Board Game Cycle: Ars Alchimia

Last modified by Mitchell on 2022/04/30 05:49

BGG Link

Game 1: Base game

Game 2: Base game

Enthusiasm: ❤️🖤🖤🖤

  • Ars Alchimia takes the concept of worker placement and pushes it to the nth degree, all while being a small box game. Its claim to fame is providing 20 workers per player, well more than other worker placement games.
  • Gameplay is relatively straightforward, so is fairly easy to learn.
  • For better or for worse, as the game goes on, it becomes possible to calculate how many points a given action will provide, with some variance due to player interaction.
  • The assistants in the game are very unbalanced (another point this game is known for), although how good they are can be very dependent upon how far into the game it is.
  • The game doesn’t play well at 2 players (which is what we played it at). This is reflected in the updated rules, which states that the game is for 3-4 players, not 2-4 players.