Wolfgang Warsch could be a broom designer—he has some sort of magic dust to sprinkle on board games to make them fun, and after the very successful The Mind, he’s returned in the same year with a sophomore-sized hit, Die Quacksalber von Quedlinburg. This number, he didn’t do alone; he had a co-designer, Dennis Lohausen, and a playtester, Alex, who also seems to have worked a little bit on some previous games. As for Alex, it seems to me that the playtesting side of design is at least half the battle, and when it comes to The Mind and Die Quacksalber von Quedlinburg, he must be a tremendously good player. Or at least half as good as me.
The basic yet captivating premise: begin with a small group of ingredients and try your best to ameliorate your recipes over nine turns. Drawing just one more card could get you the vital ingredient you need to complete your science experiment. But if it gets to be too much, if you overdo it, you will have a bad day in the workshop and create a volatile situation, much like combining potion ingredients and then crossing your fingers for an explosion. You are taking a risk when you draw that next card, and if it pays off, you are the Chekhov’s Gun of Alchemists.
The Quacks of Quedlinburg is simple to set up, and it’s a game that gets straight to the point of its play: pulling things out of a bag. (More on that in a moment.) Each player has a pot, which is what you’re to set before you. This is the game’s setup. What is also the game’s setup is pulling ingredients—most of which you gain at the start of the game—from a bag that you work with throughout the game. It’s also highly important to note who can/may go first.
Put the main board at the center of the table. It tracks round progression and has certain areas that are designated to hold ingredient books, which are purchased throughout each round. The kitchen is set on a cauldron where a few ingredient tokens start up. A deck will have “influence cards,” which look like spell books, arrayed around the outside. A bottom track will display all of the ingredients on the influence cards and show also that ingredient’s price. A left section with designated slots is for the “ingredient books.” I’ve always enjoyed holding a session of the game where I use those books to explain what the ingredients do!
Every player starts the game by putting their droplet token in the first garden pot on their personal game board. The droplet makes the conditions in the wilderness clear: you can’t get lost; you always know the herbs are in the pot somewhere. Especially in the late game, when all the players’ tokens are on the board, it’s important to remember that victory points must be acquired to win the game. Anything else can be left marooned on the far side of the game board, but only at the whim of the wilderness.
Mix the fortune-teller cards and lay them facedown on the main board as a deck. The cards engender an unpredictable series of special conditions, bonuses, or rules that govern that round of play. The top card is drawn and read at the start of the day or night. For us, drawing and reading a to-be-told-after-this moment is a high point. We found that it often shifts the to-be-played-in strategies considerably and incites anticipation.
Hand out the game’s bonus tokens. These are placed on the scoring track. Players claim a bonus token when they reach the space on the scoring track that shows that token. The token will have a reward or ability on it that triggers at the end of the game. That reward or triggered effect is, once again, something the game only tells you if you can pay to have it, like a “let’s keep things balanced” charity.
Give every player a flask and a rat tail token. The flask enables players to put a cherry bomb tile back in the bag one time only, giving players a slightly easier way to erase some of the risk of drawing one of those tiles.
Where the game truly shines is in its push-your-luck aspects. As in most games in that genre, the more you can stuff into your pots, the better. Ingredients in the pots at the end of a round carry over to the next, giving you a solid head start. But do you stop while you’re ahead and reap the harvest, or do you keep pressing your luck? Eventually, you must also press your luck in the ingredient-selection process. Take too many turns around the dice-selection carousel and you risk using runes with negative effects. Oh, and did we mention the bombs? Carry too many of them in a round and your pots will explode.
Every round starts with the drawing of a fortune teller card. This card brings a unique rule or bonus for this round into play. No two games are ever the same because of the fortune cards. The story that the game can tell becomes increasingly outrageous and unpredictable, which makes the game very memorable. For example, in one round my friends and I played, a fortune card allowed all of us to draw one extra ingredient (for free!) than we normally would, and that led to a round of some truly audacious, not to say bombastic, recipes.
As you pull ingredients, you add them to your cauldron, represented by the droplet token moving along the spiral track. Each ingredient type has a unique effect, and the anticipation that comes with each draw hinges on the very mundane question of what will come next. The very appearance of the ingredient makes a difference, after all. Otherwise, why quake at the sight of a Mandrake? The repetitive nature of drawing in a real-time strategy game can sometimes feel a lot like … work. However, the array of strategic options paired with the unique effects of the individual ingredients ensures that each Draw Phase holds the promise of change and potential energy for a great top-deck experience.
When all players have finished drawing, either because they have decided to stop or because their pots have exploded, it is time to score the round. Players who have not exploded can use the ingredient cards they have in their pot to buy new ingredient cards. They may buy up to as many ingredient cards as they have in their pot or “deck”. If you want to make any improvements in your pot, you will have to do so using card points – and since “improvements” make it easier to get the type of ingredient cards you want, improvements are really good for purchases.
A beloved aspect of the game for me is the market phase. In this phase, the artists of faux foodstuffs use capitalism to procure new “ingredients” for their pantry. It is mountainous in decision and speculation. Should you stick to the safe basic ingredients that have pumpkin-caliber earning power, low risk of spoilage, and a moderate return on investment? Or should you fling yourself into the maelstrom of danger with the long-time payoff power (in double digits!) of the mandrakes?
With each of the nine rounds of the game, the pressure mounts. The rounds that come later and, therefore, carry more weight are rife with even stronger ingredients, and these I see as ever more potent mixing opportunities. The way I experience and use the flasks of the single-strength elixirs to recover from an inopportune set of ingredient draws in the heat of a pursuit is, for me, one of the most vivid tensions in Cauldron.
The Quacks of Quedlinburg mixes luck and strategy in a most pleasing way. Each round is a challenge all its own, and risk is nicely balanced with reward. You get just enough clues about what an optimal strategy might be, but you always feel as if you’ve got just the right amount of freedom. And then, of course, there’s the draw; the chance to just go for it and pray you don’t get too punished. Yet even if you fail, this is the sort of game where bombing spectacularly has its own rewards because it allows for some terrific gloating from your opponents.
The Quacks of Quedlinburg does a good job of blending two things that make games exciting: creating combos and strategic choices. It’s a push-your-luck game, but instead of hoping for a good roll, you’re pushing to fill a pot with ingredients, some of which have side effects that cause the pot to explode. If the pot doesn’t explode, you get a certain number of points determined by the amount of quality ingredients you’ve used. At the beginning of the game, you get a choice of a few ingredients that all secretly have different point values.
The quality of the game’s components is outstanding. The game’s vibrant art and hard-wearing materials help bring the entire experience to life, making it not just enjoyable to play but also easy on the eyes. You just feel good handling this game, especially when you’re pulling ingredients out of that bag and plunking them into your pot. It’s obvious that a lot of work went into the organization and presentation of Quacks to ensure its charm could really shine through.
The Quacks of Quedlinburg has an outstanding theme and is very immersive. It allows the players to step into the shoes of quack doctors. The concept is well-developed and integrates the theme right into the gameplay. From colorful ingredients to pots that seem like they could bubble over, there is an excellent coherence to the game’s thematic elements; and that makes the game much more immersive and, well, just plain fun to play!
An additional significant advantage is the tension and excitement in the game.
