Set: Alchemy
Trash a card from your hand. If it is an...
Action card, gain a Duchy
Treasure card, gain a Transmute
Victory card, gain a Gold
Cost: P
Oh hey, an Alchemy card. That took a while.
This is a card that I just don't really "get." I know it has bad stats on isotropic but I believe that this is only because, when it's mishandled, it's obviously a huge disaster. People probably just unthinkingly Transmute all their Coppers into more Transmutes without any real plan behind it and clutter up their deck horrifyingly.
Can it be handled properly? I've seen at least one game that suggests it may be possible, but I still don't really get it. It takes someone with a really clear gameplan to pull this card off, I think. As with all cards that have a Potion cost, and this is something I'll have to get into more as more Potion-cost cards come up, having to buy the Potion first and then buy this card represents multiple opportunity costs that I'm uncomfortable with for a card like this. And then, once you have it, what is it good for?
I think that if you can successfully Transmute some Estates into Golds early on in the game, that is a pretty useful effect, but again, you need to have bought a Potion to do this, and then you need to use the turn you draw the Potion in to buy a Transmute (possibly forgoing a better buy if you don't have +buys), then you need to draw this and an Estate. It's actually a lot to ask.
I think the more useful effect for this, perhaps surprisingly, is action cards into Duchies. Interestingly enough, this is one of the few cards that can actually gain a Duchy in the first place, without Bridge support - Workshop and Ironworks only go up to 4, University can't gain victories. If you've got spare Actions lying around, which you might if you Transmuted some Coppers, you can potentially Transmute some Duchies and win the Duchy race. I could see this being a major lynchpin in a Duke strategy.
All that said, I haven't really tried this card out much. It's not to my style. It has the usual problem that terminal cards with no immediate effect have, which is that it's a major deck clogger that's as good for your current hand as a Curse, and because of its sort of strange interaction with cards I don't consider it a "true" trasher, it can only really call itself that when getting rid of Estates (Copper to Transmute is a highly questionable thing to do and it certainly doesn't improve deck flow). Also, while it can help win the Duchy race, I don't think it can really help win the Province race, which is to me usually the more important race. In fact, it probably sabotages efforts to win the Province race due to needing to buy two dead cards to get it, the Potion and the Transmute, unless you want the Potion for something else anyway. That's a huge opportunity cost for minimal gain.
I sure do have a lot to say about a card I have no real understanding of. Maybe a true Dominion master could handle this sleeping beast, but me, I just don't really get it.