The Quacks of Quedlinburg: The Alchemists Expansion

The Alchemists is the second major expansion for Wolfgang Warsch’s The Quacks of Quedlinburg. The 2018 smash hit from Schmidt Spiele is a mainstay within the modern board gaming world. Quacks of Quedlinburg blends the mechanisms of bag-building and pushing your luck. And the results are every bit as wacky as the potions you create!

In this expansion, the game introduces a new extension to your cauldron, in the form of a laboratory. During set-up, you reveal three random illnesses or afflictions that have struck down the citizens of Quedlinburg. You decide at the start of the game which illness you want to try and cure. This could be vampirism, or the more-bizarre case of carrot-nose! (That’s right, the citizens have grown carrots for noses…)

Depending on your chosen disease, you place the associated card on your lab board. The game plays the same, with you drawing ingredient chits out of your bag. You add them to your cauldron as per usual. Only this time, a new phase gets added. After everyone’s stopped drawing or blown up, check your cauldron’s ingredient types. You get one lab point per unique ingredient drawn. You also get one lab point if you drew exactly a sum of seven unwanted white ingredients. You also get points for each of your neighbours whose concoction exploded.

The lab points you get determines an extra reward, depending on the disease type you’re aiming to cure. This could be the chance to earn more money to buy an extra chit. It could be extra rat tails, or straight-up extra points. These tantalising benefits further heighten players to push their luck to the limit!

Please note that The Alchemists is an expansion; you’ll need a base copy of The Quacks of Quedlinburg to play. You can also combine The Alchemists with the first Quack’s expansion, The Herb Witches.

Player Count: 2-5 Players
Time: 45 minutes
Age: 10+