How to Organize Quacks of Quedlinburg: Stop the Chip Chaos and Speed Up Setup
The easiest way to organize Quacks of Quedlinburg is one small bin per ingredient color. BitsBins makes two ready-made sets that fit inside the original box: the Original Edition set (1 Pod, 17 Minis, 1 Card Box) and the 2024 / Anniversary Edition set (1 Pod, 20 Minis, 1 Card Box, 1 Tarot). No assembly, and the bins double as the ingredient market during play.
If you've played more than one round of Quacks, you already know the culprit: ingredient chips. Dozens and dozens of little cardboard ingredient chips in seven-plus colors, all needing to come out of the box, get sorted by color, and land next to the right ingredient book before anyone can start brewing.
Do that with a pile of chips in plastic baggies, and setup turns into ten minutes of sorting before you've even placed a single potion piece. Do it with the right bins, and it's a two-minute job — because the same bins that store your chips double as the actual market display you shop from all game long.
First, Let's Talk About What's Actually Making Your Life Hard
Quacks is a fantastic family press your lucky game with a bag-builder mechanic, but it wasn't exactly designed with storage in mind. Here's what causes the most friction:
Seven-plus colors of chips, all similar in size. White, orange, green, blue, yellow, purple, black — and if you've added expansions, even more. Dump them all in one box tray and you're hand-sorting a rainbow of tiny discs every time you play.
The ingredient books rotate mid-game. Yellow chips don't come into play until round 2, purple not until round 3. That means your storage has to keep every color ready to go, not just the ones you start with — and it needs to be easy to pull the right color out mid-session without disturbing everything else.
The market itself needs a home. During play, every chip color needs to sit visibly next to its ingredient book so players can see what's available to buy. Most groups end up dumping color piles straight onto the table, where they get bumped, mixed, or knocked onto the floor by an elbow going for coins.
The good news: Quacks' components are small, and there aren't dozens of different shapes to account for — you're mostly organizing by color. That makes it one of the easiest games to get a genuinely great system for.
The Approach That Works: Modular Bins You Actually Use During the Game
A wooden laser-cut insert will get your chips sorted for storage, but once you're playing, you still dump everything onto the table for the market. Modular bins solve both problems at once, which is what makes them such a natural fit for Quacks specifically.
Here's why it works so well for this game:
One bin, one color, all game long. Sort each ingredient color into its own bin at setup, and that bin stays that color's home for the entire session — during storage, during setup, and during play. When the yellow book flips face-up in round 2, you just set the yellow bin next to it. No re-sorting required.
The bins double as the market. This is the part that changes how the game actually plays at your table: instead of loose piles of chips getting knocked around, each color sits in its own small, stable container right next to its ingredient book. Players can see what's available, grab what they bought, and the pile never turns into a spill.
Cleanup is the same motion as setup, in reverse. At the end of the game, chips go back into the same bins they came out of — no re-sorting by color, because they never left their bin in the first place.
No assembly, no glue. Snap the bins into the box, sort once, and you're set up for every future game night in a couple of minutes.
The Full Setup: What Goes Where
BitsBins offers two curated sets for Quacks of Quedlinburg, matched to the two editions currently in print. Both follow the same logic — one container per ingredient color, plus dedicated homes for cards and small shared components.
Original Edition Set — 1 Pod, 17 Minis, 1 Card Box
This set is built for the classic printing of the game. The single Pod takes the highest-volume chip color (white chips, which every player starts with the most of and which appear throughout the game), giving it a bin large enough to hold the full supply without crowding.
The 17 Minis split out the rest of the ingredient chips by color — orange, green, blue, yellow, purple, and black — plus coins, rubies, and the smaller shared pieces like the flame marker and scoring pieces. Because each Mini holds a single color, they drop straight into place next to the matching ingredient book at setup and act as that color's market bin for the whole game.
The Card Box houses the Fortune Teller deck, keeping it protected and easy to shuffle without digging around loose chips to find it.
2024 / Anniversary Edition Set — 1 Pod, 20 Minis, 1 Card Box, 1 Tarot
The newer printing ships with a few more components, so this set adds a Tarot container to the mix. The ingredient books themselves are flat, oversized cardboard tiles — exactly the kind of component a Tarot bin (with its built-in dividers) is made for, so they stay grouped and don't slide around in the box.
The Pod takes the rubies, the 20 Minis cover the remaining ingredient colors plus coins and small shared tokens, and the Card Box holds the Fortune Teller cards.
At a Glance
| Container | Original Edition Set | 2024 / Anniversary Set |
|---|---|---|
| Pod | 1 (white chips) | 1 (rubies) |
| Minis | 17 | 20 |
| Card Box | 1 | 1 |
| Tarot | — | 1 |
The extra Minis and the Tarot in the newer set reflect the slightly larger component count in the current printing — the underlying system is identical either way: one bin, one color, used from setup straight through to the last round.
What About Fixed Wooden Inserts?
Quacks is a popular enough game that laser-cut inserts exist for it, and they look sharp sitting in the box. Worth knowing before you commit to one, though:
- Assembly typically means wood glue, clamps, and an evening you weren't planning to spend on it
- A fixed tray sorts chips for storage, but you'll still likely be pouring them onto the table to shop from during play
- They generally run $35–60
- Adding an expansion later often means the insert no longer fits everything
If you want the sorted-storage look and don't mind the table still getting a chip pile mid-game, a fixed insert works fine. If you want the chips to stay organized during play too — not just in the box — modular bins are the simpler answer, and they cost less.
The Part That Actually Changes How Often You Play
The real payoff with Quacks isn't just a tidier box. It's that the market stays legible all game long — everyone can actually see what's available to buy instead of squinting at a mixed pile, and nobody's knocking over the purple chips reaching for a coin. Setup goes from "let me sort these first" to "grab your pot, we're starting." That's the difference between a game that comes out every session and one that quietly moves to the bottom of the shelf.
Good storage doesn't just organize your game. It changes how often you play it.
Quacks of Quedlinburg Organizer FAQ
Which BitsBins set fits my copy of Quacks?
The Original Edition set (1 Pod, 17 Minis, 1 Card Box) is built for the classic printing. The 2024 / Anniversary Edition set (1 Pod, 20 Minis, 1 Card Box, 1 Tarot) is built for the newer printing, which has more components. Not sure which one you have? Send us a photo of your box and we'll tell you.
Will it fit if I have expansions?
The sets are built for the base game. Expansions like The Herb Witches and The Alchemists add more pieces, so you may want a few extra Minis from our à la carte menu to keep one color per bin.
How long does setup take with BitsBins?
About two minutes. Every color is already sorted in its own bin, so you set each bin next to its ingredient book and start playing.
Ready to stop sorting chips? Shop the Original Edition Quacks of Quedlinburg set or the 2024 / Anniversary Edition set.
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