Potion-Making: Practice Card Game Review

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Show your mastery in alchemy as you compete with fellow students to create the most powerful potions in Potion-Making: Practice! Brew potions and elixirs, create talismans and summon magical creatures using special reagents such as firelight, mandrake root and snakes’ eyes. Successfully use the many available recipes to become the greatest alchemist in this strategy card game!

Potion-Making: Practice is published by RightGames, a Russian company known for other card games such as Evolution: The Origin of Species and The Enigma of Leonardo. Potion-Making: Practice has long been considered one of the most popular board and card games in Russia, and it’s not hard to see why. Now that it has finally been translated into English, the rest of us have a chance to experience this gem.

As the name suggests, this game is all about creating potions (and other magical stuff). Pouring over recipes and ingredients, you will feel like being in the world of Harry Potter, sitting beside Hermione Granger in Professor Snape’s Potions class. And don’t worry, the potions in this game won’t blow up in your face! The goal of the game is pretty straightforward: earn the most victory points by successfully using recipes to create lots of potions, talismans and magical creatures.

The game is simple and elegant. Each card is separated into two sections. The top section contains the name of the card’s recipe, and what ingredients are required to make it. The bottom section shows what element or raw material the card can be used as, and there are a whopping 16 elements in the game. When the card is in your hand, it can be used as a recipe. And when it is on the table, it becomes an ingredient.

The game begins with each player drawing a hand of 4 cards. 4 more cards are revealed face up on the table to act as a starting pool of raw materials, known as the Table of Elements. Each turn, a player draws a card from a central deck, then plays a card from his hand. This continues until the deck runs out and all players have played the last card from their hand. The player with the most victory points then wins the game.

Playing a card can involve one of 2 actions. If none of the recipes in your hand can be created (i.e. their ingredients are not available), then you have to discard a card to the table as raw material. This isn’t so bad though, since you gain one victory point if that raw material was not previously available on the table.

However, if the ingredients are available for one of your recipes, then you can play it. Basic potions require 2 raw elements as ingredients, and give you 2 victory points when played. There are also plenty of other recipes that are more complex, giving you more victory points. For example, the Talisman of Teleportation requires an Elixir of Flight and a Liquor of Eternity as ingredients and gives you 8 points. Previously-created potions can be used as ingredients for your recipes, even if they were created by another player. However, using other players’ potions will also give them half of the victory points you earned with your recipe.

There are also a few special cards that can be played in addition to the basic one card a turn. These are spells that can have a big impact on the playing field. There is a spell that lets you grab a card from the table into your hand to be used as a recipe. And there is another that lets you swap one of your previously-created potions with a card from the table, and treat it as if you had created that potion instead.

The rules of the game are really easy for anyone with any level of experience to master, and it can easily be played in just over half an hour. However, it should be considered elegant rather than simple, because there is a surprising amount of strategy involved. Do you discard a crucial raw material to the table for a victory point or withhold it to prevent your opponents from creating their potions? Do you piggyback on other players’ potions or try to create your own potion chains for a larger point difference? Do you try to focus on one type of potions and make it difficult for the other players to create other types? There are a lot of things to consider in this deceptively simple game, and players of all experience levels will appreciate it as a quick filler game.

The quality of the cards, boards and playing pieces may not be the best, but the art is simple yet striking, and captures the feel of the game perfectly. It is also really cheap for a game that will provide you with countless hours of fun. If you haven’t tried or heard of Russian board games before, Potion-Making: Practice is one that you have really got to try. You’ll also like it if you are into the world of Harry Potter or like games with a medieval fantasy or magic theme.

You can find out more about the game at RightGames’ website.

Complexity: 2.0/5.0

Playing Time: 30 to 45 minutes

Number of Players: 2 to 6 players

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