Matthew BaileyThe first game we played today was “Quacks & Co. Quedlinburg Dash” essentially a younger version of Bailey house favourite “The Quacks of Quedlinburg.”
The general premise is that you are racing to get to Quedlinburg on the back of various animals. You start the game by filling your bag (that you are NEVER allowed to look into (more on that later) with some food tokens and some dream weed tokens.
You then take turns drawing tokens out of the bag (a big change from the adult game where turns happen simultaneously). If you draw a food token you move forward that number of spaces and do “the thing” that corresponds to that particular colour of food.
On the default caterpillar rules
Red – lets you pick up gems
Yellow – lets you roll the dice and get a prize
Green – Lets you put a food token back in the bag
Blue – Moves you to the next “Hearthstone” tile
Purple – Moves you the equivalent to the number of gems you have
Orange – adds a clover and then moves you the number of clovers when you fill your dream weed “gauge”
White token – does nothing but if a nice fat 8 spaces
There are also butterfly sides to each of these rules that provide alternate rules for each colour (much like the adult game) to give the game longevity.
When you pull out a dream weed it goes into the dream space on your board and when you get this to 3 dream weeds you get to put everything back in the bag and then use accrued gems to buy more things from the shop.
Unlike “Big Quacks” there is no bust mechanic and sometimes I found myself wanting to pull a dream weed so that I could spend money and get better tokens. There is less strategy than in the adult game but there is a def strategy in other places giving an almost engine-builder feel.
A strategy I settled on pretty quickly was to go heavy on the purples and greens that allowed me to use the gems I had to boost me and then let me use the greens to put the purple tokens back to be redrawn. Seemed to work well… I did however lose by one point to Toby(4) who went for the tactic of going in hard on reds and purples to ensure there were lots of gems ready to go every time a purple was pulled. Jack(7) went for the blues to boost him along but ended up with some pretty unlucky pulls towards the end that saw him finish in last place.
Overall it’s a really good game and a fantastic introduction to engine building and blind pulling “increase your chance” mechanics. Unlike the original, this is NOT a “push your luck game” as there is no “i will stop” decision making which is a shame. Don’t get me wrong we all enjoyed it and will definitely play it again but I feel this could have been a totally different game without the “Quacks” branding and I still would have loved it (although might not have bought it so that answers my own question).
I do have a few minor issues. Firstly for some bizarre reason, the white and pink bags are made of a different material to the brown and grey bags. The brown and grey ones are a soft felt-like material and the white and pink ones are foam which is very difficult to pull the drawstring on properly. This meant Toby(4)’s bag was almost always fairly open and def a few times I could see him fighting the urge to look into his bag that was flapping open through no fault of his own due to the considerably worse material. So yes get kids to use the brown and grey bags…
There are 2 sides to the board but one is simply longer which doesn’t really add anything
The insert could have been perfect to hold everything in the correct place but sadly the board doesn’t sit in that little indent over the tokens you can see and instead sits on top so there is nothing to stop everything flapping in the wind so baggies are “a must” to decrease setup time next time.
Apart from the bag issue (which is a massive issue IMO) the components are good. The meeples are lovely and everything is nice and colourful.
This is a fantastic family game and def one I could recommend. you can usually pick it up for just over £20 and it’s def worth it at that price. For slightly older kids I would still recommend the original “Quacks of Quedlinburg” but for the younger crowd, this will fit the bill nicely (Jack(7) and I very much enjoyed it as well).
Great stuff
