In Vino Morte is a social deduction game about drinking delicious wine…

…or will you drink the deadly poison?

In the first course, it was definitely in the soup. After that, it’s not as clear. Perhaps in the Béarnaise sauce?

Regardless, two things are abundantly clear: someone is poisoning the guests at this party, and the wine that is being poured may be the last you ever taste.

In Vino Morte Game Play

A player has 16 cards, 8 wine and 8 poison. The player gives one of these facedown to all players, including themselves.

The player to the dealer’s left will then either Drink or Swap.

If they Drink they flip their card face up. Should they drink Wine they survive, if it’s Poison they are out of the game.

If they swap, then they change their card face down for any other player’s face-down card.

This continues until every player except the dealer has done this. Then everyone with a face-down card flips it face up and the wine drinkers survive, the poison drinkers are out.

A new round starts with the survivors and continues until there is one winner left.

I also played with an expansion that let players distribute face up cheese cards with some of the facedown drinks. Drinking while in possession of cheese will reverse the effect of the card.

Theme

Killing people at a dinner party is always a fun theme. But you know the wine is killing people so why are you drinking it?

Setup

Literally none! 16 cards and you don’t even shuffle them.

Components & Artwork

Just cards.

The art style is not for me but doesn’t have to be flashy. (But it could have been)

Ease of Teaching

Very simple. You only have two choices on your turn and as the dealer, you could, if you wanted, go random.

In Vino Morte Summary

As with a lot of social deduction games, it comes down to table talk. Without table talk, it’s just a guessing game. But, it is essentially Win/Lose/Banana without the Banana and more than 3 players.

There are a TONNE of top social deduction games, this is not one of them.

Jesta ThaRogue