Market Drafting Games

Step into the shoes of an heir who has just inherited an abandoned family distillery in 'Distilled', a highly thematic, medium-weight Eurogame. Your ultimate goal is to restore your family's legacy by crafting the world's most renowned and profitable spirits. Through careful planning and strategic investments, you will upgrade your facilities, hire specialized staff, and gather premium ingredients from a dynamic market. Over the course of seven rounds, you must balance your finances and resources to outshine your rivals, aiming to earn the most Spirit Points and claim the prestigious title of Master Distiller. The core gameplay loop of 'Distilled' revolves around four distinct phases: Market, Distill, Sell, and Age. During the Market phase, players draft essential ingredients, specialized equipment, and key upgrades from shared premium and basic displays. The magic truly happens in the Distill phase, which introduces a brilliant thematic push-your-luck mechanic known as the washback. After combining your purchased sugars, water, and yeast, you shuffle them with alcohol cards to form a unique deck. To simulate the real-world distillation process where the harsh head and tail of the batch are discarded, players must blindly remove the top and bottom cards of their deck. This thrilling element of chance means you might accidentally discard a crucial premium grain, downgrading your highly anticipated whiskey into a basic moonshine or vodka. Fans of thematic board games are consistently captivated by how seamlessly 'Distilled' blends its real-world subject matter with engaging mechanics. Players love the deep satisfaction of the Aging phase, where prestigious spirits are safely tucked away in barrels and placed in a warehouse. As these high-tier liquors mature round after round, they accumulate face-down flavor cards that exponentially boost their final victory point value while adding delightful thematic notes like vanilla or leather. Combined with a robust solo mode, beautiful iconography, and a rewarding set-collection system for bottling your creations, the game offers immense replayability. The tension of the distillation deck draw and the satisfying progression of building a world-class production engine make it an unforgettable experience for modern strategy enthusiasts.