How to Play Alchemists

hi it's Ryan from knights around a table and this is alchemists a worker placement logical deduction game for two to four players as usual the rules gremlin is here to let us know when things get a little confusing let me show you how to play in alchemists you and your friends play academic wizards trying to determine the secret building blocks of various potion ingredients and then publishing theories on your research for money and fame you'll experiment by combining ingredients in your cauldron and then using a free app discover which potion you've made by drinking it yourself or feeding it to a hapless intern tracking your results plays out like a logic puzzle once you think you know the molecule that underlies an ingredient you can publish a theory on it as in real life you don't necessarily have to be right and if you go on a hunch your opponents might successfully debunk your theory key to playing alchemists is understanding the games logical underpinning there are eight ingredients in the game each one of these ingredients corresponds to a different magical molecule which the game calls all chemicals which alchemical corresponds with which ingredient is randomized at the beginning of the game when you fire up the app your main goal is to figure out these relationships and to exploit that knowledge for your own game and now chemical is made of three circles a circle can be red green or blue it can be big or small and it can be positive or negative when two ingredients are combined if each underlying L chemical has a circle with a matching sign a matching color and a different size those two ingredients will make a certain potion a big and a little red positive circle combination makes a healing potion a big and a little green positive combo makes a speed potion a big and little blue positive combo makes a wisdom potion the same types of combinations with negative symbols make potions with the opposite effects poison paralysis and insanity when you combine two ingredients you scan those cards using the app and it tells you what kind of potion they make you don't know the corresponding L chemicals yet but now you have a hint so let's say that a toad and a feather make a healing potion you find those two ingredients in your secret notebook and place a healing token where they intersect you know that neither of the two underlying L chemicals for the toad or the feather can have a red - circle because that combination wouldn't give you a healing potion so you can cross out all the L chemicals with red - circles beneath both of those ingredients a big part of the game is making deductions like these to narrow down which L chemicals fit which ingredients each ingredient also has one exact opposite when two opposites mine they create a neutral potion so an alchemical matchup like this one where none of the circles would make anything viable produces a neutral potion if your phone's camera is wonky you can punch in the ingredients by hand there's also a web app if you don't own a phone each new game session generates a code so everyone at the table can download the app punch in the game code and get the same results when they scan their ingredients and if you're Amish you can elect a game master to oversee this board where the randomization can be done manually and you can hand over your cards to the game master and ask which results they produce but whichever sucker is in charge of that board doesn't get to play because the answers are right there still it's nice to know that Alchemist is playable even after the zombie apocalypse with that groundwork laid here's how you actually play alchemists the game is played in six rounds the first step is choosing player order beginning with the starting player and going clockwise you determine how early you're willing to get out of bed by placing your colored flask on one of these spaces the later you wake up the sweeter the perk you get one ingredient card one favorite card in one ingredient card three ingredient cards and so on these cards are all drawn from their facedown decks if you wake up megha early you have to pay a coin to buy yourself breakfast each of these spaces can accommodate only one player the space at the very bottom of the track is for wizards who have been paralyzed by drinking a bum potion I'll talk about that later let's my face start out in the first round only these areas are accessible depending on the player count you'll have between four to six cubes you can place but in the first round you only get to use three of them the extras get stacked down here until round two [Music] once everyone has chosen a spot on the turn order track and collected their goodies play begins in Reverse turn order the player who woke up the latest goes first paradoxically this is because the late rising player is only declaring his actions and letting the other players know what he intends to do during this step if you've slept in the longest you play all of your cubes to the different action spaces in one go on the lowest rung then the next sleepiest player places his or her cubes one row up and so on when everyone has finished declaring their actions the first actions get resolved from top to bottom so the player who wakes up earliest sees what everyone else is going to do reacts accordingly and has his or her preferred actions take effect first before everything else is resolved if a row has multiple boxes you can play cubes to declare multiple actions if the boxes are connected you have to play two cubes together to take that action so here the first action costs one cube and the second action costs two cubes in a two-player game the space is marked with a three aren't used after everyone else has placed their cubes actions are resolved like this the top row first action happens first then the next row with cubes in it first action then the following row first action then the first row second action then the second action in this row so top to bottom in columns the areas around the Academy resolve in a specific order so this one first then this one and this one then this one all the way around the school in an arc and ending with the drake a potion space remember that in the first round these spaces are unavailable if you foraged by playing one or more of your cubes here you can either take a face-up ingredient card or draw one facedown from the deck these cards don't get replenished until the next round so it's first-come first-served if there are no face-up cards left you have to try your luck with the deck when all of the foraging actions have been taken discard any remaining face-up ingredients [Music] taking one or more transmutation actions lets you discard an ingredient facedown in exchange for one gold if you took an action here you can pay gold to buy one of the face-up artifact cards by paying the cost in the top-left corner of the card cards with immediate effects take effect immediately and other cards give you powers that last the whole game long in either case you play these cards out in front of you most are worth points at the end of the game like the ingredient cards artifact cards aren't replenished but new ones get dealt out later in the game these spaces lets you combine two ingredient cards in your cauldron to make a potion put the cards on the little ledge and then depending on where you placed your cubes drink the potion yourself or feed it to a student top the correct option in the app scan the cards and discard the ingredients then show the other players the result you got take a matching token and put it on your secret player board and draw any logical conclusions you can in your notebook you also have to place a token on your public board so that everyone knows the different potions you've made if the potion a student drank is positive it's all good if it's negative then each wizard who tests a potion on a student after you has to pay one gold to the bank that's pretty funny right if you chose to drink the potion yourself the experiment is free but you might suffer the effects of a negative potion if you drink an insanity potion you lose one reputation point if you drink poison your cube goes into this quarantine space and you'll have one less cube to use in the next round if you drink a paralysis potion you move your flask to the very last space on the turn order track it's hard to get out of bed when you can't feel your legs so you're waking up dead last next round if multiple players get paralyzed they wake up in the order in which they were paralyzed at the end of each round the starting player token gets passed clockwise skipping over anyone who's paralyzed if everyone's paralyzed the starting player token goes to the next player who would have been starting player despite the paralysis at the beginning of round 2 everyone can claim their extra action cubes the more complicated action spaces are now available here's what's up for round two onward a new adventurer shows up here wanting to buy some potions this is a way for you to both test out some ingredients and make some money on the side it costs two cubes to sell a potion to an adventurer the bottom of the tiles shows which potions the adventurer wants to buy this beat head wants a healing potion a speed potion or an insanity potion notice he's not interested in a wisdom potion when it comes time to resolve the potions selling area there's a whole bluffing minigame to reorder everyone's cubes that we'll talk about in a moment hang tight and we'll loop back around to it when it's your turn to sell a potion you take one of your two cubes and place it under the potion you intend to sell this blocks that potion off from your opponents and they can't sell that potion in this round the game board is double sided in a three player game playing a cube on either of the first two potions blocks off both for the other players in a two-player game the three spaces aren't used which means only one player can sell a potion that doesn't mean that only one player can place their cubes in this area though the number of potions that can be sold is always player count -1 so somebody's cubes might go to waste alchemist is a cutthroat game that was a good time to mention that if it's ever your turn to perform an action and you get completely hosed like this you can decline your action by throwing your cubes into this space on the board at the end of the round you draw one favor card for every two cubes you had to abandon what abandoned cube gets you connecting so one cube indicates a witch potion you're trying to sell the other cube goes on this guarantee of quality list if you guarantee you'll make the exact potion same color same sign that you pledged to make you can charge four coins for it if you think you can make a potion with the right sign but you're fuzzy on the color you choose this option if you think you can make a neutral potion or a potion where the sign doesn't come out the opposite of what the adventurer is expecting you choose this guarantee for two coins if guaranteed peddler of unmitigated garbage you can always count on getting one coin for your concoction a super important and easy to miss point is that these spaces aren't exclusive multiple players can offer the same guarantee as with drinking a potion you set up the ingredients in your cauldron and select sell potion then you tell the app which potion you pledge to make the app won't tell you which exact potion you made but it will tell you which guarantee you met you discard the ingredients and show the results from the app to your opponents if the results from the app is as good or better than the guarantee you made on the board you sell the potion for the coins listed next to your guarantee if you poached it and the result is worse than your guarantee you don't get any money for your potion and if your result is a no-smoking symbol or a cruddy black bottle you lose one point of reputation but the results you get can also help you whittle down the logic puzzle in your notebook if you got the null symbol you know those two ingredients neutralize each other neutralizing pairs about chemicals are separated by dark and light color banding in your notebook if you tried to make a health potion and you got this symbol you know you got the plus sign correct but the color is wrong so you made either a green speed or blue wisdom potion you can put a multicolored token like this one in your notebook to remember the result you also know that your ingredients didn't neutralize each other so you can cross those all chemicals out if you got this symbol you know you mixed a negative potion but it could be any color use a white negative token to remember that you don't have to put these tokens out on your public board like you did when you were experimenting now this whole potion selling process is obviously high stakes especially when one player might get left high and dry by being last on the list that's why I mentioned there's this extra bluffing minigame to reorder the cubes before the action spaces get resolved let me show you how that works if multiple players want to sell a potion then before anything happens here everyone gets a chance to offer the adventurer a discount choosing a card from their personal discount deck the players each pick a discount and everyone reveals their cards at the same time the cubes are then reordered by whoever offers the deepest discount with the most happy faces on the card if players are tied for happy faces you maintain the original order between those players this discount affects your guarantee though you can't guarantee a potion at a level where the discount would take the potion price to zero or below so if you offer a discount of three coins your only choice is to guarantee your potion at the four coin level if selling a potion wasn't complicated enough there's one extra mechanic to keep in mind this track where you gain and lose reputation is divided into zones blue green and red if your flask is in the Green Zone you get one extra smiley face added to your bit in the blue zone you get one extra smiley face on your bid and you get paid one extra coin for any potion you sell in the red zone you have to charge one last gold for your potion because word gets around that your potions are hot garbage this means that if you're in the red zone you can't offer a three coin discount because no guarantee will take your potion price above zero there's also a rubber banding effect that happens in these zones whenever you lose reputation when your flask begins in the green zone you lose an extra point of reputation this is because people expected better of you when you lose reputation when your flask is sitting in the blue zone you lose an additional two points but every time you lose reputation in the red zone you lose one point less oh okay are we finished learning how to sell a potion yet well that was tough how you doing still hanging in there okay good buckle up on to the most complex spaces on the board publishing and debunking theories when you place cubes on these spaces you can either publish a theory you have about which ingredient represents which alchemical symbol or you can agree with someone else's theory that has already been published it costs one gold to publish a theory take an alchemical symbol and place it on a particular ingredients book you can only publish a theory for an ingredient that doesn't already have a theory published then you put one of your colored seals on the book to put your name on the theory you immediately get one point of reputation note that your theory doesn't actually have to be correct well that's where a hedging comes into play on the other side of your seal is a secret bet indicating how confident you are in your own theory at the end of the game all will be revealed and you'll find out which ingredients correctly map on to which alchemical symbols your gold and silver starred seals get you five or three points at the end of the game but only if they're on a theory that's correct the unstart seals are worth any points but they do protect you against a wild guess in case someone tries to debunk your theory we'll see how that works in a moment for now if you're unsure about the sign of a certain color and inau chemical whether it's positive or negative place a seal with that color on the book if you want to ride in other players coattails you can endorse a theory you pay one goal to the bank and one gold to the player whose theory you're endorsing and then you put one of your seals on that ingredients book you don't earn any reputation for doing this and you can't endorse your own theories but if you use a starred seal the endorsement could be worth some points to you at the end of the game if the theory proves correct why bother using a none starred seal to endorse a theory if you're not going to get any points for it well endorsements also count towards the top alchemists prize which we'll look at shortly you can also win grants if you publish or endorse theories on two of the ingredients listed on one of these grant tiles you take the tile place it facedown on your public board and take two coins from the bank the tile will be worth points to you at the the game for your second grant and beyond you have to publish or endorse theories for three of the ingredients on one of the available grant tiles grant tiles are first-come first-served it's entirely possible that one of your opponents is full of baloney and has published a bogus theory if you have better information you can debunk theories by playing your cubes here if you successfully debunk a theory you get to reputation points alchemists has master and apprentice variants you can change moods by pressing a toggle button in the app to switch between them debunking is slightly more complicated in the master variant here's how it works in apprentice mode select debunk theory from the app and put the phone out in the middle of the table you can only select an ingredient that has a theory published you're trying to prove that the sign on one of the colors on the theory token is wrong tap the color you're disproving and select confirm the app will reveal the proper sign for that color in that ingredients alchemical if it matches the theories token you messed up you lose one point of reputation you've also just provided information to your opponents that they might not already have if the sign is the opposite of what's on the token for that color you successfully debunked the theory you get to reputation points you kick the theory token off the book like it stopped paying rent you flip over all the seals on the theory to expose the sloppy scholarship anyone who used a start seal loses five points of reputation anyone who used an unstirred seal with a color that doesn't match the one you disproved loses 5 reputation points too if the seal matches the color you just disproved that players safe from repercussions all of the seals get booted off the book and can't be reused for the rest of the game note that players don't lose any grants they earned after their bogus theories are exposed if you successfully debunk a theory and you have a cube on the published theory space then you can skip the queue and immediately publish a new theory as long as that new theory is either about the ingredient you just debunked a theory on or your new theory uses the alchemical token you Jess debunked you can't republish the exact same theory that you just debunked if you're publishing immediately but there's nothing stopping you from publishing a bogus theory that you and everyone at the table already knows is false later on in the game we'll see why you might want to do that in a moment you can even debunk your own theory if you successfully debunk it you gain two points but if you didn't hedge your bet correctly you lose five points for a net loss of three rep you lose the three points off your current reputation track score instead of going up two and then losing five it seems like a picky point but it matters because of the way those modifiers on the three scoring zones work in the master debunking variant you have to ask the app whether the ingredient in question plus another ingredient will make a certain potion you don't have to use ingredient cards to do this let's say someone posted this theory of feathers and let's say you suspect that the blue aspect of feathers is actually negative not positive because you know that if you combine a feather with a toad you get an insanity potion so in the app you punch in feather plus toad and then the insanity symbol then you tell the table that you intend to prove that the blue aspect of the published theory is wrong you push the confirm button the app will either confirm or deny that feather plus toad equals insanity if you fail to debunk the theory you lose two points as before if you're right then all the consequences from The Apprentice variant happen as usual it's possible that your demonstration disproves two published theories let's say that before you can debunk the bogus feather theory some goober publishes the theory that toads alchemical has a negative blue aspect your demonstration disproves both theories so you did bunk them both at once you get rid of the tokens you flip all the seals and hand out the consequences some players may to lose ten points of reputation with a move like this in some cases you can show that two theories can't possibly coexist if this was the theory of mushrooms and this was the theory of fiddleheads and you asked the app if these two ingredients make a strength potion and the app says yes then something's not right these theories can't both be correct because one of these two green circles would have to be small and the other one large you still get two points for debunking but you don't flip over all the seals and kick out the theories because it's not clear which of these two theories is wrong but you do put conflict tokens on those theories these theories no longer count towards earning players any grants or towards the top alchemists award which we'll talk about soon if if theory with a conflict token is fully debunked later on both conflict tokens get removed and the once conflicted theory is treated normally again even though it may still be wrong if you demonstrate a conflict that's already being demonstrated you lose one reputation point nobody has time for your plagiarism Powell at the end of every round whoever has the most published theories and endorsements gets the top alchemists award which is worth one point Theory's in conflict don't count towards this award all tied players get one point note that it still doesn't matter if these theories are correct or not you just rack up points every round anyways it's almost as if the system encourages you to publish bogus scientific theories hmmmm the unused cubes in this space get returned to their players every two unused cubes earns one favorite card a single cube gets nothing cubes that wound up in the hospital after their owners drank poison get moved to the unused cube space where they can be retrieved at the end of next round move a new adventurer tile onto the board at the beginning of rounds three and five you'll uncover a conference tile put it in this space on the board the conference has happened after the drink potion actions are resolved the conference tiles are double-sided use one side for the apprentice variant and the other side for the master variant players who meet the conference requirements gain points and players who don't lose points so this one says if you've published or endorsed at least two theories you gained a reputation point if you've published or endorsed only one theory you lose a reputation point and if you've published or endorsed zero theories you lose two reputation points the conference tiles also make you cycle the artifact cards at the first conference scrap the artifacts and replace them with the level two cards and likewise knock out the cards and replace them with level three artifacts during the second conference trash all the face-up ingredients and deal five new ones shuffle the deck if you run out of cards take the flasks off the order spaces accept any that are paralysed the starting player token gets passed clockwise skipping over any paralyzed players in the final round the drink potion test on student space is covered up by this exhibition board the board is double sided to accommodate different player counts select final round on the app the exhibition gives you a chance to show off your potion-making skills and to get rid of any leftover ingredients when it's your turn move a cube beneath the potion you intend to make put the ingredients in your cauldron tap exhibit potion in the app tell the judges which potion you're attempting to make and scan your cards you'll lose a reputation point if you fail to make that exact potion and you have to put your cube down here if you succeed you gain a point of reputation and you put your cube beneath that potion this limits the options for the other players if you succeed but you're not the first exhibitor your cube goes in here and you don't get any points but you do get the chance to pick up some points for mixing the opposite potion if you spend cubes and ingredient cards to demonstrate both the positive and negative versions of a certain color whether or not you're the first to do so you prove that you've mastered that color and you gain to reputation points like the other spaces the exhibition is optional once the exhibition is over finish out the round by awarding the top Alchemist prize and taking care of the unused cubes as usual at the end of the final round the reputation points you've earned turn into victory points this is to prevent the different zone reputation biases from swinging your score up and down as you count up the final points the zones are no longer in effect tally up the points from your artifact cards and your grant tiles unused favorite cards are worth the two gold pieces each you can buy extra points for three gold apiece keep your leftover gold in case you need to break a tie then tap the show answers button on the app for the big reveal the app will show you once and for all which alchemical corresponds to which ingredient flip the seals on the theories one by one for every correct theory the players score the points on their seals colored seals used to hedge bets don't earn any points if it theory is wrong players who use starred seals lose four points an unstart seal that's improperly hedged losses the player four points as well but a properly hedge seal doesn't cost the player any points to determine whether a seal is properly hedged or not compare the wrong theory against the correct theory if two or more circles are the wrong symbol none of the seals are properly hedged if only one of the circles has the wrong sign and that circle matches the seal the seal is properly hedged if it doesn't match is not properly hedged remember that hedging your bet with the seal means that you were unsure about a single color ignore any conflict tokens when scoring the player with the most victory points wins leftover coins break ties if coins are tied the game is tied guess you have to play again to set up the game flip the player board to the proper side based on player count shuffle the adventurer tiles and put one back in the box at random slip the first conference tile in under the second adventurer and the second conference tile above the bottom adventurer the conference's are double-sided depending on whether you're playing The Apprentice or master variant split the artifact deck into levels one two and three and shuffle each stack deal three cards face-up from each deck the cards in the two and three stacks can't be bought until those conferences come up but everyone can see what's on the horizon so they can plan out their strategy accordingly result tokens go here money goes here and five ingredients get dealt to the board put the ingredients deck here each player takes a public board with two coins and six five or four cubes for a two three or four player game you get three cubes in the first round and pile the leftovers on the adventure tiles for round two and Beyond take your deck of big cards and your seals and keep them secret draw two favorite cards keep one and discard the other draw three ingredients from the deck for the apprentice level variant and two ingredients for the master variant assemble your cauldron and tear off a fresh notebook sheet to go at the bottom of your deduction board put the grants on the theory board and place your flasks on space ten of the reputation track the starting player token goes to whoever was most recently in a lab press the start new game button on the app this will randomize the ingredients and how chemicals for your game write down the code from the app in case your dog eats your phone or you want to queue up the same configuration on multiple devices there's a lot more to explore in alchemists beyond what this video is covered you can check out all of the artifacts and their powers or the perks the different favour cards give you the manual shows you different techniques for making logical deductions beyond what I've covered but this video is definitely enough to help you fake it til you make it in the world of magical academic publishing now you're ready to play alchemists did you just watch that whole thing oh hey there 100% this video click the badge to subscribe and then click the bell to get notifications when I've got new stuff [Music]

Channel: Nights Around a Table

Views: 23,395

Keywords: board game, wizards, Harry Potter, deduction, worker placement, apprentice, master, potions, Severus Snape, brewing, academia, satire, parody, theory, publishing, witches, magic, foraging, mandrake root, eagle claw, magic mushrooms, scorpions, ingredients, adventurers, health, wisdom, insanity, strength, paralysis, poison, favor, cards, artifacts, artefacts, CGE, Matus Kotry, board game geek, how to play, watch it played, instructional, tutorial, help, logic puzzle, David Cochard

Id: E2eAVGlniMI

Length: 32min 17sec (1937 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 11 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/animeinme]

This guy taught me Burgundy. Hope his channel grows!

[u/[deleted]]

I like this guy’s videos

[u/AlmightySpoonman]

Just played this yesterday! Thought I had the game in the bag but I had written two things down incorrectly and paid a huge point penalty XD

[u/PM_ME_A_COLOR]

This is our ultimate "house favorite" game. My wife and I are solid light-medium gamers, so we never feel like we can show off this game enough (due to the time it takes to get through a game with first-timers), but it's just an absolute pleasure to get to introduce people to. Once in a while when the stars align and we can bring this to the table, it's absolute magic.

​

Question for Ryan, or other teachers-of-your-game-groups in this subreddit: not that I've ever had this game "flop" despite its potential to be confusing, but I wanted to ask how you, personally, teach Alchemists. What I do is explain the deduction portion and the turn one spaces, completely ignoring all other aspects of playing the game and saying "great-- now that you know this much, let's play the first round!"

Then after 25 minutes of rules explanation and one full round of play, I'll pause again and say "okay, now let me tell you about how to actually win this game," and launch into another 20-minute lecture about publishing and adventurers and reputation. I've probably taught the game a dozen times this way, but it always seems weird to me to teach base mechanics where people are so distracted by this super cool deduction puzzle that nobody stops to ask "Wait how do you get victory points in this game?" before we actually start to play. As I say, it's always been a hit with veterans and first-timers alike... but I thought I'd pose the question and see if anybody here does it differently? What are your thoughts?

[u/you_havin_a_laugh]

I really love that he's tackling how-to-play videos for so many great games that are otherwise under-represented. His Puerto Rico video was both educational and entertaining. Keep it up!

[u/zojbo]

I've played this several times, and this video still taught me a rule I missed: the turn order is resolution order, but placement order goes in the opposite direction. That's a bit counterintuitive thematically (somehow the "sleepier" player makes their plans further in advance?) but it adds some extra motivation to want to be higher on the track, relative to how I've been playing so far.

Great video, I really like the visual editing (like showing where the symbol token should go when making a potion). I'm not entirely sure that the length is right, but this game is hard to teach in general, so I can't fault them for it.

[u/blodskjegg]

Damn this game is hard, my head exploded from this video