Let's be honest, the auction system in the game is severely lacking.

Let's be honest, the auction system in the game is severely lacking.

The rules are loose and there's no penalty to bidding $6 on anything even if you don't have $6 to pay for it.

That's reality.

I have no problems with people being able to bid and not buy.

It took them an action they could have used elsewhere.

The ability to bid without any subsequent effect to your own finances or vineyard progression is a BROKEN MECHANIC.

Perhaps the problem is with your wife's understanding.

Nothing deflates a game more than having a significant part of the experience ruined by one person bidding up all available tiles and then purchasing NOTHING every round.

You wanna see a game last 15-20 years, spend 1 game with someone exploiting a rule that removes progression from the game. Auctions are simple...you bid and if everyone else passes to up the bid, then you win and you pay up. You should never bid more than you're willing to fork over for the commodity. This is one area of the game that I think the designer got a little too clever and over mechanized a very simple concept. Taking a game mechanic and changing the universal understanding of that mechanic for the sake of being different doesn't always work and in this case, it's a fail.

There's a reason why the majority of variants for this game center around changing the implementation of the auction.

It just doesn't work.

Let's take an opposite perspective....had the auction mechanic been implemented in the fashion of how an auction works (high bidder pays up) and someone had created a variant that stated you "can" bid on a commodity with no intention to buy or in-game penalty for stifling game progress by eliminating new auctions, I have a feeling you'd see far more posts in disagreement with the variant than in agreement.

Oh well everybody, he said it in all caps. I guess it must be true.

On the off chance that you're wrong, however, I'll try and break my understanding down for you.

Here's a scenario in a 2-player game:
1. You bid $1 on a tile
2. I have two choices: raise the bid (to $6, probably), or do something else
3. Then you have two choices: pay $7 to buy-it-now, or do something else.

I'd obviously rather you pay $7 than $1 for the tile. And in fact, I probably prefer it so much that I'm going to spend an action to force it. After all, it's a $6 difference.

Let's say, however, that instead of crazily bidding just $1 for the tile, you bid $4. Now, the choice is harder for me. Do I bid $6, thus making you pay $7 for the tile (costing you an extra $3), or do I do something else? For only a $3 difference, I might do something else and get one extra action compared to you this turn.

So if you bid smarter ($4 instead of $1), you get the tile cheaper than if you bid just $1. What an amazing auction! Things go for closer to what they're actually worth, even in a 2-player game! Of course, you had to give up an extra action to get it this way, but that's part of the game. If you really want the tile and need to save an action, just pay $7.

Yes, I understand that players playing badly will produce an uninteresting game. This is not a surprise. I assume you won handily by simply buying the necessary tiles outright and then harvesting and selling your grapes while your wife wasted her time with useless bids?

You have $4 and I have $10.

You start a bid and bid the most you can afford $4, then I bid $6 because I can and don't have to worry about parting with my money. You don't get the tile, I don't buy the tile and I suffer no penalty. You then start a second auction and you bid $4 and I bid $6. You don't get the tile, I don't buy the tile and I suffer no penalty.

In a 2P game, no more auctions and no chance of game progress.

You wanna see a game nobody wants to play, watch this pattern occur year after year across auctions. I've seen it, it's boring and it really ruins an otherwise simple, yet elegant game design.

I did win handily, but having to grind out victories in a game due to in-game mechanics that can be exploited by poor play are just head scratching.

I will never be convinced that the designer intended to allow people with $1 in their bank to bid something up to $6, even if they cannot nor have the ability to actually pay for it.

Mishandling of finances should be punished as much as you should be rewarded for intelligently handling your finances. This game provides neither with its existing rules.

Poor players can drag out the game, ruin the experience and exploit rules with no relevancy to improving the game or their position within it.

Perhaps your opponent should not have played poorly then.



The designer has repeatedly stated exactly that.



Sure it does: that's what excess loans, loan interest & punitive emergency loans are for and do.



Yes, weak players can wreck any game. This is a fault of the weak player and not of the game, and is not unique to Grand Cru. Weak players kill games. I suggest either getting them to improve the quality of their play or not playing with them.

The game currently has no catch-up mechanism...

...and if I see you're taking out another loan, I know you have no money and I can just bid tiles up to the max price.

This forces you to either spend every dollar you have to get a tile that MAY provide a return on investment in "n" years or continue to watch the player in the lead drag the game out year after year grinding out another unnecessarily long road to victory.

Games are meant to be fun and sorry, the auction rules just aren't fun. It just makes the game take longer and in the end, the better player still wins. Grand Cru was a snooze fest until we spiced up the auction and now it's something we enjoy.

Yes, I understand that you have corrected the fact that you did not understand the game with a rules-change.

Games are meant to be fun and sorry, the auction rules just aren't fun.

I'm not sure if the community here realizes that suggested variants are actually just a deficiency of intelligence and the lack of ability to understand the game sitting in front of them. Let's get ahold of some of the game designers as well that have posted their own variants they use to play their own games and let them know they actually just don't understand the game they've designed, HENCE the reason for their own variant

Hey! Yesterday A played a chess game against B. A was 3000 ELO and B was 100 ELO! B played badly its queen and lost it after only 5 moves. B has played a bad game obviously and A has wone easily...

Today A and B says queen movement is broken and suggest a variant: queen cannot be eaten before 10th move!! What's!!?? And more... A and B states that the author of chess and all its testers were crazy having created queen rule in that way...

Oh no, this is not out of topic. There are many players who can kill games. When playing, ELO difference can't be so huge among players.

GC is a game where ELO counts. So, play with players as intelligent as you, or the game will be a non-game. GC is for experts, treat it with care!

Maybe, but all games are not meant to be fun for all people. That doesn't mean that they have "BROKEN MECHANICS". Play whatever variant that you like, and explain how a game doesn't meet your gaming preferences, but you'll find less argument if you remain open-minded and stop pronouncing games "broken", "not fun" (as if everybody has the same definition of fun), and saying things like, "Let's be honest everybody...this game is severely lacking." Not everybody has the same gaming preferences as you, and that kind of talk just stirs up argument.

I'm not sure if the community here realizes that suggested variants are actually just a deficiency of intelligence and the lack of ability to understand the game sitting in front of them.

You've convinced me, I'm going to go back to playing Grand Cru as intended resuming my boredom and bearing witness to every game playing out just about the same.