Gameplay

Plan each workday, take actions in the pharmacy, village and forest, and turn ingredients into medicines before patients' deadlines.

Day and round flow

Tinctura runs for five weekdays, Monday through Friday. Each day has nine working hours, from 8 a.m. through 4 p.m.

Planning phase

Behind your screen, place a location planning marker on each of the nine time spaces. White means Pharmacy, blue Village and green Forest. You choose the exact action only when that hour is resolved. Your supply of markers limits how often you can schedule each place; training and bonuses can add markers. If you still have an Apprentice you failed to train yesterday, use one hour for its apprentice marker. That hour is lost while you supervise it.

Work phase

Reveal plans. In each hour, act in Tea-track order; when markers share a space, the upper marker goes first. Take one action at the location you scheduled, or use Experiment if available. Return its planning marker to your supply after acting. Some actions, such as a standard training course, need two planned Village hours.

Each day, no more than two shared Experiment actions may be taken. Place an Experiment marker beside the board each time. Training and certain bonuses can grant extra experiments without removing a shared marker.

End of the day

After the 4 p.m. actions, prepare the next day:

1. Refill the forest from the bag; if it empties, return discarded plants to the bag.
2. Replace the two training cards.
3. Reveal the next merchant-hours tile.
4. Return unsold furnishings to their bag and draw the next display for this player count.
5. Return both mortars to the merchant spaces.
6. Refill empty apprentice spaces. For 2–3 players, remove apprentices on spaces blocked for the next day. An Apprentice left untrained also costs you one hour tomorrow.
7. Advance the day marker.

Village actions

Training

A scheduled two-hour course improves the skills shown on its card during its second hour. You must schedule the Village for both hours. Several players may attend the same course. If a course grants extra location markers, take them; you may instead use its stated experiment bonus. Botany cannot improve through training.

Individual training takes one Village hour and one plant of any type. Improve Mixing, Pressing, Filtering or Heating by one level.

Hire an Apprentice

Take an available Apprentice card of a medicine type you do not already have as an Apprentice or Journeyman. You may have at most two untrained Apprentices at once. Once one is trained to a Journeyman, its space is available for another hire.

Merchant and bonus tracks

Visit only during the hours shown on that day’s merchant tile. You may buy up to three items total, counting mortars. Pay one plant for one item, two plants for two, or four plants for three; any plant type works. Shopping in the first open hour costs one extra plant, while shopping in the last open hour costs one fewer.

For each furnishing, move its matching-colour bonus marker one space and return the tile to its bag. Each mortar advances your Mortar marker and stays beside the board until the next day. Stop when a track is full.

The standard tracks give an immediate benefit on their first space: White moves your Tea marker one space, Blue adds a Mortar level, Purple grants an Experiment, and Green draws two plants. Their second and fourth spaces give RP. Each third space gives the day’s printed RP and a lasting ability: White can repeat one Pharmacy action once per day; Blue immediately adds two Mortar levels; Purple adds three points among non-Botany skills once; Green takes one extra plant from the forest once per day.

Pharmacy actions

Accept patients

Take a face-up patient into your work area, place a time marker on it for the current hour, and refill the display. You may hold at most two patients. You may not take a new patient until you have produced at least one medicine. The deck is not reshuffled when empty.

Patient deadlines and medicine

Produce an accepted patient’s medicine no later than the same hour of the following day. If the deadline passes, discard the patient and lose 1 RP. You may voluntarily decline an untreated patient at any time, also losing 1 RP. Resolve an expiry or decline at the start of the hour, before that hour’s action.

Each card lists a medicine and its ingredients, minimum skill level and reward. Botany is always required; the other skill depends on the medicine: Pressing for pills, Heating for ointments, Filtering for tinctures, and Mixing for special recipes. Both required skills must meet the printed minimum. Special recipes use any three roots, herbs and/or mushrooms. For a patient offering two recipes, choose either one.

Medicine quality is the lower of the relevant skill levels. Tinctures may use mushrooms to increase quality, at an RP cost. The English rulebook’s mushroom wording and worked example do not agree for all cases; the example for Botany 4, Filtering 3 and a required level 5 spends three mushrooms. See the FAQ for the documented limit.

Rewards may be a fixed amount, based on quality, based on elapsed active hours, or based on producing one, two or three copies. For time rewards, count only working hours since accepting the patient. The card’s reward diagram determines the points.

Apprentices and Journeymen

When you produce the medicine type required by one of your Apprentices, train it automatically: flip it to its Journeyman side and take its one-time or continuing benefit. You may have only one Apprentice or Journeyman of each medicine type and no more than four Journeymen.

Make tea

Spend one root or herb for each cup, up to your Mortar level, then move forward that many spaces on the Tea track. Tea order sets action priority starting next hour. If the marker reaches the end, it cannot move farther; the track can be shifted back toward its start as described in the rulebook.

Forest action

The later you visit the forest, the more plants you may take: one from 8–10 a.m., two from 11 a.m.–1 p.m., three at 2 p.m., and four at 3 p.m. At 4 p.m., share remaining plants among forest visitors in Tea-track order until the supply is gone.

When a plant matches the next Botany space, keep it and advance Botany. You may instead advance by discarding the plant you just collected. Botany does not improve when plants come from another source. At any time, exchange any two plants for one plant of your choice, taking it from the discard area if possible or else from the bag.

Experiment

Use a location marker for an Experiment action at any location. Roll the die and advance the skill shown by the result; on a six, choose a skill, and Botany advances two spaces. Skill tracks stop at their last space. The shared action is limited to two per day, except for extra experiments explicitly granted by courses or abilities.