Potion

Potion
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Treasure
Kingdom card?	No
Set	Alchemy
Illustrator(s)	Matthias Catrein Claus Stephan
Card text

A Potion is a basic Treasure card from the Alchemy set. It is the only card that produces , and therefore Potion is needed to buy cards with in the cost.

During setup, Potion is added to the Supply if at least one Kingdom card with in the cost is on the board (or in the Black Market deck).

is orthogonal to in a cost; thus, although a card with a cost of is considered to cost "more" than a card costing or less with no , costs of, e.g., and are incomparable—neither is more or less than the other. Many trash-for-benefit cards whose effects depend on a card's cost only consider the cost in and ignore ; most Workshop variants can't gain cards with costs at all.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• This is a basic Treasure card. It costs and produces .
• It is not a Kingdom card; see the Preparation rules.

Strategy

Potion is a Treasure card that offers a currency completely distinct from . With only a few exceptions, it is the only way to gain cards costing : there are no effects that give Action-based , unlike with , and most gainers are restricted to cards costing only . This means Potion is usually a critical purchase, despite its downsides, when cards costing are important. While the effects of those cards can be very strong (e.g., Possession or Scrying Pool), Potion itself has several issues.

In the opening it is fairly similar to Silver, as a Treasure stop card that can help you hit specific price points early but may not be the most effective long-term payload. Even more so than Silver, its cost can mean that it has a high opportunity cost, i.e. the lost chance to buy or gain something that would have much more immediate benefit than Potion (e.g., a thinner such as Bounty Hunter). Aside from this opportunity cost, Potion is also very narrow and inflexible in its use: in many cases, Potion can only be used to buy one card in the Kingdom, and if you draw a hand that can’t afford that card, your opportunity to obtain that card is lost until the next shuffle and you are less likely to be able to afford something else. More generally, the bottleneck of only being able to buy one cost card per copy of Potion per shuffle limits the strength of many cost cards, as it is slow to acquire them in bulk. Adding more than one Potion is rarely a good idea, as this comes with a heavy additional opportunity cost and negatively impacts your deck control, though it can be worth doing if you are scoring with Vineyard.

Because of this bottleneck, if you want to use cards costing , you usually need to commit early, which often means buying Potion in the opening; this will especially be the case when playing those cost cards early is especially impactful, for example junking with Familiar or drawing with Apothecary. Conversely, if there are strong cheap cards that will help you initially build more quickly, and the cards costing don’t have as much immediate impact, it may be preferable to delay the Potion slightly. This is more likely to be the case with cost cards, because there is a somewhat small but significant chance of missing the price point when opening with Potion. In other cases, there’s no point in obtaining one until you are ready to afford a more expensive target (notably Possession) or until later still (Vineyard).

Certain effects can help solve some of the problems with making effective use of your Potion. Cycling (e.g. Warehouse) can help with the acquisition bottleneck. Effects that can help guarantee you hit a price point (e.g. Coffers from Pageant) can help ensure you do not miss out on buying the card this shuffle. A source of +Buy can also allow you to make use of additional you generate by buying another card, as many cost cards have a low price in , i.e. or . Storeroom is a particularly useful support card for Potion in the early game, as it has all three of these attributes.

Other effects allow you to either acquire cards faster than you otherwise could, or to skip the Potion entirely. In the case of the former, you can stretch a single Potion to two purchases that need it by playing it twice with Crown or using Stonemason’s overpay effect, or use effects that can gain more copies of a card once you have the first one, for example Changeling, Disciple, or Way of the Rat. For the latter, gainers that do not have a condition such as Lurker or Transport suffice. Notably, Squire can gain any Attack with its on-trash effect, including Scrying Pool and Familiar.

Cards with costs offer some immunity to Attacks and player interaction effects that care about card costs (e.g., Knights, Smugglers, and Chariot Race). If those effects will be an important part of the Kingdom, likely because they can be played multiple times per turn, cards costing and therefore Potion itself may be slightly more attractive than other alternatives.

Given that Potion, as a Treasure, is often a hindrance to your deck control, it may be worth trashing it if you no longer need it: for example, it may no longer be of any use if the Scrying Pools have run out or you if do not need to buy another Familiar because the Curse pile is empty. At , Potion makes a good target for trash-for-benefit effects.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
			Alchemy 1st Edition	May 2010
	never implemented		Base Cards 1st Edition	June 2012
			Alchemy 2nd Edition	physical set unreleased
	never implemented		Base Cards 2nd Edition	June 2018

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Release
Chinese	藥劑 (pron. yàojì, lit. drug)
Czech	Elixír
Dutch	Toverdrank (lit. magic potion)
Finnish	Rohto (lit. medicament)
French	Potion
German	Trank				Die Alchemisten 2010 Mixbox 2014 Mixbox 2019 Einsteiger-Bigbox 2019
German	Trank				Basiskarten-Set 2014 Sammler-Box 2019
Italian	Pozione
Japanese	ポーション (pron. pōshon)
Russian	Зелье (pron. zyel'ye)
Spanish	Poción

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

When I came up with Dominion, I figured it would have multiple resources. When I actually made it, I went with one resource, because it was simpler. I could always add another resource in an expansion. With Alchemy I finally got around to doing that. Originally I was thinking it would be Reagents or Mandrake or something. I didn't find a good enough picture to use for such a card, so I went with Potions. That's how these decisions get made.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Alchemy Cards

This is the same card as ever. I put it at because none of the cards that are always out cost . Originally the pile was 12 cards. There was room for 16 so there are 16. Twelve is probably enough, but it's nice to have a few extras just in case.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Alchemy Cards

Is Potion design space limited?

Well they really aren't that limited. It's bad if too many of them make you build slow chaining decks, like the ones in Alchemy do, but any given one can be a slow chaining card. A Potion-coster's thing is that it needs to be playable in multiples when there are no other Potion-costers out; it wants to either have +1 action or more, or play actions directly, or be a   card or treasure, or be a Remodel/Vault, or be really expensive. With a few extra more obscure niches. There's no special limit on how many cards like that you can make; they're normal cards that every expansion has.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.

Should Potion give +?

The premise was an alternate resource; not a partially alternate resource. Many people over the years have thought they'd like " +“ better. I've never felt much of a pull towards that though. So far what I like best is just not doing potions.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.