Board Gaming - Viticulture

ratticus (58)in #gaming • 7 years ago

Viticulture

Viticulture is a worker placement game that is themed around the production of wine. Each of the players (up to 6) run their own production from growing the grapes through producing wine and finally fulfilling orders.

Viticulture - Player Board.jpg
^{My player board (or vineyard) early in the game with vines in all 3 of my areas, 4 buildings constructed, the workers at home, and my 2 stating cards that determine your starting resources}

The game has multiple rounds, each consisting of 4 seasons, and goes until someone passes 20 victory points, and then ends at the end of that current round. I think they start with Summer, so I'm going to run from that in my descriptions.

Summer - You can pick up green or yellow cards. Green are the vines you need, and Yellow are one of the special visitor types. You can also plant vines, play yellow visitors, build buildings and conduct tours (which is a way of getting money)

Viticulture - Early Game.jpg
^{Early on in the game, with workers placed in just the Summer area, as well as the Chickens showing placement order}

Autumn - You can draw a Yellow or Blue card. Both of these are visitor types with their benefits appropriate for the season you can play them in.

Winter - Harvesting your grapes, producing wines, playing Blue visitors, drawing Purple cards, which are orders to fill for victory points, hiring new workers and delivering orders. The most difficult part of placement for winter is having kept enough workers from summer to still be able to place where you want.

Spring - End of round clean up. Discarding down to 7, collecting your workers back, passing the first player button anti-clockwise and then determining play order. Starting from the player with the first player marker select where they want to go in the order, with each position having different benefits for selecting it, from nothing but placing first for the round, through to an extra worker but placing last. Turn order matters a varying amount, but with the limited placements for each task, and the bonus benefit location for each of them too can make this a difficult decision.

Viticulture - Late Game.jpg
^{late in the game, with a lot more workers placed during Winter as well as Summer.}

I enjoyed the game quite a bit, but also made some terrible mistakes early on that I never managed to recover from. Most significant was probably spending too much money and workers in the first Summer so I couldn't hire an additional worker in the first Winter, or harvest any grapes either. At least one of those may have made for a much more competitive position later in the game.

Things that I liked from the game were the multiple placement locations for the same task, but with one placement gaining an additional benefit, as well as the theme seeming more than just put over the top of a mechanic or 2. It was also good having only one pool of workers but multiple phases of the game to place them in, requiring planning and not getting distracted from it. The way starting resources from being dealt a ma and pa card was interesting and made for interesting variation in how to start.

One notable downside for me was how severely early mistakes and poor card draws can influence your entire game. For a game that needed so much planning, I felt there was a bit too much random from the cards with some being not really useful unless in a certain situation, while others are pretty much always beneficial.