I’m going to address the elephant in the room and clarify early on that this is a game about making Champagne, not wine, as at first glance Dom Pierre strongly resembles Stonemaier Games’ classic Viticulture, and to a lesser extent, Vital Lacerda’s Vinhos. But when considering these aesthetic, thematic, and even generic similarities, Dom Pierre interestingly opens up musings on how well mechanical innovations can aid such a game in setting itself apart.
Thankfully, Dom Pierre flaunts its differences immediately with a turn structure guided by a unique action selection mechanism. Taking the form of a matrix on each players’ winery board, action selection follows a process of moving one of six discs associated with each action up one step before carrying it out. Where this disc is positioned will ultimately determine how many times that action can be performed, whilst the location of a player’s lowest disc in the matrix determines how much it will cost. Only the first three actions in the matrix actually incur a cost; Vineyard, Cellar, and Village, but as you’d expect they’re crucial. The trick lies in figuring out how best to increase the strength of particular actions whilst holding back on performing certain others to keep costs down.