Viticulture
An interesting worker placement game where your workers farm the fields and do all the tasks necessary to produce and sell wine. I played the first time with 4 experienced players, and I had no idea what I was doing. By the end of the game, I finally caught on to the rules and some strategy. Ah well. It’s a little hard to follow at first, but once you get a few rotations in, it becomes a little clearer how to play. Fun, but a little complex.
Ito
Ito is a cooperative party game where a category is drawn, and each player draws a number between 1-100. Players collectively attempt to sort their numbers based on where it would fall in the category. So, if the category is “size of an animal”, where 0 is smallest, players have to specify which animal corresponds to their number, and sort the numbers. It’s fun! You get into some interesting conversations about the categories and why people chose what they did.
World Wonders
World Wonders struck me a lot like Kingdomino, but also includes fun models of multiple world monuments. The idea is to accumulate resources to increase the population of your Ancient City. This took a little while to get the hang of, but was fun.
Rauha
Basically you start as a Shaman, and need to create a harmonious world of different resources. There are various divine entities that can be taken from other other players. I kind of neglected to write down the details so game play is a little fuzzy, but I really enjoyed it. Again, it took awhile to get the hang of.
Fit to Print
In this game you’re laying out a newspaper with various articles, ads, and photos of different sizes, while keeping in mind a variety of attributes under some time pressure. Your balance and lack of empty space are compared to the other players and scored. I didn’t particularly enjoy this game.
Vineyard
Control various characters to aid in the group’s wine making operation. Yes, this is the second wine-based game I played this year. It’s pretty interesting how players get “credit” for controlling the actions of the characters in different stations. The game takes a little while to get used to, because the various vineyard stations all have different rule subtleties to remember. My friend, Kat, made the artwork so the game looks fantastic!