How To Play
What the devil is The Quacks of Quedlinburg I hear you cry. Well, in The Quacks of Quedlinburg, players take on the role of quack doctors, attending a nine-day festival where you must compete with each other to produce the best potions to sell to peasants.
Each round, you will draw ingredients from your bag (blindly) and then place these into your bubbling cauldron. Each ingredient will have a number on it, dictating how many spaces along you can place it. The more points you get, the more you can spend on new ingredients and the more victory points you will obtain.
Be careful though If you draw out the white cherry bombs and the numbers on their tiles exceeds seven, your cauldron will explode When every player has passed or their cauldron has exploded, you then score your potion. The player with the most points rolls the dice, then you all collect points and buy new ingredients to add to your bag. If your cauldron has exploded, you will have to decide to take the points or the money. Want a more detailed explanation You can read our full how to play here.
How Does It Play
This blind bag-builder has started my 2019 off with a bang (quite literally). It seems weird that one could find such joy from pulling out these ingredients blindly from a bag, but Warsch somehow manages to make it riveting Of course, during the buying phase, you can purchase either one or two ingredients to add to your bag. While this seems mundane, you find yourself filled with excitement at the prospect of not only pulling out one of these new ingredients but also pulling them out at the right time, so as to chain their effects together
For example, if you pull out a mandrake, and the last chip placed in the cauldron was a white cherry bomb, you get to remove that white chip from the board and put it back in your bag before placing the mandrake The sheer excitement of waiting to pull one of your new ingredients out is weirdly satisfying.
Of course, if you end up putting too many cherry bombs into your cauldron, you are going to find that your potion and your cauldron explode When I first played this, I thought it wasnt going to be too bad if it happened, but it can be catastrophic You need to choose between either taking the VP or using the money to buy new ingredients.
I guarantee that 99% of the time you will take the points, meaning you must forgo your buying phase. This, while it may seem insignificant, means the odds of pulling various ingredients remains the same and you will find yourself in a similar situation as before, trying to get back into the game by taking risks and those risks not paying off I loved this element It kept the game interesting and competitive, everyone I played with getting massively engaged with the gameplay and frantically picking out ingredients, hoping for the best ones.
