Enjoy cheese? Like to order cheeseboards in restaurants? Ever thought about what wine goes with that cheese?
Cheese and wine is a common pairing, so it was arguably inevitable that Ben Rosset would design and accompanying game to fromage and formaggio, all about wine.
Bordeaux put you in the role of a wine maker, striving to create the best quality and most prestigious wines in France.
This is a distilled version of Rosset’s previous pairings of Fromage and Formaggio, but now in a small, company, travel friendly paper-and-pencil ‘choose and write’ title.
So lets…
Pop the cork and Decant
There is no box! You simply receive a 75 page book with each sheet printed both front and back with player sheets, all unique! Pavel Zhovba also returns, meaning the art style is in keeping with Fromage and Formaggio.
The rules are found on the inside front cover as a fold out flap, which makes it easy to see the rules as you play the game.
Each sheet has the ability to be removed so that you can include any number of players you wish. In fact, the game boasts a player count of 1-75 players!!!
The Tasting
The set up is quick. Each player needs to grab a pencil and sheet. Then randomly select a first player. The game takes place of 13 years… not really, that would be awful, it’s a thematic way of saying how many turns you get. Player 1, now circles year 1. In clockwise order from that player, each player then circles the next year on their sheet, until it reaches the final player, who will then circle 2 years in a row, and the in anti-clockwise order, all players again circle a second year… and so on until the first 12 years are circled. Year 13 is in an exception.
The years you have circled mean you are the leader that turn.
One a turn, you can complete up to actions depending on how many workers you have available.
You can either make wine or gain resources.
The top of your sheet, you can track how many workers you have (maximum of 3 available at any time, but can be less depending on previous choices). It also tells you which region you are working in and what resource is available to you.
On each turn, the leader of that turn gets to pick either a region or resource, depending which is presented as an empty space that year. That will apply to all players. As previously mentioned, year 13 was an exception to assigning a leader, and that is because all players get to choose their own region and resource that turn.
All players will then simultaneously choose what actions they wish to do.
Make wine
You choose a wine in your current region (as denoted by the top of your sheet). The wind you choose must have a corresponding worker of that colour available to you that turn. You then choose (depending on what is available to you) if you wish to do a 1, 2 or 3 year action. This will then render that worker unavailable for that many turns.
Some wines will have little casks attached to them. For these, you must have a cask cicled and therefore available to you, in order to circle that wine.
If the wine you choose connects to another circled wine, you get to join the paths. If the path has a resource on it, you gain that resource.
Gain Resources
Your other action available is to gain resources, again denoted by what is indicated on the top of your sheet. Just like with making wine, you choose and available worker and the strength of the action you wish to take, then circle that number of resources.
Casks - as previously mentioned, casks are used to help with choosing wines in regions, and are spent as one use item.
Vines – Vines are traced on to the vine resource path. If you fill in a vine connected to a grape, you immediately gain a matching wine in any region (casks are required as normal). This is the only way you can create more than one wine per year.
Trellises – These a traced over dotter T’s on the trellis paths. Complete a line, and you unlock end of game bonuses.
Once you have decided on and completed you chosen actions, you mark in that year (and successive years if choosing a 2 or 3 year strength action, a letter corresponding to the wine region or resource.
Once everyone is ready, move on to the next year.
At the end of the 13th year, you enter the end game scoring, which gains you points for paths, having the longest path, used casks, most casks used and if you had fewer leader years than others.
Sommelier’s verdict
The obvious thing to point out is the clear similarities to Fromage and Formaggio. This is simply a ‘Choose and Write’ version of those games.
The artwork fantastically fits with its bigger sibling games, making it a clear member of that series before you even open it up and play, and this is simply because Pavel Zhovba is back at the helm for the artwork, fully recreating the character and charm, whilst gearing the theme towards wine rather than cheese.
That fact that Ben Rosset has crafted the gameplay to resemble Fromage and Formaggio, anyone familiar with those games will easily pick this up. If you haven’t played them however, (first of all correct that!!), don’t worry, the rules are clean and simple and you will be picking them up in no time.
This is a great little edition to the series, and makes a lovely travel version of the game, but as with many verb and write games, you have a limited number of plays unless you use an erasable form of writing on the sheet, but even then, how many times will it last being rubbed out? Well thankfully, with 75 sheets in the book, you probably won’t run out too quickly unless you play it regularly, and at the small price R2I have gone with, once you are done, you probably won’t begrudge replacing it. There are also some online sheets you can download to print for yourself for free (as of when writing this review anyway)
If you like the ‘Cheese’ game series Ben Rosset has designed, you will probably like this and it is well worth giving a go. A great ‘pairing’ for fans of the series.
Peaches and Meeples
We are Peaches and Meeples, busy professionals who love to chill out to fun table top games. We love board games, card games, miniatures games, competitive or co-operative. Put some dice in our hands and we are in our happy place.
We are also proud guinea pig parents to two lovely fluffballs of joy.
