Viticulture is a beloved classic board game that has stood the test of time. Tuscany Essential Edition, as a modular expansion for this game, introduces multiple modules to enhance the gameplay experience.

An Overview of Significant Changes

New Main Board and Actions

With the introduction of the new board, each year in Tuscany Essential Edition is divided into four seasons, as opposed to the two seasons in the base game. This expansion introduces new action spaces, with the following being the most important ones:

Trade: This action allows players to trade using these options: two cards, a value one grape, a victory point, or 3 liras.

Sell Wine: With this action, wine can be directly converted into victory points without a contract.

Place or Move Influence Tokens: Tuscany introduces an area control aspect by adding a mini-map in one corner of the board. Tokens are placed to gain bonuses and influence in different regions, aiming to secure majorities and earn victory points by the end of the game.

A New Wake-up Chart

The wake-up chart has changed in Tuscany. Instead of receiving immediate bonuses after placing their roosters, players now possibly receive bonuses when passing in each season.

Special Workers

During setup, two special workers are randomly selected and made available for hire during the game. By paying an additional coin, players can train these special workers, each with powerful rule-breaking abilities that add depth to decision-making and strategy.

Structures

Structures offer players exclusive actions or different kinds of bonuses at a cost. The expansion includes player board extensions, providing room for two structures. Structures can also be built on empty fields.

Review

As evident, Tuscany Essential Edition brings several noteworthy modifications to Viticulture, with the most essential one being the new board layout. The base game’s two seasons are extended to four, resulting in more structured action spaces and requiring better planning around choosing actions and passing. The updated wake-up chart further adds a twist to the turn order. These changes alone make the expansion valuable, regardless of whether all modules are used.

When it comes to worker placement, the addition of bonuses to primary worker placement spots improves the game experience for two players. Also, the new action spaces greatly improve the game. The trading action, in particular, opens up the game and was heavily used in our games. Additionally, the option to sell wine directly without fulfilling contracts provides a new way of reaching the victory point threshold and ending the game. The new area control aspect is enjoyable, but not groundbreaking. However, placing tokens on regions provides bonuses that can be valuable early-game.

Another notable change to the mechanics is how year-end works. Now, when passing in winter, workers are immediately retrieved, potentially opening up highly-contested action spaces like fulfilling contracts or selling wine and letting players take those actions without being blocked until the following year.

Special workers are an interesting addition, but their appeal may vary among different groups. Personally, I love these workers as they add depth to the game. However, they cost more than regular workers. In our three-player games, we usually trained only three out of the potential six special workers. I always trained both and enjoyed using them to my advantage, but one of us never used them.

Similarly, we didn’t always make full use of structures in our games. We found that structures were mostly played when they aligned closely with our specific strategies, as most are expensive to build. However, this module offers additional options, and there is no harm in including it. While not all structure cards may fit your strategy, the ones that do can be very powerful.

Overall, Tuscany Essential Edition elevates and expands the Viticulture experience by offering more choices and improvements. It is an excellent addition to the base game as a modular expansion. If you are a fan of Viticulture, Tuscany is a must-have expansion.

Disclosure: We received a review copy of this game. Also, there may be an affiliate link in the links included at the end of this article.