Rules
How to play
The binder rule — One binder for every two pigments, rounded up.
Learn that sentence and you never need the table again. More powder needs more glue to hold it together.
Your palette board
| Pan | Pigments in the window | Binder slots | Chips in total | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small ×1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| Medium ×2 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Large ×1 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 9 |
A full palette holds 13 chips. Your board also has three reference panels printed on it: the Atom Key, the absorption chart, and the Kiln.
The Atom Key
Also in the box
The small number tells you how many atoms. Fe2O3 is two irons and three oxygens. TiO2 is one titanium and two oxygens. That is all you need.
Reading the absorption chart
White light contains every colour. A pigment swallows some bands and lets the rest bounce back to your eye. The colour you see is what was not swallowed. Put two pigments together and a band survives only if both let it through.
| Pigment | Swallows | So it looks |
|---|---|---|
| Fe2O3 | violet, blue, green | red |
| FeO(OH) | violet, blue | yellow |
| Ultramarine | yellow, orange, red | blue |
| TiO2 | nothing — it scatters every band | white, and it lightens whatever it joins |
Try it on Coral. Fe2O3 swallows violet, blue and green. FeO(OH) swallows violet and blue. Between them, violet, blue and green are gone. Yellow, orange and red survive — and that mixture reads as coral.
Setup
- 1Put all 80 chips in a face-down pile beside the table. This is the supply. Mix them up.
- 2Give each player a palette board.
- 3Put the Market sheet in the middle. It has circles marked CRATE and one dark square marked SPILL TRAY.
- 4Use one crate more than there are players — 3 crates for two players, 4 for three, 5 for four.
- 5Put 3 chips from the supply in each crate you are using.
- 6Shuffle the Shade cards. Deal 8 face-up in a row, colour side showing. This is the Shade Row. The rest form a face-down draw pile.
- 7Shuffle the Fault cards and put them face-down with the symptom side showing.
- 8Put the water tokens where everyone can reach them.
- 9Youngest player takes the First Chemist token and goes first.
How a turn works
Your one action
Draft chips.
Free, any time on your turn
Claim a Shade card · Sift · Use the Kiln · Spend water · Press a pan.
The game lasts 5 rounds. Within a round, players take turns clockwise. The round ends when every crate and the Spill Tray are empty.
Drafting chips
Choose one crate. Take every chip of one colour from it. (If a crate holds red, red, yellow — take both reds, or the one yellow.)
Everything left in that crate slides into the Spill Tray. You may also draft all chips of one colour from the Spill Tray instead of a crate.
Put every chip you took into ONE pan. Whatever does not fit goes on your Spill Line.
Free actions
Claim a shade
When you start a new pan, claim one Shade card from the Shade Row and tuck it face-up under that pan. Hold up to two claimed shades at a time. Refill the Row from the deck. The card shows a colour and a name, never a recipe.
Sift
Once per turn, take one chip out of any unpressed pan and drop it in the Spill Tray. No penalty. This is your undo.
Kiln
Discard 2 yellow chips. Take 1 red chip and 1 water token. 2 FeO(OH) → Fe2O3 + H2O Two yellows make one red because that is what the equation says.
Water
Spend 2 water tokens to remove one chip from your Spill Line. Water is not waste; it came out of the yellow iron oxide when you kilned it.
Pressing a pan
A pan is full when every slot has a chip in it, no matter what those chips are. To press: say the recipe and why → turn the Shade card over → check.
- ■ If it matches: the pan is pressed. Keep the card. It is worth points.
- ■ If the recipe is wrong: nothing happens. Guessing wrong is free, so guess.
- ■ If the pan has the wrong number of binder chips: that is a structural fault. Draw a Fault card.
When a batch fails
| Symptom on the card | Cause |
|---|---|
| The cake crumbles when you touch it | Not enough binder |
| Glazed surface — the brush picks up nothing | Too much binder |
| The colour looks chalky and washed out | Too much titanium dioxide |
| It goes on streaky and patchy | The particles are too coarse |
Read the symptom out loud. Say what caused it. Then flip. Correct — swap one chip in that pan for one from your Spill Line, or return one chip to the Spill Tray. Wrong — lose 1 point and return every chip in that pan to the Spill Tray.
End of a round & scoring
End of round
Score Spill Lines (first chip free, then −1, −1, −2, −2, −3, −3, and −3 for each chip after that); return Spill Line chips to the box; refill every crate with 3 chips; the First Chemist token holder starts the next round.
Final scoring after round 5
Pressed pans — Small 2 · Medium 5 · Large 9. Penalties — Spill Line totals from every round, and 1 point per wrong Fault diagnosis. Highest score wins; ties go to the player with more large pans pressed.
Palette bonuses
[BONUS_1]
[BONUS_2]
[BONUS_3]
Shade gallery
The recipe is on the back. Work it out first.