Playing the Game

Resolve regular picks, explosions, potion powers, ingredient placement and turn cleanup.

Regular pick and explosions

Take one marble from the first eight accessible positions of any dispenser track. The partly hidden ninth marble is not a legal starting pick. The regular pick is mandatory, but need not be your first action.

When removing it makes two matching colours collide, collect the colliding marbles and every adjacent marble of that colour in that connected group. Resolve the next collision exposed by their removal in the same way. Stop when no matching collision remains. A pre-existing matching group does not explode merely because it is present: a collision must occur.

Picking the middle marble from three of the same colour creates a valid collision between the other two. Empty spaces left by a large reaction are allowed.

[Fifth] White Ghost Ectoplasm can copy other colours during explosions; see wild ingredients. [Sixth] Green Mandragora instead explodes only with green; see Mandragora.

Little Help

Once on your turn, take a Little Help token and one accessible dispenser marble. You may do this before or after your regular pick, including after using potion powers. This removal triggers no explosions, even if matching marbles collide. Each token costs 2 points at game end.

A useful extra pick can remove a blocker before the regular pick or supply the final ingredient for a potion you want to drink now.

Placing ingredients

You may hold newly collected ingredients while taking other permitted actions. When placing ingredients, and by turn end, fill matching empty holes of either recipe on your Desk whenever possible. A marble placed on a recipe stays there until that potion is complete; you cannot move it to the other recipe.

Your Pool holds at most three ingredients. During your turn, ingredients may move between your hand and Pool, but ingredients that can be used in your recipes must be used. The publisher clarification confirms this applies to saved Pool ingredients as well. Once your turn ends, leave your Pool untouched until your next turn.

Completing and drinking

When a recipe is full, return all its ingredients to the dispenser, turn the tile to its completed side, and place it below your Desk. Its printed points are now secured.

Drink any of your unused completed potions on your turn, including one just completed. Rotate it upside down and resolve its power. You may drink several different potions in the same turn. Drinking never loses its points or removes it from your achievements.

Potions that remove dispenser ingredients do not cause explosions. Their removal may prepare a later regular pick, but it is not itself a regular pick. See the potion reference.

Refilling the dispenser

Roll returned ingredients randomly into the tank; do not aim them at a particular track. If a marble sticks above a full track, move it to the nearest track with room. Fill tracks whenever possible.

[Sixth] With five or six players, all returns go into the dispenser without the Bell; the two-dispenser procedure replaces this single-dispenser arrangement.

End of turn

After the regular pick and any optional powers or Little Help:

1. Save up to three ingredients in your Pool and return excess ingredients from your hand.
2. Draw face-up top potions from the available stacks until both burners have a recipe. You may choose the same stack twice.
3. Check Skill-token achievements.
4. Check whether the game end has been triggered.

You cannot put ingredients on newly drawn recipes or drink more potions after replenishing the burners. At most two potions can be completed per turn because empty burners refill only during cleanup.