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Two-four alchemical mages vie for control of ancient monuments and Places of Power. As a mage, use your magical essences and items to build artifacts, activate their powers, and command dragons. The mage with the most points wins!

Each mage begins with 1 of each essence, 3 artifacts in hand, and 1 magic item. During a round, you'll collect essences and then do 1 action each turn, until everyone passes. The goal is to have the most points, 10 or more, when victory is checked.

Components

• 40 Artifact cards
• 5 Places of Power
• 10 Mage cards
• First Player token
• 10 Monument cards
• 8 Magic items
• 150 essence tokens
• 12 "5x" essence chips
• 4 reference cards
• Summary tile

Mages and items are chosen during setup and begin in play. Each round, when a player passes, they will turn in their item for a new one. …

Mages

Artificer: this discount applies only to artifacts, not Places of Power or Monuments.

Transmuter: some of the non-gold essences you take can be the same as those you turn in. If you have fewer than 2 essences in your pool, you may not use this power.

Artifacts

Athanor: this artifact has two powers. The first is used to build Elan on it (which may be taken during the Collect step if desired). The second requires turning in 6 Elan from this artifact to convert any number of some essence, all the same, into that number of Gold. …

After you become reasonably familiar with the artifacts, you may wish to try these variants.

For 2-4 Players

This variant replaces setup step 6.

After players receive their 2 mages, deal 4 artifacts to each player. Each player keeps 1 artifact and passes the other cards to the left (clockwise). Repeat this keep-1-and-pass-the-rest until there are no more artifacts to pass.

Then, deal 4 more artifacts to each player. Each player keeps 1 of these artifacts and passes the others to the right (counter-clockwise). Repeat this keep-1-and-pass-the-rest until there are no more artifacts to pass. …

In a dark cathedral, a mage harnesses the power of demons to enhance her spells. In an alchemical laboratory, a diviner inscribes a scroll of destruction. Meanwhile, a bard and beastmaster seek out the prismatic dragon and golden lion to keep the forces of darkness at bay.

Ability: a Collect effect, placement discount, or victory formula on a component that automatically applies (when appropriate) whether or not that component is turned.

Component: an artifact, mage, magic item, monument, or Place of Power.

Creature: a type of artifact.

Destroy: to discard an artifact from play, not from hand. Destroyed artifacts are placed in your discard pile.

Discount: a reduction in the number of essences needed to place a given component. Placement discounts cannot reduce a cost below zero.

Dragon: a type of artifact. …