Worldwide Wines Boardgame

This game may have a board, but really it's all about the cards. Gather up the Napa Valley, Bordeaux and other wine regions in your quest to become a world class winery organization. This game does a reasonably good job of balancing competitive gameplay with some wine learning. You're dealt a hand of cards and are trying to put together a winning collection of wine regions, based on a number of rules. In order to purchase regions, you have to collect money.

This is where the strategy and challenge comes in. Each turn you draw a money card. This card might simply grant you money, or penalize you money. In both cases they give a description of why you are gaining or losing money in wine terms - your growing season was great, or maybe you bought new barrels. The third type of card is where the game is really fun, though. It's a trivial pursuits sort of question, awarding you money if you're able to properly answer the question posed to you.

You're able to buy away cards from your opponents, to block them from achieving their goals. The questions range from very hard to very easy, so everyone has a chance of getting at least some of them right.

We had a lot of fun with this game and were eager to play again when we finished. However, there are a few gripes.

There are hardly any question cards compared to the number of 'give free cash' cards - so a lot of time you're just going around from player to player without any wine-related things going on at all. Also, because you can buy many regions at the same time, you can in essence hoard all your best cards - and then buy them all in a surprise move when you win the game. So other players might have no idea at all that you are about to win, and then you end the game abruptly.

Still, you can always alter the rules yourself to make it more or less challenging based on the way you enjoy playing. I did find it silly that a board was included with the game. The board merely has a world map on it so you can see where the various regions are located - but isn't used at all. If they just sold this as a card game, they could have cut the price in half and still had it just as enjoyable.

A fun game to play with friends while you sample some wines!

Wine Games

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