In The Quacks of Quedlinburg you’re pushing your luck trying to make a really valuable potion!

Just don’t explode!

In The Quacks of Quedlinburg, players are charlatans — or quack doctors — each making their own secret brew by adding ingredients one at a time. Take care with what you add, though, for a pinch too much of this or that will spoil the whole mixture!

The Quacks of Quedlinburg Summary

One of the minor mechanisms in this game is ‘bag building’. But, it’s not really straight-up bag building in a ‘deckbuilding’ sense like Automobiles for example.

If you imagine the bag of tokens as a deck of cards (which I always do) you basically draw through it once, stopping at some point. Then you add to your deck, reshuffle and go again.

But the main mechanism is basically pushing your luck. I don’t have any games with push-your-luck token drawing. It’s mostly either rolling dice or drawing cards.

My favourite ‘push your luck’ game is Archaeology: A New Expedition. Here you are basically pushing your luck on the number of cards you are willing to risk keeping in your hand.

So yeah, this is quite different to anything I’ve played before.

Replayability

The game is good fun and luckily it has replayability.

The Fortune Teller cards, for example, change each round. There is 24 in the box and only 9 are used in each game. Even the order they come up will change how effective they are.

The cards that describe the token abilities are also double-sided which is cool. It means you can mix and match them game to game to make different combinations. It also gives you an alternative to those that may be your group find either boring or… OP? Should that be the case…

I would like the potion exploding portion to have more of a consequence. Yes, you lose either your ‘money’ to buy new tokens or points, but I want more…

I never felt scared to go bust, especially early on. I would easily lose 1-3 points in the hope I’ll get 1-3 more money so I can buy that mildly better token. With the ‘rat tail catch-up’ in place, you can get something back for missing out too.

Is that a bad thing? Or did I just tactically explain why blowing up can be a good thing? 🙂

Jesta ThaRogue