In Distilled from Paverson Games you will get your chance to run a distillery deciding along the way what spirits to make, how long to age them and a whole lot more. and the other components, particularly the thick cardboard player mats and spirit label tokens, all work well.

My critique is only components based and it’s that it should come with a board / mat for the good sized market of cards that’s in play. This add a lot of flavor to the game, oh yea there are flavors you can add to your spirits too for bonuses. There is a lot of other things going on in Distilled but hopefully the brief rules explanation gives you enough of an idea of how the game plays. There’s a barrel-shaped pyramid (yes, I know that makes no sense) of goal cards to achieve during the seven rounds the game lasts. It really exposes the game for what it is, and I think if you can play a game and enjoy it on TTS, it’s doing something right.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. 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. There was a time, not all that long ago, when I would have been intimidated by a game that comes in a box as big as Distilled.

The problem with this is that any ingredients you used in your spirit go back to the market at the end of the round. 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.That tightness of only being able to make one spirit per round means that you want to try and make the best you can every time to get those all important points, but that little economic game that sits underneath makes you constantly aware that this game is still about running a business. This list has wallet-sized and wallet-friendly games; games for the first timer and for friends who have been playing for years.

To age spirits you place the stack of cards in your warehouse and add a face down flavour card to the stack. In that game—a game where I produced vodka four times—I lost by 40 points despite doing a decent job of trying to mitigate a bad card draw.

The issue with being the first player becomes more pronounced late in the game, when the spirit labels are almost gone.