Tuscany Essentials Edition isn't just more wine for your palate, or even a cheeky cheese board on the side, it offers an entire sub menu of additional drinks and snacks that some might go as far as calling crass and invasive. I consider the whole affair rather insulting and horrific if I'm being completely honest.
Insulting because it dares to take one of my favourite games of all time and try to tell me while it's obviously half cut and leaning against the wall, that maybe, just maybe Viticulture isn't as wonderful as I think. Secondly, here's a list of things it should do instead. Horrific in the sense that some of things it dares to add to the table make a bit of sense. A tiny bit of sense. Look, there going to be a huge amount of 'your mileage may vary' of this thing that Jamey carefully packaged up and thrust into my arms. I'm going to be fighting this every step of the way, and I'm going to rely on you to hold my hair if things get too much and I'm crying and being sick over the toilet.
Firstly, it's not compulsory to play with every part of Tuscany, you can play with some or all of the choices in the box. The extended board, special workers and structures can all be mixed in and matched and added into the game depending on how far you insist on marching off the beaten and well kept track. It's not an expansion as such, more like, well, more Viticulture.
When you like a game as much as I do, its difficult to see where something can be improved, instead of change for change sake. There's always been mention of how the wake up selection can be slightly unfair, and how a single bonus on being fourth place to place your workers on the board doesn't make up for you having to use the grand worker on every turn in order to carry out the base actions, and with it missing out on any chance to gain any of the bonuses on offer on the board spaces.
In Tuscany, there's been a huge shake up on both the wake up and main action spaces of the board, where Summer and Winter have parts to play instead of providing cards or ends to a round. Spring now contains preparation actions, Summer is planting, Autumn is harvesting and making up wine tokens and Winter is for fulfilling orders, training workers and now selling wine. It makes more sense than the original board in logical terms, and breaks up the mad rushes for certain spaces at the beginning of the game, and helps to alleviate the curse of not being first player in larger games.
The change to the wake up chart is very welcome indeed. The rewards in vanilla Viticulture were fine, but over larger counts, even with the additional worker spaces, I occasionally saw the heads of newer players drop, as the catch up for playing 4th or 5th just didn't seem to surface. The new wake-up chart gives more rewards every season for those who were lower down the turn ranking and first place can only be grabbed for those who are willing to spend some time in last place on the previous turn. You could call it a successful attempt at balancing, and the automatic gaining of cards has become more strategic, in fact, I think it manages to bring in the need for more strategy for where you choose to wake up as opposed to high as you can.
For those taking time away from Scythe, there be stars here, as the extended board has a a mini map of the region of Tuscany where stars can be added for bonuses. At the end of the game, the player with the most stars in each region collects some additional victory points. Stars are placed during spring or winter, and I'm not one hundred percent convinced of this inclusion into the game. It's a smaller sub system that seems to be thematically separate from the other inclusions in Tuscany and it's the one I'm currently not sure of. Its an end game victory point treasure chest, which doesn't immediately make it clear how important it can be at the point of the game finishing, but again, it needs to be played more to see how it can really change the game in the log term.
Now, special workers and special structures, that I can get behind, but only because I felt that structures in Viticulture were always a necessary evil as opposed to a workable bonus. The yoke and cottage were fine but everyone needed to get the extension to the cellar and the irrigation on every game, especially to grow specific point scoring vines. The workers were the workers, and while I wasn't expecting to be potentially fielding a team of two special agents in the field, the new inclusions are welcome. Even the grumpy chef, who pushes opponents back into their pool. thus giving them an extra worker to play with. Thankfully you only need to remember the special powers of two workers per game, but like everything else, you can ease these into the game as you see fit, and even decide what you are playing with.
The new structures require an extension to each player mat, because if we need anything in a game, it's the requirement for the table to magically grow a couple of inches to fit in some game designers imagination, but it adds that extra asymmetry so even those with little experience in the game have the chance to have a mild advantage and causes those experienced wine grower to reconsider their strategy with fresher eyes and cement.
Tuscany is ultimately about choices in how you play. It mirrors closely Stonemaier's approach with Scythe, Wingspan and recently Expeditions. Its not just designed to give you more of the same, but to give you more but with tweaks and changes. It's honestly quite challenging to say whether or not this creates the ultimate edition of one of my favourite games. What it does give me is increased longevity, new mechanics and yet another excuse to unpack Viticulture to the table. For others it might just be another reason to avoid the game as the complexity onion is given just one more layer to make your eyes water. They took a game I liked and told me I was wrong that it could possibly be improved upon, so with that being said. I hate this game and everything it stands for. (I like this expansion and everything it offers)
Destroyed by Jamey Stegmaier and Alan Stone.
https://europe.stonemaiergames.com/products/viticulture-tuscany
DON'T YOU DARE...
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