The Quacks of Quedlinburg – 2018 – Designed by Wolfgang Warsch
The Quacks of Quedlinburg sees its players each playing as competing brew masters each brewing a proprietary secret potion to impress local townsfolk with the showmanship of their ill-conceived potions. Players (read: Quacks) will be permitted to purchase various ingredients for their potion before arbitrarily throwing them by the fistful into their pots in hopes of the best. The thing is, nobody is really quite sure how to brew a potion, so everyone is constantly teetering on the edge of exploding their potion every round.
The “Just Right” Goldilocks Concoction that is More than the Sum of its Parts
I struggle to articulate what makes Quacks truly special. I don’t have any particular love for the theme or the artwork, but this game has something in it. Much like the potions you will brew, why exactly anyone would like this as much as my group and I do remains oddly distant and obscure even after the deed is done.
Sure, Quacks has typical elements of deck building via the chips you purchase to throw into each player’s bag of ingredients to be blind drawn into your pot each round. There are also some minor abilities to offset poor luck via the potion players can drop into their potion in a round to hastily attempt to stabilize their concoction just before it explodes, but I have played other games with these similar deck-building push your luck elements that fall well short of the addictive feeling of brewing these silly potions. I think much like the theme of the game here, the magic trick of Quacks is no magic at all but rather just a particularly satisfying blend of common elements mixed together to form a dazzling treat for its audience.
Complexity – Lower Middle Weight
Quacks is an easy game. Players new to board games or prone to freeze up when presented with multiple options at once may struggle to get started when initially perusing the 6-7 ingredients that are available in any given game of Quacks, but the rules teach is a breeze on the whole. The theme is immediately transparent and a guiding analogy for the order in which players are doing things, and the mechanical parts of the rules explanation are fairly limited. While there is quite a bit of game here, there is not a ton of nuance or rules interaction to complicate the teach. This is a pretty straightforward game to learn, and a breeze to teach once you are familiar with it.
Further, I think it is fair to describe this game as fairly lower middle complexity in its strategy space as well. The decision space is largely a push-your-luck decision each round, and then you will be tasked with spending your money each round. Fortunately, you can only buy one or two chips of different colors each round, so no matter how much money you may make on the prior round each player has a fairly limited amount of ways in which they can spend their money given it is always most efficient to spend it all each round (money does not carry over round to round).
ALSO THE UPGRADED BITS
Alright, time for a potentially frowned-upon plug. Let me lead with: this game is great without the upgraded bits. BUT, if the money is not an obstacle in your financial situation, I wholeheartedly recommend the Geek Up bits for the game. This replaces the cardboard punch out ingredient tokens you are pulling every round with chunky, glossy plastic pieces instead. While these do not come with the game and they are disproportionately expensive relative to the game itself, they are such a joy to play with. They also add a bit of extra punch to make this game pop on the table more than it already does.
Target Audience – Everyone
When you have such an approachable combination of push your luck, deck/bag-building and quality components in an easy-to-teach package, this game is not a hard sell for anyone. In my experience, the theme can bee a bit of a sell with new players (particularly since my play group is exclusively adults), but one game is all it will take to convince people that Quacks is worth their time.
The Peanut Gallery
This is the single most requested game in my collection. I am not confident that it is necessarily what would aggregate to everyone’s favorite game per se, but there is not disputing that this game is suggested more than any other I own. I think this is heavily influenced by the length of the game, clocking in typically just under an hour for our group, but the game also earns its keep with its proprietary mixture of push your luck, interesting ingredients to combine and amusing mishaps when things inevitably go wrong for someone.
Conclusion
Again, I struggled with this review because I still don’t think I’ve sufficiently identified what about this game makes it stand out so far above competitors in this space, but I (along with everyone in my regular group) love this game. Much like a delicious meal, you can’t always explain what unique combination of spices lead to the experience you have, but everyone is aware when they have a truly special meal.
This sailed smoothly to a 10 on the BGG scale as an outstanding game that I expect I will always want to play. I also review games via a tiered rating system described below:
Tier 1 – Reserved for my absolute favorites. The type of games that I am always excited to play.
Tier 2 – Great games that I always enjoy but do not reach for with the same frequency as Tier 1.
Tier 3 – Enjoyable, but situational. These are games that might not always sing or might require a certain type of group to enjoy. I consider these candidates for possible culling or replacement in my collection.
Tier 4 – Not my favorite (although not to say they are bad). These are games that I either would not buy or would likely sell. To the extent I keep these games, I am likely either (i) holding out to give it one more try before a final decision or (ii) keeping it because someone in my group loves it.
Tier 5 – Just not good, and I would not recommend it to others.
Quacks is a Tier 1 game. We consistently have a great time even after repeated plays, and there are no indications that Quacks is losing its shine.