Viticulture World adds a co-op expansion to Scythe studio’s wine-making board game

Viticulture, the board game about making wine from the creators of Scythe, is getting a new expansion that turns its competitive experience into a cooperative one.

As in normal Viticulture, each player will still manage their own vineyard - primarily by assigning worker meeples to various actions - in order to produce wine and drive tourism, but Viticulture World will see the players joining forces to boost their collective fame and fortune rather than competing with each other.

The expansion, which requires the original Viticulture to play, includes a dedicated game board that challenges the players to each earn 25 victory points and collectively reach the end of the influence track in order to claim victory. The expansion will also support Viticulture’s previous expansions, including the modular additions found in Tuscany and its Essential Edition.

Seven different continents present different challenges in each playthrough due to asymmetric event card decks, representing six years of in-game time divided into individual seasons. The continents include six real-world regions and a surprise crossover with the world of Charterstone, the fantasy legacy game by Viticulture co-creator Jamey Stegmaier.

Publisher Stonemaier Games compared the new collaborative mode’s objectives and asymmetrical effects to co-op board games Spirit Island and Orleans: Invasion.

Viticulture World will also include Automa rules to play the game as a single player, with the solo mode simulating a co-op partner to join the lone human player.

Outside of its cooperative additions, the expansion will revise the original game’s red and blue “mama and papa cards” - thematically representing the two people who gifted each player their vineyard, while mechanically providing a unique set of starting resources to each player. Viticulture World’s additional cards can be shuffled into the original game’s “mamas and papas” to offer new same-sex pairings, expanding the previous game’s limitation to man-and-woman combinations only.

Stonemaier Games added that future printings of the base game would similarly include the revised cards, confirming that the change would not alter gameplay but ensured “more inclusive visibility”. The eight revised cards can also be downloaded freely from the publisher’s website.

Viticulture World will be made available for pre-order in early June, with its release set to follow “within a few weeks”, according to Stonemaier. A wider retail release will subsequently land “a few months” after that.