So, let's have a look at the board for the end of round 1 before we rotate over.
Artifacts are going fast, and two of our aspiring academics have severely hindered themselves with unsafe potion testing methods. Note that Johnny's action cube has moved over to the hospital space, and CaffeKnight's turn marker is off of the current Busy Days section. He'll have to settle for the funny green spot at the bottom of the next day's roster...
As seen here. Some of these spaces let you spend one of your upcoming actions for extra gold, but we'll table this for now and go over end of round stuff. If you're curious about next round's turn order, it's here:
- First up, we allocate the Top Alchemist Award. Whoever has the most seals on published theories (more on this in a bit) gets 1 reputation. Note that ties means everyone at the top gets rep. Nobody has seals on the board right now, of course, but this is still a good thing to shoot for.
- Next, everyone will Claim Unused Cubes. If you decide to dip out on taking an action for any reason, or spent an action as part of the Busy Days roster like the above, those cubes will chill out on the unused space for the round. Pick up at least 2, and you get to draw a Favor as a consolation prize. Again, nobody has these here yet, but hold up...
- After that, Johnny moves that cube in the Hospital to the Unused Cubes space. While everyone else gets their full four actions for each round hereout, Johnny's stuck with 3 for the next round.
- And finally, refreshing the board, including New Adventurers. (I'll also calculate Johnny's +5 rep here.)
So, refreshing the board will set a new tableau of ingredients to forage, but more importantly, round 2 also opens up the remainder of the actions on the board!
We'll start with
Sell Potions, taking place between transmuting ingredients and buying artifacts. As mentioned, Red Bannister is here for
potions of paralysis, insanity, and health, and as usual, you all place your actions here in turn order, with 2 action cubes needed to commit to the sale. But the rules for THIS turn order work a little differently!
Everyone has access to four discount cards like this, which govern your relative priority for who gets to make their sale first. The bigger of a discount you offer, the faster your sale goes through. If you take this action, secretly tell me how big of a discount you're offering using this scale, and we'll reveal them all when the time comes to resolve it. Whoever offers the most smileys gets first dibs on what they sell, which is doubly important because adventurers will only take one of each potion they're looking for! And, because we're all so proud of Johnny Unusual for sticking it out despite the early confusion, his excellent reputation gives him a free point of discount, allowing him to win ties on sales! Note that you still have to make gold on the sale, and jenkitchen's rep means she gets one gold fewer from sales, so she can't even attempt the -3 gold discount!
Now, strictly speaking, you don't have to know exactly how to make the potion in question. A good alchemist makes their offers with four degrees of guarantee, which you declare alongside which potion you're selling. These guarantees are money-back, and they also reflect how much info you get from the sale. In descending order, and using Mr. Bannister's desired
potion of paralysis as an example...
- Exact Match: Guaranteed to stop your political rivals and/or their stooges in their tracks. Mix exactly what the adventurer in question is looking for, and that's a clean 4 gold for you!
- Same Sign: Okay, so it won't strictly immobilize your target, but it'll still incapacitate them, and that's almost as good. You get this result if you match the sign, but NOT the color, of the requested potion, and the guarantee is still worth 3 gold, so hey, close enough. (So if the sale returns this result in this case, you either mixed poison or insanity.)
- Neutral Potion: At the very least, this potion won't make your victim better. Expanding the guarantee to include the possibility of a neutral potion takes the price down to 2 gold, and whether it's included in the guarantee or not, selling a neutral potion costs 1 reputation. The whole point of potions is that they DO things, y'know.
- Any Potion: You can guarantee that you are selling them a bottle with something in it. No matter what you sell, you walk away with 1 gold, and caveat emptor, sucker. Naturally, mixing a potion with the wrong sign gives you both very little info to go on (as you have no indication of color) and costs you 1 reputation.
If you don't have a potion worth selling to Red, no problem! Agent Esgarrouth is due to stop by next round, and he's looking for
potions of speed, wisdom, and poison to aid his guerrilla war against the brainslugs. Literally the exact opposite set from Red! How about that.
Before we move on to the next two action, let's take a quick look at the Theory Board.
This is the battleground of ideas, the core of how you win or lose the game! I've gone over reputation a bit already, it's that track around the edge of this board. Not only does it translate to victory points at the end of the game, certain levels also impart special properties, as we've already gone over.
- Low Reputation (6 or less), like jenkitchen and her skulduggery that got her that Printing Press, means that even if people HAVE heard about you, it's not good. The good news is that being this low insulates you against further reputation loss by 1 (mostly because it's pretty hard to think worse of people at that level). The bad news is that you have to bake in a 1 gold discount on all your sales, without the priority benefit that would normally entail.
- High Reputation (14-17), on the other hand, means people are more interested in your potions, as a rising star in the field of alchemy. As mentioned, Johnny will get priority on sales even on discount ties. But if there's something people love more than a rising star, it's a scandal, so whenever you lose reputation here, you'll lose 1 extra.
- Sky-High Reputation (18 or more) is even more valuable, since people will pay an extra gold for your potions off of brand recognition alone! But this level of popularity is very hard to maintain, and even a single mistake will cost you 2 extra points of reputation.
But enough about rep, let's talk about those inner spaces! These represent the current theories of the eight ingredients, which you can establish and contest with the
Debunk Theory and
Publish Theory spaces. Technically debunking comes first, but we'll start with publishing. Say that you've discovered the true nature of the scorpion, or at least you think you have. So you grab the matching alchemical for your theories (let's say R+ at random, or the large red positive alchemical), put that sucker on the board, add your facedown seal to authorize it, pay 1 gold to your publisher (academia ain't cheap, buddy!) and drink in that +1 reputation for being a published alchemist. Other people can endorse your theory by adding their own seals to it, which costs 1 gold AND they have to pay 1 gold to anyone with a seal already on it, AND they don't get the freebie reputation.
Having seals on theories also gets you closer to those grant tiles in the middle. Simply have seals on any two theories matching the picture (three, if you have any grants already), and you get to take the grant for 2 immediate gold and some victory points later. You also keep the grants even if someone debunks your theories later.
Speaking of debunking, how does that work? Well, let's take a quick look at some of the seals a player might have.
Broadly speaking, each player has two kinds of seals.
Starred seals are the ones you play to put your reputation where your mouth is, and every single one on a correct theory at the end of the game is worth cold hard VP. You each have two 5-pointers and four 3-pointers (normally it'd be 3 of the latter, but the Royal Encyclopedia offers an extra. Scroll up to the first post for info on it.)
But maybe you aren't totally sure about a theory and you're SO close to getting that grant and that smug jerkass keeps walking away with the Top Alchemist Award and you want to get an edge.
Unstarred seals, or hedged seals if you prefer, are worth no points, but allow you some wiggle room in the case of an eventual debunk. So if you aren't 100% sold on scorpion extract being good for your health for whatever reason, you can place this seal on it to indicate that you at least have the other two properties figured out. Even if it doesn't win you points, as long as that seal is on the board, it still counts for grants, conferences, getting people to endorse you, and the Top Alchemist Award. You get seven of these: two of each color, and one white one for exclusive use with the Royal Encyclopedia (again, the first post has the deets there).
As for debunking, it's much more straightforward. All you do when taking the Debunk Theory action is name the theory in question, and which of the three aspects you wish to challenge. So if your notes reveal that the scorpion is supposed to bestow wisdom, you could call the blue aspect in question. I will then
publically reveal the aspect of that ingredient. Should this blow the established theory apart, you get 2 reputation, and everyone with a seal currently on it has to reveal their seals. Correctly hedged seals (in this case, a blue unstarred seal) are merely burnt, while any other seal immediately loses
5 reputation. There is no greater disgrace to the study of alchemy than to have a theory you staked your reputation on overturned.
Meanwhile, for the hopeful skeptic, a successful debunk lets you immediately chain into a Publish Theory action if you have one queued. This "immediate publish" must cover either the alchemical or the ingredient of the theory you just debunked, but it does get to skip all other turn order shenanigans, which is Nice Good. Oh, and failing to debunk a theory property costs you 1 reputation for wasting everyone's time.
That about covers it. It's now time to go to turn order! jenkitchen declares first, then Johnny Unusual, and then aturtledoesbite. Remember, people who didn't chug poison get four actions this round! I'll post some summaries of public knowledge in just a bit.
