Feed your farm animals or lose with dignity
There are many noble themes in board games. Some ask you to save the world, some ask you to conquer empires, some ask you to build civilisations, many ask you to gain the most victory points. And then there is Quacks & Co: Quedlinburg Dash published by Schmidt Spiele, which boldly asks you to feed vegetables to a pig to make it race.
Medieval animal Olympics
In Quacks & Co: Quedlinburg Dash you are not brewing potions like in its older sibling, Quacks of Quedlinburg. In this game for 2-4 players, you are now managing what can only be described as a livestock marathon. You pick one of 4 animals (cow, donkey, sheep or pig), feed it mystery food picked out of a bag and hope that it runs faster than the other animals. Yes, this is a real game. Yes, it works. Yes, it was nominated for the Kinderspiel des Jahres in 2022. No, animals are not harmed during the playing of this game (so long as your toddler does not try to swallow the animal tokens).
Just like in Quacks of Quedlinburg, the core mechanic is “bag-building. On a player’s turn they pull a food token out of a bag and “feed” it to their animals. Depending on the number on the token the animal is moved forward a corresponding number of spaces. Some tokens move you far, most tokens give you bonuses and some… are dream weed…
Dream Weed: The Real Villain
Dream weed, as its name suggests, puts your animals to sleep for a turn (basically a “miss a turn” action). Once 3 dream weeds are placed on your character sheet you return all played tokens into your bag and use any rubies (the in-game currency) accumulated during play to purchase additional tokens from the market. In this way you increase the chance of picking desirable food tokens and decrease your chances of picking an awful dream weed. What is nice is that the Quacks & Co adds a “catch up” mechanic in that the last player gets to add an additional gem to their cache before they proceed with the shopping action.
Red apple tokens give players rubies to buy better tokens. Yellow corn tokens allow players to role a dice and receive a reward or gain movement. Green cabbage allow you pick an additional token on your turn. Blue blueberries allow you to upgrade your tokens (for additional movement). Orange carrot tokens allow you to gain four-leafed clovers which grant you additional movement when you recycle your tokens. Purple grape tokens allow you to gain additional tokens from the market.
There is a more basic caterpillar side to the rules and a more advanced butterfly side which changes the bonus outcome of drawing the various tokens. This does increase the replayability to a limited extent.
The goal of Quacks & Co is to reach the finish line on the other side of the track as fast as possible. The winner is awarded the magnificent golden cauldron and named the winner of this rural marathon. The board is double-sided (the only real difference being the length of the race).
Vegan bag-building
The component quality is generally solid. The food tokens are satisfyingly chunky; the wooden animal tokens are cute and the art on the board is colourful with great attention to detail. My daughter loves telling me how she has just raced past the goat or the bear that are beautifully depicted alongside many other creatures along the sides of the track. She also loves nothing more than playing with the delightful sparkly ruby-like gems and always insists on being the “ruby lady” so that she can spend her time playing with them as well as dishing them out to players. 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.
One negative is that whilst the cow and donkey bags are soft and supple, the pig and sheep bags for some reason are very stiff and do not feel nearly as nice. I am not sure if this is due to the dye that was used but it would have been better had there been better consistency in that regard. Another negative is that the board itself, whilst very windy, is basically just a line that is moved along. I feel that the developers may have missed a trick in not adding more interesting obstacles or features to the track itself (at least on one of the sides) that may have increased the games replayability.
Slow out the stocks
Generally, I have found that games initially progress slowly. The first 1/3 of the race takes a long time to complete, but, just as you are starting to think that this game could go on for hours, someone pulls an 8-value sweet beet from their bag and their donkey turns into a Kentucky Derby thoroughbred.
We bought Quacks & Co for my daughter when she turned 4 but we found that initially she became easily distracted and would lose interest after only a few turns. However, as she has gotten older, she has requested Quacks & Co more frequently as she has caught on to how her bag becomes greatly improved as the game goes on and in almost a year we have played this game around 20 times. She is almost 5 now, and whilst I still do not feel she has quite grasped how to maximise movement she does still win her fair share of races.
The Cow in the Room
This is mainly because this Quacks & Co is very luck driven. You can carefully build your bag by strategically choosing your tokens and then still lose because your fingertips seem to be magnetically attracted to the dream weed. However, this game is targeted at children, and I feel that if it was more geared towards skill-based success then my daughter would be less inclined to request to play it if she found herself constantly losing. Most toddlers do not like losing.
Despite the inherent luck in the game, most finishes tend to be close and often come down to one lucky draw at the end. This sets the game up for some exciting conclusions as a lucky sweet beet draw or 2 at the right time can quickly propel a languishing ovine to the top of the podium out of nowhere. The “catch-up” mechanic mentioned earlier in this review does a good job at creating these tense finales.
The luck-driven aspect aside, I still find myself enjoying this game designed for children, as I find myself trying to decide how best to optimise my own bag. How long to you choose the apples to improve your gem acquiring capabilities? When is the right time to switch over to blueberries and cabbage to ensure you improve your ability to pick improved tokens? Or do you acquire more corn to hopefully generate more movement for yourself? This strategic side Quacks & Co helps keep me interested, and there are not many children’s games that are able to do that.
