In The Quacks of Quedlinburg, you become charlatans - or quack doctors - brewing wondrous concoctions to charm the masses, cure ills, and most importantly get rich. To brew potions, you draw ingredients from the shared supply bag. But be careful with what you draw, as too many cherry bombs could explode your potion! Will you stop early to improve your chances of making a better potion later, or will you risk a big setback to get more money and fame now?
Each round you draw ingredients from your bag and add them to your cauldron player board, starting at the middle and spiralling outwards. Each ingredient is numbered 1-4, and that’s how many spaces the ingredient moves around the cauldron. Your bag starts with lots of white ingredients (cherry bombs) in and one green and one orange. The catch is that if the total value of your cherry bombs is more than seven, your cauldron explodes!
Your aim is to get as far around the cauldron as possible because the further around you get, the more victory points and spending power you receive. At the end of a round, you can choose to buy up to two new ingredients of different colours. Ingredients give you access to special powers. These powers are colour-specific but for each colour, there are four different powers, with you choosing one in each game or going with the suggested set-ups.
Once everyone has stopped, you score up. First, you complete the special chip actions if relevant, then you collect rubies, score victory points and go shopping! If your pot explodes, you must choose to either use your money to buy ingredients or take victory points. The powers of the ingredients give you plenty of ways to avoid exploding your potions by mitigating the dreaded white ingredients but this is a luck-based game and sometimes you are just going to draw all your white ingredients in a row.
There are nine rounds and the player with the most victory points at the end wins!
Bonus!
The rat's tails catch up mechanic ensures that all players stay in the game. There’s no downtime between turns as everyone plays at the same time, so it’s a high speed push your luck game!
Key Features
- Brew Potions - In The Quacks of Quedlinburg, the best quack surgeons from across the land gather to brew their concoctions.
- Simultaneous Turns - During each round, everyone draws chips from their ingredient bags and adds them to their pots. The higher the number on the drawn chip, the further it is placed around the cauldron.
- Push Your Luck - Do you stop early to improve your chances of making a better potion later, or do you risk exploding to get more money and fame now?
- Score Up - After each round, you gain rubies, victory points and coins to spend on new ingredients. But players with exploded pots must choose points or coins - not both!
- Award-Winning Fun - Kennerspiel des Jahres 2018 winner.
Age: 10+Players: 2-4Time: 45 mins