Ten coins in The Quacks of Quedlinburg can buy one blue ingredient worth two spaces of movement. Eight coins can buy a blue worth one and an orange worth one. Both purchases add two spaces of printed value to your bag. One spreads that movement across two draws; the other delivers it in one draw and gives you a stronger selection power.
That difference matters in a game where you repeatedly decide whether to reach into your bag again. Each chip advances your potion along its track. Farther progress provides shopping money and victory points, but white ingredients make the potion explode if their values total more than seven. An explosion forces you to choose between that round's points and shopping, and excludes you from the bonus-die contest. Most points after nine rounds wins.
Buying more colored chips makes a dangerous white less likely to be your next draw. Buying a stronger chip can make a successful draw more useful. Blue ingredients let us separate those advantages, then see what each one leaves unresolved.
Two ways to spend ten coins
Use the standard pot and Set 1 ingredients in the 2024 English rules. With this set, placing a blue chip lets you draw a sample equal to its value: one chip for a blue 1, two for a blue 2. You may place one sampled chip and return the rest, or return them all. Orange has no extra power.
Imagine having exactly ten coins at each of your first three shopping phases. One plan buys a blue 2 each time. The other buys a blue 1 and an orange 1 each time, spending eight. Those two unspent coins disappear at every shop; they aren't savings toward something later. Both plans obey the limit of two purchases in different colors.
Assume the chips remain in stock and nothing else adds or removes ingredients. Keep Fortune Teller effects from changing these examples. We'll examine the following brewing round after each purchase, so all three comparisons happen before the extra white chip enters the bag in round six. Treat each remaining chip as equally likely to be drawn from a well-mixed bag.
The original bag has nine chips: four white 1s, two white 2s, a white 3, an orange 1 and a green 1. After three shops, the larger-blue plan has added three chips. The smaller-blue-and-orange plan has added six. It has paid less and bought more opportunities to draw something colored. What does that buy at a tense moment?
At seven, every remaining white is dangerous
Suppose the first three draws of the next round are the original white 3, white 2 and white 2. That's a legal opening: the white total is exactly seven. All four white 1s remain in the bag, and any one of them would now cause an explosion.
For this comparison, leave that last white 2 in the pot and consider another draw. Even with a full flask, you cannot undo the next chip if it causes an explosion. You could instead use the flask now to return the last 2, lowering your white total to five, but that creates a different position.
Here are the immediate explosion chances if you keep the seven and draw. Each fraction counts the four dangerous chips over every chip still in the bag.
Scroll across the comparison if needed.
| Purchases completed | Blue 2 each shop | Blue 1 + orange 1 each shop |
|---|---|---|
| One | 4/7, about 57% | 4/8, 50% |
| Two | 4/8, 50% | 4/10, 40% |
| Three | 4/9, about 44% | 4/12, about 33% |
When the blue appears, the advantage changes
The extra orange chips make the next ordinary draw safer in every row. But stop at the first row and suppose that next draw is the purchased blue. Now the larger chip has two advantages: it immediately advances two spaces rather than one, and it offers a choice from two sampled chips rather than one.
After placing the blue 2, six chips remain: four dangerous white 1s and the original orange and green, both safe. There are fifteen possible pairs to sample. Six pairs contain only dangerous whites, leaving nine with at least one safe chip. So the chance of being offered a safe chip is 9/15, or 3/5.
After placing the blue 1 from the other plan, seven chips remain. Four are dangerous whites; three are safe colored chips, including the extra orange. Its one-chip sample therefore offers something safe with probability 3/7.
The larger blue wins this particular comparison, even though its bag had the worse immediate explosion odds. Once drawn, it moves farther and is more likely to offer a safe follow-up. You can reject an entirely dangerous sample with either blue, so these figures measure an opportunity to keep advancing safely, not the chance of surviving the blue's power.
There is a limit to that control. Unchosen chips return to the bag. A blue 2 can offer the orange alongside a white, let you place the orange, and leave that same white waiting for a later draw. You've gained movement and another stopping decision. You haven't removed the danger.
Change the whites, change the decision
Now change the opening to white 3, white 2, white 1. The white total is six. After one purchase, the bags still contain seven and eight chips respectively, but only the remaining white 2 would immediately explode the potion. The three remaining white 1s are safe for the next draw.
The immediate explosion chances become 1/7 and 1/8. The extra orange still helps, but the difference is much smaller than it was at seven. Counting every remaining white as dangerous would badly misread this position.
Neither set of figures tells you whether to draw. That depends on what another chip could gain and what an explosion would cost. If you've reached enough money for a purchase you particularly want, stopping preserves both that shop and your points. If you're willing to take shopping and give up points after an explosion, you may accept more risk. The die contest, rubies and the rewards printed along your pot also matter.
Nor do these selected openings tell us which bag usually reaches a better position. They deliberately hold the first three draws constant. They don't account for how often each plan reaches that opening, how earlier blue selections unfold, or what else ten coins could have bought.
Buy for the opportunity you want
At a ten-coin shop, the extra orange has a clear job: add another draw that cannot itself explode your potion. The blue 2 has a different job: concentrate movement into one draw and offer a wider selection when it arrives. Its stronger effect remains something you have to draw before you can use it.
If your reason for buying the blue 1 and orange is simply that two chips must be better than one, consider the movement and sample size you're giving up. If your reason for buying the blue 2 is that selection must make the bag safer, consider the extra colored draw you're giving up. Choose the benefit you want to add, then reassess the risk from the whites actually left when your hand next goes into the bag.