Viticulture Bordeaux: Review
Information:
Mechanics: Worker Placement, Engine Building, Contracts, Hand Management
Player Age: 14+Player Count: 1 - 6 PlayersTime to Play: 90 - 120 Minutes
Game Designer: Jamey Stegmaier
Player Age: 14+
Game Designer: Jamey Stegmaier
Introduction:
Viticulture is over ten years old, it is the first game from Stonemaier. Over the years there has been an essential edition and Tuscany that revamp the rules balancing and creating new gameplay challenges for Viticulture fans. Bordeaux is an incredibly small expansion physically for the game featuring some solo components, a new board and several cubes. This board however drastically changes the gameplay loop of Viticulture, this expansion will sit with Tuscany and essential edition in revamping Viticulture for modern audiences and create new challenges for players already familiar.
New Setup Conditions:
During setup only the size 6 field is active the rest will start sold. Selling fields is actually removed as an action on this board.
The benefit of this is players will start with three extra lira, a red or white wine on 1, a red or white grape on 2 and one perpetual Income.
Perpetual Income:
In the original game and the Tuscany board the way to gain perpetual income (lira gained at the end of every year) is by completing wine jobs. In Bordeaux players can gain perpetual income through trading
and certain expert locations making it much more accessible to create a steady flow of lira.
As players progress on this track they will now also gain one time benefits of victory points when passing certain values.
Card Display:
The original game board can now be removed from the collection to make way for this new and improved double sided board. The first side is the original with an added card display and the second side is the Bordeaux board. The card display now creates less luck and more agency with vine and wine order cards having two face-up cards as well as the top of the deck for players to select from.
Wake Up Chart:
Like Tuscany, Bordeaux has a wake up chart. Instead of one benefit for the player, a benefit will be gained each season. There is a lot more choice on this wake up board than Tuscany there are also more methods in ageing grapes and wine directly related to this wake up chart.
Trading:
Trading is a simple but engaging addition. Essentially when a player trades, they add a glass token to the board lining in the intersection of what was paid and what was gained. The next player trading cannot place on any previously played glass tokens. Perpetual income, victory points and more common benefits can be gained such as lira, cards, grape and victory points.
Experts:
Experts is a large change to the game. Each player will have only four expert cubes for the game. By going to "Hire an Expert" players can spend two lira to upgrade a location for the rest of the game.
Each location can only be upgraded by one player. These upgrades create new ways to earn lira, victory points, perpetual income or enhance the locations ability to create stronger effects.
Added Location Benefits:
Locations now have more benefits for visiting a particular allocation in the worker spot. This never used to occur before. This creates more urgency to be the first player at the location in a two player game and higher player counts.
Another location worth mentioning is a location in fall that lets the player spend one lira and activate any other location benefit in any season. This is a perfect way to activate certain elements the player missed or give the chance for the player to activate out of the normal season order.
Final Thoughts:
- More methods of gaining perpetual income.
- More methods of gaining small doses of points.
- The card display helps reduce randomness for the crucial elements of vine and wine orders.
- Much faster gameplay as well as more momentum.
- Physically there is not a lot in the box for this expansion. Which is also a positive as it will easily fit in your game box replacing the original board.
Viticulture is an engaging worker placement game that challenges players to optimise their vineyard to make and deliver wine. Bordeaux is the latest expansion which judging by components can feel small, but content wise that is far from true. Bordeaux is very much a lesson learned expansion. By that I mean this kind of feels like an update to the original Viticulture and all that has come. It takes lessons learned from Tuscany and integrates new concepts for players to discover. My main gripes with Viticulture is the randomness when trying to start your field (getting the right vines) and getting the right wine orders to fulfill. With the display this has now been mitigated to keep the focus and agency much easier for players. The other big shake up is the speed of gameplay, there is a larger addition in setup creating faster gameplay, and more ways to gain points and perpetual income on the board all accumulating to create faster gameplay. If those fixes aren't enough there is also the introduction of experts, while the structure cards and advanced workers can still be used on this board, there is a new introduction of another gameplay layer in experts. These enhance locations (for the first player to enhance that location) and improve the location whether this is an upgrade to the player's engine, a new way to score or simply an improvement to the location. If you're a fan of Viticulture and enjoy the gameplay improvements that the Tuscany expansion brought, I think Bordeaux is not an expansion to overlook, this breathes new life, while improving the gameplay. Can easily recommend Bordeaux.
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