Die QUACKSALBER von QUEDLINBURG
<PERSON> for <PERSON> / North Star Games Kennerspiel des Jahres 2018 Kritikpreis 2-4 Players aged 10+
Games Take About 45 minutes Retails around €35.00
This is a fun game of portent potion preparation in the bazaar of Quedlinburg. Each player (Quack) is out to make the best potions that will give them fame, fortune and cash in hand but mostly Victory Points; have the most VPs at the end of the ninth Turn and you are the winner of the game. However in my opinion simply having the game to play makes you a winner.
Every good witch, wizard or quack has their own cauldron for brewing their potions in (as well as cooking their lunch) and each user of the special arts also has a bag in which they keep the herbs, spiders-legs, frogs feet, eyes of newt, gems and other ingredients and resources - a bag which you cannot afford to be without; players of Quacksalber have their own Cauldrons and Sacks. The other most important thing for a user of magic, apart from a magic wand and pointy hat of course, are the magician's Spell Books, in this case they are called Recipe or Ingredient Books.
The Ingredient Books come into play at predetermined intervals during play, decided by the Round marker on the Score Track board. The Round Marker being a Flame token that is moved from hanging lantern to hanging lantern at the end of each Round - each lantern shows if and which Ingredient Books will be added. How easy or difficult you want to play is determined by the Ingredient Books you include in the game. The Black and Orange books take part in every game other than these one set of Ingredient Books is used per game, the strength of these being shown by the number of Bookmarks. Each set also contains 5 Ingredients comprising of Green, Blue, Red, Yellow and Purple Tokens.
Each player has their own Cauldron (board) which shows the swirling path their Droplet markers (player's markers are shaped like a drop of liquid) will slowly take. All of the movement spaces are numbered, numerically upwards, and most show a VP value and or a VP value and Gemstone (Ruby) - the space directly after the space where the player's last ingredient is placed is the space taken into account - this has to be remembered when planning each move for sometimes it is better to not move quite as far as possible so that the reward is better. 84
Every cauldron has a space (a trivet) where the quack places their mixing flask, their very important and extremely useful mixing flask. Each Round begins with the flipping face up and reading aloud of a Fortune Telling card, it's actions/events affecting all players.
The game play is fun, semi random, and includes great mechanics to keep the balance without hindering either the leading player or assisting the lowest scoring player to the point of unfairness. To begin with you are trying to get as many useful ingredients into your bag as possible so that when drawn out they move your droplet further round the swirly track. There is also an element of greed or gambling (or both) as it is possible to push your luck when drawing the ingredient Tokens from your bag and placing them on your track. Every coloured chit has its own effect but white Tokens being the most plentiful and available and also the least required, which is why the game mechanic automatically adds them to every player's bag at the start of certain Rounds - the more white Tokens in your bag the more likely you are to pull one out. Players know what Tokens they have put into their bags but are never allowed to look through them or the bag.
Swirly tracks can only have a white chit value of 7 in total, going over this causes the cauldron to explode in a way that still allows the owning player to perform one useful act. We like this idea a lot as it means there is always a reason to push but similarly there is a reason not to take the chance on drawing a chit once the 7 points of white chit are on display.
The space in front of your droplet has several effects, as you might remember, and one of these is the number of points you have to spend on buying ingredients for your bag. You may buy only one or two Tokens (not 2 in value) and not more than one per ingredient, thus you could gain a Red 4 for 16pts and an Orange 1 for 3 points, but any 'money' unspent is lost, you cannot save it for the next Round. The ingredients are 'bought' from the available Ingredient Books, thus as more Ingredient Books come into play so do more ingredients. 629