BoardGames:The Quacks of Quedlinburg
Creator: Wolfgang Warsh
Publisher: Schmidt
Genre:Bag-Building, Bag-Pulling
Weight: Light
2-4 Players
Although it has a few extra bits and pieces added on, Quacks is fundamentally a push-your-luck game. You'll always be wondering if just one more ingredient pulled from the bag will give you the slice of pumpkin you need to win you the round, or will lead to your pot exploding in a foamy mess.
The Basics
In The Quacks of Quedlinburg, each player takes the role of one of the quacks - fake doctors at a fair, trying to brew the biggest, foamiest potion to win the prize.
Each player has a large cauldron in which they place ingredients they randomly draw from their bag. Chunks of pumpkin, berries, bugs and some spooky extras all add up to grow the potion, earn more points and money to buy more ingredients for the next round.
But watch out for the white ingredients. These little berries make your potions foam and bubble beautifully - but if you ever have too much in your cauldron, it explodes and you'll lose out on points or money this round.
Introduction
Although it has a few extra bits and pieces added on, Quacks is fundamentally a push-your-luck game. You'll always be wondering if just one more ingredient pulled from the bag will give you the slice of pumpkin you need to win you the round, or will lead to your pot exploding in a foamy mess.
That's all your turn-to-turn decision making really is, apart from the option of pouring in your bottle of anti-foaming agent to return the most recently played ingredient back to the bag.
There's a few decisions between rounds - choosing which ingredients to buy to fill up your bag, rolling to see what rewards the winner gets, unlocking new ingredients as the rounds progress etc, all keep you building momentum and wanting to play the next round.
You can only add a maximum of two new ingredients in your bag each round, but when the bag starts out with only 9 ingredients, these small additions do make a serious difference to how generous your bag feels.
You can also collect rubies that can be swapped for points, or to re-fill your flask.
The Good
Very simple gameplay - even kids can get in on the action.
Very low skill ceiling - although bag-building may involve strategy, the turn-by-turn play is as simple as it gets, and a seasoned player has next to no advantage over a newbie.
Simultaneous turns - the game can scale up to any number of players (with expansions or an extra base game), but adding players doesn't bog the game down.
Balanced - even though the game is luck-based, the 'rats tail' mechanic gives players who are lagging behind in points a boost. This helps encourage the trailing players to keep going and keeps the current leaders on their toes.
Great Artwork - while the player boards might be a little thin, they're very pretty - not only including the bubbling cauldron itself, but places to put your gems, your rat-tails and your flask.
The Bad
Luck Driven - Push-your-luck games are always awkward in that no amount of skill can address bad luck. The players decisions end up being simply "pull from the bag", or "don't". While such a simple game does manage to be surprisingly engaging and the game takes quite a few steps to mitigate wild swings of luck, if you're looking for something with deep strategy, this isn't your game.
Overall
80%
It's relatively simple, it's fun and it's very accessible. A great light game for friends and family. There's not a huge amount of depth, but there's enough progression to pull you through the rounds, watching your potion getting bigger each time.
