In Vino Morte - First Play!

12th July 2022

Another Tuesday is here and it means we're at the The Sovereigns with the Woking Board Gaming Club for an evening of gaming fun.

In Vino Morte (In wine there is death!) is a much more depressing phrase than in vino veritas but is this a more depressing game?
​Well... since it's about poisoning your friends to death, I'll let you decide...

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What's in a game?

• Cards: The game uses a deck of 16 cards; half depict a bottle of wine and the other a bottle of poison.

That's it for components, this is going to be a very short full game blog!

The cards are a standard quality you'd expect from a modern game. Like all games from Button Shy Games, this comes packaged in a wallet.

The 2 pieces of artwork used for In Vino Morte have a sort of flat colour illustration style, it looks bright and pleasant.

There's no iconography or text in the game and it's only 2 images contain a bunch of grapes or a skull & crossbones. It's all self explanatory.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Dealer: Determine which player should be the dealer and give them all 16 cards.

On to play
Each round, cards representing wine will be dealt out to all players and may or may not contain poison.
The objective is to avoid drinking the poison and stay alive and last player standing is the winner.

• Deal cards: The dealer does not shuffle the cards, instead they keep all of them in their hand and decides which cards to give out.
  The dealer should then give 1 card face-down card to each player, including themselves.
• Drink or swap: Starting with the player to the left of the dealer, in turn order, each player must choose whether to drink the wine or swap their card.
  Drink: If the player chooses drink, they must flip their card and deal with the consequences.
  If it shows wine, then they survive the round.
  If poison is on the other side, then that player is eliminated from the round... Ohhh... nasty!
  ​Swap: With this choice, the player swaps their face-down card with any other player who also has a face-down card.
  Neither card is revealed at this time.
• End of round: Play continues until each player except the dealer has chosen to drink or swap - the dealer never makes the choice.​
  Then, one-by-one and in turn order, each player - ending with the dealer - flips any card that's face-down and is either safe if it's wine or eliminated if it's poison.
• Next round: The first player to the left of the dealer who is still in the game collects up all 16 cards and a new round begins with the new dealer giving out cards to the remaining players.

Endgame
Play continues until only 1 player remains and they are declared the winner.

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Overall
There's not much I can say about In Vino Morte other than it's probably the most unalloyed, unfiltered bluffing game I've played.
It's simplicity and accessible rules make it a game of guessing and second guessing, players must try and anticipate what their opponents' motives will be.

However, there's definitely a peculiar quirk and asymmetrical gameplay at work here.
When a player is the the dealer, they'll have the opportunity to notably alter the playing time. E.G., The more poison cards the dealer doles out, the more players will be eliminated. A bold dealer could give out poison to all other players and see where it goes for example! I imagine it will present dealers with some intriguing propositions.

In Vino Morte also has player elimination which is something I'm not fond of and usually consider a bad thing. Luckily, the game is almost a spectator sport and even when you're knocked out, it's still fascinating to watch how the remaining rounds will play out. It helps that it's also a pretty fast game to get through.

With a quick play time and easily understood rules it can make a great little filler or party game, especially since it plays up to 8 - provided of course that the players like this type of game.

If you don't like bluffing games, then this is one to avoid; but if you do, then you'll probably love In Vino Morte and it's definitely one to try.