Beautiful exploding compounds brighten the night sky with color. These produce chemicals bound with fuel oxiders and cholorine donors – prolonging the flame. It is common practice around the world to welcome the New Year with a bang. Did you know that for fireworks, to produce an orange color, one uses Calcium salt? To make yellow stars, one uses Sodium salt.
But I didn’t learn this chemistry from school. I learned it by playing a boardgame – “Compounded”.
The board game Compounded was designed by Darrell Louder and published by Dice Hate Me Games. It seats 2 to 5 players and plays from 60 to 90 minutes. In this game, one plays a scientist – making discoveries, marking studies, doing research and managing a lab. To win, one must be the best scientist – by completing the most compounds, and garnering the most Atomic Points at the end of the game.
The scientist with the rarest elements at his workbench during setup gets the lead scientist key and is the first player for the round. Players take turns going through the 4 phases of each round: Discovery, Study, Research and Lab.
During the Discovery Phase, each player draws from a bag a number elements equal to the discovery level of their workbench. When every player has drawn their elements, they can trade with each other. After trading, players discard down to the element capacity of their lab and move on to the next phase.
In the Study Phase, players take turns assigning a claim token for the Compound they wish to pursue. The level of Study of their workbench indicates how many claim tokens they can assign. After all players have assigned their claim tokens, in turn order each player may move only one of their claim tokens to another unclaimed Compound if they wish to do so.
During Research, players can move elements from their workbench to any available Compound whether or not they have a claim token on it. The amount of elements they can move is dependent on the level of their Research. Also in this phase, players can exchange 3 elements of the same type to one element of their choice from the bag.
Lastly the Lab Phase is where players who have claims on completed compounds can score and get the lab tool rewards. These tools can be one time benefits like fishing that hard to find an element from the bag up to manipulating the levels in their workbench every round. After scoring, the compounds are replenished from the stack. Beware though, as lab fires may be drawn causing volatile compounds to explode! Elements in exploding compounds are thrown to its near by compounds if possible or are returned to the bag.
The current Lead scientists passes the key to the next player and a new round starts. Last round is triggered when a player reached 50 Atomic Points or has maxed out 3 of the 4 test tubes in their workbench.
For the gameplay, it’s a decent Euro style game. There is the concern on the luck of the draw, but manageable. Some of the lab tools are a little overpowered though. As you improve your workbench, you unlock technologies and capabilities that make the progression of the game exciting. It is a bit too long in playtime though, and can sometimes overstay its welcome.
Overall, it’s a great game to familiarize oneself on how to make compounds. It adds a tangible and visual dimension on recalling chemical compositions. It may be a bit difficult to find a copy at the moment though, but hopefully Dice Hate Me Games will do another print run of the base game soon. To date, it has 2 published expansions and a third one just opened its Kickstarter campaign as of this writing.
I am saving this game for my son’s high school years. I am looking forward to our father and son chemistry review/game sessions. Truly with its beautiful components and effective educational theme, Compounded is a definite keeper for me.
Written by: Ronald Villaver
Edited by: Reg Tolentino