We played with Agricola: The Goodies for the first time last night, and while it was very silly, it didn't have the negative impact on gameplay that I'd feared. However, the Occupation cards from the L-deck created all sorts of rules questions for us that we weren't quite equipped to answer. But that's where this site comes in!
The Bean Farmer occupation reads:
Once you have player the Bean Farmer, no opponent can change the order of the cards in their hand; they may only play the card that is at the front. (If the first card is an Occupation, for example, they cannot play a Minor Improvement.)
My question is, is there a canonical interpretation of the "front" of your hand? If you are holding your cards in a fan, where the rightmost card is the only one with its full face showing, is that the front?
Obviously the intent of this card is to force the opponents to play Bohnanza-style, but this just adds complexity to the issue: when I play Bohnanza, I consider my "first bean" to be the card at the far left of my fan!
In the event we ruled that each player could decide what constituted the "front" of their hand, but this may be open to abuse. Is there a definitive "front" and "back" of your hand in Agricola? And incidentally, have I been playing Bohnanza wrong all these years?
