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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There are premium ingredients that you can purchase to make your spirits, these premium ingredients will add money and/or points to the spirit that you make. As I said earlier, it makes the whole distilling process a little bit more interesting and adds a tension to the game that can lead each player to have their own private little “yay or nay” moments. The part of the game that I found very interesting and very true to the theme was the process of making the spirits.

Distilled is a 1-4 four player game that should take about 30 minutes per player to get through this mid weight euro featuring press your luck and resource management mechanics. The process is fascinating, it’s like real magic, seeing these very basic ingredients transformed into something so crafted and nuanced. The issue with being the first player becomes more pronounced late in the game, when the spirit labels are almost gone. In the game, you have inherited an abandoned distillery from a distant relative, and are now tasked with bringing your family’s business back to its former glory! As of the publishing of this review they have already met the pledge goal in 23 minutes, so congratulations to Dave Beck and the team over at Paverson Games.The head and tail are normally put back into the next batch you are distilling (don't worry its distilled again and no longer bad for you). This game breeds moments when you forget about the scoring track and just want to make some brandy for the round—not because it is potentially the perfect maximization in an exacting coin-to-Spirit-Point ratio, but because you just want to enjoy yourself making brandy. 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.

This is where you place all the ingredients you want to brew into your washbag and add an alcohol card to match each sugar. I steadily found games to take 30-40 minutes per player, a number that I’m sure would decrease with increased experience. Normally, your goal should be to NOT make moonshine or vodka, since those recipes score you almost no points.Over the course of seven rounds you will acquire ingredients, bottles, barrels, recipes, equipment upgrades and staff to create and distil the best spirits around. Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. Choose whether to age your spirits to enhance their flavor, or immediately bottle them to sell it for quick profit.

Spending an entire round to pull together everything you need to make a big point scorer, only to see it turn to vodka all because of a bad draw can be really frustrating. Money is so tight in the early game here that I found it a little too punishing, sucking some of the fun out of the proceedings. One friend of mine who backed the crowdfunding campaign reported that his first five-player game (all new players for their learning game) took FOUR HOURS.The first player gets the chance to distill a spirit first; if there’s only one whiskey label left but multiple players made it, that might be the difference between two points (or more) for the first player. There are a few food/drink games out in the world in which it would be almost rude not to pair them with the subject in question. But more importantly, in a seven-round game with five players, two players get the advantage of going first twice in each game. This may well be the game that brings certain non-gamers into the hobby or at least allows them to enjoy a game night when they otherwise wouldn’t. Sell Phase - Players bottle their spirits, score spirit points, receive money and gain a label bonus.