In the interim though distilled is peppered with little alcohol related facts throughout the rule book and cards. When you make and sell a spirit you’ll also gain a label of that type (if available) and use it to cover one of the bonus spaces on your player board. I have a handsome home bar, purchased pre-pandemic, and that bar got a LOT of work for the first six months of COVID.

There’s tons of variety in the cards on offer, the characters you play, the geographic restrictions and bonuses offered by those same characters, and the spirits they create. Because of that I can easily see people being put off of this game based just on that alone, and honestly, I wouldn’t blame you. 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.Most players will watch an instruction video, or read the rules just once, and be off and running during their first game. It’s fair to say that humans enjoy alcohol—at least the majority who decide to take part in such beverages. 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. I thought this mechanic was so interesting when I played the game, it really felt like the actual process. But in both cases they are small enough that it will become a problem unless you sit real close to them, which isn’t always easy with a big game like this.

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.Alcohol cards are added for each sugar, all cards are shuffled, the top and bottom cards are revealed and placed in your supply for future rounds. I have found that in rounds six and seven, sometimes players have so much money they can’t spend it all. You can have all the fancy ingredients and barrels but if you don’t know how to make a Baijiu you can’t make a Baijiu. 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.