The Hungry Gamer Previews Distilled Cocktails

0:00 Oo, that looks tasty. Welcome folks. Stay the Hungry Gamer is back with another crowdfunding preview. And today we're talking about Distilled Cocktails, a spirited expansion published by Patterson Games, designed by Dave Beck and Richard Woods, and art by Eric Evansson. And I do apologize if I mispronounced any of those names. So, what this is is this is the first huge expansion to distill. There are two other smaller expansions, but this is the first big one. And what it does is it allows you to create craft cocktails. It allows you to sell your spirits to collectors, as well as kind of develop your fame throughout the world, all while adding a bunch of new cards to the game as well. And finally, it allows you to on occasion do a second wash back and make a second spirit. Now, if you have no idea how to play distilled, I recommend checking out a video that teaches you that because this video is going to focus solely on what is new in Distilled Cocktails. So, with that being said, if you are not interested in how this expansion works and just want to jump ahead to my final thoughts, then you want to go to the timestamp on the screen right now. For those of us still here, let's talk about what we have in front of us. We have some new distillers with their secret ingredients. And nothing's changed about how those work. So, I'm just going to move those off to the side. We have some new spirit awards. Again, nothing's

1:32 changed about how those work. They're just new ones. So, I'm going to move those away as well. And the same thing with the new distillery goals. Also, nothing has changed about these. Again, they are just new objectives that you are trying to reach. Which leaves us with the cocktails. the second washback and the renown board here and then of course I'll show you a little bit that has to do with the new cards. So we'll go ahead and get started right away and we will start by talking about how the new washback works. So when you start the game you'll notice you have another board right here that you're going to be adding to the side here along with this additional space to place your spirit labels up there. And you'll notice that it starts with the washback locked. And so what's going to happen is during the market phase, you'll be allowed to purchase the ability to use another washback. So the first time I purchase one, it's going to cost me two. I'd get an alcohol that I get to use however I like. And then that will allow me to unlock this washback right here. Then at any point during the rest of the game, in addition to my normal washback over here, I could then do a second on this side. Now, what's important here is when you are doing that, you have to make sure that you are distilling a different spirit than the first one. You can do the same spirit, but if you do that, you've basically just made one huge batch and you're only going to get a single spirit label for it. But if you manage to do two separate spirits, then you'll get two spirit

3:03 labels, which you can then place up here just like you normally would. And then once you've used it, you would then relock it. And then the next time you want to do it, you would have to purchase that ability again for an increasing price as the game goes on. I'll also point out right here that there is another place to place a spirit label, which in this case would give you three basic ingredients or two points. And then we have up here these four spots here, which are also places that you can place your labels. And this also gives you a place to place all the other labels that you might be getting by the second washback. And so you'll get what you cover, an alcohol, a wild mixer, which I'll explain later, a coin, and renown, which I'll explain later. But if you're using the ones up here, in addition to gaining that, you'll also be able to sell the spirit you just made to one of the collectors that are out in the game. And each collector is going to give you a little bit of extra money on top of what your normal score would be for the spirit, but also will give you an in-game scoring condition. So, let's say I sold my signature spirit and I placed it up here. I would have gotten myself an alcohol. Then I could look here and see if any of these collectors are looking to buy signature spirits. In this case, this cowboy is interested in buying a signature spirit as long as it is worth at least 19 points. If it is, I will get one extra buck. And then I could take this right here and place it there. And now at the end of the game, I'll get two points for every spirit that I've sold from the Asia. and Oceanana region. And

4:36 as you can see, there's different requirements and you get different bonuses, but most importantly, there are different in-game scoring conditions that you're able to unlock. And there are a bunch of different collectors in the game. Now, the next thing I want to point out are on this second washback, you'll notice you have these two distillery bar spaces. And what those are for are places where you can put cocktail recipes. On the cocktail board here, you will see that there are prices and you're able to purchase any one of those that you would like and you're able to purchase that during the market phase. So, if I wanted this one here, it would cost me two bucks and I would take it and place it onto one of my two bars. And then, just like normal, everything would slide down and flip out. And also at the end of the round, depending on player count, one or two cards will also cycle off to kind of keep the deck flowing. The other thing you'll notice is there is this order up and this little mini fridge. Now, what this is right here is a place to place the dice, which in the Kickstarter version, there's this lovely shaker that you're going to get. This is obviously a prototype, and you'll roll those out at the beginning of the game, and that's going to tell you what eight mixers are going to start in the fridge. Then, you would roll them again, and that's going to tell you what the next eight mixers are going to be in the fridge. So, when you make your purchase of your cocktail, depending on how much money you spent, so let's say I spent two bucks for this, I could then take two mixers. And we'll just say that I'm going to take this one

6:07 here and this one here. The the umbrellas represent wilds. And you can never take more than one of those, no matter what happens. And you will simply place them over there. The other thing you can do is you can spend two bucks over here to get three more mixers. So, we'll say that I'm going to do that and I'll just take one, two, and three. Now, what matters with that is at the end of your turn, if there's ever only three mixers left, then you will refresh the market with what you have right there. So, in this case, we would have another one of those, another one of those. That's that die. Then I would place a another pitcher, which I actually am out of pitchers at the moment. Mixers are not limited. I just happen to not bring it up back here with me. So, let's just go ahead and turn that to this side here. And we have that and a fizz. And again, I don't have another picture with me. So, we will do this one and this one. And then that and that. Then, because I refreshed the market, I could take any one of these that I would like and go to my supply. Then, you take them in, put them back in, shake them up, and now we know what's coming out the next round. And this brings us to how renown works at the ve after the aging phase. Then you have the cocktail phase and people can sell the cocktails that they have made. And the way the cocktails work are in order to gain your cocktail, you have to one have the mixers needed. So in this case, if I wanted to do this, I could use

7:40 a wild and a flavoring and a fruit and accomplish this top one there. However, you'll notice it has right here a type of spirit that you need. What that means is, let's say I had that there. I have to use a grain spirit or an aged fruit spirit. So, in this case, I'm using the grain spirit. Then, I would look up here, see what type of glass there is, and I would place that out, noting that I have one of those glasses, and I have used that spirit, and I can't use it again. I would discard my pieces and then I would gain two renown. And I've had this thing upside down the whole time. That is embarrassing and silly. Let's flip that on around. And then I would place my two renown onto the map.

8:25 So here's my two renown. And the first thing you have to do is you have to start in the region that your distiller is from. And we'll just pretend that my distiller is from Asia. And so I could place one out like so. And I would collect what I covered. in this case, an umbrella. And then I can place one next to it. So I could then say place right here and gain a point or go up here and get a water. You can also cover other people's renown tokens. And there's no penalty for doing that other than you won't get whatever the initial reward was. But I could do that right there as I'm trying to spread my renown around the world. Anytime you have spanned two continents with your renown, if you're the first one to do so, you can take the rewards that are listed on the board and gain whatever it happens to say. Then at the end of the game, you'll receive points for having sets of your renown markers on the four different scoring areas.

9:20 Every full set you have will get you three points. And having a all and having six markers on a space will also get you three points per region. Then finally, at the end of the game, if you remember, you were putting out these different glasses. But if you have made cocktails of all four different glass shapes, by the end of the game, you will score points. And you start out gaining one point for every set. But the more of your renown that you place out onto the board, it makes them worth more and more points. And the last thing to talk about is one of the things that the new cards have. And you know, some of these cards are sleeved. Perhaps you can see that in this light and some are not. That's only because my personal copy I have sleeved because I actually played at 10th Street Distillery quite often and just wanted to keep it safe. And all of the prototype cards like this guy right here, they aren't sleeved cuz well I got to send them on anyway. But other than they all have new abilities, the thing to point out here is this little forklift symbol here. What it means is when you're doing your discard at the end of the market phase, it might cause you to cycle the deck even further. So, normally if you just discard a card like so, you have your slide down and a new one comes out and this is a new card, but nothing will happen. However, if we looked right here, as soon as I start discarding cards with the forklift, that will immediately discard the next card. And in this case, that was another forklift, which would then immediately pull the following card. Then we'd slide one

10:52 down, and then we'd have three more cards. It is possible to discard the entire row. Though, even if this final card that gets discarded has a forklift on it, you don't start pulling from the deck. And as you can see down here, we only have one forklift. So, we do that. And then the next one would discard. And then that would be that. And that's how the new stuff in Distilled Cocktails works. So, what do I like about this game? The first thing is it takes Distilled and just puts it on steroids. You just have so many more choices and options that you're able to make. And occasionally in the original game, sometimes towards the end of the game, you would just kind of fall into a rhythm of, well, this is the only real choice that I have. Well, with this expansion, suddenly there's a lot of new choices that you have. And so it really kind of I think refreshes the entire game in a way that I think is very very satisfying. But as far as the specifics, there's really three new things that this game is adding. It's adding the cocktails, it's adding the second washback, and it's adding the collectors and then, you know, new cards as well. So I guess three and a half things are being added. And I want to put them in the order that I like them.

12:04 And so the first one that I like the most is the cocktails. I think it's really, really fun. I really enjoy this idea that one, it's something else to chase. It gives you these mixers that you're able to purchase. It has the really fun shaker with the dice, and that's that is just fun. But at the same time, you know what's going to be coming out the next round, so it's not so it doesn't feel random. But I like that you have this thing that you're kind of chasing. And as you're chasing this other thing, you are able to then use these spirits that you have made. So, it's not the end of the game for them. They're there. You got your bonus. And then you're going to be able to do one more thing with them later. And I find that very, very satisfying, very fun. Then you combine that with the way the renown works and how you're kind of spreading your notoriety all over the globe, which I think is very, very cool. But mostly, I think it's really cool because you're kind of working it out, trying to get some points and little bonuses. But those little bonuses that you're getting are just often so timely and it can be exactly the thing that you need to be able to do something else really cool.

13:11 So, I really do really like the way that works. I also have to give a special little kind of shout out that it's not really hard to get the mixers. You're able to you get them when you purchase a cocktail recipe. You also get mixers. You can buy them very cheaply. So, I do like the way that works, especially because you're buying those mixtures for only two. And as near as I can tell, other than the basic items, there's nothing that you're buying for only two. So, I like the way that works. It's a way to kind of spend some money when you have just a little bit left over. The next thing is the second washback. And that's pretty much something that people have been clamoring for as long as I've known people playing Distilled. People have always been like, "Ah, gosh, I really want to be able to do a second one of these." And now you can. But with that, I like that it's not over easy. You can't just do it. You actually have to spend a little capital to be able to do the thing and get all the items. And I love what they've done thematically with you have to make a different spirit because if you make the exact same spirit, then no, you really just make one big batch of the same thing. And so, you're only going to get one label. And I really like the way that works. I also love the new spot that they have uh just above the second washback, which is the get three basic items. That is great.

14:26 That is a great great bonus. Then moving on to the my third favorite of them are the forklifts. I think those are great. I think it's great that it is a way to just kind of cycle through the deck a lot faster and I wish there was a way to get some of those forklifts on more items throughout the thing. It's just really great to have those items cycle more because there's always going to be a time when suddenly the whole market is all plant or all fruit and doesn't matter how many times I shuffle that deck it always comes up that we'll have the whole thing is all fruit and ain't nobody trying to get fruit and it just kind of sits there and someone has to kind of bite the bullet and buy something they don't really need. So I love the way those fork lists work which brings us to my least favorite of them which are the new collectors. Now, and now also note this is still in my things I like about this game, but I got to rank these things, right? And on the one hand, I love the collectors. I love that there's people going out and trying to buy your specific spirit, and that's really, really cool. Also, shout out to Patterson Games for the inclusion in those characters. They're just fabulous.

15:31 Every single one of them is fabulous. So, I love that. But to me, it's really a hard challenge sometimes to do that because they have very specific wants and needs. And so, you really have to kind of pursue that, which means you kind of have to change an entire strategy for a couple turns around to be able to get the thing that they particularly want. And getting the collector's goals are way harder than I thought it was going to be. And it and it's very satisfying because those in-game scoring conditions are great if you're able to chase down the right one. But because they're randomized, sometimes it can be really hard to kind of go off track to get the goal that's going to give you points for doing grain, but you had to make something with fruit to get that. So, it can be a little bit hard, which is going to bring me into one of my quibbles with the game. So, first one is it is massive. It does not fit on a humansized table. It is huge.

16:28 I can't imagine playing it at five players. I played it at three players. This is my the biggest I played. And we could have done four at that table, but we were playing on our big dining room table. I could not play this more than solo. Maybe maybe I could get two-player on my 3x4 table I have back here in my game room. So, it's really, really, really big. The next thing is it just significantly increases the length of the game. And there's just no way to put it any other way. It just makes the game a lot longer. Now, next I'm going to just highlight something that I'm really hoping is going to change. And that is on all the original ingredients, there are these fun little fun facts and you have these, you know, different names, all these different spirits, and every different unique distiller has their own special signature, which is something special. None of the cocktails have any names on them. None of them have any fun facts on them. And I really, well, I'm kind of disappointed by that. I really hope that they add some fun stuff on there because the art on them is great.

17:24 The cocktails look really good, but tell us what they are. Which brings me to the last thing. Now, before I say what it is, those of you that know me know that I'm a big Shakespeare fan. And one of the things that Shakespeare did was he made up a whole lot of words and change the usage of a whole lot of words. For example, first person to use fair play, which is very appropriate for a board game channel. But more important to me, he also made up verbs. He's the first person to use elbow as a verb. And so, I'm going to do that right now. I'm going to do that with the word exponential. And I'm going to say that this expansion exponentials the choice difficulty in this game. Distilled has always had the lovely challenge of what am I going to do?

18:11 Because there's no way I can do everything that I want to do only making seven spirits. And if I'm going to take the time and start aging something, it means my next turn is going to be really hard because I don't have much money. And it's always done that. Now you have so many more choices and so many more ways to blow your money. It can be paralyzing in some moments as you're trying to figure out, do I want to try to chase cocktails? Well, I got to chase the cocktails because I got to get the renown on the board because I get the renown on the board. I want to be able to get these cool little bonuses. But at the same time, I need to go after these collectors, which means I have to try to make something that's really good for me as far as what I've developed so far so I can get this in-game storeing condition that is really good for me. So how am I going to I got to spend money to buy this same recipe. You got to buy all these other things. Do that. Get the thing. Now I can go back to what I was originally doing to begin with. And then of course we have to start talking about these cocktails which way you get to the renowned board which means I can't buy anything because now I have to go and I got to buy some mixers to try to get this and I got to buy it can feel overwhelming. That's it folks. Despite the rant that I just went on there really I think this is a really good expansion. I really really enjoy it a lot. I think if there are even just the minorest of improvements from now until what finally shows up hopefully next year or so, it will be something that is in the mix for expansion of the year for me. I think it just really makes Distilled a delight of hard choices to I think it just takes a game that I already enjoy and makes it a delight of difficult

19:43 choices. And so I'm really looking forward to getting this back eventually. I have to actually send this prototype on and I'm actually really sad about that. But in any event, if you found this video useful, please like, subscribe, share, maybe become a channel member. As always, thank you so much for watching. Have a wonderful, wonderful day.