Designer: Wolfgang Warsch

The Quacks of Quedlinburg: The Herb Witches expansion (Saturday Review)

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"Bubble, bubble," the herb witch cackles. "Stir the pot - nice and slow," the miracle doctor says. "Slowly, add another ingredient... what will it be?" the quack surgeon asks, looking at you intently. You reach into the bag, with anticipation, not quite sure what ingredient your hand will retrieve. "Come now, come now," the witch emplores. "Put it in the pot, don't hesitate," the miracle doctor tells you, rushing you along. You can't look. You quickly withdraw your hand and throw the ingredient in the pot and as you do so, you open your eyes a tiny bit and see a flash of white. A cherry bomb lands in the pot with a splash and a fraction of a second later it explodes. However, it's not too late to seek help from The Herb Witches by Schmidt Spiele.

The Quacks of Quedlinburg (Saturday Review)

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"Carefully now," you mumble as your hand reaches into the bag of ingredients. "That's it," you mutter as you pull out another pumpkin piece and add it to your bubbling pot. "One more, just one more," you say to yourself as you pray that the next ingredient won't be another cherry bomb. It would be disastrous. You have plenty of toadstools, pumpkins, crow skulls and emerald spiders in your bag, so you should be all right. "Come on, come on," you pray as you slowly withdraw your hand and reveal the ingredient you hold. "Oh no!" It's a cherry bomb of course and with a loud bang, your pot explodes. Now you have no chance of competing with the other Quacks of Quedlinburg by Schmidt Spiele.

The Mind Extreme (Saturday Review)

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There is absolute silence and the flickering candles cast eerie shadows of the four people sitting around the table. Everyone has one hand on the table and moves their gaze from face to face, trying to lock onto the thoughts that waft through the other person's mind. The tension is palpable and the air is thick. There is a faint sound of ticking, as if from a grandfather clock, but it's not real. It's in everyone's head. Yet, it's not a single clock, but a jumbled rhythm as each player counts down at their own frequency. Then, slowly, everyone withdraws their hand and the game begins. It's time to get into synch as the game of The Mind Extreme by Nürnberger-Spielkarten-Verlag begins.

The Mind (Saturday Review)

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If you are looking for an easy-to-teach, easy-to-carry, quick, fun, co-operative card game, then The Mind by Coiledspring Games is the right game for you. However, let's start at the beginning. The game is really simply: there is a deck of cards numbered 1 to 100, every players is dealt a certain number randomly from the deck, there is no turn order and everyone plays when they feel the time is right, without co-ordinating with each other, and as long as all cards are played in ascending order everyone wins. That's pretty much all there is to it. Sounds easy enough - but it's actually really hard - and that's what makes this game so interesting in my view, as it creates a new gameplay mechanism that I have not come across before.