Tips alchemists

1. Don’t make mistakes

   It sounds so obvious. I hate to say that about half of my lost games are caused by not following this rule.

   • Play carefully
   • Check what has happened since your last move
   • Put your action cubes onto the right action
   • Place the crosses in the right column and row of your grid
   • have enough resources for the actions you want to do
   • select the right alchemical and the right seal
   • select the correct ingredients for your potion
   • look up the results in the right column
   • Double check everything before you commit
   • Check if the action can still be done as planned
2. Learn deduction

   You have better things to do than being in the lab brewing potions. Good deduction skills can save a lot of lab work. For the beginning, you should have 16 crosses on your deduction grid if your first two experiments have different colors (not neutral). If you have only 14 crosses (many beginners only get 14) reread the Alchemicals section in “Basic Principles of Alchemy” to find the other two.

   There’s more to deduction than is written in the rules. Find it out.

   In a 3 or 4 player master game, a good alchemist needs 3-4 experiments to have his grid almost completed at the first conference. You’ll not meet him in the lab afterwards. 2 player or apprentice games need a bit more.

   Learn all about the structure of alchemicals.

3. You don’t need to know everything. You just need to know enough. And you don’t even have to know. You may also guess. Most times it is sufficient to be confident.
4. It is better to know more about less than to know a bit about everything.
5. Publish. Your seals are worth 19 points in total. This is about half of the points you’ll get in the game.
6. Make use of the theory table

   Your dear colleagues are morons (no offense meant, they think same of you) and publish nonsense all the time. You can’t trust them. Everyone knows that. However, they value reputation as much as you do. So, there must be some truth in their publications. Take advantage of their weakness and find out what it is. Of course, this is not state of the art knowledge, but as told before you don’t need to know exactly. Confidence is sufficient. The grey crosses will help you.

7. Play for grants. A good alchemist gets his first grant usually with the second seal.
8. Watch what the others do, and also what they don't do
9. Plan your round. This starts at selecting the position in play order and continues with placing the actions cubes. You should know then what ingredients to take, what to sell, which discount to give, and so on. Think about what the others will do. This is somewhere between guesswork and psychology, but it helps.
10. Take notes

    This is especially important for round-based games. You can’t remember everything over a couple of days. You may use the built-in notepad on the upper right, a sheet of paper or anything you like.

11. Take risks

    You may fail. That’s ok in the early game. It may cost one reputation point, but you get something in return that’s worth more.

    You may promise a higher guarantee for your potion than you know for sure. On the long run 50% of 3 gold is more than 100% of 1. Of course you should not do that if the next conference is due and you badly need the money for the printing.

    Gold is scarce and valuable. Instead of spending it on a student you may choose to suffer damage yourself and spare the money for the next artifact. You’ll find other situations.

12. You can get information almost everywhere. Use all of it.