CMYKThe Quacks of Quedlinburg: The Alchemists - The Hit Game of Potions, Explosions, and Pushing Your Luck

We thoroughly enjoyed the original Quacks game, and quickly purchased The Herb Witches when it came out. I've noticed if you add too many variations to a game, it can get a little chaotic or hard to remember all the new steps, so I waited a bit before buying Alchemists. Wish I'd bought it sooner! It adds a lot of nice variation to the game-play, and even some of the patients that sound like that might not be very useful prove pretty valuable during game-play. I do wish the game designers had included a new scoring board with this game, though - it would be helpful to include the "score your essence" step and allow the scoring system to go a bit higher before rounding through zero again. The larger score path would be helpful since the addition of the alchemists (and for that matter, the herb witches) can definitely bump your round scores significantly higher. Definitely recommended.

This is a great expansion. There no are new ingredients in this expansion, but there are new ingredient books for the locoweed. It also comes with addition locoweed chips and replacement cherry bombs for the base game, as they tend to wear out. In this expansion there are 8 patient boards, of which 3 will be used each game, and their alchemist board. Each player will choose one patient to treat for that game (multiple player may choose the same one). This adds asymmetrical benefits to players based on their chosen patient. I love The Quacks of Quedlinburg, and this expansion is a great addition.

Fantastic addition to an already amazing game. If you have not tried this game please please give it a go. Easy to learn, tough to master and is great fun for old and new players alike.

We generally just play quacks and witches but for the right group, alchemists makes for a different game experience for the more focused game nights

This is a very easy expansion to quacks. It makes the game more interesting without adding any complex rules

The additional elements introduced by alchemists add some nice variety for replay.

Great addition to the orginal game

Expansions to games need to add something. It needs to make the game more dynamic and interesting without feeling like it added complexity needlessly. And honestly this expansion seems to have mostly been a way to add complexity.And worse, I see this as making a runaway game worse. Someone who gets ahead will likely be able to use the bonuses from alchemy to get even more ahead. (I haven't played in a game where its made a difference, but I've only used it once.)I enjoy the basic Quacks, but honestly I don't expect that I'll be bringing this expansion out often. It just added another thing to track without making the game more fun.