Distilled: A Spirited Strategy Game, Highly-Thematic Euro Game, Strie for The Title of Master Distiller, 30 Minute Play Time, for 1 to 5 Players, Ages 14 and up

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A few other issues. The only thing about Distilled that feels broken is the round structure. Seven rounds is too many, particularly when the player count is high. But more importantly, in a seven-round game with five players, two players get the advantage of going first twice in each game. This feels off, particularly because having the first choice of a fresh market of cards can be vital. Teng Whay is the community liaison for Distilled. He is a college student majoring in Chemistry. Hailing from the little red dot of Singapore, Teng Whay is an avid gamer who loves board games and video games alike and hopes to one day be able to design, develop and publish his own board game. His favorite categories of board games are medium to heavy-weight strategy games and is always up for a challenge. For a game that comes in such a big box, Distilled is deceptively simple. From set up to scoring, everything flows smoothly and is a game that can be taught easily. Throughout your turns you will be acquiring various sugars, grains, upgrades, barrels, bottles etc all so that you can brew the best spirits that you can. And at the highest profits of course. However, Distilled accommodates up to five players. That means that for your first four- or five-player game, you are looking at possibly a three-hour experience. For my final review play, I tried Distilled at five players, with three of the five players being experienced Distilled players. That game took two hours and 45 minutes. Over the course of seven rounds you will acquire ingredients, bottles, barrels, recipes, equipment upgrades and staff to create and distill the best spirits around.

It is really hard to find fault in this masterpiece. But I do have a job to do… “Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy.” Frank Sinatra However, all players can make moonshine or vodka right out of the box. So, even if you don’t make the recipe you want during the distill phase, you’ll still always make something. (Normally, your goal should be to NOT make moonshine or vodka, since those recipes score you almost no points.) This will turn off some people—specifically, strategy gamers—expecting the recipe fulfillment elements of distilling spirits to be more deterministic.

There is a small gripe I have concerning the number of rounds in the game. I primarily play games 2-player and this game ends after 7 rounds. This means that whoever goes first on the first round, also goes first on the last round. Whilst this doesn’t make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, it is just one of those things that irk me. David Digby is the solo designer for Distilled. David is a designer, developer, and rulebook editor based in Colchester in the UK. David has also designed solo modes for Chocolate Factory, Eternal Palace, Swatch, Fantastic Quests, Undaunted: Reinforcements(with David Turczi) and Tinners Trail(which he also redeveloped for the new edition). As a slight disclaimer, it is worth noting that the pics I have provided for this review were taken from my Signature Blend pledge level copy of the game. So, there may be elements not present in the base game, such as brewers from the Middle Eastern expansion, metal coins, coasters, shot glass, neoprene mat etc. But, that said, the base game and components are all produced at an excellent standard and the retail version of the game is still superb. Don’t get me wrong, I am far past the ‘iron liver Dan’ days of my youth and waking up in car show room entry ways holding on to half eaten cheesecake slices. True story. Don’t ask. But I do still enjoy the odd tiple. Especially if that tiple happens to be unusual and interesting. And coincidentally, that is pretty much a perfect depiction of Distilled: unusual and interesting.

The rulebooks? Fantastic. There’s the normal instruction manual but also a “First Taste” walkthrough for new players who want something a bit more to guide a first play. The player aids are my second-favorite aids, just behind Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory. Most players will watch an instruction video, or read the rules just once, and be off and running during their first game. A typical round is made up of four phases; Market, Distill, Sell and Age phase and players will gain "Spirit" points over the course of seven rounds. At the end of the game the player with the most spirit points is the winner. Sell Phase - Players bottle their spirits, score spirit points, receive money and gain a label bonus. Points and money are awarded for the cards that make up your spirit (including a barrel) that has been distilled in the previous phase. If you want to play it on Distilled's dedicated Discord server, find it here: https://discord.gg/Th9WFcX Cody Reimer is the copy editor for Distilled. He is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, where he teaches in the Professional Communication and Emerging Media program and the Master’s program in Technical and Professional Communication. An avid gamer, his research focuses on the intersection of games and rhetoric. His academic writing has been published in Communication Design Quarterly and the Journal of Basic Writing as well as several edited collections, and he frequently appears as a guest on the podcast Game Studies Review.A typical round is made up of four phases; Market, Distill, Sell and Age phase and players will gain “Spirit” points over the course of seven rounds. At the end of the game the player with the most spirit points is the winner. Annnnd that about sums up everything that I have to say that veers on the negative side. And trust me, I needed to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find something to put in this section. “The golden nectar of life is sweeter when shared over games” Dan Hilton