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2018 seems to be the year for Wolfgang Warsch, designer of The Mind and Ganz Schön Clever (both of which had nominations in the Spiel Des Jahre). He seems to have produced games that have been incredibly well received and have also created a fair amount of buzz, especially with The Mind! His big box game for 2018 was no exception, fantastically named The Quacks of Quedlinburg!
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 wasn’t 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.
Final Thoughts On The Quacks Of Quedlinburg
What Warsch has created here is a game that is simple and easy to play, but also very satisfying. While you may have a vague idea of what ingredients you have in your bag, you will never be 100% sure. This keeps players guessing, hoping that they can continue without exploding.
Quacks of Quedlinburg is also beautifully balanced. You will not find anyone streaking ahead in terms of Victory Points thanks to the rat tails. Around the score track, one will find rats placed between certain points. Each player that finds themselves behind the leader will be able to count the number of rats between them and then start that many spaces ahead of the lead player in their cauldron. Warsch has thought of everything in this game and this just adds to the competitiveness and engagement!
I will be honest, when I first came across The Quacks of Quedlinburg, I wasn’t too taken aback. It looked interesting but I wasn’t racing to play it. Please don’t do what I do! You will regret it! The Quacks of Quedlinburg is absolutely fantastic. It has all the elements that keep a game interesting and various mechanics work in perfect harmony, producing a beautiful product.
As soon as we finished our very first game of Quacks, we were straight back to it, ready for the next game! We just wanted to try our luck again and aim to fill the cauldron track. We wanted to try different combos of ingredients to boost us along. We wanted to see what else we could do to try and win! This, to me, demonstrates how beautifully crafted this game is. If a board game has you wanting more as soon as you’ve finished, then what you have is a winner!
The Quacks of Quedlinburg is just that, a winner, and I would be inclined to say that this game may well be my most-played game throughout 2019 (it's already my most-played game this month)! Yet again, this is another gem from the legend, Wolfgang Warsch, and one that you should really pick up as soon as you can. For even more fun, The Quacks of Quedlinburg now has two great expansion packs filled with extra meeples for adding extra players, new ingredients, and more! Shop all things Quacks of Quedlinburg here.
After more Quacks of Quedlinburg? Buy the Zatu exclusive mega box here.
Editors note: This blog was originally published on February 5th, 2019. Updated on March 24th, 2022 to improve the information available.
