start with. Lay out the 4 starting cards (they have unique backs), shuffle the rest of the cards and you’re ready to go!
On your turn you simply pick from one of the cards available and add it to your farm. Your farm slowly builds throughout the game until all the cards have been taken. Then it’s time for scoring.
Animal Or Vegetable?
Most of the cards are pen cards. These essentially add an extra field for your farm expanding the fields of grass or corn and continuing the fences throughout. Some of the cards are animals.
When you choose to take an animal card you can adopt those animals by taking the corresponding animal tokens and adding them to your farm. For example, if the card has a picture of 2 goats you get to add 2 goats to your farm, 1 pig, you get to add 1 pig. To adopt an animal you must have room to place them in your farm, these spots are clearly marked on your cards.
The animals will score you points if they are still on your farm at game end. To keep the animals secure on your farm they must be in an enclosed pen. Why you might ask? Because if they aren’t in an enclosed pen and a wolf comes along….
Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?
That’s right, during a game of Farmini a wolf might come along and… scare your animals right off your farm! Each wolf is only interested in one type of animal though, so you might get lucky, but will you take the risk?
The wolves turn up in the card flips and if one does come up you must resolve the wolf attack before replacing the card and continuing the game.
Fields Of Gold
Some of the pen cards have cornfields on them. The cornfields will earn you points at game end if they are protected in an enclosed pen. However, the cornfields must not be in a pen with animals, if they are they will not earn you any points at game end.
There’s not a lot to the components of Farmini, just cards and cardboard tokens. The box interior is nice though as it is decorated as a farmyard and this is where you keep the animal tokens throughout the game. The artwork of the animals is super cute.
My children (especially my 5 year old) really enjoy playing Farmini and request it on a Sunday afternoon. I’m looking forward to moving them on to Carcassonne but this is a great starter game to get them used to this sort of tile placement game. They’ve learnt to weigh the options of enclosing the animals vs the cornfields first, how to score the best points and the risk factor of leaving your animals unprotected or never getting around to enclosing a big scoring cornfield.
For adults, Farmini is a fun little game to play with the family and basically, if the kids are having fun, so are we! It’s also a small and light box so easy to take away on holiday with you, which we have done. A thoroughly enjoyable game for us!
