The Quacks of Quendlinburg is the 2018 Kennerspiel des Jahres winner created by Wolfgang Warsch. This quirky, 1-4 player press your luck game is published by Schmidt Spiele games and distributed in America by North Star Games and takes roughly 45 minutes to play. Similar to Orleans, players select from a variety of ingredient chips to add to their personal potion bags, hoping to create the best potion without an explosion. Although there are numerous deck building games on the market Quacks is one of the few bag building ones- making it a unique experience.

How to Play

Played over nine rounds, the alchemists blindly pull ingredients from their bags, hoping they pull out chips in their favor. At the start of each round, a random fortune teller card activates, giving all players (unless otherwise stated) bonuses, such as adding an additional chip to their bags. Players then simultaneously pull ingredients from their personal bags, trying to progress as far as they can along the potion track, which increases their victory points and spending power for the round. The white number on the pulled chip tells the player how many spaces to place it from the dropper or previously placed chip and the chip’s icon indicates what special ability is activated. There are four different ingredient rule options. In this post, we will be using set one for all examples.

Set One Abilities

• Pumpkin: No ability, just moves one space.
• Crow Skull: Depending on the number on the chip, the next 1, 2 or 4 chips you pull from your bag you may either place one in your pot or put them all back into your bag.
• Toadstool: If there are 1 or 2 pumpkin chips already in your pot, the toadstool chip moves an extra space and if there are 3 or more pumpkins out already it moves an extra two spaces.
• Mandrake (becomes available at the start of round two): If the chip drawn immediately after the mandrake is a snowberry place the snowberry back into your bag.
• African Death’s Head Hawkmoth: If you have more deathmoths than the person to your left and right you move your dropper forward one and get a ruby. If you have drawn more than only one player to your left or right you only move your dropper.
• Garden Spider: If the garden spider is your last or next to last chip in your pot you get a ruby.
• Ghost’s Breath (becomes available at the start of round 3): If you have 1 ghost’s breath in your pot you get a victory point, 2 a victory point and a ruby, and 3 two victory points and get to move your dropper one space forward.

A player continues drawing chips, until they choose to stop or the value of all the white snowberries they have drawn exceeds seven. If the player’s potion explodes they may choose to use their full flask to put the last played chip back into their bag and flip the flask over to show it is empty. After players stop drawing chips, they find their last placed chip, and use the next visible space to determine values during the evaluation phase.

At the end of each round players follow the evaluation phase steps on the scoring banner:

1. The player(s) with the best potion who did not explode roll the bonus die.
2. Check to see if any players’s qualify for bonuses from the death moth, garden spider or ghost’s breath.
3. If the player sees a ruby on their next visible space they get one.
4. Players take the victory points (number in the lower yellow box) on their visible space and spending power (white number on their visible space). Players buying chips must either purchase one chip or two different chips paying attention to their cost and can not carry over any funds into the next round. If a player exploded they must choose either victory points or money. During the last round, rather than buying chips, players divide their money by five and take that many victory points.
5. Players may turn in two rubies to move their dropper forward one space or refill their flask (during the last round every two rubies turned in is a victory point).

At the end of the round players check the scoring track and calculate how many rat tails are between themselves and the lead player. They place their rat marker that many spaces past their dropper, moving them further along the potion track. At the conclusion of the ninth round, the player furthest along the scoring track is named the top Quack of Quedlinburg!

Review

Wolfgang Warsch has been on a roll with his games and The Quacks of Quedlinburg is another stellar one great for novice and experienced players. Joe found the rulebook concise and easy to understand and liked that the language independent boards include reminders of rules. The individual player boards tell you what is in your starting bag (which helps you remember how many snowberries are left in it), the scoring track lays out the steps for the evaluation phase, all of the ingredient books describe the chip’s powers, and the designers included a quick reference sheet with rules and examples for all of the sets.

The theme works well for the mechanics and game. Although the mechanics could be used with another theme, being a quack doctor was just plain fun. You could imagine an alchemist adding rat tails, spiders, and deathmoths to their potion batch, experimenting with ingredients, searching for the elixir of life (or whatever you imagine your potion to be). Being an eccentric alchemist added some role-playinig flair to the game.

Although the box art did not appeal to us we were impressed with most of the internal components. There are linen finish cards, heavy card stock boards and chips, and colorful wooden markers. As a librarian, Heather thoroughly enjoyed the 3-D ingredient books with bookmarks telling players which set they belonged to. The well crafted player boards were spacious and had a spot for everything you collected, including your rat tails, a flask, and rubies.

Due to the variety of options such as different ingredient sets (including an option to mix and match between sets), a double sided board with different dropper tracks, and the random fortunes, this game has immense replayability. We tested out each of the sets, including trying our own combinations and found that none of them created an impossible lead with each player progressing towards different goals, and each had at least one interesting new chip rule.

Heather enjoyed that the game was competitive, press your luck and had limited player interaction. If your pot exploded it was your own fault. She felt a rush as she pulled items out of her potion bag, and enjoyed internally debating whether to balance the bag with a variety of chips or stack her bag with a few types. The only time she experienced minor blocking was when a chip numerous players were purchasing ran out. With so many chip options though, it did not really effect the gameplay. This is a game she can play a few rounds in a row without feeling drained or bored. The game makes you want to reach into the bag and pull just one more chip to move further along the track but your greed often quickly causes your downfall. She liked that even if she messed up one round, she could purchase more chips and easily bounce back the next round. Everyone who has experienced it has enjoyed the mechanics and theme, and asked to try other ingredient sets. This is her current favorite game and one that sees a lot of table time.

Joe found that Quacks was more enjoyable than he finds most luck based games. Most of his issues revolve around some of the component quality and his own terrible luck. Statistical probability does not directly correlate to Quacks of Quedlinburg. If you have one snowberry in your bag with a dozen other chips, you will pull that snowberry and explode. Matt from Shut Up and Sit Down said it best, “When you pull a ‘cherrybomb’, it’s disastrous, but when you pull a different ingredient, you feel relief. You never exist in an indifferent area.” Most games have you performing the motions to see the reward later in the game, but Quacks will keep you on the edge of your seat because your ingredient bag is a wormhole of wonder that will either win you the game or not let you advance past your opponents.

Although we both thoroughly enjoy this game, there are some minor flaws. Often chips get stuck in the bag, so you really have to mix them by hand when playing and check the bag corners. We purchased our own set of tarot bags (which also matched the player board colors) to help mitigate this issue. Often when playing, players will reach the last space (35) and want to keep pulling chips as that should mean more money and points, but they currently have nowhere to go. The upcoming expansion will apparently address this with an overflow pot. Our biggest problem is the white snowberries have begun to show dirt and turn grey. The game gets heavy usage, but by game five they were starting to collect oils and dirt.

Heather: 5/5 Paws
+ Low player interaction, high replay factor, quirky theme, she enjoys deck/pool building and press your luck games
– Can not score past 35 (expansion may fix this)

Joe: 4/5 Paws
+ High variability, easy to teach, little to no downtime, little chance of a runaway winner
– Extremely lucky based, bag quality is lacking