VITICULTURE

Players: 1-6
Game Time: 120 min
Ages: 13 and up
Complexity: Medium-High
Strategy: Medium
Luck: Low
Programming Board Game
Detailed Game Info
Download Official Instructions

In Viticulture, the players find themselves in the roles of people in rustic, pre-modern Tuscany who have inherited meager vineyards. They have a few plots of land, an old crushpad, a tiny cellar, and three workers. They each have a dream of being the first to call their winery a true success.

The players are in the position of determining how they want to allocate their workers throughout the year. Every season is different on a vineyard, so the workers have different tasks they can take care of in the summer and winter. There’s competition over those tasks, and often the first worker to get to the job has an advantage over subsequent workers.

Fortunately for the players, people love to visit wineries, and it just so happens that many of those visitors are willing to help out around the vineyard when they visit as long as you assign a worker to take care of them. Their visits (in the form of cards) are brief but can be very helpful.

Using those workers and visitors, players can expand their vineyards by building structures, planting vines (vine cards), and filling wine orders (wine order cards). Players work towards the goal of running the most successful winery in Tuscany.

Viticulture is essentially an economic farming game.  It is the perfect example of what are called worker placement games.  The reason we only have one game scheduled for this gaming session is because Viticulture more complicated than most games we play with our group.  A typical play through of this game by experienced Viticulture players will last around 90 minutes.  For newcomers, games can last over 2 full hours.  It takes some time to learn the game and become familiar its complexities.  However, it is well worth the investment.  The theme is wonderful and the game play is rewarding.  You end up loving it even if you lose the game.  Don’t let the complexity intimidate you – you can grasp it and it will quickly move on to become one of your favorite games.

Because this game is a bit more complex, we highly recommend you watch both of the videos below to become familiar with it before coming to our gaming session.  We don’t expect you to know it backwards and forwards, but it will certainly help if you have a general idea of how it is played.