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Author Topic: How good is Alchemy?  (Read 10771 times)

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Fragasnap

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Re: How good is Alchemy?
« Reply #25 on: August 31, 2016, 07:04:57 am »
+3

I really like Alchemy from a designer's perspective. It manages to make its Potion cost an interesting limiter to the acquisition of a card, in addition to meaningfully bifurcating the decision tree of a Kingdom and infusing its unique flavor into the game with as few as 1 or 2 cards.

As a player, I could live without Alchemy.
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AdrianHealey

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Re: How good is Alchemy?
« Reply #26 on: August 31, 2016, 01:03:29 pm »
+1

I would get alchemy, just because I have a bunch of fan made cards that I took from different sets online that work great, in additio to some of the 'real' cards. But the bad cards in the set are still bad.
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NoMoreFun

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Re: How good is Alchemy?
« Reply #27 on: September 01, 2016, 01:27:52 am »
+2

Transmute is a bad card,  Possession is annoying and Philosophers Stone is way too much effort IRL and not particularly strong, even in fat decks where it should be strong.
If you like games with lots of Actions then University, Golem and Scrying Pool are great, but otherwise they're annoying. Vineyard is a great addition. Alchemist and Apothecary make good use of the potion mechanic but all the shuffling can be annoying IRL. Herbalist isn't the best card but it's what a $2 card should look like IMO (not strong, but useful to pick up in quite a few games due to the +buy, and it has some great combos), and it fits the set. Apprentice is a unique and useful card and the only Alchemy card you wouldn't think twice about using in full random kingdoms.

IMO 3 duds out of 12 cards, which is a better ratio than the base set but not any other set.
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Davio

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Re: How good is Alchemy?
« Reply #28 on: September 01, 2016, 07:47:48 am »
+1

Alchemy offers less bang for buck than many other expansions, maybe the least of all.

Philosopher's Stone is blegh, Possession is not much fun, Transmute is weak, so you're essentially paying $20+ for 9 cards.
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Asper

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Re: How good is Alchemy?
« Reply #29 on: September 01, 2016, 12:11:05 pm »
+2

Unpopular Opinion Potion: Philosopher's Stone is my favourite Alchemy card because it doesn't cause me to sit through hours of my opponents chaining actions.
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Re: How good is Alchemy?
« Reply #30 on: September 01, 2016, 12:30:11 pm »
+2

Unpopular Opinion Potion: Philosopher's Stone is my favourite Alchemy card because it doesn't cause me to sit through hours of my opponents chaining actions.

Just hours of them counting their deck and discard every time they play it.
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Asper

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Re: How good is Alchemy?
« Reply #31 on: September 01, 2016, 12:35:38 pm »
+1

Unpopular Opinion Potion: Philosopher's Stone is my favourite Alchemy card because it doesn't cause me to sit through hours of my opponents chaining actions.

Just hours of them counting their deck and discard every time they play it.

My friends are generally capable of remembering the number they just counted when they play two Philosopher's Stones. Some are even clever enough to say "Well, they were worth $4 last turn, so i guess you trust me when i say i can afford a Province with these two".
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Re: How good is Alchemy?
« Reply #32 on: September 01, 2016, 04:51:09 pm »
+3

how good is Alchemy?

Turns out it's preeeetty good.
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Re: How good is Alchemy?
« Reply #33 on: September 06, 2016, 05:59:34 am »
+1

Alchemy is probably the worst Dominion expansion.

But you should probably still get it at some point. The worst pizza is still pretty tasty.
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Awaclus

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Re: How good is Alchemy?
« Reply #34 on: September 06, 2016, 08:51:11 am »
+1

The worst pizza is still pretty tasty.

Unless you've had free pizza recently.
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SkyHard

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Re: How good is Alchemy?
« Reply #35 on: September 06, 2016, 08:56:13 am »
+2

Unpopular Opinion Potion: Philosopher's Stone is my favourite Alchemy card because it doesn't cause me to sit through hours of my opponents chaining actions.

Just hours of them counting their deck and discard every time they play it.

My friends are generally capable of remembering the number they just counted when they play two Philosopher's Stones. Some are even clever enough to say "Well, they were worth $4 last turn, so i guess you trust me when i say i can afford a Province with these two".

I would not trust them! Why? Because it depends on the number of cards in hand and played, since "You only count your deck and discard pile, not your hand or cards in play or set aside cards.".
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Re: How good is Alchemy?
« Reply #36 on: September 06, 2016, 11:14:49 am »
0

Unpopular Opinion Potion: Philosopher's Stone is my favourite Alchemy card because it doesn't cause me to sit through hours of my opponents chaining actions.

Just hours of them counting their deck and discard every time they play it.

My friends are generally capable of remembering the number they just counted when they play two Philosopher's Stones. Some are even clever enough to say "Well, they were worth $4 last turn, so i guess you trust me when i say i can afford a Province with these two".

I would not trust them! Why? Because it depends on the number of cards in hand and played, since "You only count your deck and discard pile, not your hand or cards in play or set aside cards.".

I will have to keep that in mind the next time i see somebody play a Philosopher's Stone engine, where people actually draw and play cards. Which might take some time, because PS is anti-engine and it would be a pretty dumb idea. Hey, at least when you draw your deck, there's less to count, right? Most PS games i experienced were "I have one buy, two PS, buy a Province". At some point it just doesn't matter anymore, even with more buys. You just know he has that money. Seriously, i can just say, i never ever felt i had to wait long for a PS turn to end, but i have had agonizingly slow Scrying Pool games. Even if you would actually count your deck once per turn, that's still loads faster than revealing, drawing and playing it.
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Davio

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Re: How good is Alchemy?
« Reply #37 on: September 06, 2016, 01:33:44 pm »
0

Alchemy is probably the worst Dominion expansion.

But you should probably still get it at some point. The worst pizza is still pretty tasty.
Well, it just has a lot of variance, also because it's so small.

I like Apothecary a lot, University is pretty fun too, Scrying Pool is manageable, Golem is useful from time to time.
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Aleimon Thimble

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Re: How good is Alchemy?
« Reply #38 on: September 06, 2016, 01:48:18 pm »
0

Alchemy is probably the worst Dominion expansion.

But you should probably still get it at some point. The worst pizza is still pretty tasty.
Well, it just has a lot of variance, also because it's so small.

I like Apothecary a lot, University is pretty fun too, Scrying Pool is manageable, Golem is useful from time to time.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Alchemy personally, I'm just saying that it's probably the worst one you can buy. (I actually prefer Alchemy over Seaside and maybe Cornucopia, although that's a close call.) The reason being the high variance and small size. University, Apothecary and Golem are all among my favorite cards, Scrying Pool would be up there too if it weren't for its unfortunate tendency to make games last more than an hour.
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ackmondual

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Re: How good is Alchemy?
« Reply #39 on: March 05, 2017, 03:00:56 am »
0

As much as it pains me to say this, I would prioritize Alchemy last, if not lower.  While I really did enjoy playing Alchemy when it first came out, the later sets do put it to shame.  I do recall one Dom. regular got frustrated b/c when we randomize, when a potion cost card came out, we'd have to ensure there was at least 1 other Potion cost card!  This happened often as back then, Alchemy was the latest and greatest in Dominion.

My boyfriend and I usually ban Alchemy, and always ban Possession.  The problem is that the theme is chaining actions, but chaining actions is slow to resolve.  Apothecary, Alchemist, Golem, Scrying Pool, they're all slow.  Philosopher's Stone is slow too because you have to count your deck.  Back when we played with Alchemy, I found it particularly frustrating because I was newer to Dominion than my boyfriend and one-sided slow games are the worst.

Lately I've been watching Twitch streams, and they've given me a new appreciation for Alchemy, and I wouldn't mind playing a few more games with them IRL.  However, I've observed that Possession leads to more resignations than basically any other card.  It seems that Possession is too slow even online.

Heh... I'd have to ask that group again, but they've been refusing to play with Alchemy as well.  Basically... "So you guys bought Dominion: Alchemy so that you can... not play it?"

Why does everybody hate possession so much? I think it can be a ton of fun. I even like the sloggy games where both players stop improving their decks out of fear of helping the other player.

It's already annoying in the simulator, but it's even more frustrating trying to juggle multiple hands and multiple decks in person. Since this is asking about in person expansions, this colored my opinion appropriately. Also, those sloggy games take "literally forever" in person.
Also annoying to implement, as I hear many digital version held off on that completely, or it was delayed for no small amount of time
« Last Edit: March 05, 2017, 03:02:45 am by ackmondual »
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