Well, I went and did it.  I jumped head first into the tidal wave of hype over the upcoming Z-Man release of Agricola, the Essen release about the exciting world of subsistence farming, and I even went so far as to preorder the dern game (which is still open until the end of the year... get yours NOW!).  I've never done such a thing before, but all the rave reviews on this game are just hard to ignore!  I mean, it's already up to number 15 on BGG, and I haven't heard a single bad word about it yet.  I think it was the 24-card promo deck and special "animeeples" that pushed me over the top (I still have way too many collectible gamer instincts in me that just won't go away). 

Anyway, I guess the real question is, will it live up to the hype?  I have no doubt that the production quality will be superb (Z-Man is hitting on all cylinders right now), and the game appears to be have virtually infinite replayability.  My biggest concern is about the balance of such a large number of cards.  I mean, how could you really adequately playtest even a significant number of the cards and combinations possible?  Knowing almost nothing about how the game is actually played, I would just be afraid of the "god hand" vs. "crap hand" phenomenon occurring too often.  But maybe that's just very rare and not a big deal at all.  Either way, I'll let you know in April or May...