Oops, I thought I had responded to this earlier.
Thanks for the comments! I'm really glad you liked it.
I liked the game. The playing experience was unique and distinct from other games I've played. A few times it felt like between rapport, money, and RSC there were too many resources to manage, but I think in person, with actual chits to trade in for money and rapport, that wouldn't be such a big problem.
There's some variance in which potions you get and how well they synergize with each other, but it's no worse than, say, the variance in Ticket to Ride based on what tickets you draw. And having spells to learn helps mitigate it.
I'm so happy that it was a unique gaming experience! I was concerned while conceiving it that there was sure to be a game out there with similar mechanics that I was simply unfamiliar with. Still could be.
There are kind of a lot of resources. After the first game, I thought about trying to eliminate coins. Instead, I ended up making things a bit less finicky and it seemed to work out after that. Now that I've played a bunch more games, things feel like they interlock well.
Glad to hear the potion variance didn't seem over the top. There are definitely some good combos in there, but I've tried to mitigate bad luck by allowing players to look at extra cards in a lot of situations. I've also toyed with the idea of making the potion deck smaller or maybe removing panacea altogether to reduce variance. But I like the potion effects so I'm resistant to the idea. I thought of a change to Telepathy earlier (changing "Draw 3 potions" to "Draw a potion every time you learn a spell") that might also help smooth out draws.
Has anyone learned invisibility in a practice game yet? Having played once (and been blocked from my plans several times) invisibility suddenly seems much stronger than it did when I first looked at the board. Once you get it, the game becomes largely non-interactive and you can simply follow your own plan. That might actually be too strong/unfun because it keeps other players from trying to mobilize to stop the leader from winning.
Yes, Invisibility has been learned a lot, it's a favorite of my group's (although my style is to try to go without it). It's strong, to be sure. Initially, it was a green spell, but that changed after the first game because it was clearly too strong and also made the game less interactive much sooner. And it definitely does reduce interaction (but remember that just because you cannot be blocked does not mean you can't block) and ganging up, but it's also an expenditure of resources to get Invisibility that could have been used for something else.
I've proposed the idea of making it a red spell, but people didn't like that. Maybe that's just my play group, who seriously have a thing for it, but it seems like it'd just be too late to matter. Something else would have to be tacked on, and maybe that's ok. In fact, maybe I should try to switch Invisibility with the new top half of Telepathy from above.
Overall, my personal opinion is that it's not bad the way it is. Aside from a couple people I've playtested with loving it maybe too much, it doesn't seem like it's been learned substantially more than the other yellow spells, and I've seen success with it and without it. It's pretty satisfying to win after not learning Invisibility when both opponents had it. Plus, even though it removes some interaction, I think that fits with the flow of the game, which moves from a lighter, "take that!" style game to a puzzler towards the end. Kinda tricks people into having a deeper experience than they thought. This whole paragraph is just my opinion though, based on my style as a gamer. Certainly not everyone will agree. I guess my best advice would be, play another game and try Invisibility. See what you think.
Oh and one last thing about Invisibility that I just thought of and don't love, is that it changes a lot with different player counts. It's way more important in 4 player than 2. So maybe this is a good reason to consider scrapping it, maybe it's a good reason to swap it with Telepathy, I don't know. But it's something to keep in mind.
You also might consider making the teleport taxi free in cases where the player is forced to use it. That makes getting boxed in a little less feel bad.
This is totally brilliant. Idk if it'll be a situation that arises often enough for it to matter, but I want to try the game this way. It just gives a perfect out, in fact a strong advantage, to someone who's getting ganged up on too much. Thanks for the suggestion.