I don't like the new version, it is all over the place with weird Debt costs and Treasure hand gaining (be careful with that, Sculptor is the obvious benchmark of a non-terminal Silver hand-gainer).
Why don't you stick with the old one and either ignore the virtual Potion issue or simply do a Silver for $5 that junks Coppers?
First i have to say that i like the idea of alchemy on principle. I think Donald had a fine idea but wasn't really lucky about it. If you read his secret history you get this impression because he mentioned that the cards of Alchemy had several cards which he has „stolen” for other expansions.
So with
Reagent i want to create a card which gives a more powerful start into buying cards with potion-costs.
You wrote that you like the idea of
Reagent but there was an issue with
Apothecary and
Alchemist because they work only fine if there is a potion in your deck.
So with the instruction „gain a treasure card with cost up to $4” i can solve the problem not to
buy a potion. You can
gain (!) a potion (treasure with cost $4) if you want and
Reagent is attractive attack too.
Now about the cost. As
Reagent is powerful, the cost have to be $5 or $6 eventually more (?).
Sculptor has cost of $5 but only the instruction, to gain a card up to $4.
Reagent is more a potion-gainer in opposite to
Sculptor because
Reagent should be part of an Alchemy-kingdom and it gains to your hand (!) too. So you can use the potion-card at once.
So $6 would be right. But the idea is to start into alchemy cards quickly. So with costs of $4+2debts you can
buy Reagent in your first two turns.
On the other side spending coppers slows the game. But alchemy has nice possibilites:
Apothecary and
Philosophers stone (!) work with them well or if you don't like a large deck, there are two trashers in it (
Apprentice and
Transmute or from other expansions).
So i want to expand the idea of Alchemy which you don't see in other expansions.
Virtual potions accelerates the game with alchemy especially when you use these fine (tested) basic victory cards (game ends when
County supply pile is empty too):
You have to see all these alchemy-cards with an eye on my other alchemy cards: