Potion explosion is an entertaining game all about brewing magical potions. Players will need to collect ingredients to make these potions, and marbles represent the ingredients!
Inside the box, players will find a total of 80 marbles in 4 different colors. Each color represents a special ingredient. These marbles are perfectly functional, but they’re not particularly exciting. Lots of our marbles had chips, and some were even cracked in half. Not to worry though, Potion Explosion does come with a few extra marbles just in case you need them!
Why replace perfectly functional marbles?
We’ve been fortunate to have Potion Explosion in our board game collection for a few years now. This is a game that my daughter likes to pull out, and I’ll never say no if she asks me to play it. With that being said, the last time we played I was convinced it was missing something. I kept staring at the marbles and curiosity got the best of me.
Down a deep rabbit hole, I realized there was an amazing world of marbles out there. I spent a few hours looking at pretty, sparkly, interesting marbles. And then I had an epiphany. Not only could I upgrade our marbles, but I could also make them more thematic. Not simply blue, but unicorn tear blue!
Let’s talk about the ingredients in Potion Explosion
In the rulebook there is a page that explains what each of the 4 ingredients are! The blue marbles are Unicorn Tears. Dragon Smoke is represented by the red marbles. Yellow marbles are Fairy Dandruff. Lastly, Ogre Mucus (my favorite) is represented by the black marbles.
Marble Size
I learned a lot about marbles during this adventure. The marbles used in Potion Explsion are 16mm (5/8″) in size. They’re referred to as player marbles because this is the standard size you’d use for a game of marbles. You can purchase sets of players marbles in a net bag that include 24 16mm marbles, and one larger marble that’s used as a shooter. This provides enough marbles for Potion Explosion with a few leftover as spares!
The marbles we picked to represent out ingredients!
Unicorn Tears
For our blue marbles, we selected the Manta Ray set of Players marbles. These are a clear turquoise marble with some white swirls through them. If you hold a marble up to the unicorn on the ingredients page, they look nearly identical!
Dragon Smoke
We picked Mars marbles for our Dragon Smoke. I wish these were a more intense shade of red, but I love the black spattering all over them. It looks like soot from the smoke. Seems pretty thematic to me.
Ogre Mucus
I’m most excited about our ogre mucus marbles. For this ingredient we are using the King Penguin marbles. Instead of just a simple black, these marbles have swirls of snotty yellow and white spatter on them. It’s a big gross, but also thematic too.
Fairy Dandruff
We went with Bumble Bee marbles to represent our Fairy Dandruff. These opaque yellow marbles really pop. They have these little swirls of black and brown around them that we are calling fairy hair!
An unexpected bonus: Not only is Potion Explosion more interesting to look at now, it’s also more entertaining to play. You’re not just collecting the blue ingredient, you’re collecting unicorn tears! I’m pretty sure nobody knew what the ingredients were before we upgraded the marbles! I’m calling this project a success.
