Dominion: Alchemy Rules

Official-rulebook flavor excerpt: “There are strange things going on in your basement laboratories.”

Alchemy turns Dominion toward experimental science, dubious chemistry, and grand plans involving lead, gold, strange ingredients, and the hope that progress will eventually justify the mess. It is a small expansion centered on a second purchasing resource: Potions.

What You Need

Dominion: Alchemy is an expansion. Use the Basic cards and the normal Dominion rules, then add the Alchemy rules below when Alchemy cards are selected.

Setup and Potion Costs

If at least one selected Kingdom card has a Potion symbol in its cost, add the Potion pile to the Supply. Potion is a Basic Treasure costing 4 coins. When played, a Potion produces one Potion resource rather than coins. A card whose cost includes both coins and a Potion requires both parts of the cost.

Potion is a separate part of cost. Effects that compare costs must be able to match both the coin and Potion portions. A card with Potion in its cost is not treated as merely having a larger coin cost. Unspent coin and Potion purchasing power disappears when the Buy phase ends, just as ordinary unspent coins do.

The Potion pile is a Supply pile. If it empties, it counts toward the normal empty-pile game-ending condition.

Card-by-Card Clarifications

Alchemist

Alchemist gives +2 Cards and +1 Action. During Clean-up, if you have at least one Potion in play, each Alchemist being discarded from play may be put on top of your deck instead. You only need to have played a Potion; it does not need to have been spent. With several Alchemists, you may return any number of them. Clean-up order matters, so you may resolve the Alchemists before discarding the Potion.

Apothecary

Resolve the +1 Card and +1 Action first. Then reveal the next four cards of your deck, shuffling if necessary. Every revealed Copper and Potion goes into your hand. Put the other revealed cards back on top of your deck in any order. Taking the revealed Coppers and Potions is mandatory.

Apprentice

Trash one card from your hand. Draw one card for each coin in that card's cost, plus two additional cards if the trashed card also has Potion in its cost. A zero-coin card such as Copper or Curse normally draws no cards. Potion is not converted to a coin value; it supplies the separate two-card bonus.

Familiar

Familiar gives +1 Card and +1 Action, then each other player gains a Curse if possible. Resolve affected players in turn order when the Curse pile is close to empty.

Golem

Reveal cards from your deck until you have revealed two Action cards that are not Golems, shuffling as needed. Discard all other revealed cards. If you found one qualifying Action, play it; if you found two, play both in the order you choose. You must play the Actions you found. Because the revealed Actions are not in your hand, an Action such as Throne Room found by Golem cannot use the other revealed Action as a card “from your hand.”

Herbalist

Herbalist gives +1 Buy and +1 coin. When you discard Herbalist from play during Clean-up, you may put one Treasure you have in play on top of your deck. Multiple Herbalists can each save a different Treasure. You control the order in which cards leave play during Clean-up, which can matter with Alchemist and Potion.

Philosopher's Stone

When played, count only the cards in your deck and discard pile. Divide that total by five and round down; Philosopher's Stone produces that many coins. Do not count your hand, cards in play, or cards set aside. Its value is fixed when played even if your deck or discard pile changes later in the turn.

Possession

The player to your left takes an extra turn after your current turn, but you see the cards they can see and make the decisions for that turn. The word “you” on cards still refers to the player whose turn it is, not the player controlling the decisions.

Cards and certain gain-related resources that the possessed player would gain during that turn go to the possessing player instead, normally to that player's discard pile. Cards belonging to the possessed player that are trashed during the possessed turn are set aside and returned to that player's discard pile after Clean-up; they still count as having been trashed for any trash-triggered abilities.

Passing, returning, or exchanging a card is not the same thing as gaining or trashing it. If an Attack is played during the possessed turn, it can affect the player controlling the Possession normally. Possession creates a full extra turn after the current turn has ended and can be cumulative if played more than once. It is not a Duration card and is discarded during the turn in which it was played. Extra turns that would occur after the game has already ended are not played.

Scrying Pool

First, each player—including you—reveals the top card of their deck. You decide separately for each player whether that card is discarded or returned to the top. Then reveal cards from your own deck until you reveal a non-Action card, shuffling if necessary. Put all of those revealed cards, including the final non-Action card, into your hand. If your entire available deck consists of Actions, put all of the revealed Actions into your hand when there is nothing else to reveal.

Transmute

Trash a card from your hand and apply every listed reward whose type matches that card. A card with multiple types can produce multiple rewards. Trashing a Curse produces no reward. For example, an Action-Victory card qualifies for both the Action and Victory results.

University

University gives +2 Actions. You may gain an Action card costing up to the printed coin limit, but the gain is optional. A card with Potion in its cost cannot be gained by University because its cost includes a component University does not allow.

Vineyard

At the end of the game, each Vineyard is worth 1 Victory Point for every three Action cards you own, rounded down. Count Action cards wherever they are in your deck at scoring time, including cards with additional types.

Important Cross-Expansion Notes

When another expansion compares card costs, remember that Potion is its own cost component. Debt and Potion are not interchangeable with coins. Multi-type cards can interact with Transmute and Vineyard in more than one way because each printed type still counts.

Accessibility Notes

When announcing a card cost, state the coin portion and Potion portion separately, for example “3 coins and 1 Potion.” When using Apothecary, Golem, or Scrying Pool, read revealed card names aloud in reveal order and clearly state which cards are going to hand, discard, or back on the deck. For Possession, announce when the extra turn begins and ends, who is making decisions, and which gained or trashed cards belong to which player.

Source

This accessible rules page is based on the current Rio Grande Games rulebook and retains additional accessibility guidance for mixed blind and sighted play. Official Rio Grande Games Alchemy rulebook PDF.