Alchemists: a well-deserved hype
Once in a while, there is a board game that finds the right balance across the board. Alchemists was all the hype at Spiel, and quite rightly so. You can read the review here.
Alchemists: a well-deserved hype
The Czech game designers from CGE - headed by the brilliant Vlaada Chvátil - have grown quite the reputation over the last few years. Games like Galaxy Trucker, Dungeon Lords and Tzolkin shine in orignality and are able to combine well thought-out and rich gameplay with fun game mechanics and loads of humour. They seem to have found another great talent in Matúš Kotry. Although in many ways, Alchemists is a typical CGE-game, Kotry's Alchemists means yet another big step in the development of their trademark.
Alchemists takes us on a journey to a time when charlatans filled their days by combining ingredients into (not so) medicinal potions, spreading their crazy theories and debunking the crazy theories of their fellow charlatans.
The app as the icing on the cake
CGE is not known for walking away from a challenge, and Alchemists is no exception as they have spared neither cost nor effort to achieve their goals. The game's contents (cards, counters, playing field) are beautiful, high quality and numerous as always. The free gaming app is not just a gimmick but an integral part of the game.
Both the selling and testing of potions happen in the same way. You put the two ingredients you want to combine in your lab and scan them by using the app on your smart phone or tablet. You will then get the result straightaway. Based on that result, you can then deduce whether the ingredients' green, red or blue building blocks are either positive or negative and whether they are big or small. Sounds complicated ? It is not so bad !
Worker placement meets Cluedo
Alchemists is a worker-placement game, combined with the deductive elements of games like Cluedo and Mystery of the Abbey. The puzzle-solving in Alchemists is so much more fun though and way more challenging.
In the first phase of each round, all action cubes need to be placed among eight different action stations. You can forage in the woods to find some more ingredients, transmute some of your ingredients into gold, sell one of your potions to a travelling adventurer, buy yourself an artefact, publish a theory (founded or not), debunk a theory of one of your adversaries, test one of your potions on a student or drink your own concoction and suffer the results personally.
It goes without saying that some of these actions can go horribly wrong, which will negatively influence your reputation. This is imporant, as reputation will be converted into victory points at the end of the game.
Calculated guessing for the win !
A game lasts six rounds, which will not be enough to solve the entire alchemy puzzle. There is bound to be some calculated guessing and bluffing involved along the way, which will inevitably lead to hilarious and suprising twists and turns when the correct theories are revealed at the end of the game. Depending on how much you wagered on certain theories, this can generate you a lot of credit or totally ruin your carefully build-up reputation.
Although Alchemists, like so many Czech board games, has a lot of rulings and the inevitable exceptions to accompany them, the rules make a lot of sense and do not hamper the flow of the game at all. When there is downtime, you can use it to solve the Alchemy puzzle, which is the key to winning the respect and envy of your peers.
Conclusion
It will not come as a surprise that Alchemists was the absolute hit with the Spiel public in Essen this year. It is very fluent, fun and challenging, has great game balance and an original app to top it all off.
Alchemists has also been released at a very attractive price point: the quality game contents alone are well worth the 39,90 €.
