Quacks and Co: Quedlinburg Dash

Over the past few years, a number of games have been released that have caught fire with the board gaming community, even gaining a foothold outside those entrenched in the hobby. Games like Wingspan, Gloomhaven and Everdell have all seen huge widespread success and another of the same ilk is the massively popularQuacks of Quedlinburg, a push-your-luck masterpiece perfectly honed to create roars of laughter and screams of frustration around any table.

When designer Wolfgang Warsch and publisher Schmidt Spiele announced a family-friendly spin off,Quacks and Co: Quedlinburg Dash early in 2022, I’ll freely admit to being more than a little sceptical. While thematically entirely suitable for children, the original Quacks of Quedlinburg worked for me on a visceral level because of the constant cogs of probability, laughing at someone who was just a little too greedy, sweating knowing one more chip was the difference between victory and defeat. I had my doubts that sanitising this experience for something more suitable mechanically for children would retain the charm of what makes Quacks of Quedlinburg such a modern classic. 

Needless to say, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Quacks and Co: Quedlinburg Dash manages to maintain the charm and elegance of the original, that delicious risk and reward cycle of bag building and pulling whilst being playable with children from an incredibly young age. 

The day before the market that is being played in the original game, a race is held in which a group of children each find the nearest animal, hop on its back and race to be the first to reach town and claim the Golden Cauldron for that year. 

Components

Quacks and Co: Quedlinburg Dash is designed as a lightweight family title and as such, is priced accordingly, substantially cheaper than its big brother Quacks of Quedlinburg(which was already phenomenal value for money). As such, production isn’t quite to the same level. That said, given how cheap this game is, the quality of the game components is absolutely superb.

The main gameboard is bifold, large and detailed without being over cluttered and therefore too complex for children. It’s also double-sided, with the back of the board offering a longer path to victory for when you want to sit and play a little longer.

Each player has their own simple player board emblazoned with the animal of their choice, the back of which succinctly but clearly marks out what goes in each bag at the start of the game. The front of each player board has an illustration of their selected animal, a small number of spaces for tokens and a backpack where rubies that are picked up on the way can be stored.

Each player also has their own bag to go with their board. A nice touch is that each bag is colour coordinated with their chosen animal - the bag for the player riding the pig is pink, the sheep bag is white and so on. This is purely an aesthetic choice from the publisher that adds nothing to the gameplay mechanically but my two children loved picking their animal and the respective bag that went with it.

Cardboard tokens are chunky and clear, easy to read and understand and the rubies from the original game are ported over to this one. My favourite game component here though is the wonderful pre-fitted box insert that not only has individual compartments for each token value but also has simple and obvious iconography along the side of each section making it clear how much each one costs to add to your bag. 

Gameplay

The key difference in gameplay between Quacks and Co: Quedlinburg Dash and the original game is that chips are no longer pulled from bags simultaneously. Each player will take a turn pulling their chip from a bag, showing everyone, adding to their player board and taking the respective action.

Also, the alternative to Quacks of Quedlinburg’sevil white cherry bombs in Quacks and Co: Quedlinburg Dash are dreamweed tokens. In this new version of the game, these are far less punitive, essentially stopping you from having a turn of movement and action but instead allowing you to shop for new chips in the market.

For those of you experienced with Quacks of Quedlinburg, one of the things that impressed me so much about that game and keeps it coming back to my kitchen table time and time again is the modularity of the different chip sets. Changing one to another can completely alter how the game feels and plays out, keeping the experience fresh and players on their toes.

Quacks and Co: Quedlinburg Dash does this also but in an extremely clever way. The base chip set is incredibly simple. Only four chips are used and the rules for each are so easy, my four year old had them totally understood by the end of the first game. There are then three more chip types that can be added in stages to increase complexity. Then each chip has an entirely different and more complex second set of rules. I played this with three other adults  with all the various chip types on this second set of instructions and Quacks and Co: Quedlinburg Dash, while still lightweight, contained far more depth than it had any right to.

Conclusion

I have a deep abiding love for Quacks of Quedlinburg as one of my favourite games to play with family and friends. The vast majority of the time, Quacks and Co: Quedlinburg Dash will not replace that experience. 

However, as a dad, it's been wonderful watching my older child who is now ten years old, move into the hobby, enjoying more and more complex games. But involving my younger child is difficult because it normally involves playing some sort of simple board game that is, quite frankly, not much fun for anyone around the table other than her. 

This is what has impressed me most about the gameplay of Quacks and Co: Quedlinburg Dash - this is literally a game I could play with my four year old daughter right now and still have a whale of a time. But as she grows more comfortable in the hobby, as her English and mathematics improves, this is a game that will evolve as she does, increasing in depth and complexity. Quacks and Co: Quedlinburg Dash is a wonderful experience and one I highly recommend for any family collection.