Nov Posted by Dan Thurot. One of my main complaints with modern Eurogames is that they too often mistake complication for depth. After all, many deep games come across as complicated, with strategies and levels of mastery that may seem counterintuitive and elusive. Trismegistus: The Ultimate Formula is both an example of how to do a modern Eurogame right β and horribly, utterly wrong.
Both the symbols and the colors of the dice are important. Right from the get-go, it flings terminology and iconography at you like an ape with too much poop and too little patience. Except in this case, even the teacher succumbs to occasional dyslexia.
The linchpin here is transmutation, the process that purifies a material into its purer form. Because this is a modern Eurogame, there are a significant number of complications to consider. The first is your selected die. Not that anyone can be expected to call them that. At last, everything starts to click into place. The real centerpiece of the game is your transmutation board.
See those square tiles attached to your board? Whenever a material travels along an arrow that passes an artifact, it gains some benefit. Extra resources, bumps on the mastery track, a handful of rare points prior to the final scoring spree β pretty much everything is up for grabs.
Between gathering resources and essences, running transmutations, and recharging artifacts, your potency track will be quickly deflated. The white blocks above your alchemical station are somewhat more troublesome. Both provide additional bonuses. And let me tell you, some of them are insane. Take that, Goldfinger. The thing is, this is a fantastic reward for accomplishing experiments. Perhaps too fantastic.
