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[Co0kieL0rd]

Apothecary: $5 is almost too much, I think. Again, why give it buying restriction that clearly anti-synergizes with the card? I might give you up to four Coppers (not Potions) in your hand at best. So you might even get all your seven starting Coppers in your hand after your first reshuffle (but no Silver, so you cannot hit 8 on that turn), and you have no +buy, AND you might otherwise weaken your next hand with all those Estates. So even at a cost of $5, the only thing that really makes it better than Scout is the +card, and it's a terrible opening buy with 5/2. So it actually should be $4 (without restrictions) to be actually worth it.

Wow, you have no idea how powerful Apothecary is. I would expect to pay $5 for it, minimum. For one thing, every +1 Card is huge on a non-terminal. Second, pulling all those Coppers into your hand is a giant economy boost. Why the hell would you want to buy Province on turn 3 anyhow? Buy Gold or a power $5 card.

You are correct. What was I thinking? I edited my post.

[Ritzy]

Okay, if you're going down that route, most of these costs are fine. But your buying restrictions on some just feel wrong to me.

The idea behind the buy restrictions was partly to emulate the "hard and slow to gain" impact of potion costs. I agree that they're not that well thought out though (though the apothecary one doesn't anti-synergise as much as you suggest, as people don't tend to build an entire strategy around apothecary and copper). Any other suggestions would be welcome.

EDIT: Whatever variants you choose, you should playtest them, and adjust when needed.

Absolutely.

[silverspawn]

and why would you do that? any reason except "i don't like potions?"

Mainly to make it easier to play with just one Alchemy card in a non-Alchemy kingdom. The potion mechanic can result in dead cards if most players decide it's not worth buying a Potion just for the sake of one card.

Are we talking about the same expansion? Let me list some of them... : University, Scyring Pool, Alchemist, Familiar, Vineyard. I think that, on a random board, every card in this list will have an "above average" chance to be bought. So, unless you disagree here, the only cards which need that kind of fix are: Transmute, Possession, Philosophers Stone, Golem. I don't think either Transmute or Possession are worth saving, they are fundamentally stupid, I would just remove them. Philosophers Stone is weak, but I like it. The only card I would fix is Golem... and I'd change all $3P cards to $2P, just to remove the luck factor

You can redesign them anyway, of course. I just don't see the point, I like the potion concept.

[Awaclus]

So, unless you disagree here, the only cards which need that kind of fix are: Transmute, Possession, Philosophers Stone, Golem. I don't think either Transmute or Possession are worth saving, they are fundamentally stupid, I would just remove them. Philosophers Stone is weak, but I like it.

Possession and Golem get frequently bought in games with no other potion cost cards.

[Asper]

So, unless you disagree here, the only cards which need that kind of fix are: Transmute, Possession, Philosophers Stone, Golem. I don't think either Transmute or Possession are worth saving, they are fundamentally stupid, I would just remove them. Philosophers Stone is weak, but I like it.

I had a very interesting game recently that had PS, Familiar, Watchtower and Squire. I opened WT/WT to buy a Squire and trash it for a Familiar as fast as possible, which also worked very well. One of my two opponents didn't really get what the board meant (not that experienced) and the other one didn't care. He bought a Potion and went for Philosopher's Stone. Of course i spammed them with Curses and while they both could trash one or two Curses with Watchtower, their decks were bloated very soon. The PS player easily reached 11$ the first time he had Philosopher's Stone in hand and anihilated the Curse minus by buying a Colony. It's not that he crushed me, and it's not like it couldn't be my incompetence that enabled that, but he won.

[KingZog3]

So, unless you disagree here, the only cards which need that kind of fix are: Transmute, Possession, Philosophers Stone, Golem. I don't think either Transmute or Possession are worth saving, they are fundamentally stupid, I would just remove them. Philosophers Stone is weak, but I like it.

I had a very interesting game recently that had PS, Familiar, Watchtower and Squire. I opened WT/WT to buy a Squire and trash it for a Familiar as fast as possible, which also worked very well. One of my two opponents didn't really get what the board meant (not that experienced) and the other one didn't care. He bought a Potion and went for Philosopher's Stone. Of course i spammed them with Curses and while they both could trash one or two Curses with Watchtower, their decks were bloated very soon. The PS player easily reached 11$ the first time he had Philosopher's Stone in hand and anihilated the Curse minus by buying a Colony. It's not that he crushed me, and it's not like it couldn't be my incompetence that enabled that, but he won.

PS is good in non-trashing Colony games, similar to Counting House can be. It needs lots of time and lots of cards, which Colonies allow for.

[popsofctown]

Curses are supposed to be bad.  That's their thing.  Ruins are supposed to be occasionally good, that's their thing.  Pitch ruins to buy Golems instead (add Looter subtype so they are technically available etc)

[pedroluchini]

Curses are supposed to be bad.  That's their thing.  Ruins are supposed to be occasionally good, that's their thing.  Pitch ruins to buy Golems instead (add Looter subtype so they are technically available etc)

Keeping Ruins and Golem in the same deck seems like a bad idea. Ruins are Action cards, and the Golem will start snagging on them when it could be finding your more worthwhile Actions...

[Co0kieL0rd]

Curses are supposed to be bad.  That's their thing.  Ruins are supposed to be occasionally good, that's their thing.  Pitch ruins to buy Golems instead (add Looter subtype so they are technically available etc)

Keeping Ruins and Golem in the same deck seems like a bad idea. Ruins are Action cards, and the Golem will start snagging on them when it could be finding your more worthwhile Actions...

I think that's why popsofctown suggested them as a penalty to gaining a Golem. However, the presence of Ruins might completely ruin the power of Golem and Scrying Pool, so having those together in a deck would be highly counterproductive as well as counterintuitive.

[Ritzy]

Okay, if you're going down that route, most of these costs are fine. But your buying restrictions on some just feel wrong to me.

The idea behind the buy restrictions was partly to emulate the "hard and slow to gain" impact of potion costs. I agree that they're not that well thought out though (though the apothecary one doesn't anti-synergise as much as you suggest, as people don't tend to build an entire strategy around apothecary and copper). Any other suggestions would be welcome.

Thinking about the buy restrictions more:

1) I'm tempted to keep the Curse restriction for Familiar, but drop the discard part, and reduce the price to $4. This permits at least four ways of gaining the card:
a) Opening Curse and $4/$5: unlikely to be worthwhile, but not vastly worse than Potion and $2/$3. If your second buy is a drawer, for example, you've got a reasonable chance of buying a Familiar in rounds 3/4 (4 Coppers and a Curse, 2-3 Coppers 0-1 Curses and a Smithy, etc).
b) Buying a cheap Curse early on, using a spare +Buy: might be worthwhile, but possibly niche.
d) Using a Curse from an opponent's attack: this actually makes Familiar and other Cursers less attractive as opponents become more likely to be able to afford Familiars soon after you start attacking. Though getting a couple of unanswered attacks may justify it.
c) Gaining it some other way: e.g. Remodel an Estate.
It may be that the cost of a) and b) doesn't justify the Familiar. I'll playtest to find out.

2) Likewise, I'll playtest the 'non-Copper in-play' restriction for Apothecary. It's actually a fairly minor restriction (as soon as you have one Apothecary, or a synergetic card such as Warehouse, then you're probably fine) and I'm not sure if Apothecary without Potions would get bought much at $6.

3) I'll try Golem at $7 as I can't think of an appropriate buy restriction.

[HiveMindEmulator]

The main drawback for the Potion costing cards is the Alchemy proposed range of using 3-5 Alchemy cards per game if you are using at least 1 Alchemy card. The Potion cards were designed with this in mind, but it was definitely a design flaw if you ask me.

From the secret history:

So I always knew this was an issue. The cards had to be worth buying multiple copies of. They had to be compelling. With just one out, you had to still consider buying Potion to get it. So that's why the set has so many +1 action cards, and then a victory card and a treasure; it's all stuff you want as much of as you can get.

This was considered in the design of the set.

What we really need to work on is translating the costs of all non-Potion cost cards into costs with Potion.

[eHalcyon]

What we really need to work on is translating the costs of all non-Potion cost cards into costs with Potion.

I'm thinking that Potion should cost no more than $0P.

[Holger]

From the secret history:

So I always knew this was an issue. The cards had to be worth buying multiple copies of. They had to be compelling. With just one out, you had to still consider buying Potion to get it. So that's why the set has so many +1 action cards, and then a victory card and a treasure; it's all stuff you want as much of as you can get.

This was considered in the design of the set.

Considered, but not quite achieved, as Transmute shows. And clearly you can't balance the Alchemy cards perfectly for both situations - either they're rather too weak in random games or rather too strong in Alchemy-heavy games (or both).

I think Ritzy's price suggestions (with CookieLord's "improvements") seem reasonable, except that Possession is probably too strong at $8, especially in Colony games. I would try it at $9 or even at $10, to avoid someone luckily getting a Possession on turn 3/4 e.g. with Coppersmith.

An alternative to changing the potion-cost cards is changing the Potion card. I think it was suggested on BGG to let the Potion card be used as a Copper when you don't need the potion - i.e. the card would read "Choose one: +P or +$1". This is probably far too strong when playing with 3+ potion-cost cards, but it may be a good boost in games with a single potion-cost card.

[LastFootnote]

And clearly you can't balance the Alchemy cards perfectly for both situations - either they're rather too weak in random games or rather too strong in Alchemy-heavy games (or both).

While this makes sense intuitively, I don't think it's necessarily true. What's your logic here?

An alternative to changing the potion-cost cards is changing the Potion card. I think it was suggested on BGG to let the Potion card be used as a Copper when you don't need the potion - i.e. the card would read "Choose one: +P or +$1". This is probably far too strong when playing with 3+ potion-cost cards, but it may be a good boost in games with a single potion-cost card.

Before Alchemy came out, I was so sure that Potions would provide one or more Coins along with the Potion-symbol, and the card costs would reflect that. Shows what I know.

Potion couldn't generate $2P without having the Silver-with-a-bonus at $4 problem. It could generate $1P, but just generating P is simpler, and simple is usually better.

[Holger]

And clearly you can't balance the Alchemy cards perfectly for both situations - either they're rather too weak in random games or rather too strong in Alchemy-heavy games (or both).

While this makes sense intuitively, I don't think it's necessarily true. What's your logic here?

Probably my claim was a bit too strong, but the argument is the differing opportunity cost for buying the Potion card. Often you don't want to continue buying a single potion card for the whole game - e.g. Transmute, Apothecary, University and Familiar become weaker or useless in the late game, while PS and Vineyard are weak buys in the early game. Also, when there's only a single potion card, you usually have to waste either $ or P when you go for it (either you overpay for a cheap potion card, or you draw potion with not enough $ to buy it - the Familiar problem); with several potion cards (that you want) at different price points you can make better use of your money (without needing +Buy).

[HiveMindEmulator]

From the secret history:

So I always knew this was an issue. The cards had to be worth buying multiple copies of. They had to be compelling. With just one out, you had to still consider buying Potion to get it. So that's why the set has so many +1 action cards, and then a victory card and a treasure; it's all stuff you want as much of as you can get.

This was considered in the design of the set.

Considered, but not quite achieved, as Transmute shows. And clearly you can't balance the Alchemy cards perfectly for both situations - either they're rather too weak in random games or rather too strong in Alchemy-heavy games (or both).

How does Transmute show this? You're not terribly likely to buy it regardless of how many other Alchemy cards are out there. And I don't think its impossible to balance for both situations, it's definitely not "clear" that you can't. The thing is that with random kingdom selection, "balance" isn't that delicate. It's okay for cards to be really strong in some kingdoms and useless in others. For instance, Sea Hag is really strong when there's no trashing, but pretty weak when there is good trashing, and this has nothing to do with the set that it's in or any weird cost mechanics, it's just interactions between cards. And anyway, cards being stronger in their own expansion is not unique to Alchemy. Look at Tribute and Counting House, for example.

[Holger]

From the secret history:

So I always knew this was an issue. The cards had to be worth buying multiple copies of. They had to be compelling. With just one out, you had to still consider buying Potion to get it. So that's why the set has so many +1 action cards, and then a victory card and a treasure; it's all stuff you want as much of as you can get.

This was considered in the design of the set.

Considered, but not quite achieved, as Transmute shows. And clearly you can't balance the Alchemy cards perfectly for both situations - either they're rather too weak in random games or rather too strong in Alchemy-heavy games (or both).

How does Transmute show this? You're not terribly likely to buy it regardless of how many other Alchemy cards are out there.

Yes, but that makes the design of Transmute even worse in this regard. Certainly Transmute is not usually "worth buying multiple copies of" or so "compelling" that "with just one out, you had to still consider buying Potion to get it", as Donald intended it to be.

And I don't think its impossible to balance for both situations, it's definitely not "clear" that you can't. The thing is that with random kingdom selection, "balance" isn't that delicate. It's okay for cards to be really strong in some kingdoms and useless in others. For instance, Sea Hag is really strong when there's no trashing, but pretty weak when there is good trashing, and this has nothing to do with the set that it's in or any weird cost mechanics, it's just interactions between cards. And anyway, cards being stronger in their own expansion is not unique to Alchemy. Look at Tribute and Counting House, for example.

I didn't say it's impossible to balance them for both situations, just impossible to balance them perfectly for both situations. The strength of all cards depends strongly on what the other kingdom cards do, but for Alchemy cards (and a few others, like BoM) it also depends strongly on the prices of the other kingdom cards, increasing what I would call the "imbalance" on individual boards.

[eHalcyon]

Yes, but that makes the design of Transmute even worse in this regard. Certainly Transmute is not usually "worth buying multiple copies of" or so "compelling" that "with just one out, you had to still consider buying Potion to get it", as Donald intended it to be.

I don't think anyone will defend Transmute as an amazing card, but I don't think it was ever intended to be a card worth buying multiple copies of, even though most Alchemy cards are.  If you ever want multiple copies of Transmute (for Vineyards, if anything), you would be getting them by using Transmute to trash treasures.





On the overall topic, most of the suggestions by Ritzy look pretty good to me.  The one that looks worst is Familiar at $5 and a Curse in hand.  With this kind of cost restriction, the Curse is basically standing in for Potion.  The main difference is that Potion uses up the $4 opening buy while Curse can be picked up even with a $2 opening hand.  Even so, Familiar would probably be better translated at $3 and Curse in hand, especially since this restriction actually nerfs Familiar -- buying the Curse lowers the ammo you can throw at opponents, and playing Familiar actually gives opponents the option to pick up their own Familiar without having to use up a buy.

[Marcory]

Everyone who owns Dominion owns either Scout or Chancellor. What if you added one of these to the kingdom as an 11th pile, then said that the 'P' symbol means 'when you buy this, first discard a Scout or Chancellor. If you do not, return this to the supply'

Alchemist could be likewise amended.

This way, you keep the other problems associated with Potion-cost cards--their slowness in coming into play, the problem of $2P, etc. To be sure, Chancellor and Scout make you go through your deck faster, but on the other hand, if you play them, you can't use them for payment, so i don't think this is a major issue.

This would also not change the effect of Remodel and Apprentice on Potion-cost cards, since the 'P' symbol would still be on the card.

You could also state that this 11th pile doesn't count for ending the game, to make up for the fact that you're replacing 16 potions with a stack of 10 cards.

[silverspawn]

Everyone who owns Dominion owns either Scout or Chancellor. What if you added one of these to the kingdom as an 11th pile, then said that the 'P' symbol means 'when you buy this, first discard a Scout or Chancellor. If you do not, return this to the supply'

Alchemist could be likewise amended.

This way, you keep the other problems associated with Potion-cost cards--their slowness in coming into play, the problem of $2P, etc. To be sure, Chancellor and Scout make you go through your deck faster, but on the other hand, if you play them, you can't use them for payment, so i don't think this is a major issue.

This would also not change the effect of Remodel and Apprentice on Potion-cost cards, since the 'P' symbol would still be on the card.

You could also state that this 11th pile doesn't count for ending the game, to make up for the fact that you're replacing 16 potions with a stack of 10 cards.

hahaha