Greetings from Quedlingburg, the place where quack surgeons and miracle physicians from all over the country come to mix their remedies for relationship problems, hiccups, smelly feet, and homesickness. Every quack has a specific concoction they believe will make them the nation’s greatest miracle physician!
In the strategy push-your-luck game Quacks of Quedlinburg, players select components from a potpourri until they believe their unique combination is ideal. However, exercise caution—if you add too many unusual ingredients, the entire concoction can explode up in your face!
Do you risk a major defeat now in order to get more money and notoriety later, or do you quit early to increase your chances of creating a stronger potion later that will win the day? Achieving the ideal ratio of reward to risk is crucial.
Players take on the role of quack doctors or charlatans in The Quacks of Quedlinburg, creating their own concoction by adding ingredients one at a time. But be careful what you add—too much of one thing or another may ruin the entire concoction!
Every participant possesses a bag containing ingredient chips. They simultaneously take chips out of their bags and add them to their pots during each round. The pulled chip’s value increases with its placement in the swirling pattern of the pot; the higher its face value, the more the potion’s value. Try your luck as much as you can, but watch out—your pot will blow up if you add too many cherry bombs!
Depending on how successfully they filled their pots, players receive cash and victory points at the conclusion of each round, which they may use to purchase fresh ingredients. However, players whose pots have blown up have to decide between coins and points, not both! The game is won by the person who has the most victory points after nine rounds.
40 minutes | 2-4 players | Created by Wolfgang Warsch
When I first heard about a board game with a duck theme that was sweeping the boardgaming industry, garnering accolades everywhere, and appearing fantastic in pictures, I was quite fascinated. You can only imagine my extreme dismay when I sat down to play an early import of the game at a local meet-up and realized there were no ducks in sight! Although I felt deceived, I persevered through the rules explanation and, by the middle of the second round, everyone had already been pardoned. The push-your-luck craziness of the game more than made up for the absence of ducks!
How does it operate?
Players fight to brew the best potions in Quacks of Quedlinburg, a push-your-luck bag building game that’s similar to deck building, in order to build their engines and score the most points. Each participant receives an ingredient starter kit and a cauldron to brew their potions in at the start of the game.
In Quacks, every one of the nine rounds has the same outcome. Initially, a card is selected from the event deck, and an event takes place. After then, players start preparing their potions. Players take ingredients out of their bags one at a time and add them to their cauldrons.
Every ingredient has a number (1-4) on it that indicates how much of it fills the pot; the type of ingredient also indicates possible outcomes. The player keeps drawing ingredients and adding them to their cauldron until they either stop or their concoction blows up!
At the beginning of the game, each player is given a bag full of cherry bombs, also known as white chips, which are an essential component of Quackpot potions but are regrettably quite flammable. Your potion has exploded if the total value of the white chips in your cauldron is greater than 7 at any point! You are done creating potions for the day if you decide to draw one more chip to add to your concoction and it turns out to be a white one that pushes you over this threshold.
Luckily, the effects of the other colored chips are often good and can occur either during or after the brewing process of your potion. Some of these features include the ability to take out white chips, the ability to place the chip you draw next, and the ability to increase the worth of chips to further bolster your potion.
Points and end-of-round bonuses are given out when each person has finished their potion for the round, whether it exploded or worked. With the money they have earned—which is determined by how many components they have added to their potion—players can also purchase additional chips. You will lose your points and your chance to get more chips if your potion exploded during this round.
The main objective of the game is to brew the biggest potion each round in order to earn plenty of points and money that can be exchanged for further components. Players then start each new round with a bag of ingredients that get stronger and stronger. By the time the game ends, potions have grown very complex and can occasionally fill the cauldron to the brim! Following nine rounds of competition, the largest Quack is crowned, and the other Quacks are forced to respect them and their prowess in concocting potions.