17th April 2025 - Grand Cru
by Robin. Mon 21 Apr (Updated at Mon 21 Apr)It's time for the umpteenth instalment in the regular series of Steve's shelf of shame, or, more specifically: "Games that no-one's heard of but Steve picked up when they were new many years ago and then forgot about." Which may not sound promising, but to those of us who regularly subscribe to this series, it's been a gold mine. In the past it's brought us League Of Six, Sun Sea & Sand, In The Shadow Of The Emperor and, more famously since its appearance in the Tournament, Last Train To Wensleydale - all of which I've really enjoyed.
Back in 2010, a little-known designer released a new board game all about making wine, with nice mechanics woven into the thematic elements like aging in a cellar, and regular wine fairs; with the notionally different aims of money and prestige somehow combining into a single scoring mechanism in the end. The game was a hit, and quickly developed a cult following that has accompanied the designer from strength to strength in the years since... Or rather, that was Vinhos and Vital Lacerda. Meanwhile, another wine game with all that stuff from 2010 didn't quite make the same impression: that one was Grand Cru by Ulrich Blum.
So what's the difference? They're obviously completely different games, with just the thematic elements in common. Grand Cru is certainly simpler than Vinhos. There are a couple of really nice mechanics that I've not come across elsewhere. Of all things, it reminds me of Age Of Steam, but without the network building; insofar as each round you have to decide up front how many loans you're taking, and you need that to cover both auctions and upkeep. Running out of money is really bad - but what you've borrowed will count against you later.
Vinhos is about Portuguese wine so, thematically enough, you win through prestige, and you gain prestige in general through making high-quality wines. Whereas Grand Cru is about French wine, for which prestige is gained through advertising. I think we are playing as the large wine producers or cooperatives, not the little specialists; so the aim is to make lots of money. You start with nothing and a bunch of loans, and you aim to win by selling lots of wine for lots of Francs, paying off your loans and having more net worth than any other player.
The main gameplay is nice and straightforward. You take turns, doing one thing each turn: buy stuff for your vineyards through auctions; harvest grapes and do other things to make wine; and sell wines. At the end of the year, you receive prestige at the wine fair and pay interest on your loans - and also take more loans or pay off loans. The nice thing is, the year-end is triggered by the first player finishing their harvest. You have lots of actions you want to take, and the order you take them in is important - but working out the ideal sequence is completely undermined if the year ends too early. You can end the year early and ruin it for everyone else - but make sure you're not also ruining it for yourself!
It's a most-money game, and you get money by selling wine - and also at end-game for the number of vines and other things in your vineyard - so the best strategy is to make a lot of wine, right? Apparently not, with this end-of-year mechanic. The best strategy is to get your wine made and sold promptly - and to sell more of it than the others in that same prompt timeframe. It took us a while to figure this out.
After a while it became clear that David and I, who had both built only small vineyards with few vines, were managing to run a steady production line of key wines. We'd then trigger the year-end, while the others, who had all invested in bigger, more diverse sets of vines, were never able to get all theirs harvested or sold in the time available. So we were able to focus all our efforts on advertising our single wine types and selling at high prices, while the others spread their bets into multiple varieties, none of which yielded the same returns.
If it weren't for the end-of-year mechanic, this game would be unremarkable. But with that mechanic, it reaches the high bar set by all the other Steve's-obscure-finds games. Maybe not the best, but I really liked it. And there's lots of scope for replayability: winning ultimately comes down to who manages to sell the most, and how best to do that depends on how everyone else plays the game - which is always my mark of a good game. In our game, the second-priciest grape variety (Cabernet Sauvignon) did the trick for me, because almost everyone else went after the priciest (Pinot Noir). If everyone goes after Cabernet Sauvignon next time, then another high-end grape will probably be the way to go.
Apart from the good track record of obscure games from Steve's shelf of shame, I signed up for this one because it claimed to take just 90 minutes - and I needed to go early. The problem was, the end-game is triggered by someone paying off all their loans. We took nearly 3 hours to finish, which probably tells you something about how well we played the game. Maybe we'll do better next time...
There was a lot of wine washing around the gaming tables this week. They were celebrating their return from LeiriaCon with champagne at the next table in Dom Pierre, which Paul managed to wangle a free copy of from Rola and Costa themselves as a reward for going to Leiria. Or possibly he gave them one of our coasters. We'll look forward to a Rola-And-Costa Night in future to join the existing Vital Night - they might even get a free week, if Paul can find the funds for a second and third free entry in the budget in addition to Vital's. Anyway, from what I saw it looked like a game I'd like to try; if it's ended up in the club's cupboard then I guess we'll all get the chance.