I first stumbled across this game in its original German language version (Die Quack Sadler Von Quedlinburg) whilst at a convention earlier on in the year, luckily the person who ran the game did German to English rules translations so was able to explain it to us. After this initial play I was keeping an eye out for the English language version, and here it is now available. So if you haven't worked it out yet then spoilers...I like this game.
The premise of this game is that you are quack doctors making potions and trying to gain the greatest reward for doing so, this is undertaken via charming push your luck bag building type mechanisms.
Each player has a bag which contains chips or various types and values representing ingredients which will be added to your mixing pot, placing these allows you to advance on the track on your player board gaining more victory points and money to spend along the way, but beware as there are explosive items in the bag and if you place more than a combined value total of 7 explosive items your pot will explode and you won't get as many rewards.
As the game progresses you may purchase different ingredients to add to your bag, each having a special effect when placed or at the end of the turn and so it continues for 9 game rounds.
The game does a great job of giving you various strategy options to try and it can get really tense when you are closing on the explosive total. The addition of a rule changing fortune cards each turn will mean that no two games are the same and if you don't do very well the 'rat tails' catch up mechanic means you are not left standing with no chance of catching up.
The game would appear to have plenty of replay options, there are 4 optional special powers for each of the ingredients, random fortune cards and the reverse side of the players board offers yet another way to play this game.
Components - The components are of a reasonable quality. The player markers are already printed with the required design and the punch boards were well printed, everything in line and punched out very easily. The draw bags are slightly silky feeling and just the right size to get your hand in to draw chips with no problems and overall the art work is bright and cartoony. I found it easy to identify components and there is really only a limited amount of required iconography. I thought the player boards were practical to use in game and the aesthetics helped with the creation of game theme. I'd recommend the use of little pots for the storage of ingredient chips during the set up.
Game Play - Found this easy to teach our not so gamery friends and the progression of the turn is clear and logical. The push your luck element is where the real fun is and it can be very rewarding trying to build combinations of ingredients to push you up the tracker. There is obviously a large random element with the blind drawing of chips from the bag, but I don't think this is a bad thing for the game. The rules suggest all players build their pots simultaneously, but we felt this could lead to an almost solo play experience, so we decided each person build their pot with others looking on and offering banter and encouragement. This does make the game a little longer and we decided to avoid unfair advantage we would add a moving first player token in future. This house ruling was just a personal choice and I'd be happy to play either way.
Board Game Geek Link https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/244521/quacks-quedlinburg
TL:DR - Nice colourful bag building game, easy to teach with a really fun push your luck element. Has lots of replayability and felt it was good value for money.
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