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).
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.
is to date the only possible component of a card cost other than . 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. ManyContents |
Strategy
Different
-costing cards call for different strategies, of course. But there are a few general points that apply to most Potion games.Potion costs to buy—slightly more than Silver. Thus, cards costing can be thought of as slightly more expensive than cards costing +. This rough guideline works in many cases: for instance, Alchemist is a Laboratory with a bonus; Familiar is more powerful than Witch; Possession, the most powerful Action card, competes at with Province at .
However, there is more to open with a -costing card and thus usually can't have one in hand till turn 5 at the earliest; since Potion costs you can't open with two Potions, and thus can't even usually gain your second -costing card before turn 5. Moreover, having Potion in your deck is itself usually ultimately a liability: the only Victory card Potions can buy is Vineyard, and when it comes time to buy Provinces the Potion is essentially a dead card in your deck.
costs than just the notion that < < ; cards costing are in general much harder to gain than cards costing +-and-a-half or so. Since you don't start with a Potion in your deck, you can'tFor this reason, a major component of the strategy of Potion games lies in deciding whether the value of the powerful cards you can buy with Potion is worth the cost of weakening your deck by adding to it a Potion that won't help you buy Provinces, and of the fact that the construction of your deck is delayed by the amount of time it can take to acquire the powerful
-costing cards.These drawbacks are compensated for in part by the fact that Vineyard and Philosopher's Stone can be worth, respectively, insane amounts of and in decks properly constructed around them; and with sufficient trashing, an engine built around Scrying Pool or Alchemist can regularly draw your whole deck with a high degree of consistency. Moreover, -costing cards are generally designed so that decks that benefit from gaining them benefit from gaining multiple copies of them—the majority of them are non-terminal Actions, one is a Treasure, and one is a Victory card—so it is rare that you find yourself buying a Potion that you only want to use once; whenever you draw your Potion, you're usually happy to buy another copy of whatever -costing card made you want to buy the Potion in the first place.
-costing cards are in general very powerful. For instance,The best times to buy Potion are usually either the opening—for cheap -costing cards, to enable you to buy as many of the target cards as you can as early as possible—or once you have a smoothly-functioning and rapidly cycling engine assembled—so you don't have to wait too long after buying the Potion to start being able to use it to buy expensive -costing cards like Golem or Possession. A common mistake inexperienced players make is to open with Potion when the only -costing card in the Kingdom is an expensive one; the early Potion then just acts as a dead card for the early game, making it harder for you to actually buy the Gold you need to be able to afford that Possession.
The Alchemy rulebook suggests that players might prefer to play games containing three to five Kingdom rather than just one, but this is only a suggestion; games with any number of -costing cards are legal Dominion games. However, the presence of a few different -costing cards in the supply increases the value of Potions.
-costing cards in theThere are a very small number of ways to gain Jester, which on a lucky draw can gain you a copy of a -costing card in your opponent's deck. Also worth noting is Squire, whose on-trash effect can get you a free Familiar or Scrying Pool. Masquerade can be used to steal -cost cards from your opponent without "gaining" them.
-costing cards without using a Potion. The most important isSynergies
- Multiple -costing cards in the Kingdom.
- +Buy. When you have a Potion in hand plus more than you need to buy the
- Especially Herbalist, since it also allows you to save your Potion from one turn to the next and thus buy multiple -costing cards per reshuffle.
-costing card that you want, it's very useful to be able to spend the remaining on a Treasure or another engine component.
- -costing terminal silvers. On a 4/3 opening with Potion, cheap terminals can give you a much-needed + and a bonus without risk of early collision with another terminal. Even relatively weak terminal silvers like Woodcutter and Chancellor can be good complements to a Potion opening.
- Colony, which tends to favor slow-building engines.
- Mine, which can let you trade in a Silver for a Potion or a Potion for a Gold, depending on whether you need or more at the moment.
Anti-synergies
- Fast Big Money strategies.
Trivia
The original Potion card art is by Matthias Catrein, and the art on the Potion card in the Base Cards expansion is by Claus Stephan.
Secret History