Yep it’s been one of those weeks with not much on the gaming front going on. Which explains the lack of posts this week. Think of it as having a much needed holiday from my ramblings.

Earlier in the week Jonathan set up the Facebook event for the evenings gaming session. I posted a suggestion on the comment section for the event of playing Viticulture again but with the Visit from the Rhine Valley expansion.

Visit from the Rhine Valley was a small expansion that both Jonathan and I had picked up at the UK Games Expo over a year ago. Which as you can guess from the previous post we had not played. In fact my copy until Wednesday was still sealed.

Visit from the Rhine Valley is an alternate set of visitor cards for Viticulture. However these cards focus more on wine production than producing victory points. Setup is dead easy. You use these visitor cards instead of the ones in the core game.

I enjoyed these new cards, and their focus. They did seem very combo like. Earlier on I was able to play 2 Summer visitor cards that would unknowingly payoff and get me the (spoiler) win. Using the Vine Trader I was able to discard 2 cards to get €6 to take my coins up to the required €9 that I needed for the Premium Wine Dealer. Which in a single play gave me 7 champagne without the large cellar.

That would turn out to be a great play for later.

I love cards like the Skeptic where you could age something and fill an order. That card was a life saver. I was short by one for an order and would have had to wait until the next year before filling. But this card let me fill the order and get that all,important residual payment. But that card would easily combo with others that would allow you to make wine to use for using the Skeptic.

I was in the lead in our game, but Jonathan wasn’t far behind. I needed one more contract to complete to trigger the end of the game. Sadly I didn’t have the wine to complete any of the ones I had in hand. So I took the draw contract action, got to draw 2 cards. One of the two needed 9 champagne to complete. Wait I had 9 sitting in my cellar. That 7 I’d initially got had now aged into 9 bottles. I could complete an order. What a fortuitous top deck. And seeing that earlier play pay off. Wow. Until that point I hadn’t seen any contracts that needed champagne to complete.

It was enough to trigger the end of the game, and give me the win.

If I had one complaint about this expansion it’s the wording on some of the cards could be clearer.

One or two of the cards were worded like the example above. It wasn’t really clear was it pick just one, or could you do the first and one of the last two? We house ruled it was the former.

But this was a fun expansion. Loved the focus on wine production. Definitely a must buy for fans of Viticulture. Especially if the game has been played a lot, and you want to spice things up a little.

Our last game of the evening was Love Letter: Batman. It’s still a great game. Definitely a group favourite as a way to unwind at the end of an evening of gaming. Sadly Jonathan was able to grab the win.

A great evenings gaming.

Games Played: Viticulture, Love Letter: Batman