A few things I like about Tuscany

It's in Italy, and I'm part (1/8) Italian, so that's pretty cool.

Oh, wait.

The Tuscany I was actually referring to is an expansion for Viticulture. Sorry if you came here thinking I was talking about the place. Side note: For some reason, now that we've gotten the expansion, we've been referring to the game by the name of the expansion. "Do you want to play Tuscany" instead of "Do you want to play Viticulture". Which is interesting.

Anyway, I wanted to post something, but didn't know what to talk about, but this popped into my head, so I'm just going to talk about it.

First off, I wanted to state that I really do enjoy the base essential edition of this game. It was really enjoyable. But I'm never planning on not using at least the new board expansion that was added in Tuscany. If I'm teaching a new player who's not super duper adept at board games, I probably wouldn't use the structures or new workers. If I am teaching a new player who I know has played lots of games in the past, I might include all three modules at once, I wouldn't be surprised.

I really really enjoy how many good options there are that I want to take. In the base version of the game, all the actions weren't very exciting. There were many action spaces that I just didn't care about. I never felt excited about going to a lot of the spaces on the board. I felt exciting about some of them, sure, but a lot of them felt like they just never got used (imo).

In the expansion, however, there are tons of things I want to do, and I'm not able to do them all. I love that. Every action space I take feels rewarding and enjoyable. I want to do train a worker and build a building and build this other super cool building card, but I also really want to plant and I probably need more green cards, and trading twice is just so cool and good. There are just a lot of exciting things going on, more than I just listed.

And the action spaces feel tight. Adding two seasons means there are less actions in each season. Which means more fighting over those action spaces when the time comes. You have that suspense hoping that your opponent won't take that space you really really want. You feel rewarded when you take a risk and do something else first, but still get the spot you wanted (that's now even better because of your previous action) and you feel crushed when they harvest two field and you just really really needed those crushed grapes. It's enjoyable.

The new wake-up chart is sooo cool. And it just feels exciting. The base game one was pretty good too, but the new one is better by a decent chunk. I love how it gives you exciting options that you want to pick. In Fresco, it was the opposite. Almost all (if not all, I haven't played it in a while) of the wake-up options you have in Fresco are negatives. Everytime you wake up in that game, you're sad. Everytime you wake up in Tuscany, you excited about how many cool things you get this round. Even if you take the top spot and only get a coin, you're instead excited about how you'll (most likely) be going first and you get to take two green cards before anyone else, and then plant twice before anyone else has the chance to get the spot etc.

Another reason why I like it is because it values winter visitors over summer visitors. We played the base game a couple times right before we got the expansion in the mail. And my mom even commented, "Is it just me, or in Fall do I almost always seem to be picking up Winter visitors?" It wasn't just you, Mom. I almost exclusively picked Winter visitors in the base game. Maybe a couple of rounds in the beginning where I would pick Summer ones, but other than that I would get Winter visitor cards. And Tuscany addresses that. You have to wake up later on the wake-up track in order to get Winter visitor cards, and I think that's awesome. Because they do feel more valuable (imo).

The star mini-board off to the side is pretty cool. We've played a few two-player games and two three-player games. In two-player games, it suggests you don't score the victory points, and so we didn't. So the star mini-board is only alright in a two-player game. I still like the variety of choices you get when placing a star, though.

But in a three-player game, it was really cool. It was this strange area-control aspect that actually seemed to fit well into the game. It was cool to see how the spots on the board would shift. When I was ahead, she abandoned her fights with Eric. Thus giving Eric free points at the end of the game, but hopefully stopping me, the person she targeted as being ahead of her in score, from getting a few extra points. My mom doesn't care if Eric gets a few extra points as long as I don't get a few extra since I was ahead. It was cool. I like it.

The structure cards add a lot of variety to what you can do with your money and I love it. And the card all feel cool and exciting.

Special workers are probably my least favorite out of the modules, but they're still a super cool addition. It's fun to have new workers that can do a cool thing that other people might not have. And the fact that you only use two per game means there's a good chunk of replayability in that, which is great. Having different workers each game changes the way everyone plays and it make it more dynamic and interesting.

I love how there are bonuses on the two-player spots now. I've played Viticulture as a two-player game more than any other player count combined, and it's always sad when you can't go on that super cool version of the action you're taking. Now you can in a lot of different scenarios, which is amazing. This also adds a cool thing when you play with more than two people as well. This is because you have to choose between which bonus you want, which is another little interesting choice to think about.

This post was longer than I thought it was going to be, but that's fine. I didn't realize how many new things in the expansion I enjoyed. It's a really good expansion.

I'm so excited to play it and other games with Andrew soon!!