Workers at the Winery (a review of Viticulture)

Tuscany! Land of grape and vine! You are a vineyard owner tasked with improving your winery. Construct new buildings, attract influential visitors, and build your prestige through growing, crushing, and bottling delicious grapes. But watch out! While Tuscany is a beautiful place to live, it is a competitive place to work.

Can your vineyard outshine all others? Find out in Viticulture!

FDQ: What Game Is Beautiful?

Board game design, at least within the hobby, is considered an art form. Mechanics in harmony create a well-oiled machine that is wonderful to take part in. But there are some games that go the extra mile, and beyond being beautiful mechanically are beautiful to behold. What game best falls into this category for you? Answer in the comments!

@FarmerLenny answers:
It's hard to choose just one...so I'll choose two. The first is Fresco, which is a fairly obvious choice. The components in this game are astounding, and even the insert is beautiful. The artwork throughout captures the feel of master painters fulfilling their commission. A game about master painters that wasn't beautiful would lose all street cred, so Fresco seems like an obvious choice.

Next to Fresco, the next most beautiful game I can think of is Troyes. I love the artwork style in this game. While the theme is bland, the artwork more than makes up for it, drawing the player back in time to the Middle Ages. The subdued art and color coding make it a game that's easy to stare at.

@Futurewolfie answers:
The choice for me is obvious:  Twilight Imperium. Fantasy Flight Games, with their commonly hefty rulesets and lengthy playtimes may not appeal to everyone, but one thing is certain: they consistently go the distance with art, design, and the inclusion of fancy bits.  Twilight Imperium is no exception.  All the pieces and bits are excellent quality, with lots of color.  It all feels very space-y, with art for each race that fits well within the theme, and the ships! Oh, all the tiny little plastic mini ships.  Fleets of them! Fleets of these finely detailed constructions, all in one box.  This game is a delight to unpack, and it has one of the finest looking boards (once assembled) I've ever seen.

Takenoko is a fairly recent acquisition, but it too carries the banner of beauty.  With vibrant colors, solidly crafted stackable wooden bamboo pieces, and painted minis, Takenoko is definitely easy on the eyes.

Honorable mentions:  Battlestar Galactica, and Small World.  I seem to have a lot of beautiful games because I could go on.

FDQ: Minis or Cubes

It's an age-old topic of debate. Games come with a variety of parts. Sometimes tokens are relegated to printed cardboard circles; some games resort to classic meeples and cubes to represent various elements of the game board. And then some companies, attempting to pack in as much flavor in the components themselves, fill their boxes with detailed plastic minis.

The idea of minis excites many gamers, but some just wish the parts were simpler and the games were cheaper. So, fellow gamerites, what do you think? What is your preferred style of game component?

@Futurewolfie says:
I know that @Farmerlenny will probably hate on the minis, but honestly, I love 'em. I love theme and flavor in games, and detailed plastic minis just add a whole lot to that. Starships in Twilight Imperium? Awesome!  Knights in Shadows over Camelot? Sweet! Zombies and heroes in Last Night on Earth? Dude!

I realize there are drawbacks, and I can certainly understand why someone might prefer wooden parts; the colors are more distinct and easy to check at a glance, and minis definitely add to the cost of a game. Not every game needs minis—in Carcassonne, for example, it would be pointless to have minis instead of meeples (which are sort of like wooden minis anyway; they have such personality!)  Ascending Empires, while we love starship minis, just wouldn't work—the disks are needed for flicking. Fortunately, detailed stickers fill in some of the flavor so we're not stuck with plain colorized cylinders.

But you know what? Last Night on Earth would just not be the same without the minis. The crowds of zombies help the story and enhance the flavor. Battlestar Galactica's Viper and Raider minis may not be entirely necessary, but the ship designs are visually distinct and again, it adds to that Galactica feel. Twilight Imperium just wouldn't have the same feel if you have different sizes or shapes of cubies to represent the different types of ships in your fleet.

And over time, I think the cost difference between meeples and minis will shrink. As the board game hobby overall grows, more and more games will be purchased, and games will get bigger print runs. Bigger print runs means smaller cost per game—and the costly part of detailed minis is creating the original mold. Heck, even wooden tokens are getting more detailed and unique, with animeeples, vegemeeples, fruitimeeples—all sorts of meeples coming in various shapes and sizes. Woohoo! I love this stuff!

@Farmerlenny says:
@Futurewolfie only gets it half right (which is half more than normal, by the way) when he says I will hate on minis. I don't hate on minis. Minis are kind of cool...when they aren't used as a mask for shoddy game design. That I don't like most games that include minis isn't a judgment on minis themselves but on a certain type of theme-rich gameplay that ignores the more important aspects of game design: decisions, downtime, and a preference for simplicity over convolution.

To me, cubes are serviceable, and most of the time that's enough. I opted not to upgrade my copy of Agricola, being perfectly content with discs and cubes. I don't need sheep that look like sheep. I make my living by reading: I can imagine a story overlaying drab bits if I want to. But most of the time, my games don't need the extra layer. What's the story in Ticket to Ride? I don't care. The decisions are interesting enough that I'm not thinking about it. If I want a good story, I'll read a book. I play games for different reasons. I'm so boring that I came this close to not applying the included stickers in my copy of Belfort. But then I realized that @Futurewolfie cares about such things, and since he is the person I'm most likely to play it with...

All of this being said, however, I am not immune to the draw of fancy components when they are paired with a good game. Show me a beautiful game (with beautiful mechanics to match), and I will likely be putty in your hand. I'm sure this is nine-tenths of the reason I purchased Troyes, and one-half the reason I haven't traded away Fresco. It was also what kept me on the fence about El Grande and what keeps Stone Age hitting the table again and again. I have a soft spot for beautiful games and components, whether made of wood, plastic, marble, or glass.

But I'm also plenty happy with my original Director's Cut edition of Kill Doctor Lucky, which I taped together myself.

FDQ: What Game Is on Your Radar?

Conventions, blogs, and BGG—they seem like an endless source of inspiration (and temptation). This leads to today's FDQ: What new game is on your radar? Or, if not new, what game is at the top of your wish/to-play list? Answer in the comments!

@FarmerLenny answers:
As a huge Dominion fan, I'm obviously pretty stoked about the new Donald X. Vaccarino titles, Nefarious and Kingdom Builder, to see if lightning struck twice. (Admittedly, Kingdom Builder's name is lame.) I'm also pretty curious about Ora et Labora from Uwe Rosenberg. I love Bohnanza, Agricola, and At the Gates of Loyang, and this one—combined with a theme that interests me—is one I will follow with interest.

As for games on the to-play list, Fresco is at the top. It looks like a beautiful game, an interesting twist on worker placement. I'm quite excited about trying Glory to Rome—with schnazzy new art! I had avoided the older version because of the kiddish artwork, but I kickstarted the black box edition. I am anxious for its arrival. And thanks to The Card Gamer, I'm pumped to try out Ra. If any of you have a copy and are holding out on me...

@Futurewolfie answers:
This is pretty easy for me to answer.  Rex is the number one title I'm looking forward to right now. As a huge fan of Cosmic Encounter and the designers of that game, I've had my sights on the impossible-to-find-if-you-don't-want-to-spend-hundreds-of-dollars Dune game for a long time, so imagine my excitement when I learned it was being re-released in a new form in the Twilight Imperium universe. Incidentally, though Twilight Imperium isn't new, I haven't had a chance to play it yet, so it's also high on my want-to-play list.

I also really want to get my hands on Star Trek: Fleet Captains. I'm a huge Star Trek fan, but as there have been a number of pathetic excuses for star trek games milking the franchise, I was apprehensive. After trying it at Gencon, though, I found it to be excellent. 

Apparently I really like Space-themed games.

See, Nemesis, I can put in a bunch of random hyperlinks too!