Get into…Viticulture World overview
‘Cooperate with members of your extended winemaking family in various different regions around the world as your try to achieve global recognition. Balance the management of your individual vineyard with the combined effort of your fellow players to gain influence within the region.’
Get into…Viticulture World gameplay
This game requires you to have Viticulture – the base game as it uses some of the resources from the main game.
You can also incorporate some of the elements of the Tuscany expansion in this cooperative version of a firm favourite – particularly in our house.
In this game, you are essentially playing a game of Viticulture with a few changes. Firstly, you are working together to meet common goals such as 10 influence points, and 25 victory points each. Sound easy? It isn’t! Spaces are at a premium in this game as is money and every decision feels important and has to be carefully thought about. You need to confer with your fellow players and discuss which spaces you each will need to use, so that you can maximise your achievement each year. Why is this discussion so important you might ask? In Viticulture world, there are only 6 years in which you have to achieve your goals and targets. This is quite tight and requires you to ensure you spend your money wisely and innovate when you can,
Innovation is new in Viticulture world and is a way in which you can upgrade spaces on the board. There are two types of innovation tiles: rectangular and oval. Rectangular innovation tiles allow you to upgrade the action spaces whilst oval tiles allow you to gain extra resources and combo actions with trained workers.
Training workers is not new to Viticulture but in this expansion, you are training workers to remove their hats. Yes, that’s right! Hats!! Each worker, except the Grande work, starts off with either a yellow or blue hat meaning they can only take that type of action; summer or winter. Training them removes their hats and allows them to work in any season and access the bonuses on the oval tiles. Win, win! It does cost money though, so you will have to choose wisely when you take this action and how often as you will need money to build structures and win influence too.
All this makes for a really compelling game which takes the enjoyment of Viticulture and adds a cooperative spin to it.
3 words to describe this game: cooperative, wine, decisions
Get into…Viticulture World components
1 game board (double sided for playing with or without the structures module)
– a game board much the same as Viticulture World except that turn order is done slightly differently and there are spaces for the innovation cards.
20 black-bordered card reprints (highlighting those incompatible with Viticulture World)
– these can replace the cards in your existing game and just highlight cards that don’t work in Viticulture World which works quite nicely in gameplay as you can just ignore these and draw another one
16 rectangular innovation tiles – allow you to upgrade the action spaces
12 oval innovation tiles – allow you to combo action and gain additional bonuses
20 red and blue cards (formerly ‘mamas and papas’) – provide you with your starting bonuses
7 unique continent decks – providing an increasing level of challenge
1 influence token – used to track the influence of the team of players
1 event token – used to place on action spaces denoting an event that has been turned. It serves only as a reminder.
24 hats (12 yellow and 12 blue) – you add these to your workers to denote which type of action they can take – summer or winter
Get into…Viticulture World overall thoughts
First of all, we have only played this a couple of times and I might well review this further when we have completed more continents.
My initial thoughts is that this is a great cooperative two player experience. We have only played at 2 but to be honest this feels like the sweet spot for this game. I can’t imagine playing it with a bigger play count although you obviously can.
The board for one faces one way and so is easier to play with two players side by side. Also, you need to discuss with each other your intentions and plans so as not to take up spaces need by another player. This would seem far easier at two than I can imagine it would be with 3 or 4 players.
The first game takes a little while to get used to the new innovation tiles but then as you get into it, it feels like a good level of challenge to have in a cooperative game. We didn’t mind not winning because it actually makes us want to keep going back to try again. Resources, money and income are all at a premium in this game and so it feels pertinent to find a route through that allows you to maximise your turns. This is the same in Viticulture and I love that the feel of the base game has come through into this cooperative expansion.
Given the choice, after work, or after putting the kids to bed if I had a choice to bring Viticulture or Viticulture World to the table, I am thinking more and more that it would be this new cooperative expansion – 2 heads are better than one sometimes.
I really enjoyed this game and I didn’t think I was going to – Ive heard mixed reviews but it has definitely won over my heart and mind and I will update this review on playing a few of the other continents.
Get into…Viticulture World
Thanks to Stonemaier games for sending this copy of Viticulture World to me for review. I absolutely loved exploring this one and will continue to explore and find out all it has to offer updating you all as I do so
