Potions and Profits Board Game - How to Play

hi it's tarrant and stella from ipoon university today we'll be teaching you how to play potions and prophets hopefully after this video you'll be ready to play the game coming up [Music] let's learn to play potions and prophets game designed by zoran dobrievich and published by peterson gaines let's get to the table potions and prophets is a fast-paced bidding game set in a magical world of potions and business players will bid for the right to choose the best potions while secretly spiking the potions with good bad or weird ingredients to make the choice a little bit harder the first player to acquire three matching potions or have any three potions and a pr value of 16 or higher wins the game to set up each player takes one of the large tokens which represents their color and then places a small token on step 5 of the inner stock market track and on step 8 of the outer public relations track choose a first player who takes the dealer token shuffle up the game's three decks the blue investment cards the pink potion cards and the ingredient cards which come in purple red and green these are all shuffled together into one deck deal each player a starting hand of five investments and five ingredients and you're now ready to play each round of potions and profits is played in six phases first players will gain new investment cards second players gain new ingredients cards and have one chance to swap some out for better ones thirdly new potions are added to the display for this round fourth players engage in a round of bidding trying to get the best position in turn order for choosing potions and secretly adding ingredients to the potions which will either increase or decrease their value fifth players reveal their bids and then choose their potions in bid order and then finally players collect their potions and adjust their stock and pr levels then check the win condition and if nobody's won the game continue with another round so now let's look at each step in detail the first step is to gain investments and as a default you'll get three cards from the investment deck this is adjusted based on your positions on the scoring tracks you'll either increase or decrease the number based on the bonus or penalty shown in your color of the pr track and anyone with a stock value of 10 also gains one investment some effects on previously gained potions may also change your investment here blue gets minus one plus one and plus one for this card so that's a total of four new investment cards there is no hand limit you'll skip this phase in the first round the second step is to manage your ingredient cards first in turn order from the dealer each player draws up to five ingredient cards from the top of the deck then again in turn order each player may look at their five ingredient cards discard as many as they wish and then redraw to five doing this once this will allow the player to optimize their hand of ingredient cards purple ingredients are good and will have positive effects on potions red ingredients are bad and will have negative effects and green ingredients are weird and they can have wildly volatile effects or special powers in text the third step is potions and you will draw and reveal one personal card from the deck per player in the game these will be the potions available to bid on in this round the fourth phase is bidding and this is where the bulk of the game occurs this phase occurs in turns starting from the player with the dealer token and going clockwise around the table if no player has yet made a bid when it is your turn you have three choices you may either pass in which case you make no bid or you may bid one or two investment cards from your hand face down into the center of the table after the first bid has been made you have four options on your turn you may match the previous highest bid by playing face down as many cards as that previous highest bid you may raise by playing one more card than the previous highest bid you may pass in which case you do not make a bid and keep all your cards in hand or if you do not have enough cards in your hand to match the previous highest bid then you can go all in playing all of your current cards into your bid players who have passed or gone all in are out of this round of bidding and are skipped for subsequent turns this phase ends once all players have passed or gone all in what's important to note for this phase is that it does not matter what the values on your investment cards are this phase of bidding looks solely at your total number of cards each time you add one or more investment cards to your bid you must take one ingredient card from your hand and play it face down underneath one of the potions available this round everyone will be able to see from the back of the card whether it is good bad or weird but will not know its effect as a round of bidding progresses more and more ingredients will be placed under these potions the most cards that a potion may have is three and once all of the potions are full bidding may continue but no more ingredients are placed the fifth step is to pick potions and first players will now reveal all of the investment cards they bid during phase four players will choose from among these potions in order from highest to lowest of who bid the most total value of money in the event of a tie whoever was earlier in this round's turn order breaks that tie in order the players choose a potion and reveal all of the ingredients which were underneath that potion giving all players full view of the value of that potion at the end of the round when doing this there are some of the weird green ingredients which have a text effect on them which is resolved now this magician's hat for example allows the player to switch potions with someone who has picked a potion earlier players continue picking potions and revealing the ingredients in this way until all have been revealed even if a player passed at the beginning of phase 4 and has made no bid that player must still choose a potion but of course we'll choose last then discard all of the investment cards that were bid in this round in the sixth phase the players resolve their positions on the pr and stock market tracks for their potions for stock value add up all of the numbers in the bottom left corners of the cards shown by the up arrow icon here it is negative one and you will resolve that shift in your stock price do the same for the potion's pr value shown in the bottom right corner and represented by the heart icon here it would be plus 15 to pr both of these values can swing wildly from round to round you may never go above 20 or below 1 on the pr track and if you have any excess you simply leave your marker in the end position the same goes for increasing your stock price this may never go above 10.

on the other hand you must try to avoid your stock price dropping to zero once you reach zero you've gone bankrupt discard everything you have all cards in your hand all potions you've collected and reset to the game's starting condition five stock price eight pr and five new investments and ingredients as for the ingredients you can expect different types of effects from the different sorts of potions vanity potions are overall good helpful potions are good for pr but bad for stock value harmful potions are good for stock value and bad for pr and strange potions will tend to have some strange effects including text effects that you have to contend with after resolving pr and stock any player who has more than three potions must discard down to three and may not discard the potion which was gained this round finally check for the win condition if any single player has gained three potions of the same type or any three potions and has a pr value of 16 or higher then that player wins the game if multiple players achieve this on the same turn then the player with the single highest tie breaker number on one of their potions breaks the tie be aware that these three strange potions with increasingly negative values on both sides are the highest tie breaker numbers this may come with the highest penalty but it guarantees that you'll be able to shoot off this firework to celebrate your tie break victory investment cards range between one and nine but there are also three special cards called magic tricks the trick coin tradesies and smoke bomb when playing a magic trick card as part of a bid during phase 4 you have two options you may either play the card face down in which case its magic effect is cancelled and it simply counts as an investment of value 10.

the alternative is to reveal it it counts as an investment value of zero but its effect will now be resolved when you play tradesies you immediately swap your bid with that of an opponents while the bidding phase still goes on you need only have matched or raised the previous bids after making the switch not before if there is a trick coin on the table then in phase 5 players will pick in reverse beard order so here yellow would pick first then red purple and blue if both trick coins are played then the order returns to normal finally if you don't like the way the potions are looking you can play a smoke bomb discard it and then opt out of the round picking up all your investment cards for a future round after your opponents have taken the potions they wish to any that are unclaimed because of smoke bombs are discarded there are several other strange potions and weird ingredients with different effects such as protection from negative effects making good ingredients into bad impacting player order and so on these are all outlined on the cards and in the rule book and that's how to play portions and profits we hope that you enjoy the video do check out potions and profits we'll put a link to its project page below so you know where you can go to check it out if you find this video useful please help us by hitting that like button subscribe to us you can also hit the nipple in the corner to do so and hit the bell icon so you'll be one of the first to know when we have new and exciting videos you can also follow me on instagram for my board games journey and if you have any questions comments or feedback please leave them in the comment section below until next time