It’s time to literally shake things up with Cocktails, a big-box spirited expansion for Distilled.

Your distillery has now been established, and it’s time to bring your famous spirits to the world! Expand the production capacity of your distillery by adding a second wash-back, providing you with more acclaim and revenue for your brand. Craft unique cocktails for customers, requiring special mixers that are paired with the spirits from your distillery, spreading your international renown around the globe. Perhaps even consider seeking out an esteemed collector, attracting them with your most prestigious spirits to unlock new end game scoring opportunities.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided the prototype copy of Distilled: Cocktails. The opinions expressed in the review are completely my own.

Review:

Overview:

Cocktails is the latest and ‘last’ expansion for the hugely popular boardgame DISTILLED. It adds in the making & serving of cocktails and adding in other ways of scoring points, and distilling and selling more than one spirit per turn.

Although still in development the rules are well thought out and compiled, and the new actions for things like the Cocktails add much more flavour to the game. There are plenty of pictures to help learn the additional rules for this new expansion, and these are very helpful when reading through them

The solo rules are not yet released so I played a 2 player double handed game for my review, and this actually allowed me to try out different things / strategies and to see if the new actions seamlessly entered into the game.

The new expansion adds a LOT of stuff, so setup took a little while but the table presence is vastly improved by the addition of all the new boards and components.

As per the original game you are a Distiller making and selling different spirits, and now the inclusion of Cocktails in the aim of collecting points for doing these. 

When you sell the normal spirits and collect the relevant spirit label for doing so, this is still placed out onto your now extended board giving you the one time bonus for achieving this, but they are also used to aid in the making and ultimately selling of any cocktails you make, as the cocktail can only be sold if you have already collected a spirit label with the spirit requirements, i.e. sugar type and if it must be aged, meaning you have to do some advance planning and collection to ensure one compliments the other.

You also now have an additional world map where you can place RENOWN tokens, and again a one off bonus such as new cards, resources and money amongst other things, if you are the first person to place a token onto the space. Your Distiller also has a region on their card and your first RENOWN token must go into their own region and then all future ones must ‘link’ off that first token by placing them onto a new space which is joined by a line to one of your previously placed tokens. You can place tokens on top of another player’s RENOWN token, but you do not gain the benefit of that space as it is already covered up when you place your token onto an opponents’ token.

There are also character cards to interact with, along with new Premium market cards, some of which replace those from the original game, and some which are completely new.

The game still plays for the same amount of rounds, but the addition of a second washback (which starts locked) means you may be able to distil more than one spirit on some of your turns. Once you have used your second washback it returns to being locked and the cost to open it again increases the more times it is unlocked meaning again you have to be prudent and choosy on how you spend your money received from selling spirits and cocktails.

The new expansion comes with new achievements to do, and new goals for both the multi and solo play.

I can’t fault anything after playing DISTILLED COCKTAILS, and I look forward to playing it multiplayer with my gaming group, as well as many solo games once those new rules have been finalized. 

If you already have the base game then Cocktails for me is an absolute must, and in future I wouldn’t want to play the game without the Cocktails expansion added in, it is that good in my opinion.

So, in conclusion, this last ever expansion for DISTILLED will elevate it even more than before in its replay-ability, and it will certainly leave you Shaken & Stirred, but only in a good way, and after all my word is my Bond, Games Bond ☺

Do you find that you’re missing too many reviews as we drop them? Provide your name and email below and we’ll keep you in the know of what we reviewed that week as well as other hot news!!!!!