Quacks of Quedlinburg Rules | How to Brew and Win

Quacks of Quedlinburg is a 2 to 4 player push your luck bag building game for ages 10 and up, and it lasts 9 turns. Your pot explodes when the white chips in it add up to more than 7, and only white chip values count toward that. You score the printed value of the space directly after your last chip, not the ingredients themselves.

I am Spector, a dad to Alex, 7, and Emma, 10. This is the game where I have said out loud, more than once, that I am stopping, and then drawn again. That is the whole experience. You fill a strip of numbered spaces in front of you with chips pulled blind from a cloth bag, and every time you reach into the bag you are choosing between a number printed on a space and a pot full of cherries that goes bang.

It is also the game I get asked about most from people who already own push your luck games and find them unfair. The reason is that the randomness is not a dice roll. It is a bag you built yourself, and every bad draw traces back to something you chose to buy two rounds ago. Our 4 player luck and skill guide covers that distinction at more length, and it is the reason this one survives a bad night better than most.

It is also the rare game where nobody waits. Everyone is brewing at the same time, which is a completely different feeling to a turn based game with three people sitting and watching. 6 Nimmt is the other game on our shelf that manages that, and it manages it with no luck at all.

One thing the box does not tell you, and one thing almost nobody writes down: you cannot lose a game you were winning in round seven. The last round is a free swing for everyone. If that bothers you, buy something else.

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Quacks of Quedlinburg at a Glance

Aspect	Details
Designer	Wolfgang Warsch
First published	2018
Publisher	Schmidt Spiele, Berlin. The 2025 English edition is CMYK Games
Players	2 to 4 in the base box, 5 with The Herb Witches
Best player count	3 or 4. Two is fine but a runaway leader hurts more when you are the only one playing
Age	10 and up
Play time	45 minutes
Box	29.5 by 29.5 by 7.3 cm
Length	9 turns, tracked by the Flame piece
Ingredient chips	215, plus 3 replacements. Eight colours, values 1 to 4
Ingredient books	Orange and black always out, plus four sets of five, being green, blue, red, yellow and purple
Other components	4 pots, 4 bags, 4 flasks, 4 rat stones, 8 droplets, 4 scoring markers, 4 zero and fifty seals, 20 rubies, 24 Fortune Teller cards, 1 Bonus Die, 1 Scoring Track with Turn Indicator
Win condition	Most victory points on the Scoring Track, which runs from 0 to 50
Explosion rule	The white chips in your pot add up to more than 7
Awards	2018 Kennerspiel des Jahres, 2019 Origins nominee and American Tabletop Best Casual Game, 2020 Origins Best Family Game
Sources	Official Schmidt Spiele rulebook 88220, Herb Witches and Alchemists rulebooks, Spiel des Jahres, Wikipedia

Two of those rows matter more than the rest. The 8 colours and 215 chips figure is the one that surprises people, because the box looks like a handful of tokens and is in fact two hundred and fifteen. The 9 turns figure is the one that matters for planning, because nine short turns with no downtime is why a 45 minute game never feels like forty-five minutes of waiting.

How Do You Set Up Quacks of Quedlinburg?

Setting up Quacks of Quedlinburg takes about ten minutes. Put the Scoring Track in the middle, the Flame on turn 1, the four seals showing 0, lay out the orange and black ingredient books plus the green, blue and red books from one set, and give each player a pot, a bag, a flask, a rat stone and a bag holding 4 white 1-chips, 2 white 2-chips, 1 white 3-chip, 1 orange 1-chip and 1 green 1-chip.

The old setup advice for this game is scattered and usually wrong about one thing in particular, the starting bag. It is printed on the bottom left of the front of the pot board, and it is the single most useful fact on the board, because seven of your nine starting chips are white and the white chips are what explode.

1. Track first. Scoring Track in the middle. Flame on the 1 space of the Turn Indicator. The 4 seal tiles on the 4 seal spaces with the 0 facing up.
2. Ingredient books. Always lay out the orange book and the black book. The black book has a separate page for a 2 player game and a page for 3 and 4 players, and the pots pictured at the bottom of the page tell you which one you want. Then from ONE set of four, lay out only the green, blue and red books. Keep yellow and purple aside, because yellow comes out before turn 2 and purple before turn 3. Sets are marked with bookmarks, and the publisher recommends Set 1 for a first game, then Set 2, Set 3, and finally Set 4.
3. Chips. Sort them by colour into piles next to their matching books. This is the only fiddly part of setup and it is the reason people think the game takes twenty minutes to set up. It does not.
4. Fortune Teller cards. The last person to cook something goes first, shuffles the 24 Fortune Teller cards, and keeps them face down in front of themselves.
5. Player kit. Each player takes a pot with the test tube side DOWN, a bag, a scoring marker placed on the seal tile of their chosen colour, a flask on the large trivet beside the pot with the full side up, and a rat stone on the small trivet.
6. Starting bag. 4 white 1-chips, 2 white 2-chips, 1 white 3-chip, 1 orange 1-chip, 1 green 1-chip. Nine chips.
7. Droplet. On the 0 space in the middle of the pot.

That is the whole setup. There is no board to assemble, no tiles to sort, and no deck to shuffle but the Fortune Tellers. If you want a game that is genuinely out of the bag in under ten minutes, our board games that do not intimidate non gamer parents guide has the rest of that shelf.

How Does a Turn of Quacks Work?

A turn is four steps. The start player reads a Fortune Teller card that applies to everyone, from turn 2 non leaders set a rat stone beside their droplet, then everyone brews at the same time drawing chips one at a time until they stop, and finally the six step Evaluation Phase scores the game.

There are no individual turns in this game. That is the first thing to understand and the thing the old explanations of this game never say clearly. Everyone is brewing simultaneously, nobody waits, and the game is nine of these.

Step 1, the Fortune Teller card

The start player reads the top card aloud and lays it face up beside the Scoring Track. It applies to all players. A purple card resolves immediately before the turn starts, and a blue card applies for the whole turn or at its end. If a card offers you a yellow or purple chip, you can only take it if that book is already out, which is why the yellow and purple books arrive when they do.

Step 2, the rats, from turn 2

Every player except the one in the lead on the Scoring Track may set their rat stone into their pot. Count the rat tails printed on the Scoring Track between you and the leader, and place the rat stone that many spaces past your droplet.

This is the closest the game comes to helping you and it is a genuinely fair catch up mechanic. You cannot use it if you are leading, so it rewards the players who are behind without ever handing anyone free points. The rat stone then becomes the new starting point for your first chip of the turn.

Step 3, the Potions Phase, all players at once

Draw a chip from your bag and place it in your pot. You are never allowed to look into your bag.

Placement is the whole geometry of the game and it takes ten seconds to learn:

• The first chip goes on the space directly after the droplet, or after the rat stone if you have one.
• A 1-chip goes 1 space forward. A 2-chip goes 2 spaces forward. A 3-chip goes 3, a 4-chip goes 4.
• Every chip goes after the one you just placed, so your pot fills in order from the front.
• Gaps stay empty. A 4-chip on an empty pot leaves three empty spaces behind it, and your next chip starts from where the 4-chip landed.

So a pot that says chips at spaces 1, 2 and 6 is a pot where you drew a 1, a 1, and a 4. You can count backwards to work out what you pulled, which is a genuinely satisfying bit of bookkeeping and it is how you know whether you are safe.

After each chip you choose: stop, and lay your bag flat on the table so everyone can see you are done, or draw again. If your bag is empty you must stop. You can also choose to all draw simultaneously in any turn, which the rules allow specifically so nobody gains an advantage by watching what you did before deciding.

Step 4, the Evaluation Phase

The pot is scored on the space directly after your last chip, whether or not it exploded. That single rule is the most commonly misreported thing in this game, and it is the correction that matters most. You are not adding up ingredients. You are reading a printed number off your pot.

Then, in order:

Step	Name	What happens
A	Bonus Die	The highest scoring space among players who did not explode rolls. Ties all roll
B	Chip actions	Each player resolves their black, green and purple chips. These only happen now, never when drawn
C	Rubies	Anyone whose scoring space has a ruby on it takes 1 ruby. This applies even if you exploded
D	Victory points	Move your marker by the VP printed on your scoring space
E	Buy chips	Your scoring space number is your coin budget for this turn. Buy 1 or 2 chips, and if 2 they must be different colours
F	End of turn	Spend rubies to move your droplet or refill your flask, return rat stones, pass the Fortune Tellers, move the Flame

The order of A to F is not a suggestion. The Bonus Die is A because whoever is highest needs to know that before anyone banks anything, and D before E is why exploding hurts: the rulebook has a warning that a player whose pot exploded must choose between D and E rather than taking both.

When Does Your Pot Explode?

Your pot explodes when the white chips in it add up to more than 7, and only white chip values count. Seven white 1-chips is safe, one white 3 plus one white 2 plus one white 2 plus one white 1 is exactly 8 and blows up, and a pot full of red, green and purple chips is completely safe because none of those values count.

This is the rule to teach first and it is the one the old version of this page never gave a number for. “Too many white chips” is true and useless. The number is 7, it is a sum of values rather than a chip count, and the rulebook prints an IMPORTANT callout saying that only the white values are added up.

Three consequences that change how you play:

• A single white 3-chip takes you from 0 to 3. One white 3 plus one white 2 is 5, which is safe, and one more white 1 is 6, still safe. That is the whole game: you are watching a number climb.
• The white chip you draw last is still placed, and then you must stop. An explosion does not undo the chip.
• You cannot use your flask to rescue an explosion. The flask only works if the last chip you drew was white AND it did not blow your pot up.
• Coloured chips are all free. A red 4-chip advances you four expensive spaces and costs you nothing in explosion terms.

The white chips are the only thing in the bag that can hurt you, and the game starts you with seven of them out of nine. That is the tension, and it is designed, not an accident of the bag.

If your household would rather not have a random element at all, that is a completely reasonable line to draw and it is worth knowing where the no luck games are. Our abstract games with no luck guide is the honest version of that shelf, and the key idea in Quacks is the same one that makes them work: what is random is what you drew, and what you bought was not random at all.

What Are the Eight Ingredient Colours and What Do They Do?

There are 8 chip colours. White is the cherry bomb that explodes, orange is a cheap pumpkin with no ability, and green, blue, red, yellow and purple each have a different ability that changes with which of the four book sets you are playing. Black is a 1-chip whose ability compares you to your neighbours.

The old version of this page never listed a single colour. Here is the real thing, and the important detail is at the bottom of the table, because the same colour does a completely different job depending on which numbered set of books you laid out.

Colour	Ingredient	What it does	The trap
White	Cherry Bomb	Fills your pot, and its value counts toward the explosion total of 7. No other ability	The only chip that can kill you, and seven of your nine starting chips are white
Orange	Pumpkin	No ability at all. A 3 coin chip that fills 1 space. The orange book is always in play	The cheapest chip in the game and the reason red Set 1 chips are worth having
Green	Garden Spider	Resolves in Evaluation Phase B. Set 1 gives 1 ruby per green chip on your last or second to last space	Only counts if it is one of your final two chips, so a green drawn early is nearly worthless
Blue	Crow Skull	Resolves the moment it is drawn. Set 1 lets you draw that many extra chips, place one, and put the rest back	Drawing extra is not the same as using them. You keep one, at most
Red	Toadstool	Resolves the moment it is drawn. Set 1 goes further forward the more orange chips you already have	Set 2 lets you hold it beside the pot and place it after you stop, which is the cleverest chip in the game
Yellow	Mandrake	Resolves the moment it is drawn. Set 1 puts a white chip straight back in your bag	The best answer to a bad cherry, and it only works on the chip drawn immediately before it
Purple	Ghost’s Breath	Resolves in Evaluation Phase B. Set 1 gives 1 VP for 1 purple, more for 2 or 3	Never resolve it when you draw it, so it does nothing for the pot that turn
Black	African Death’s Head Hawkmoth	Resolves in Evaluation Phase B. Compare your black count to your neighbours and move your droplet or take a ruby	Always a 1-chip, so it only ever moves you 1 space. You are buying the ability, not the advance

That last row is the one nobody expects. Black is a 1-chip in every set, and it is also a 10 coin chip, because what you are buying is a comparison against the players either side of you.

The second thing worth knowing is the book reveal order. Orange and black are out from turn one. Green, blue and red come out from your chosen set immediately. Yellow arrives before turn 2 and purple before turn 3, so you cannot buy those chips early. The black book has a different page for a 2 player game than for 3 and 4, and the number of pots drawn at the bottom of the page tells you which you need.

This is not a deck builder in the usual sense, and our Sushi Go strategy guide is the better comparison for the set management that people actually enjoy here. What makes this game different is that you are not thinning a deck to find one good card. You are making the average of a bag go up, slowly, in public, while everybody watches what you bought.

What Are the Flask, the Rubies, the Droplet and the Rat Stone?

These are the five components that make Quacks a game rather than a bag of counters, and none of them appeared in the old version of this page.

Component	What it does	Cost
Flask	If the last chip you drew was white, put it back in your bag and keep going. Once per turn, and never if that chip exploded your pot	Free once per turn, or 2 rubies to refill it
Rubies	20 in the box. Move your droplet 1 space forward so your next chip lands on a higher space	2 rubies per space, repeatable
Droplet	The marker on the middle of your pot that your first chip is placed after. Moving it forward is the single biggest tempo play in the game	Rubies, or 6 rubies for the turn 9 VP
Rat stone	From turn 2, everyone except the leader sets it past their droplet by the number of rat tails behind the leader on the Scoring Track	Free, but only if you are not leading
Bonus Die	Rolls a ruby plus an orange chip, 4 coins, 2 VP, or 1 VP plus a droplet move. The face matters	Highest scoring space only, and only if you did not explode

The flask is the correct answer to the invented Dropper mechanic. It does exactly one job, which is putting one specific white chip back in your bag, and it works once per turn.

The rubies are the game engine. Twenty of them in a nine turn game, spent at 2 each, means the whole table generates roughly 40 to 50 ruby actions across a game, and almost all of them go on moving droplets forward. Our Splendor review is the other game on our shelf where a small pile of generic currency is the whole decision, and if that is the part you enjoy, the comparison is worth reading. A droplet two spaces further along means your first chip of every future turn lands two spaces higher, which compounds for the rest of the game. That is the deepest decision in Quacks and it never once appears in a beginner explanation.

The rat stone is the answer to the invented Rat Catcher. There is no rat token, no random draw, and no persistent bonus. There is a stone that catches you up to just behind the leader, and you get it for free precisely because you are not the leader.

If your table prefers a luck game where the randomness is a dice roll rather than a bag you built, our guide to randomness in tabletop gaming is the honest comparison, and Sleeping Gods is the heavier version of the same push your luck shape.

Are There Favour Tiles in Quacks of Quedlinburg?

No. There are no favour tiles in this game, in the base box, in any expansion, or under any other name, and the word does not appear in any of the four official rulebooks.

What the game actually has that is close to what you are picturing is one of three things, and they are quite different from each other:

1. The purple Ghost’s Breath chip, which is a chip in your bag that resolves only in Evaluation Phase B. Set 1 gives 1 victory point for one purple chip, 1 VP plus 1 ruby for two, and 2 VP plus a droplet move for three or more. Those are points on the Scoring Track, not a tile you collect and reveal.
2. The 0 and 50 seal tiles on the Scoring Track, which are four doublesided markers that sit on the two end spaces and have no ability at all.
3. Witch Pennies, which arrive with The Herb Witches expansion and are the currency for the three witch types. Those are the closest thing in the entire game to a collectible token, and they only exist if you own that expansion.

If you have read a description of Quacks somewhere that mentions collecting favours and turning them over at the end, it was describing a different game or a house variant. Nothing in the printed rules does that.

Is There a Duck Shaped Finale? How Does Scoring Actually Work?

There is no duck shaped component and no duck shaped finale. The game has no meeples and no wooden figures of any kind. The finale is: the player furthest down the Scoring Track wins, a tie goes to whoever filled their pot the furthest in the last turn, and a second tie means everyone shares. The phrase in the rulebook is that they can all claim to be the biggest quack of Quedlinburg.

That is the printed End of Game section, all of it. The duck is in the title and on the box art, and nowhere else. The Scoring Track runs from 0 to 50 and you move a marker along it with the victory points printed on your pot spaces, so a good round is worth 5 to 8 VP and a strong one is worth 15 plus 35 coins at the top of the pot.

The pot is 33 spaces deep. If you reach or pass 33, you put the chip on 33, take what is printed on the spoon, which is 15 victory points and 35 coins, and every player at 33 gets to roll the Bonus Die. If your pot blew up, you do not roll. That is why the last turn is so dangerous and so valuable at the same time.

The real finale is turn 9, and it is a rule, not a piece. At the end of the last turn you may buy 1 victory point for either 5 coins or 2 rubies, as many times as you like. It is the only way to convert a strong final round into extra points on the track, and if you stopped at space 30 with 60 coins you could buy four points. Plan for it.

Turn 9 also changes how you brew. The start player calls Stir, everyone reaches into their bag at the same time, and a player who wants to stop pulls their hand out with no chip. This repeats until everyone has stopped or blown up. So the last turn is simultaneous from the first chip, which is the moment every game of Quacks comes down to.

The tiebreak is a pot depth, not a score. If two players are level on the Scoring Track, the one who filled their pot the furthest in the last turn wins. That is a real edge and it is why a cautious final turn is often the losing one.

So the shape of a Quacks game is this. Nine turns, the last one is a free swing for everybody, and nobody can be knocked out of the lead on turn seven. For a family that argues about the last three points, our guide to keeping family game night peaceful is the more useful read, and if the swing is the specific problem then Lost Cities is a two player push your luck game with a much tighter finish.

Our House Strategy, Not Official Rules

Everything above is the printed game. This part is what we do at the table and none of it is in the rulebook.

1. Buy a yellow chip early, always. Set 1 yellow puts the white chip you just drew back in your bag. It is the cheapest insurance in the game and it also lets you keep pushing afterwards.
2. Treat 5 as your number, not 7. You do not have to use the whole allowance. A 6 white total with a red 4-chip still to come is a much better place than a 7.
3. Move the droplet before you buy the third chip. Two rubies to move your droplet one space is worth more than almost any chip, because it applies to every remaining turn. Our Viticulture strategy guide has the same problem of converting a hoard into points on a clock, and if you want the beginner version of that lesson our Settlers of Catan review is the gateway page most families start from.
4. Green and purple chips are last-two-chips chips. If you are going to draw a green, draw it when you are two chips from stopping. Drew it on chip one of nine and you wasted 8 coins.
5. Buy the red Set 1 chip when you are ahead. It goes further the more orange chips are already in your pot, and orange chips are the cheapest thing on the table.
6. Never spend rubies on anything else. Move the droplet, refill the flask, and on turn 9 buy the point. Those are the three printed uses and they are the three best uses.
7. Save the flask for a white 3. Putting a white 1 back is almost never worth a turn of your flask. A white 3 is three spaces you did not have to earn.
8. Count your white total out loud, once, after every chip. Emma does this and it is the single reason her pots do not explode. Alex, 7, cannot read the board numbers and plays by feel, which is why he is the one who blows up. This is the actual skill the game teaches, and our guide to how strategy games sharpen young minds covers why the counting habit matters more than the winning.

Is This a Good Game to Teach, and Is It Too Young for Older Kids?

Two questions come up constantly and they pull in opposite directions, so here is the honest split.

For teaching, this is close to the best game on our shelf. The whole first turn is one instruction, “put the chip that many spaces forward”, and the scoring rule is one printed number. Emma had the scoring space rule in three games. Nothing has ever taught a group faster, and the ten minute claim is real, not marketing.

For older kids it is too young, and you should not stretch it. The pot is 33 numbered spaces and a 7 year old cannot read them. Alex plays it, and he plays it by feel and he blows up more than anyone at the table. If your child is a confident reader at 8 or 9 it works. At 6 it does not, and forcing it is how you end up with a child who thinks board games are about being bad at numbers.

The reason the game hides its weight so well is that the decisions are small and specific rather than layered. Every choice is worth a couple of points and there is no engine to assemble and no combo to protect. If a group has outgrown that, the honest upgrades are heavier games rather than bigger expansions, and our guide to the best strategy games for modern players is the right shelf. A 10 minute teach is also the reason this one works as a second game after dinner, which is where most of our plays happen.

On a bad day, pick a different game. A pot that explodes in front of four people, loudly, several times a game, is a real thing to sit through and not every child wants to. 5 Tribes is the same length, teaches faster, and has no random element at all after setup.

Which Version of Quacks Should You Buy?

What you want	What to buy	Why
The main event	Quacks of Quedlinburg	The 2 to 4 player push your luck game. 215 chips, 9 turns, 45 minutes. This is the one to buy and it does not need anything else
Everything at once, and a fifth player	Quacks: All-In Edition	The 2025 English edition. Base game plus both expansions plus components for a 5th player, with deluxe bags and hard plastic chips. Same game, more players
Just a fifth player, cheaply	The Herb Witches expansion	Everything needed for a 5th player, plus Locoweed, orange 6-chips, overflow bowls, three witch types, Witch Pennies, and two more book sets
Something genuinely new alongside it	The Alchemists expansion	Patients, essences, alchemist flasks, 40 firecracker chips and 20 new Fortune Teller cards. Playable with the base game alone
A lighter game for a younger table	Sushi Go!	Quacks is rated 10 and up and the pot board needs a confident reader. This is what we hand Alex instead, and our guide to games that do not look babyish to tweens covers the rest of that shelf
The same push your luck shape, two player	Patchwork	Two players, 30 minutes, no luck in the bag at all. The opposite risk profile if Quacks randomness is the problem

• Similarities: A bag you build up over nine rounds, cheap chips early and better chips later, and a turn that is one decision.
• Differences: Quacks has no board anyone fights over, no talking to negotiate, and the whole tension is a single number climbing past 7.
• Why this game fans will enjoy it: If the thing you like is watching a table collectively hold its breath while one person reaches into a bag, this is that game and nothing else on our shelf does it.

Quacks of Quedlinburg FAQs

How many players does Quacks of Quedlinburg need? Two to four players in the base box. You need a fifth player expansion for five, and The Herb Witches is the one that provides it. Three or four is the sweet spot, and two is fine but a runaway leader is worse to watch when you are the only opponent.

How long does a game of Quacks of Quedlinburg last? 45 minutes, which is what the box and the publisher both print. The game is 9 turns and there is almost no downtime, so it rarely runs long.

How old do you have to be to play Quacks of Quedlinburg? Ten and up, which is the rating on the box and on the publisher product page. It is not a game for a 7 year old on their own, because the pot board is 33 numbered spaces and the ingredient books are dense.

When does your pot explode in Quacks of Quedlinburg? When the white chips in your pot add up to more than 7. Only white chip values count, so red, green, blue, yellow and purple chips are free. The last chip you drew is still placed, then you must stop.

What are the eight ingredient colours in Quacks of Quedlinburg? White, orange, green, blue, red, yellow, purple and black. White is the cherry bomb that can explode your pot, orange has no ability at all, and the other six each have a different ability that changes with which of the four book sets you are playing.

How do you score in Quacks of Quedlinburg? You score the printed value of the space directly after your last chip, not a sum of your ingredients. You then move your marker along the Scoring Track from 0 to 50. The pot is 33 spaces deep and space 33 pays 15 victory points and 35 coins.

What is the flask for in Quacks of Quedlinburg? If the last chip you drew was white and it did not explode your pot, you can put that one chip back in your bag and keep drawing. Once per turn. Refilling it costs 2 rubies.

Can you play Quacks of Quedlinburg solo? No. The base box is a 2 to 4 player game and there is no solo mode, no bot, and no autoplay rules. The black ingredient book has pages for 2 players and for 3 and 4 players only.

Do I need an expansion to play Quacks of Quedlinburg? No. The base game is complete for 2 to 4 players. The Herb Witches adds a 5th player plus locoweed, the Alchemists adds patients and essences, Wolfgang’s Exchange Office adds new scoring tiles, and the 2025 All-In Edition bundles the two main expansions with a 5th player.

Why is the last turn of Quacks of Quedlinburg so wild? Turn 9 is called Stir, where everyone draws into their bag simultaneously from the first chip, and at the end of it you can buy 1 victory point for either 5 coins or 2 rubies as often as you like. A strong final turn swings a game that was already decided.

The Verdict on Quacks of Quedlinburg

Quacks of Quedlinburg is a 2018 Kennerspiel des Jahres winner that still earns the award, and the two things you need to know before you buy are both about the shape of the game rather than its quality.

The first is that you score the space after your last chip, not your ingredients. If you have been told this is a game where you add up what you brew, you have been told the wrong game, and that misunderstanding is the reason people finish it feeling the rules were unfair. They were not, the number was just in a place nobody pointed at.

The second is that the last turn is a free swing for every player at once. Nobody can be knocked out of the lead on turn seven, and a big round seven score can be overturned in round nine. That is a wonderful thing for a family that laughs at exploding pots and a genuinely bad thing for a household that argues about the last three points. Both are fine, they are just different games to buy.

Everything else is in your favour. It teaches in ten minutes, it plays three and four beautifully, it has almost no downtime, the components are genuinely lovely, and 215 chips in a 30 centimetre box is an absurd amount of game for the money. Buy the base game. Buy the All-In Edition if you want five people or better components. And teach the white 7 rule before you teach anything else, because everything else in this game is a variation on not blowing up.

If the weight of the pot board is what is worrying you more than the luck, Kingdomino is the same forty five minutes with a grid instead of a risk calculation. And if you want the same press your luck tension without anybody having a bad day about it, our guide to games for kids who get frustrated easily is the version of that conversation for younger tables.