Viticulture - Tuscanny: Review
Information:
Mechanics: Worker Placement, Engine Building, Contracts, Hand Management
Player Age: 14+Player Count: 1 - 6 PlayersTime to Play: 60 - 150 Minutes
Game Designer: Jamey Stegmaier, Alan Stone
Player Age: 14+
Game Designer: Jamey Stegmaier, Alan Stone
Introduction:
Viticulture is one of Stonemaier Games’ evergreen titles. For the full review of Viticulture, click here. Viticulture Tuscany is a large box expansion with three modules that can be played either separately or combined. This expansion comes with an extended board, special workers, and structures.
Expanded Board:
The extended board increases what you can do in both the Spring and Autumn seasons. Additionally, there are now worker locations consisting of the four seasons instead of simply Summer and Winter. There are two other elements to this; the wake-up chart and the addition of influence tokens.
The wake-up chart now gives a different bonus as you enter each season. The very last location on this chart requires that you go first next year, which has no bonus for the seasons except for being first player.
The new addition of influence tokens includes a new map found in the lower left side of the board. Every time you place an influence token on this board you will gain the bonus displayed. This does not occur when you simply move tokens. At the end of the game each section on this map will be scored and the points will be awarded to the player with the most influence tokens per section.
Special Workers:
At the start of every game there will be two new worker types presented as part of the setup. Each worker card will have a unique grey meeple next to it to show which corresponding meeple to use once purchased. When obtaining a new worker the active player can spend one more lira to purchase one of these special-ability workers instead. The amount of workers you can have is still limited to six.
Structures:
A new deck has been added into the game called Structures. These structures are built by using the same worker locations that constructs regular buildings and by paying the cost on the top left of the card. Only two structures can be built at any time, although, they can be destroyed at a later time using a private worker location. There are three types of structures; Action, Enhancement, and Residual.
Action structures unlock a private action that your workers can visit.
Enhancement structures award an ongoing bonus,
and residual structures give a bonus at the end of each year.
These bonuses may be cards or points, not simply coins.
Final Thoughts:
- Modules can be played separately or together.
- Doesn't over-extend the playtime of Viticulture.
- Special workers add variation and a different layer of strategy.
- Extended board separates the worker placement locations over four seasons instead of two, and adds an area control/ added bonus section.
If you're already a fan of aging your wine and maximising your vineyard in Viticulture, then this expansion should be a simple purchase for you. Tuscany is a larger expansion that is easily digestible as three different modules that could also be used all at once. The benefit of the modules include more variety in special workers, an abundance of unique structures to build, and a section to fight over for control. The biggest change to the pace is the extended board, but I found that this helps each season focus on a particular section of Viticulture. If you already enjoy Viticulture, this expansion adds interesting modules change up variability without bringing too much complexity.
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