Viticulture World Review

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Viticulture World Review

The Cardboard-Based Characteristics

Cooperative Vino Production?

Whether on Board Game Arena or at home around a table with a glass of wine, I adore Viticulture. Its tight worker placement, economy and strategic gameplay get my juices flowing. It’s widely considered one of the best worker placement games ever and I can truly see why. Stonemaier offered me the cooperative expansion, Viticulture World to try and I was truly excited. Maybe I can get a few more people Viticulturing with me. Let’s hope.

For people who don’t know Viticulture, I should start by quickly touching on its great theme, stunning gameplay and squeaky-tight worker placement. In Viticulture, you build a vineyard and produce beautiful wine for the most points. You place workers on spots to take various actions and planning is the key to success. There are only limited spaces for each task and apart from your Grande worker who can go anywhere, you will end up shouting at other players regularly for stealing your spots.

Similar but Different

Viticulture World builds on this framework and throws users into various locations, each with differing conditions and makes them cooperate. Not only that, it adds a few welcomed wrinkles that do make this version feel quite different. For a start, even though I have played Viticulture a lot, we found it difficult going at first. We had to slightly change our tactics and work together to succeed, which is key in cooperative games.

The setup is similar to standard Viticulture, there’s a few new components but most of the setup utilizes components from the main game which is awesome for both space and sustainability. The new bits are a few tokens, hats for your workers and cards. The new cards are sets of cards for geographical-based scenarios and there are some replacements for base game cards. What I thought was a nice touch is that these replacement cards, once replaced never have to be removed again. They just add a black border so you know to skip them when playing Viticulture World, much quicker than sorting the deck between games. Bravo! I also really appreciated the different board sides depending on what Viticulture version you have.

New Mechanics and Mechanisms

Playing World from a mechanical standpoint is very similar to base Viticulture. Now though, as a team not only do all players have to reach 25 points, you also have to get to 10 reputation as together too. It’s tense, not easy and in the first few years you will wonder if you will ever get to those winning thresholds. You have 6 years to do this in and with a few new mechanics and differing locations, each game plays out quite differently.

One of the new mechanics is upgradeable worker spaces. You have two sorts of upgrades along with a space where you pay to apply them to the board. You have oval upgrades that give bonuses to spots, along with increasing the number of people who can go there. Also, you have rectangular upgrades that change what the spots do, making them better and more efficient. Applying both these types of upgrades to the board will heavily play into whether you do well or not. A new wine order card when you fulfil a wine order? Yes please!

Who Doesn’t Need a Hat?

Another new thing is those cute little worker hats. In World you have 4 workers and your Grande, during setup you place 2 yellow cards and 2 blue hats on your regular workers. This garners which season you can use them in, which is different to regular Viticulture. In World, when you pay to train your workers, you get to remove their hands, giving them freedom to be played in any season. Your Grande worker can now trade with players when sharing spaces, which is a nice feature and sometimes vital to eke out those last few points.

The main new mechanic in World though is the little location decks, which change up each game into a kind-of scenario-type setup. For example, the starter location walks you through the new mechanics, helps you with them and gives you new worker placement slots to use. Without spoiling much, the locations get harder, more wild and each one has its own ‘flavour’ and requires a different mindset to tackle, it’s all very well done. I truly enjoyed exploring each location and the changes it brings to the base game formula.

Usual Great Component Quality

From a component standpoint, Viticulture World follows Stonemaiers’ other games in having beautiful components and lovely storage. The different boards depending on what you have already, the replacement cards to make things quicker and lots of lovely little touches really make this fall in line with other Stonemaier titles in being a very nice, all-around production, Top-tier stuff.

A Top Quality Cooperative Version of a Worker Placement Classic

I think it’s clear what I thought of Viticulture World. Once I got over the difficulty, once I had reprogrammed my brain to deal with the changes, I found this expansion very entertaining. You have to change your tactics and strategies depending on the scenario you are playing and if you are coming fresh from Viticulture, be ready to play slightly differently. Working out what to upgrade and when is rewarding as is discussing moves with your playing partners.

Working in a team to produce wine, trade and puzzle your way to victory is a lot of fun and even though your wins may be fleeting, they are all the more fulfilling when they happen. Viticulture World is not essential but if you want to play Viticulture cooperatively, it’s a surefire hit.

Rapid Reviews Rating

4 out of 5

4