Well, would you look at that. Yet another Alchemy fan expansion thingy -- this one's different, though, I promise! Let me begin by telling you what approach I chose and why. You can also skip straight to "ALCHEMISTS & ELIXIRS" if you just want to see the actual cards & rules.
THE APPROACHSince 2016, the base game itself and numerous expansions have received second edition updates. In fact, with the recent reveal of the Cornucopia & Guilds 2E, only 2 of the "old" roster of expansions have been left untouched -- Dark Ages and Alchemy. Well, we know what Donald X has said about the latter. He'll rather leave it be and work on something more promising instead, which is fair enough.
But what if he didn't, what if he changed his mind in favor for his quest for endlessly improving Dominion? What could the result of that possibly look like? That's the question I wanted to find something resembling an answer to, or rather, at least work out some kind of concept, something that gives an idea of how one might reshape Alchemy into something worthy of existing next to the other expansions.
I looked at everything Donald's written about Alchemy, especially the retrospectives, and how he approaches card design nowadays. And I came up with some stuff. None of this is tested, there are cards that I'm still not quite happy with, but I wanted to give this a shot and now look at this together with you all.
FORMING THE VISIONThe first big thing is to get rid of Potion. Yes, it has its fans, but all in all, it's still the most unpopular mechanic. That mainly comes down to its clunkiness and the issue of single Potion cards struggling to be relevant in full random because of the high investment cost that Potion poses, with it basically being a junk card in your deck. The question is, what would Donald X. do, were he about to make a new version of Alchemy? You can bet he'd remove the Potion mechanic altogether and replace it with something else, while trying to preserve the premises of the original kingdom cards in some form, at least most of them. So that's what I'm attempting here.
Now what do you replace the Potion mechanic with? Well, this is still called Alchemy, and the flavor is perfect for Dominion, so you gotta come up with a mechanic that fits that flavor. Potions are weird in that regard. You what, buy a Potion, and then pay your Alchemist or Apothecary with it to do stuff. But hey shouldn't they be the ones brewing Potions, being Alchemists and all? The old mechanic just has the flavor backwards. So I tried a new one: There are Alchemists (a type now) and all 5 of them have ways of brewing you an Elixir. If you meet their requirements, they'll brew you an Elixir of your choice overnight, ready to be used at the start of your next turn, or any of your next turns, but wearing off after one turn. Some of them take effect immediately, some others boost your turn by caring about things you do in it. More on that later.
What else? Well, the cool thing about cards that cost Potion is that they feel like these exclusive, powerful effects that aren't that easy to obtain en masse (at least the ones that aren't duds). Alchemists & Elixirs cover this, but I also had the idea to reuse Potion's cooler cousin: Debt. Those big, powerful cards that need some kind of support as to not be an automatic buy. Empires had a few, but it always felt like there was some significant design space with Debt left. Plus, Debt works and feels like Potion in many ways, so it's just ideal for this, expansion chronology be damned.
The last big thing is, looking at how Cornucopia & Guilds have become inseparable with the 2E, the 150-card-expansion is now *certainly* an outdated concept. It's a no-brainer to up the size of the set to 300 cards, as in, 26 kingdom cards (including one VP card), and 12 Elixirs. In the end, this is a weird hybrid between a 2E and an expansion-expansion. This demands new cards beside the potionless versions of the originals. As mentioned, a lot of those are Alchemists and Debt cards, but of course you need some off-theme ones. These focus on things the original expansion lacked in, like trashing, +buy and terminal $. There's also a mini-theme revolving around fluid terminals: Cards that are sometimes terminal and sometimes not, or offer some way to deal with their terminal-ness. Additionally, the Action card theme has been expanded upon, you'll see a bunch of cards and Elixirs caring about Actions in some way.
You might have seen versions of these cards before on reddit. I post there as u/westgot, and this is actually the 5th version of this little no-playtesting-project. But enough blabbering, let's finally get to the cards and rules.
ALCHEMISTS & ELIXIRSFirst off, some new rules. I'll go through these as briefly as I can.
Preparation
In games using one or more Alchemist cards, shuffle the Elixir deck, then draw and put 3 Elixirs face up next to the supply. Each player gets 2 Elixir tokens. They are placed face down, with the 2-sided token showing the empty Elixir symbol. Put the unused Elixirs back into the box.
The Elixirs are a separate deck, not combined with Events and so on. They are not part of the supply, so they cannot be gained or bought.
Turning the tokens
When you are instructed by an Alchemist card to turn an Elixir token over to full, turn one of your 2 tokens showing the empty Elixir symbol over so it shows the full Elixir symbol. If both tokens already show the full Elixir symbol, nothing happens.
Spending the tokens
You can spend full Elixir tokens only once at the start of any of your turns. You may also choose not to spend them, or only spend one if you have 2 full ones. If you decide to spend 2, you must spend them together at once, and on different Elixirs. When you spend an Elixir token, choose an Elixir and put it next to your play area, then turn the token you spent back to empty. The Elixir is now active and you follow its instructions.
If multiple things happen at the start of your turn, you choose the order in which they happen. When you spend the Elixir tokens at the start of your turn, you cannot do anything between spending the tokens and activating the Elixir -- if the Elixir has an immediate effect, you do that before anything else.
The Elixirs
At the end of your turn, if you activated an Elixir at the start of it, put it back next to the supply. The Elixir is now deactivated.
Two Elixirs may do something at the same time, e.g. at the start of your buy phase, or right when you activate them. You then get to choose in which order those effects happen.
As you can see, two of the Alchemists replace original cards. Fanatic is but a hint of Transmute's premise, the part that remained is that it turns Treasures into Actions, only it does it far better now. Early in the game, in order to flip those tokens, you can trash your starting Estates. Later on, you might find yourself cashing in some of those Actions it gained you before; that's what makes the Fanatic so fanatic. Oh and it's also able to cash in on Curses and even Night cards!
Philosopher wants you to have 10 cards outside of your hand and play area, which makes it one of the more challenging Alchemists, because in engines, it's a terminal that needs to be played ASAP in your turn. It should create interesting decisions.
Academic is like a reverse Carpenter in turning non-terminal later on, but it turns tokens instead of remodeling.
Glass Smith is on the OP side of things, but I expect it to create fun gameplay instead of being monolithic. Note that gainers, at least those who aren't Treasures, aren’t gonna help. Will you pick up two 2's early on or wait until you can gain more powerful Actions later on? The answer will depend a lot on the available selection of Elixirs.
Poisoner offers an alternative use of the tokens but really makes you work for it.
And finally here's what all the fuzz is about. Elixirs are a bit like a more powerful version of Allies. A lot of them focus on draw and $, in order to be both powerful and simple. Most of them strengthen existing engines and require some Action cards being played, some others offer immediate benefits. Most of them give +Action, but none of them give +Buy, that's why 3 of the Alchemists do just that (and why they are, in turn, mostly terminal). Elixir of Power is the wordiest one, but it needs those in order to truly being done after one turn like it's supposed to. And Elixir of Growth wants to be Coppersmith's second coming. I hope it is.
Oh, btw the Elixir tokens. I did the best I could do with AI art; it could be better. But I think it gets the point across. If anyone can do better than this, I'd be more than happy to use their result instead!
DEBT CARDS
Vineyard is the perfect Potion card. Herb Garden tries to emulate it; you can gain it without spending any $ the turn you get it, but if you want multiples at once, it demands some restraint on playing Action cards.
School costs debt in order to not ever be able to gain itself, and the buy restriction ensures that it's not an automatic first buy.
Alkahest might seem underwhelming at first glance, but man it isn't. It lets you play that Gold before upgrading it to Province, that's nuts. So nuts that this needs testing, I hope it doesn't prove to be as monolithic as Rebuild.
Concoction is a fun mix between Conspirator, Grand Market and Village. It might seem like a tracking nightmare IRL, but I promise it isn't! You only need to track the first 3 plays at the utmost anyway. In the worst case, bump it up if you chose the $, bump it down if you chose +buy, bump it even more up if you chose both, and put it sideways if you chose +Action.
Hospital is inspired by one of Asper's cards, Institute, which has Laboratory as a top and also costs 8 debt. This one has a top that interacts with the bottom, and it's probably a good BM card, but a tricky late game buy in engines.
Illusionist is my attempt at the +2 Cards, +$2 vanilla card that never came to be, because it could neither be a $4 nor a $5. This guarantees $5 in the early game and can spike really high, but becomes less relevant later on.
THE OTHER 2ND EDITION CARDS
Apprentice stays! With the removal of the whole Potion mechanic, I think you could let this count as an errata, so it requires no new name and art. It's also the coolest card from the original expansion IMO. He burned it all down and is the sole survivor. "Add a debt clause instead!", I hear someone yelling. Well, how about no?
As with School, Dispensary's gain restriction simulates the Potion delay effect, because you sure would love to open with it in most games. Since you don't have to add Potion as a stop card anymore, it got its range reduced to 3 cards revealed.
Observatory is a nerfed Scrying Pool in its purest form, but it's still explosive. It's also a candidate for costing Debt, but it just feels right at $5.
Occultist is just Golem 1:1. Is it really a $5? I think so, even if it's among the weaker ones. In some games you won't get to draw your whole deck.
Plagiarist is the super Smugglers. It's still annoying and potentially stale-mate-y, but as far as a Possession replacement goes, it's the best I could do.
Perfumer is simply a Scheme variant, in order to push the Action theme a little more. It's good with e.g. Philosopher!
Spellbinder fixes Familiar's swinginess in every way, 1) with its cost and 2) by junking in half-speed. And after it's done junking, it stays relevant as a Peddler.
Alchemist is another Potion card that I really like, because it has another use for the Potion beside letting it pay for its cost. Royal Laboratory is quite different, you just don't mind a Gold as much as a Potion in your deck, but it's more expensive. It's the fancy Lab now.
MORE NEW CARDS
Alehouse is a powerful Village variant, it really is the anti-Village-idiot-Village. A bit strong for $3, perhaps, but sometimes you might prefer classic Village's reliability.
Basilisk combines Militia with Clerk, and it bites its owner a little too. It's here to have 3 attacks in the set.
Brewery is a funny one, opening with it won't do you no good, but it likes terminal draw and Duration cards. It offers a choice between Peddler and cantrip trashing to make you want it, and echoes the chaining theme of the original set. Isn't it slow IRL, though? Well, just take 2 fingers, tap the pairs of cards in play until you have either 0 or 1 left.
All but one of these add to the "fluid terminal" theme.
Homunculus is always a weak terminal Moneylender, but it can push your other terminal to the next turn.
Investigator is a tricky one, man can it really cost $4? Yes, I think so. Does this set really need more terminal draw? I mean, no, but it also fills an interactive card slot, and it seems fun. Shouldn't it reveal the discarded card first? I don't think so, it's wordy enough, and then if Jester doesn't need to do that, this one sure as heck doesn't either.
Mage, well, it seemed like a fun new way to do a reaction, even if it's somewhat weak. It gives the benefit next turn so it's not problematic to play in the middle of resolving another card.
Physician was conceived before Infirmary! It shakes up openings while trying not to be too unfair.
FINAL NOTESIn this current form, Alchemy has a lot of terminal draw, plus some choices, revealing, and looking at cards. Damnit, Philosopher even makes you count your deck and discard pile, but it suffices to count to 10, unless you want that info. My point is, Alchemy-heavy games will still have long, slow terms. But now it also has 5 cards which give +Buy, and Elixirs which make strong engines even stronger and faster. So while the turns take longer compared to most other sets, there should also be fewer of them. This new version of Alchemy is relatively light on mechanics; both Elixirs and Debt focus on big effects that you need to build towards to, and then the aforementioned smaller themes help in giving it some identity.
I sure would like testing it all at this point, to see if Glass Smith and Alkahest are ridiculous OP after all, or if Mage never gets picked up, or if Homunculus is too preferable to Moneylender... At the very least, I hope that some of you might like this vision I have of the new Alchemy.
I would like to thank all the redditors who made great suggestions and helped me improve upon the cards with long discussions and critiques, especially: u/dGfisher who suggested using tokens for the Elixirs; u/chaotik_iak for coming up with the 2-sided tokens; and finally u/twl_corinthian for looking very critically at the wording.
If anyone's active in the German forums, the user Seli will post the German version for me there soon, or well, me, we're still figuring that out.
