Image taken from https://boardgamegeek.com/image/8629336/vineyard-a-winemaking-game

Designer: Roberta Taylor
Publisher: Pencil First Games, LLC
Artist: Katherine Waddell

After much deliberation over whether I should back this via crowdfunding, I (obviously) ended up caving and got it, honestly mostly for the theme because the husband and I adore wine!

Vineyard is an interesting worker placement/action selection/hand management game where each character is controlled by all players: no one has a specific character. Each player has unique boards that provide different strengths and bonuses for each character, but on their turn, any player can select, move, and use any of the characters. There are two rules, though. Certain locations only allow for a certain number of people to be there, so you obviously can’t move someone to a full location. Also, each player has action cards that dictate their turns. If a player has used a card with one character, that character cannot be selected again by that player until the three other characters have been utilized.

As expected, this game is about making wine. Action options on each turn include cultivating the grapes, harvesting the grapes, making wine, aging wine, loading the truck, greeting guests, and performing paperwork. The mechanics are very easy but there is still a decent amount of decision making required which makes this game enjoyable. There’s definitely some strategy necessary, but there’s also a healthy dose of tactical decisions based on where other players move characters and which locations are available.

The solo implementation includes an AI player named Aunt Mabel who is visiting your vineyard. Over the course of the game, she collects stars (points) while also moving characters around and taking actions to alter the board state, among other things. I appreciate its inclusion, and it is pretty fun, but the steps to complete some actions are a little convoluted and/or more complicated than they really need to be. I’ve also found Aunt Mabel to be rather difficult to beat (maybe I’m just terrible at this game).

Throughout the game, when you take a paperwork action, you gain all played cards back to your hand and get one coin for each you take back. The coins can then be used to purchase upgrades for your characters and cards, both of which can be very useful. In my games, I seem to lean more towards upgrading cards as they often provide better actions, or even more actions per card. Overall, the greet (also gives you coins) and paperwork actions are neat, as there are interesting options to choose from and they can be pretty impactful.

In the same vein, the general hand management required in this game is certainly my favorite mechanic (probably tied with the shared workers). When you gain an upgrade card, you actually trade out the original for the new and improved version, so your hand size is always the same. Also, the fact that people can’t be used twice until every character has been utilized is clever, especially since each character has certain strengths based on your player board. I find the action selection/hand management/worker placement combination to be the source of most of the tension in the game (besides maybe the race to load the trucks) and assuredly seems to be the most strategic element.

The art is very cute and appealing, and the game is decently thematic overall. The acrylic character standees are amazing, and the storage solution in the box is incredible! There also seems to be decent variability in set-up overall, but there needs to be more truck cards! As those score a lot of points and trigger the end of the round, they are a main focus of the game, and the fact there are only three different trucks for each round makes me a little sad. There needs to be more variety there, certainly for increased replayability purposes.

The Local News mini expansion is nice, but it doesn’t change much in the game, at least when I played with it solo. The cards affect everyone equally, which is good, but some of the events don’t really matter (as in they aren’t relevant at the time they’re drawn) or don’t alter the game enough to make them really impactful. For me, at least solo, it’s not really needed.

There are other expansions included in the base game as well. The apprentice one, which is the only one that can be played solo, isn’t really worth the time in my opinion. I didn’t care for it, but it’s also very easy to implement, so it could be a part of any standard game easily. The other two can’t be played solo, which makes me sad; I really want to play with Jasper the cat! Lame.

Based on the nature of the game with the shared worker placement, I could definitely see this playing very differently at higher player counts. An actual person making decisions is very different from an AI deck, and also, they would be restricted by the normal rules regarding action selection and which worker can be used, where Aunt Mabel is not.

For me, Vineyard is a like but not a love, though that could change once I play against an actual opponent. It’s fine, and I enjoy it, especially the theme, but there’s nothing that blows me away or makes we want to keep playing. It’s fun, but not something I’d advise purchasing for ONLY solo play; I think this one shines with at least one human opponent.