I recently played a 5-player game of Theophrastus. These are some of my initial thoughts on the game.

The basic theme is that all of the players are competing to be selected as the next apprentice to the great Alchemist Theophrastus Bombast. The game consists of performing 3 experiments, and scoring is determined on how well this experiment matches the experiment performed by Theophrastus himself. The reagents used to complete Theophrastus' experiment are dictated by a combination of the specific experiment in play as well as the cards played by each of the players. So players use their cards to add reagents to both their own experiment as well as that of Theophrastus.

It is essentially a card game with some player mats that serve more as player aids than an actual board. The cards are split into 3 basic types: Reagents, Specials, and Philosopher's Stone. The reagents come in 3 flavors: Metals, Elements, and Essentials. Each of the reagents has a hierarchy of cards, such as lead, iron, copper, silver, gold in metals, or earth, water, air, fire in elements. The cards meet a good design principle in that both a color and a shape differentiate the 3 types. So all the elements, for example, are blue triangles. The specific type of element is indicated by text and artwork. The cards also have a number on them indicating the number of points for that reagent. This value of this number is related to the reagents place in the hierarchy. For example, Water is typically a 2 or a 3, while Fire, might be a 4 or a 5.

The special cards are lodestone, ether and aqua fortis. One special card for each of the three types of reagents. These cards can be used as wild cards in their respective reagent types, or can be used to transmute, transform or transfer a reagent of the proper type. The philosopher's stone cards also do some interesting special actions, like revealing hidden reagents or spying on someone lab notes (look at their hand and steal a card), etc....

There are 3 sets of experiments, labeled A, B and C which constitute the 3 rounds of the game. You randomly select an experiment from group A and start the game. When that experiment is completed and scores, you select a random experiment from group B, and so on. Each experiment card will tell you the number and types of reagents that are required for this experiment. For example, the experiment we played in group A, was to make a Cleansing Unguent. It indicated Silver +3, Water, Not Earth, and Any 3. The way to interrupt this is that the experiment required Silver plus 3 other metals, it required Water, but Earth was a restricted Reagent and it required any 3 essentials, for a total of 8 reagents. 2 of the reagents are already indicated on the experiment card, and 6 that must be added by the players.

So everyone starts with 5 cards. The start player takes the Theophrastus marker. They draw a card into their hand and then place one card from their hand, face down next to the Theophrastus' experiment. The number of reagents in each set limits the card play. So in the above example, if 3 essentials have already been added to the experiment, no more may be added.

Then each player, starting with the player to the left of the Theophrastus marker takes their turn. The player holding the Theophrastus marker, plays for Theo-phrastus at the start of the round, but takes their own turn last. After their turn, the marker moves one player to the left and play is repeated.

On your turn, you draw a card, and then have 3 action points to spend. You options are: draw a card for 1 AP, search one of the 5 decks for the card of your choice for 3 AP, place a reagent face up in your own experiment for 1 AP, place a reagent face down in your own experiment for 2 AP, turn the card of another player (or Theophrastus) face up for 2 AP, look under a face down card (but leave it face down) for 3 AP, add a card to Theophrastus' experiment for 3 AP, use a special card or philosopher's stone card for 1 AP.

There is an important distinction between revealed (face-up) and secret (face-down) reagents. Basically how much information you want to share with everyone. The other thing is that the special cards and Philosopher's Stones can only be played on face up cards.

A round ends when the last ingredient is added to Theophrastus' experiment. Everyone then gets one last action point before scoring. For every reagent of yours that matches a reagent of Theophrastus' you get the points indicated on your card. For every reagent that doesn't match, you get 1 point. You get no points for restricted reagents (Earth in the example above). You are also limited to the number of reagents in Theophrastus' set. So in the above example, you would be limited to 4 metals, 1 element, and 3 essentials.

Insights

Okay, so that was a rather lengthy description of the game. Now for some insights, comments and feedback. The game clocked in at about 90-100 minutes. Now this included a rules explanation by someone who had never played before. I expect that this number will go down considerably with experienced players, and an experienced teacher. I also expect that it will be shorter with fewer players. We played with the full complement of 5.

Overall, I liked the game and expect it to hit the table with some frequency. As I have only played it once, I'll have to see how it holds up on the re-playability scale. I expect that the randomness generated by the cards, coupled with the variable experiments available, that it should hold up reasonably well. There were even 3 blank experiment cards. It would be interesting to see what experiments people might cook up on their own.

I think that the major flaw in the game is the rulebook. The game engine seems simple enough that it shouldn't take 13 pages to describe. And even if they did need all 13 pages, they should have put all of the detailed examples at the end and given more of an overview in the beginning. There were lots of references in the rules like, (more about this on page 11). I started at the front and started reading cover to cover and didn't really get what was going on until like page 9 or 10. And then when I finished, I had to go back and hunt through some sections a couple of more times to get everything straight. And we were constantly referring back to the rules.

The game is very rich with theme. The experiments that you are performing look to be historically accurate. And even if they are not, it's easy to get wrapped up in the theme if you choose to. The three experiments we performed in out game were to make a Cleansing Unguent, a Diving Vapor, and a Potion of Longevity. On the other hand, there is enough of an actual game, that if you chose to ignore the theme, you'd still be interested in what was going on.

The three experiments get progressively more valuable as the game progresses. We checked all of the experiment cards and all of the A's require 8 reagents, the B's 10 and the C's 12. So people not doing as well have a chance to make up more ground as the game goes on. While this undervalues good play early in the game, it keeps everyone interested in the whole game. In our game the first round scores were 14, 9, 14, 14,14. Second round scores were 35, 27, 23, 32, 23. And third round scores were 28, 27, 28, 30, 37. Final scores were 77, 63, 65, 76, 74. I believe that our second rounds scores were higher than typical because of the cards played to Theophrastus' experiment.

There is also a good amount of tension. The Actions points give you enough choice to do interesting things, but not enough to do everything you want. One thing that we caught onto early on was that Theophrastus needed fewer cards than we did. If you go back to the example, Silver, Water, any 3 Metals, and 3 essentials, Theophrastus already starts with 2 of his 8 reagents. Which means that if you are going to perfectly match your 8 with 8, you have to get 8 cards down in front of you before he gets his 6 (plus the 2 required makes 8). Putting reagents face down costs 2 AP, while putting reagents face up costs 1 AP, but you have to share that info with the other players and make your reagents susceptible to the special cards.

To summarize, I think I really like the game. If it holds up to re-playability issues it will likely earn a regular place in my gaming rotation.

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