LogFAQs > #966734620

32. Viticulture: Essential Edition

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/183394/viticulture-essential-edition

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Worker placement, card play, order fulfillment
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 60-90 minutes
First played: 2018
Experience: 6-10 plays with 2-5 players

As its name suggests, Viticulture is a game where you run a vineyard. Each round of Viticulture represents a year, during which you bid for turn order and then make worker placement choices. Each year consists of a Summer and Winter phase, during which different actions are available. In Summer, you draw grape cards and attempt to plant them in your vineyard; give tours of your winery, and construct buildings that can give you powers; in Winter, harvest grapes from your vines, brew them into wine, and draw and fulfill wine orders by selling your wine. Each round also contains some bidding for turn order and opportunities to play one-off cards for their effects.

As a Stonemeier design, Viticulture ranks extremely high in accessibility and components. It has what I consider to be one of the great themes of board gaming in running a vineyard. And while the engine is fairly intricate, its thematic resonance really helps it here - you need to prepare fields and possibly equipment to plant grapes. You need to have a grape seed before you can plant it. Once you've planted the grape, then you can harvest it. Once it's harvested, then you can mash it into wine. And then when the year passes, your wine ages and becomes more valuable. Each of those subsystems, if rendered abstract, would not flow nearly as logically and consistently as it does in Viticulture, which I love about it.

The game also introduces some nice mechanics to prevent it from getting too punishing. The random card draw can give you some pretty swingy effects, so beginners can get a jumpstart even if they misplay in other aspects You don't need to feed or pay your workers, removing one of those possibly painful parts of games like Tzolk'in.

But perhaps most critically, the game's primary mechanic through which you perform actions - worker placement - has some of its edge taken off by virtue of the Giant Meeple. Normally, in a worker placement game, if someone occupies the last available spot for an action that you want to perform (say, planting a field), you're shit out of luck until next round, when your opponent's workers are reset. But in Viticulture, your Giant Meeple allows you, once per round, to take an action even if it's already blocked off. This massively lessens the pressure on a new player.

And that allows the game to be slightly tight (you have to fight a little and hope for the right grape and order cards to get your engine going and fulfill orders), but still satisfying (after going through the whole wine lifecycle, doesn't it feel nice to fulfill a big order of rose?). There are escape routes to make points if you are not getting the right grapes or wine cards - directly selling your grapes, simply bidding for victory points during the turn order phase, going for the tour bonus. And because the game is a race - the final year is triggered when someone crosses a threshold of VP - you are (or at least someone is) highly likely to end the game wishing you just had noe more turn.

The game has some issues, and I get the sense that some of that is tied to the way it is so accessible. While it's not quite on the level of Lost Ruins of Arnak, the worker placement here doesn't feel that satisfying - there are many phases where it seems like you don't have any good actions at all, and then there are phases where it's do-or-die. Along those lines, the clever turn order bid system winds up feeling pretty pointless late in the game as well, when you've got your engine and going first/being able to draw order cards/fulfill orders is all that matters. And because of the way seasons work, it's also kind of punishing that being first player allows you to be first in both the Summer and Winter phases, doubling the benefit.

On a similar note, the resources system doesn't feel all that well thought out; money starts out tight, like in many eurogames - you're scrambling to try to construct your structures until you can get your coin income going. But once you've actually got that coin income rolling - and you absolutely do, once you fulfill wne orders - there's not actually a lot to do with it. Coins have virtually zero lategame usage and are not worth VP in the endgame - so the fact that you generate it automatically in the lategame feels kind of silly and not entirely well thought out.

That said, while I consider Viticulture not to be the best midweight eurogame, as I said, it's one of the most accessible and thematic for its weight. It doesn't feel like it drags, thanks to the racing element (usually 7-8 rounds can get played). And it's not too mean, at least at first. I'd say the strong early-to-mid-game definitely outweighs the "just get the right cards and play first" element of the endgame.

I've also played Viticulture's expansion, Tuscany, which largely improves the game, mostly on a thematic level. I just didn't manage to get it played last year.