Wine Rating Pocket is a re-working of Wine RATING as a one or two player game. It is not possible to use two copies of Wine Rating Pocket to play Wine Rating. Whilst the gameplay is the same, the cards are changed in the Pocket game.
User summary
In the game of Wine Rating, you are a wine critic. You give a rating to wines from various countries, while investing in wineries to monopolize the market.
This game uses 4 investment tokens per player and 16 cards. On the table, there is a space to hold 16 cards in 4 x 4 square grid, and each row and column represents reputation of a winery in which players may invest. Each turn, you have two options: you may place a rating card, which ranges from -3 to +5, in the square grid, affecting two wineries; or you may place two investment tokens on any wineries.
At the end of the round, the investor on each winery takes the reputation score on that winery. After the third round, the investor calculates their total score.
Although the cards have Japanese text, you can play Wine Rating ignoring the text. There are two types of cards: winery cards and rating cards. Winery cards are written in English and Japanese, and all Japanese text on the Rating cards are just flavor. They gorgeously describes a wine in wine critics' comments. Japanese players can enjoy the text, but it is not necessary for gameplay.