Alchemists: The King’s Golem Unboxing Reaction

Hey everybody! It’s Ryan from Nights Around a Table, and i have here Alchemists: The King’s Golem, which is the expansion to Alchemists, which was an interesting game in that it involved an app that you needed to use to play the game. They had a non-app thing that somebody could just sit off in a corner and do for you, but if you’re not playing that game with the app, you’re you’re playing it completely wrong, cuz that person is going to be bored out of their gourd the entire time! This… Alchemists. More on Alchemists. i quite like Alchemists. And if you’d like to see my How to Play of Alchemists… it’s kind of a complicated game, but i’ve put the link in the description below. Here’s another interesting thing: at the time of this filming, i hadn’t actually shot that How to Play Alchemists video, because i’ve written the script… this is… now, this is a bit of a time-bending thing. A little Back to the Future. So at the time of this shooting, i wrote the script for Alchemists, and it’s like a 30 minute long video, so i’ll probably split it up into two parts…? Like, you’ll know. You’ll know already. i don’t know. You know. But… check it out. Daunting game. But it’s neat! It’s like a logic puzzle. And apparently, Alchemists: The King’s Golem adds another logic puzzle to worry about on top of that, so i’m excited to unbox it and see what the guts of it are. Here we go! Maybe if you watch my Alchemists How to Play video, you can leave me comments below and tell me if i do a good job on it. Is that how that works? i don’t know. i’m gonna end up marrying my mother somehow, i know it. Great! Here we go. As usual… you know what? i don’t even look at the back of the box when i’m pretty sure about a thing. i enjoyed Alchemists so much that i bought this sight unseen, and when i heard that there was another logic puzzle component to it, i was jazzed! There is a new, huge pad of… this is something that you put in front of your… your player screen when you’re tracking the logic of what underlies all the different elements, and they’ve added this golem thing on the bottom. i don’t know how it works yet, at all. i have a few games that have these – you know – pre-printed pads that you’re supposed to write on, and i always worry, like, “Oh – what if i run out and i’ll never have them again?” i’m sure you can print them on the website, and i have never played a game where i’ve actually gone through all the sheets on a pad. i just don’t play games individually often enough to worry about that. Perhaps you do? That’s interesting. That’s a good question to ask, actually: do you ever run out of printed pads? Oh, interesting. What does this say? If i can get it out… it says “We apologize for a small production error in the seals that are included with this game. Please use the seals on this sheet instead of the other ones, which can be thrown away as you’ll not need them. Thank You! CGE Alchemist instructors.” Well that’s nice! Instead of… i know some games have printing errors, and you actually have to… first know about the printing error, and then secondly write the company and they’ll send you this stuff, but it’s cool that they caught the error and they corrected it. Good on you! This very curly ad for Spielbox Magazine. A little packet of cards. Interesting they’re not individually wrapped. That makes me wonder. Like, does that mean that somebody at a factory somewhere has to take bigger decks of cards, sort them all out, and physically put them in a bag? Has… have people’s hands touched these components? That’s really fascinating. Who are those people? i don’t know. Probably not paid very much. A little deck of cards. Probably about… (riffles lips) like, 50,000 cards in there… and they say “Money!” They say “Goods!” They say “Extra reputation!” “Gain this after the end of the first round.” So these are little perks and rewards that look to – actually, kind of wildly swing what’s happening with the points and rep. Intriguing. And we have this dude, the Courtier. Cort-ee-ay. “Play when you need to pay an approval token. Playing this card counts as playing one approval token.” i don’t know what approval tokens are all about! But it looks like you shuffle those into the existing deck of favour cards. And these are new gadgets and gizmos to buy. “At the end of this round, use one of your start up cards again and discard it at the end of the following…” i don’t know what a startup card is, so it means nothing to me, but you get one for each phase of the game. One new… replicator, the royal signet, and the mahogany bookcase. One new gizmo to buy, which likely pertains to what’s going on with these special King’s Golem-only rules. What else do we have? A catalog for CGE Games. Thank you so much. We have more little… i like these a lot. This is the only game that i have that has these sort of translucent flasks. You get two each in the base game. One represents your wake-up time… two each? You get at least one. And this looks like it probably covers up… speaking of wake up time…. covers up the wake up time area on the base game, and with different player accounts on the back. Two that say 5-6. i wonder what the difference between the two of them… the difference is… quite a lot of difference! This one has purple things on it! (i don’t know. Eh don’t nuew.) What else is in the box? Wow! Quite a few… i wonder if you randomly deal out – there’s a LOT of these – randomly deal one of these wake up cards, or if it cycles through, maybe even, while you’re playing the game, and the wake up circumstances are different? That was kind of a funny thing in the base game, is you could… you could determine when you wanted to wake up. i’ve seen it in other games like Viticulture, but i saw it in this game first. Like, here, if you wake up super early, you have to pay a gold coin, because you have to buy breakfast, which i thought was funny. But it means if you wake up early earlier than the other players, you get to forage in the forest for ingredients, and get the best ones before the other players get… thematically, it worked really really well. i thought it was great. And now, the big show. A bunch of different tokens… this looks like… i bet we’re gonna find four of these. This looks like a… player mat. Player board. Mm-hmm! Of course, i don’t know what it means. And of course, i’ll have to study the rulebook for hours to figure it out! It’s not a simple game! And little punch tokens for each of the different ingredients that are underlied by the alchemicals. And these look like… alchemical tokens? For the three different balls in the two different sizes. This is the titular king of the King’s Golem. Couple of book tokens. A whole other board. i mean, like, as if Alchemists wasn’t complicated enough, here’s a whole other board, with a bunch of different squares and tiles on it! This, again, looks like an adjunct board that you stick on the side of the board, and crazy King’s Golem-related stuff is going on here. New… places to stick your workers. This looks like a new certificate…? i forget! You know what? i’m gonna have to watch my own How to Play Alchemist this video when it’s produced, and figure out what the heck that means! And these purple ones, these purple king tokens, look like the the main currency, or icon, or or feature, of The King’s Golem. Finally, the rulebook. Down here in the corner, it says Use the same app! If your Alchemists Lab Equipment app is updated to version 2 or higher, you’re ready to go!” So there’s no separate app to download for this game. And it says “the King’s Golem contains four separate expansions.” i don’t know how i feel about that? It’s kind of like “Here’s four expansions: you choose!” i’m like “No, YOU’RE the designer. YOU choose! You… you tell ME. That’s kind of YOUR job.” But usually when i get these games and the rulebook’s like “Okay, well there’s four expansions, and you have to – you know – piecemeal and play four different times, and slowly introduce…” i’m like “Screw it! Bah – throw it all in at the same time! We’ll just play!” Just play.” (inaudible thumping that may possibly be in Ryan’s head) The thumping upstairs tells me my family’s home, which means it’s gonna get noisy here, so i should wrap this up. Thank you for watching! i’ll get it to the table, i’ll do a How to Play of this one as well. Please enjoy the How to Play of Alchemists, and i’ll tell you what i think of it! Thanks for watching this one. Did you just watch that whole thing? Oh – hey! To 100% this video, click the badge to subscribe, then click the bell to get notifications when i’ve got new stuff! [Music – Board Game Boogie by Ryan Henson Creighton]