Boardgames are a staple of the holiday season, where all the family gather around to drink, play, and probably, invariably, fight about the game. If you like your family, don’t try playing Monopoly with alcohol; or Diplomacy at all. But you also don’t want to pull out something too dull, luck-based, or complicated to explain.

The board game industry is bigger than ever, with incredible, complex games released every year, and some of the best – like the Pandemic series – letting you play through detailed narrative stories over many, many days of play. Some are just classic fun games though, and The Quacks of Quedlinburg, released in 2018, is my favorite for the holidays.

Initially released in Germany, the game’s premise is that every year, the city of Quedinburg holds a festival where various Quackdoctors compete to be the best potion brewer in the land and sell their goods. Each player is one of the titular Quacks, adding ingredients to their pot with the aim to get the highest score in each round — letting you move forward and buy more value. You take your ingredient tokens from a bag blindly, and they come in a series of colors with different rules; but the most important is that your white tokens don’t add up to seven or more, in which case your pot explodes in that round.

There are nine rounds total, each with new rules, and there are additional elements like spell cards — which change conditions for that round — and rats tails — which help balance the game for losing players. This all sounds complex, and it is on the first round that you play, but it becomes easy to understand very quickly.

It’s also just well balanced, with a nice blend of luck and strategy, and ways for losing players to catch up; and there are no ways you can deceive your fellow players, or do any other actions that can start a fight with your loved ones.