As a youngster, we used to drive by a bar/lounge every time my family went most weekends to visit my grandparents. As neither of my parents drank, I kept peering at the neon sign on the side of the building, confused by the word. I finally asked my parents, “What are cook tales?”

Fast forward 55+ years. Like my folks, I don’t drink – but I do know what a cocktail is. Well, now I do. 

I also know the identity of my favorite game of 2024 – Distilled. Distilled has both drafting & push-your-luck elements, along with a smidgen of set collecting & a bit of engine building. That can sound like a mish-mash… but it actually pulls together nicely into a very playable game. 

Distilled: Cocktails is a big expansion to the original game that was released this summer… and it’s my privilege to let you know how it works and what it does (and doesn’t) do to the original game.

Dale Yu (the head bartender of this posh establishment we call the Opinionated Gamers) wrote a really nice review of the base game back in 2024… and I won’t begin to attempt to step on his careful explanation of the rules and the attraction of Distilled. (I will note, however, that is my game table in the review pictures.) After that first play at my 60th birthday celebration (man, I’m getting old), I had an opportunity to teach and play it again at Gulf Games – and my “I like it” rating had turned into “I love it” as I started to figure out how to balance my plans and correctly value various ingredients, items, and distillery upgrades based on my chosen strategy and the recipe menu in play.

That made it an easy decision to back the Cocktails expansion on Kickstarter. I’d already enjoyed the two previous small expansions (Africa & Middle East and Cask Strength) so throwing some new twists (no cocktail pun intended) into the game system was right up my alley.

The expansion includes 18 replacement cards from the original game that have been updated for clarity and balance. The first thing you’ll want to do is switch these out. You’ll also add the extra basic market and alcohol cards to put enough resources in the game with the expanded ability to create spirits.

Distilled: Cocktails set up for two player game

“Cocktails for Two” (Or: How There Are Two Related Versions of the Game in the Same Box)

Distilled: Cocktails comes with a plethora of cards, tokens, and center table boards – in addition to the extensions to the original player boards and a bunch of other stuff. Dale noted in his review that Distilled could be a table-eater with a full complement of players – that’s even more true with the full Cocktails expansion in play.

However, you don’t have to play with the complete expansion – you can simply add the second washback to the game and experiment with the expanded ability to produce more batches of high end distilled spirits.

Each player receives an extra metal barrel (but can reuse the same generic bottle card for each sale), additional spirit labels are added to the initial offering, and a few distillery upgrades specific to the second washback are added to the upgrade deck. Additionally, each player receives a second washback board for the right side of their player board and a label bonus board for the top of their board to give them space for all that brand new hooch!

Player board with second washback

The second washback board has an extra distillery upgrade space and an extra warehouse space to give you room to age more spirits. There is also a second washback unlock track in the center of the board – and players can spend some of their hard-earned cash to unlock the ability to use it. (Doing so also gives them an extra alcohol card to use or store.) The cost of unlocking begins at $2 and increases each time you use it.

This is a pretty straightforward addition to the base game – and the good folks at Paverson Games suggest that you play a game with the second washback before adding all the extra stuff found in the full Cocktails expansion.

Distilled: Cocktails set up for solo play

Throw In “The Kitchen Sink”

Of course, you could be like me and completely blow off that warning for your first play – I mean, how hard can it be, right? It’s not like this is my first rodeo with complicated game systems (I’m looking at you, Voidfall) or throwing in a new expansion that adds all kind of crazy extra stuff (pipe down, Cities & Knights). Granted, I also hear the line from Dodgeball echoing in my head: “It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for ’em…”

I have lived to tell the tale – and it’s not impossible to pull off but I would never suggest dragging a new player into Cocktails without them having played the base game a couple of times. The Cocktails expansion doesn’t radically change the base game – it just adds a lot of elements and potential ways to score that could easily overwhelm a new player.

In order to play with the full expansion, you’ll add all of the things you added for using the second washback, plus more cards to upgrade and item decks, new spirit awards and distillery goals, the world map (because the Kardashians aren’t the only folks who want to be famous), the cocktail market, the mixer boards, and a row of collectors who will potentially increase your reputation as they snap up your high-end spirits. Yes, it’s a lot. (See the pictures of the game set-up above.)

Surprisingly, all that stuff doesn’t radically affect the basic flow of the game – there is still a market phase, following by distilling and selling (or storing) your latest batch. There is an added cocktails phase which I’ll explain in more detail, but the complications here are in the variety of choices and not in rejiggering the game system.

Let’s just work our way through the various elements, shall we?

Distillery Expansion

The second washback remains in the game, but your player board is flipped so that you have access to a pair of “bar” spaces where you can hold cocktail orders and mixer elements. The label bonus tile flips over as well, giving you spaces for spirit labels with additional spaces for bonus tiles acquired from the world map or from a collector.

Premium Market: Forklift Icons

All of the new market cards (and a few of the cocktail orders) have a forklift icon on them. If a forklift card is discarded during cleanup following the market phase, an additional card is discarded from that row. (This helps keep the market from stagnating and forces some tricky decisions when you know that stuff you need is about to disappear.)

Cocktail Market

The cocktail market has four orders available at a time – costing from $1-$4 (depending on how long they’ve been there). Each order requires a certain set of mixer items and a particular type of spirit (based on the sugars used and whether or not it was aged). It takes a market action (and the appropriate amount of cash) to take an order.

The cost you pay (again, $1-$4) also allows you to claim 1-4 mixers from the mixer board. (This is an easy rule to miss – which is why it’s getting a paragraph by itself. No, no reason – couldn’t have possibly happened to us. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!)

Yes, that’s a dice cup cleverly disguised as a cocktail shaker. Your eyes do not decieve you.

Mixer Board(s)

Order Up board, Mixer board, mixer elements… and those very nifty ice cube dice

There are two boards for the system of offering and replenishing mixers in the game: the mixer board (where available mixers are stored) and the Order Up board (where the ice cube dice that show what will be available next are stored). Yes, I said ice cube dice – the production folks at Paverson Games are cool like that.

Players may use a market action to purchase three mixers for $2. There are five specific types of mixers (Liqueur, Fizz, Garnish, Flavorings, and Juice) as well as Umbrellas which are wild. You can have an unlimited amount of mixers at your distillery bar – but you are limited to 2 cocktail orders.

The refresh process for mixers is a bit tricky as it can be triggered by player market actions or the end of the market phase, but it is spelled out nicely on the Order Up board as well as the excellent player aid cards, so the key thing is remembering to follow the procedure.

Cocktail Orders

Cocktail glass markers on spirit labels… plus a renown board at the top

The Cocktail phase occurs at the end of the Age phase – in other words, right before the final clean-up of a round. Each player in turn order can serve a single cocktail by paying the correct mixer elements and marking an unused spirit label in your distillery with a cocktail glass token. (The cocktail glass to use is marked on the order card.)

Any three mixers can be substituted as a wild card, which can be helpful late in the game. It’s also important to remember that vodka is not the best choice for serving cocktails – you receive one less renown for using a vodka label.

World Map

The world map with renown markers and label bonus tiles.

Renown? How do I track that? The world map is here to help!

When a player gets renown (the icon is three stars grouped together), they take one of their renown markers and place it on the world map. The first marker is placed in your distillery owner’s region… and all following markers must be adjacent to a previously placed marker of your color. If you are the first person to place a renown marker on a space on the map, you also get the bonus of the space. (Yes, you can place on top of someone else’s marker – but you don’t get the bonus.)

I’ll explain the scoring benefits of renown when we get to the end game… and how you acquire label bonus tiles when we get to, well, label bonus tiles. :-)

Collectors

A row of collectors above the cocktail order board.

There are folks who collect high-end spirits like some people collect board games – I cast no aspersions here. (People who live in glass game rooms should not thrown stones and/or meeples.)

Those collectors are looking for high-scoring spirits of particular types – and will reward you with a label bonus tile (and some cash) if you manage to satisfy their whims. (This is not unlike how certain game companies are rewarded with my cash when they produce things I like. But I digress.)

Label Bonus Tiles

When placing a spirit label in your distillery, you can add it to the top row which also has spots for label bonus tiles. You can get those bonus tiles from two places:

• the world map: if you have renown in two adjacent continents, you can take the bonus tile from the connected place on the map. The majority of these tiles are in-game bonuses.
• collectors: if you satisfy their specific desires for type of recipe and prestige point total, you get the appropriate bonus tile. These tiles tend towards end-game point bonuses.

You only have space for four bonus tiles – and these tiles are taken at the point you place the spirit label.

End Game Scoring

OK, that’s a lot of additional elements, all of which can have an impact on your final score.

• Collector bonus label tokens score based on the icons on your collected spirit labels
• Every four renown you’ve placed on the board adds a point to the magic cocktail glass formula – in other words, you multiply the number of different types of cocktail glasses you have served with the number of open spaces on your renown board – somewhere between 1-20 points are available here!
  • Each player has one point on their renown board even if they don’t clear a space
  • Tiki punch glasses are wild for determining the number of cocktail glass types
• If you have renown in each region of the world map, you get three points.
• If you have 6+ renown in a single region, you get three points for each time you do that.
  • Note: it’s tough to do more than once.
• Each leftover mixer is worth $1 – which figures into your final total of cash (which is $5 = 1 point).

Like I said – the expansion offers more (a lot more!) options for scoring and play, but doesn’t undercut the base game design.

Distilling (and Doing Mixology) Alone (Or: How Does the Cocktails expansion Affect Solo Play?)

Solo play is very similar to the original game – you are still trying to satisfy a series of game goals while keeping your score high enough to win against the system.

In order to mess with your plans on the world map and in creating cocktails for your distillery bar, the solo design now adds solo tokens which come in four “flavors”:

• Mixers – which remove mixers and potentially give the automa renown
• Cocktails – which remove cocktails and place renown
• Renown – which simply place renown and remove world map label bonuses
• Collectors – which remove collector label bonuses

Those tokens are collected as you satisfy goals in the solo “web” and as forklift cards are discarded from the market. You resolve them in the order they were collected at the end of the round.

So far, the solo mode has a higher overhead (more fiddly) than the base game solo system – but it puts up a good fight and I enjoy playing it.

“The Final Ward”

There’s really “three fundamental truths at the exact same time” you need to know about Distilled: Cocktails:

1. It’s a table-eater. (Just look at the pictures.)
2. It takes about 10-15 minutes or so more per player to play… but it doesn’t “feel” a lot longer.
3. It’s a lot of fun.

I’ve already told you I wouldn’t drag a newbie into a game with the full Cocktails expansion in play. I will note that I’m fine adding Africa & Middle East with newbies – there’s nothing in that expansion that slows new players down.

Am I glad I bought the expansion (and the excellent Collector’s Cask storage box)? Yes. Is the game set up on my game table ready for me to play again later today after I watch my Titans lose yet another game? Also yes.

Enjoy!

I have to admit that I did a number of web searches to come up with the cocktail references in the titles throughout this review:

• There actually is a tequila (with a splash of arak) and watermelon juice cocktail called “Wicked Game”. No, I haven’t tasted it – even if I did drink, the whole watermelon juice thing would keep me away.
• There are a multitude of recordings of the big band tune “Cocktails for Two” – but the ones I’d suggest you listen to are from Duke Ellington (classy) and Spike Jones & His City Slickers (the opposite of classy – but well worth your time).
• I’ve become convinced that naming cocktails is primarily done by people who have imbibed too many cocktails – because, yes, Virginia, even the Food Network thinks there is such a thing as a “Kitchen Sink” cocktail.
• I’m not sure I’d heard of mixology or a mixologist before – I obviously travel in the wrong circles. :-) The linked site describes mixology as “studying the chemistry of drinks.” (BTW, there is now a distillery upgrade card where you can hire a mixologist.)
• Thanks to mixologist Phil Ward for dreaming up “The Final Ward” and giving me a great title to close out with.
  • And, yes, there was a freebie Hamilton reference in case you were wondering.

I purchased my own copy of Distilled, the previous expansions, and the Cocktails expansion – though I did not splurge for the acrylic mixer tokens or the metal cocktail glasses. My apologies to the person at Paverson Games whose year-end bonus was based on me ponying up for the extra goodies.