If you’ve always wanted to wear a lab coat and goggles and mix some interesting, colorful, and pretty elements together, this is the game for you!
In Compounded, all players chemists are in a race to concoct the most compounds.
Each player uses his Work Bench to organize elements, track experiment levels, and store Lab Tools.
The Research Field is created by making a 4×4 grid of compound cards.
The game is played in 4 Phases, as represented on the Work Bench:
- Discovery – gain elements and initiate trades
- Study – claim compounds in the research field
- Research – place elements onto compounds
- Lab – score completed compounds, manage work benches, replenish research field, deal with lab fires
All phases are managed by a player’s Work Bench. The experimental level determines how many new elements each player draws during the Discovery phase, for example. Completing a compound with the Discovery icon in the top right corner moves that player up a level on the Discovery portion of the Work Bench so now he gets to draw 3 elements during each Discovery phase. Moving up levels works similarly for the other phases.
After each player draws elements and claims compounds in the research field, they place elements onto compounds. Initially, two elements can be placed each turn. Moving up on the Research experiment level allows you to place more elements each turn.
The goal is to claim a compound and then collect and place all the right elements to complete the compound, earn points, and move up experiment levels.
The strategy part of this game is intense! There are so many ways to improve your ability to create compounds, but each can only be done slowly and one at a time. It’s a race to see who can create new compounds the quickest to move up on the work bench and be able to create new compounds even faster.
Placing the elements is our favorite part. Those little elements gems are just so tactile and colorful.
And just so it’s not too easy, lab fire cards are mixed in with the compound deck and explode all compounds with a fire icon at the bottom of the card, so be quick before a fire destroys all your hard work!
In this photo, you can see that both the blue and green players have completed compounds. They put the elements back in the bag, place the Claim Tokens back in their place on the Work Bench, score points on the periodic table, and move up experimental levels. The compound cards go into each player’s own personal pile and new cards from the deck fill the holes.
Then the first player token (the orange key) moves to the next player, UNLESS someone plays a Lab Key and claims the Lead Scientist position for the next round.
This game goes pretty quickly and can get very intense with all the trading and negotiating in the Research Phase. It starts a little slow while players are gathering elements and compounds and moving up levels, but it picks up quick and you’ve got to be fast and strategic to win!
We have had so much fun playing this game and using it as a jumping-off point for some chemistry related investigations. Board games like this one create curiosity in kids, and curiosity is the catalyst of education! (Get it…catalyst…I made a chemistry joke!! :)
My kids are getting familiar with all kinds of compounds and the periodic table itself and are developing a healthy interest for chemistry. I can’t wait to see where our curiosity leads us!
Thanks to Greater Than Games for sharing this awesome game with us!
