Quacks of Quedlinburg | Rahdo's Final Thoughts 

I feel that looking over at your opponents board IS what makes pushing your luck a bigger reward and is totally in spirit of the game. You then have to balance between the ideas of "I can stop now and gain a lot" or "If I push once or twice I might deny my opponent from getting dice roll advantages and bonuses and slowly gaining a calculated momentum."

I agree mostly, there are some flaws, but all in all, it's just plain fun. My family really loves this one. Key is don't dig too deep, just enjoy the randomness of pushing your luck. But one thing, I don't know how you can say it's a 15-20 minute game. There's 9 rounds. No way you can go at around 2 minute rounds including scoring and purchasing unless you're just playing at a frantic pace. Our games are typically close to an hour with 3-4 people. I don't think 2 would save that much time.

Great final thoughts - they mirror very closely some of the issues my group and I found with the game playing the German version. The first 3-ish rounds you aren't risking more than a point or two - it makes no sense to stop drawing so you can afford the higher priced tokens. And in the last round busting basically costs you the whole game (because instead of buying chips you buy points with your buying power). We initially liked the game but started souring on it after 2-3 plays. We noticed the runaway leader issue too - whoever started pulling away was able to go a little farther than everyone else each round which really snowballed from rounds 5-9.

It is not against the rules to look over at your opponents cauldron and use that info in your decision. It’s why the final round asks you to stop playing simultaneously, so that you can not do that in the final turn, since at that point you can calculate the score.

When you mentioned you would rather draw the tiles from a cup instead of the bag, only one question came to mind: where's your chicken cup? Haven't seen in it in a while :)

Played yesterday, not a KDJ but not a SDJ either somewhere in between, as the potion effects makes it a bit complex. Luck really plays a part I always drew the bombs when I had 8 colours and only 2 bombs. The bag is not good either. But the draws are quite tense. May be the expansion corrects a few complaints... Need a few more plays though

It is just a funny push your luck game but you are right in some games we had a runaway leader and could not catch up with rattales. But our counting the black and green chips plus buying takes us with 3 players an hour to play. So it is not over too fast. And you could try other books as well -we like it so far but we‘ll see if the runaway leader will always occur. But I guess that‘s life 😉 you will always have one Gladstone Gander at the table 😆

I don't think this game can really be compared to other "bag builders" like Orleans, since the basic premise is so different. Orleans is a worker-placement strategy game, this is a wacky push-your-luck game, closer to Yahtzee or Can't Stop. As a 30-minute filler, I can handle the great swings in luck. And if you begin to fall behind, you'd better start pushing your luck harder, or you'll only continue to fall more. Sure, you could lose big, but the stakes aren't that high here, since it's a short filler whose basic mechanic requires risk: it's where all the tension and excitement lie. To say otherwise would be like saying craps isn't strategic enough, or is too heavily determined by die rolls.

The white chips are snowberries. The german term for the item translates into snowberries.

That's odd... I thought that Kennerspiel winners were heavier games (especially in comparison to regular Spiel des Jahres winners).

Just to address the balancing of risk to lose vs. chance to gain in the end: This is offset by the fact that the chances of busting become slim. In the beginning, the proportion of white chits is much larger. Since they stay constant, if you add more colored chits, the risk of drawing white chits becomes smaller. So it makes sense that for a small risk you only get a small reward. And what's more, since drawing the chits happens simultaneously, this 1 or 2 points more you can score can win you the game. I never felt like this was a huge problem in our games.

Great review, good game, also missing a real catchup mechanism.

Hey Rahdo - love the theme in this game it looks so fun but can't pull the trigger without your approval. Do you know if the expansion encourages more risk in the late game?

Interesting this won the Kennerspiel or connoisseur/expert game of the year. I would not exactly call this a game for more experienced people.

I agree completely. The last round started with me about 8 points ahead of my opponent, and he decimated me on the final round and I still won. He was 50% further and it really only amounted to a few extra points. Plus, heavy blue seems to be the winning strategy.

You hit this spot on. I bought into the hype and found this game pretty bad in comparison. For a game with this much luck it overstays it's welcome in both game play and setup, and I would much rather play PUSH or Dead Man's Draw.