Is it deliberate that Alchemists can no longer have their power buffed? (the 1 isn't in yellow)
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Yes it's intentional. When a card that gives Power benefit from Power themselves, the best choice for who to give a Power is almost always that card.
This change is intended to bring back interesting decision making to this part of the game. Let me know what you think, I'd be happy to hear additional feedback on this.
That thought (that buffing alchemist is often the best choice) had crossed my mind previously, though it's not 100% clear-cut: giving the buff to the Alchemist can effectively double it, but at the cost of taking up a slot (a major cost) and preventing use of "right ally"/"left ally" effects (a more minor, situational cost.
Prioritising interesting decision-making is definitely a good thing - I guess in this case it comes at a cost of making alchemist much less likely to make it into play in the late game, since the effect isn't worth the cost, but that's probably not a big deal.
I think my reaction was mainly that some numbers are yellow while others aren't, and it's not immediately clear why, but I guess that was already the case? - eg. on cards which had multiple numeric effects, only one of which was buffable.
One approach might be to use words - eg. "one (power symbol)" instead of "1 (power symbol)" in the same way that some cards say "x2" (buffable) vs others saying "twice". But maybe that's just unnecessary fiddliness.