Hi everyone! In the past few months, I’ve been working on a little project: Alchemy 2E. I’d like to hear any thoughts you have about it! The rest of the post will explain the motivations behind these cards, and give rules clarifications.
General
Alchemy is the smallest Dominion expansion, it was rushed out in the early days of Dominion, and its best cards were plundered by other sets (Festival, Bridge, Wishing Well and Soothsayer were all assigned to Alchemy at one point). The Potion mechanic has sparked fascination, but in practice introduces a frustrating variance into the game. This, combined with some lacklustre cards, makes Alchemy perhaps the worst Dominion expansion.
Donald X tells us it’s unlikely we’ll see Alchemy 2E. However, I believe that the recent Shadow card mechanic allows us to fix the issue with Potions. The best of Alchemy can be salvaged.
The original set had a theme of Potion costs and “Action-chaining”. The trouble is that Action-chaining is the just the meta way to play the game, so I expanded the theme to more of a general “cares about types” theme, and added Treasured-based cards. Shadows Potion had to come with a return of Shadow cards, which now have a fancy new colour, and a shorter below-the-line text to make way for longer instructions.
I originally planned to just replace 6 cards, but I couldn’t stop churning out ideas, and ended up with a full-sized set (26 cards, 20 new).
Shadow Potion
The core concept of the Potion is to introduce second currency to the game, and currency given by Shadow cards is an interesting way to do that. It fits well with the theme of “shuffles are currency” of Potion, while avoiding the variance inherent in trying to collide potion with your money cards.
Shadow Treasures are really strong, they’re basically +1 Action + 1 Card cards that can’t be drawn dead. I’d price a Shadow Copper at $5, so having Potion at $4 arguably makes it worth less than $1, but the tempo loss from gaining Potion is significant, so I estimate the value of a Potion to be about $1.5, as opposed to $2.5 for the old potion.
The setup changes just make Potion cards fair and fun: 2-5 openings with a Potion always feel bad, and the extra pile means there will always be at least two potion-cost cards, so Potion is unlikely to be completely useless.
The fallen
· Transmute
· Herbalist
· Familiar
· Philosopher’s stone
· Golem
· Possession
I cut out 6 of the 12 original Alchemy cards. That’s a lot, but remember that Cornucopia lost 5 cards, plus the prizes. And I made worthy successor cards for all of them.
Transmute, Herbalist and Philosopher’s stone were all too weak. Familiar and Golem could have stayed, but they both have randomness that I dislike, and they were dropped when I figured out suitable replacements. Possession is possibly the most hated card in all of Dominion.
The survivors
· Vineyard
· Apothecary
· Scrying Pool
· University
· Apprentice
· Alchemist
I maintain that the rest of the original Alchemy cards are alright. Vineyard is very well-designed, and it’s hard to imagine it without the Potion cost. I’ve adjusted the costs of 4 out of 5 Potion-cost cards to balance the Potion buff, Apothecary stays at $2P because the Shadow Potion nerfs it. I considered removing Apothecary entirely due to its weakness, but I thought it fitted with the theme of revealing cards, and I wanted a cheap Potion-cost card.
New cards
P Phlogiston (Action Shadow)
“Oh dear, I’m so sorry your Hovel burnt down. Anyway, now we have room for my nice new lab.”
Originally it was a kind of Remodel that remodelled X cards into an $X card, it got reworked into this. I came up with the idea before seeing the recent “Wine Press” fancard, it felt almost uncanny to see that.
Pictured: Great Fire of London.
1P Dabbler (Action)
· You play any number of Action Cards with different names from your hand, resolving each one before playing the next.
· If you use this to play another Dabbler, resolve the effects of any cards it plays, then go back to playing cards with this Dabbler. The cards you play with the first Dabbler don’t have to be different named to those played by the second Dabbler.
Concept: anti-First Mate. I considered adding +1 Card or +1 Buy, but I wanted a 1P card, and this already seems too good for the cost. The inspiration for the Potion card is that this is generally something you want to get later on. It needs draw cards to be really strong. I’ve seen recent debate over similar cards in this forum, do you think this is too cheap?
Pictured: John Napier.
2 Coastal village (Action Duration)
· One of the 5 can be this card.
· If you don’t have 5 differently-named cards in play, you discard this card at clean-up.
· If you do, you must keep this in play and put it into your hand at the start of next turn (like Conjurer).
Alchemy is the Action-themed expansion, so here’s a village to play your actions! Also a good Vinyard synergy, if you can avoid discarding them. The +Buy is to help you get the variety, and buy more Coastal Villages.
2P Emerald Tablet (Action)
Payload card, nominally replacing Philosopher’s Stone. Rewards you for drawing the Potion.
3 Makeshift laboratory (Action)
· If you couldn’t discard a card, +0 Cards.
“Makeshift lab” felt like a card in the Alchemy set. I made 10 different versions before settling on this one.
Pictured: The Lavoisiers’ lab, which was actually quite well-funded and not makeshift at all.
3 Magician (Action Shadow)
Thanks for your feedbacks on this! I nerfed the most overpowered case (Debt cards). I also thought about how horrible double-Magician openings are, your game basically depends on whether they are in the same hand. The Donald X way to deal with this would be to just make it cost 4, but this is a Shadow-themed set.
Pictured: Paracelsus.
3 Metallurgist (Action)
Turn 1: Buy $4 card
Turn 2: Buy Metallurgist
Turn 3: Draw Metallurgist+3 Estates. Ragequit.
(The chance of this is 1 in 495)
3 Humiliation (Action Duration Attack)
· The topdeck is mandatory
Progress as a card. Not inspired by Cargo Ship, but that was used as a reference for balancing. I added the “on their turn”, to avoid this becoming oppressive with junking attacks (Kitsune-Progress :’-< ).
Pictured: The penance of Emperor Henry IV.
3P Privateer (Action Attack) V
I wanted a strong anti-big-money attack for the Actions expansion. The Potion cost is to prevent players from getting this too early. It was inspired by an early draft of Cutpurse that Donald X mentioned, where the attacker would name a Treasure to be discarded.
I had considered a name more related to Alchemy, especially after I saw someone post a “Privatier” card here, but this card just feels very “Privateer”.
Pictured: Three English privateers: John Hawkins, Francis Drake and Thomas Cavendish.
3P Astrologer (Action Attack)
· If your hand is empty after playing this, you can’t reveal a card, so you don’t so each other player must gain a Curse.
Nerfed Familiar, inspired by Sorcerer. I think this is better than Familiar: Familiar was an annoying Attack and winning was often dependent on who managed to hit 3P first. In contrast, Astrologer is easier to obtain, but you need to build an engine and get a card that your opponent doesn’t have to have Astrologer curse reliably, which I think makes for more interesting gameplay.
4 Barber (Action)
You may trash a card from your hand. If you did, you must gain a card.
· You can spend 0 money, but not a negative amount.
· You can spend more money than you must spend to gain the card, if you so wish.
· You can spend Potion money.
· Debt isn’t money, so you can’t “spend” Debt, so you can’t use this to gain a card that costs more debt than the one trashed.
· You can play Shadow Treasures from your deck with this.
A Potion-friendly remodel, inspired by Butcher and Change. This was the first card from the set that I came up with, I noticed that the official expansions tends to re-implement base set cards using the theme of the expansion (e.g. Rising Sun has Change, Craftsman and Daimyo which are like Remodel, Workshop and Throne Room but with debt). The “may” trash a card is to make a turn 3 hand of Barber plus 4 coppers less sad.
4 Transubstantiate (Treasure Reaction)
I considered a 5-cost version that also had +$2, I settled on this one because the giant $2 symbol squashed the text. What do you think?
Pictured: A very historically inaccurate depiction of the discovery of Phosphorous.
4 Road (Action Reaction Duration)
· Revealing is when a card is when a card is affected by an effect that uses a conjugation of the word “reveal” (as explained in the text of Patron).
· If you play on reveal or discard, you are still considered to have revealed or discarded the Road, and you still experience the consequences of doing so (e.g. you get 3 choices for Courtier), after you resolve playing the Road.
o This means that even if you reveal a hand with multiple Roads for Menagerie, even if you play all the Roads, you only get +1 Card, not +3 Cards.
· The playing is resolved immediately after revealing. So, if you are attacked with a Knight and reveal this, you can play it, and if you do, you must do so before trashing a card.
· As per the Lose Track Rule, cards that move revealed cards are considered to lose track of Road when it is played, because it was moved by a prior external effect. Therefore, in the aforementioned Knight case, you can choose to trash the Road, but the Knight has lost track of it, so it will not actually be trashed and you will trash no cards.
· Cards that are revealed are considered to be in “reveal land” and not in the place they were revealed from, so if you reveal a Road with Patrol, and play it as Way of the Ox, you do not draw the other revealed cards, as they are in “reveal land” and not in your deck, you instead draw from your deck, which consists only of cards physically on the table.
Fits the role of “defensive/Reaction” card, and its Duration draw makes it a “reliability card”. I had hoped this was strong enough to be viable without a synergy, and not overpowered with one. Nicely synergises with Makeshift Laboratory and Polymath.
4 Polymath (Action Reaction)
· E.g. If you reveal a Moat and Militia, the types between them are Action, Reaction and Attack, so 3 types, so +3 Cards.
· Reveal them simultaneously (to prove they are not the same card) and before you draw anything.
· If you only have one card in hand, reveal it and +1 Card per type it has
· “Attack” here refers to an Attack card.
· See the Secret Chamber FAQ to see how the Reaction works.
A funky Moat/Smithy. I borrowed the Secret Chamber reaction to help you line up your initial hand, it felt appropriate here, it interacts with three of the four Attacks in this set in useful ways. I considered a version with +1 Action, which ended up as Makeshift Laboratory
Pictured: Hildegard of Bingen gets a divine revelation.
4P Cupboard (Action Duration)
· If you have multiple buy phases in your turn due to Villa etc., this activates each time a buy phase starts.
Inspired by Cathedral and Crypt. For the name, I imagined a story about a lazy alchemist who throws things into a cupboard and shuts the door quickly, and then one day absent-mindedly opens to cupboard and everything falls out.
5P Amalgam (Treasure Shadow)
· This counts costs immediately before, not after gaining the card (this matters for Destrier, Wayfarer).
The concept was “cantrip Horn of Plenty”. I considered a cantrip, a rest-of-game Duration and a Night-Shadow, but I went with this as “Amalgam” sounds Treasurey, and I didn’t want there to be just one Night card.
In games with this, you’ll have Copper, Silver, Gold, Potion and Amalgam itself, 5 differently-costed cards, plus probably a 6th from the other Potion-cost card. In some games, you’ll be able to gain Provinces with this, in others, no such luck.
Pictured: Amalgam being used to purify gold.
5P Pharmacy (Action)
· If you somehow manage to discard a card during Clean-up due to a non-Clean-up effect, you can still set it aside. (Bonus puzzle: Can you figure out how to achieve this?)
Herbalist was too weak, so I buffed it to the max. I considered limiting the effect to just Treasures, or Actions, but it never let you set aside a Pharmacy because I didn’t want to enable an easy Big Money strategy, and I think that if you want a 100% reliable deck, you should have to work for it.
5P Chemist (Action Shadow)
One idea I had was Conclave but with +2 Cards rather than +2 Coins for $5. However, this has the problem it’s way better at the start than the end of your shuffle, so I made it a Shadow card, so you can kinda make your own shuffle luck. I also considered a version without the +1 Card.
Pictured: Antoine and Marie-Anne Lavoisier.
6P Automaton (Action)
· If you reveal a Road from your deck, you may play it from the reveal or from the Automaton, but not both. If you play it from the reveal, you still stop revealing cards from your deck because you still revealed an Action card.
Replacement Golem, which retains the overall effect “+2 Cards +2 Actions”, and the general vibe of being chaotic good, while addressing the shortcomings of Golem (can’t play itself, risk of no +Actions prematurely ending your turn).
Pictured: The Mechanical Turk.
7P Homunculus (Action Duration)
Replacement Possession. A no-strings extra turn.
Pictured: Detail from the Possession art.
Abandoned ideas:
· An alternative Makeshift Lab: $5: +1 Action trash or discard a card and draw to 5. Rejected for being too simple.
· A versatile 2-cost code, some combination of +$2; or + 1 Potion; or +1 Buy; or +1 Card +1 Action; or gain a Potion; or topdeck gains. Would have been like Town Crier, and a strong Vineyard synergy.
· A card with +2Buy on-gain, letting you effectively buy +Buys with money (live Travelling Fair)
· A Shadow card gained to the bottom of your deck.
· A Reaction card with a unique back that can be reacted from your deck.
· A Reaction card that reacts to a card being revealed on your turns.
· A Reaction card that draws up to 6 cards in hand (considered for Polymath).
· New Ways to make Action cards stronger.
