“Inside Out 2” has just been released in cinemas. The first part is one of my favourite films and the “board game version” of the theme is also one of my absolute favourite games. Apart from the theme, there are no parallels between “Cerebria” and “Inside Out”, but the comparison quickly conveys the basic idea of the game. Unlike many of the new releases that I write about, “Cerebria” has been in my collection for three years. I describe why I think it is so great in this article.
Especially when you meet new board game enthusiasts, the question about their favorite game is one of the classic questions. Usually, several titles are mentioned, since different games are best for different situations.
When I think of the great board game experiences that keep you glued to the table for several hours, there are, among others, Anachrony, Underwater Cities and also Cerebria in the fight for first place. With the Fractures of Timeexpansion came Anachrony one step closer to first place, but the fact that Cerebria recently became the first of my games to receive a deluxe wooden inlay and the last game once again offered a great gaming experience, it then became clear to me that first place was subconsciously quite clearly awarded.
Identity – Happiness and Sadness
But what actually happens in a game Cerebria? The two opposing sides, Bliss and Gloom, try to influence the identity that is currently being built and gain the upper hand. Each side has four spirits that are controlled by the players.
On the brightly colored game board, in addition to the center where the identity is built, there are three other types of locations that are used and influenced by the players. The identity is surrounded by the Origin board, which divides "Willpower" (WP; the main resource) into five spheres. In the main area of the game board you will find five frontiers and five realms. In these two types of areas, Bliss and Gloom fight for the majority.
They claim these for themselves by placing their emotions there. There are simple and strong emotions. How strong these are is shown by essence markers that are placed in the corresponding slots on the cards. Each emotion also has an effect that is activated when played or is permanent, and belongs to one of four vibes (colors). The side that has played the higher intensity with its emotions overall has control over a frontier/realm. In addition, a fragment of your own side can be placed in a realm, which acts as a fortress to further strengthen your influence there.
endless options
Deciding which three actions and possible additional actions you want to perform requires a lot of thought. The first decision about actions is actually made when setting up the game, when you assign Vibe tokens to the five types of action. Each action has a basic ability that can be upgraded up to three times with additional Vibe tokens. Before each action, you can discard a card to upgrade the chosen action.
But back to the actions: Each action costs a certain number of WP.
The most important action is probably the movement action. With its help you move in the world of Cerebriato influence as many places as possible. Most actions require that you are in the place you want to influence.
The influence is increased by placing emotions. These are summoned with the "Invoke" action. In addition to WP, you also need at least one essence, which is placed on the emotion. With upgrades, you can use more essence or essence from the general supply.
If the influence of the opposing team becomes too great, you can also weaken and remove the opposing side's emotions. With the source action, you take essence from the opposing emotions. If no essence remains on the emotion, it is removed. An important prerequisite for this is that you have a card with the same vibe as the opposing emotion.
If the opposing team does not have control in a realm, you can secure the majority there with a fortress. To do this, you place a small fragment of your own team on the corresponding field of the realm. If you already have a small fragment, you can upgrade it to a large one. The fragments serve as fortresses and increase influence by one or two points. Similar to emotions, you can also attack opposing fortresses.
The last of the five spirit actions is upgrading. If an emotion has so much essence that its upgrading limit is reached, you can exchange the emotion for its strong counterpart. These usually have higher intensity values and stronger effects.
On the asymmetrical sides of the spirits, there are additional effects in addition to the standard effects, each of which changes individual upgrades of the actions.
Five actions are not enough
In addition to the five spirit actions, there are five more realm actions. These can be performed regardless of the location of your character. Their effects are generally simpler and bring WP, essence, hand cards or allow you to move emotions.
All actions mentioned so far cost one of the three action points you have available per turn.
You get more WP with the Absorb action, which you can perform once per turn. You can take two WP from the sphere closest to your own spirit. If you control adjacent frontiers, the number increases to up to four WP. Each of these spheres also offers another effect.
The last option for performing actions is the Ambition Tokens. Once you have unlocked these, you can spend them to rotate the Origin board one space further, place any Vibe Token as an upgrade or - for two Ambition - get an additional action.
Where are the points?
The main source of points is the identity in the middle of the game board. Every time a sphere of the Origin board becomes empty, this triggers a Revelation. Now the Aspirations are scored. Each team has a stack of nine Aspirations that are face down. Only the team knows the top card. There are also the same nine Aspirations face up in the middle, which are scored in order.
Aspirations are always about having the majority of or in something (realms, frontiers, essence, vibes, ...). Whoever wins their team aspiration and/or open aspiration can place fragments in their identity. A small one if you have fulfilled one aspiration and a large one if you have fulfilled both.
A fortress that stands next to the empty sphere is also added to the identity.
Each team has intentions. If one of the four conditions is fulfilled for the first time in a turn, one point is awarded. Each additional time that another condition is fulfilled in the same turn, two points are awarded. These points are added to the scoreboard and can unlock one-time bonuses.
The identity
Which side had the most influence on identity is resolved at the end of the game. This is triggered when one side no longer has a suitable fragment to place during a Revelation, when the last open Aspiration is scored, or when a team has scored twenty points with the Intentions.
Now the fragments are evaluated in terms of identity. Each small fragment is worth three points and each large fragment is worth five points. The "roof", which is placed when you no longer have a matching fragment and thus triggers the end of the game, is worth four points.
The side that scores the most points wins the game.
Information about Cerebria – The Inside World
| Number of people: 1-4 people (2 teams) Age: from 15 years Playing time: 120 minutes Difficulty: Expert game Long-term motivation: huge Mechanics: Area Control, Team/Coop Play, Worker Movement Game idea: Viktor Peter, Richard Amann Illustrations: Pedro A. Alberto, Toby Allen, Villő Farkas, Jamie Sichel Publisher: Mindclash Games Official Website: Cerebria – The Inside World Year of publication: 2018 Language: English Cost: 65 Euro |
Conclusion
Let's start with the elephant in the room or on the game table. The game board, the team boards and the individual spirits take up a lot of space. In theory, everything could definitely have been designed more compactly. But this is precisely what makes the game visually impressive. The slowly growing identity, the origin board with the WP and the beautifully designed emotions with the transparently colored essences enchant you time and time again when you Cerebria spielt.
The game material is of great quality overall and you really get a lot for the price. The point markers could be a bit bigger, though.
Visually, there is one big flaw for me, but it doesn't really count for the game material, but rather affects the rating of the instructions. The icons are simply bad. For half of the emotions, I still can't derive their effects from the icons and have to look them up in the overview. Most combinations only appear once or are so similar that it is hardly possible to distinguish them clearly and, above all, quickly. The overview with all emotions and abilities is well designed, but given the size of the cards, a better solution should have been chosen from the start.
Apart from this point, which often disrupts the flow of the game, especially at the beginning, the instructions are really well written. All points are described in a logical order with clear examples. If you need to read something up, you can find the relevant passages without any problems.
Especially at the beginning, you will spend a lot of time looking things up because there is just so much to consider. In some places it may seem a bit step-by-step, but on the whole everything fits together really well. The intermediate goals in the form of aspirations mean that you always have an idea from the start of the direction you want to take your actions. Nevertheless, it is of course not something you can get started in just a few minutes.
The flow of the game is certainly not for everyone. The individual moves can take a lot of time. With four players, it can happen that you don't even get a turn between two revelations. But since you play as a team, that's not so bad, as you still get to participate in the planning.
If you get involved, the game rewards you with an incredibly fascinating depth.
When you trigger a revelation requires careful planning. It is always worth taking a look at the next open aspiration if it is clear that you will not win the current one. Since the other spheres have already "begun" after the first revelation, subsequent revelations are triggered more and more quickly. Especially towards the end of the game, when more and more intentions are being evaluated, every action really counts. The dueling character of the game comes to the fore perfectly here.
The scoring also remains exciting. Theoretically, you can calculate the score at any time. Since towards the end you can score five or seven points with the intentions in one turn, you have to be careful not to let the opposing team win. The final score is usually somewhere between 30 and 50 points and it is always close.
If you are looking for an expert game that can score points with a unique theme, away from the Euro uniformity, high thinking and optimization potential and very pleasant interaction, then Cerebria You've come to the right place. Behind the cute artwork lies an impressive area control game with huge replay value that, unusually for the mechanism, works perfectly with two players (or two teams).
EGO
Even if you don’t want to fight each other, Cerebria with the solo and co-op opponent "EGO" an exciting challenge. The rules do not change for the people.
EGO is controlled by a deck of cards. Two cards always form the action that is carried out. The first is always revealed at the end of EGO's previous turn. This allows you to plan with EGO's three possible actions. You can even consider the probabilities if you keep an eye on EGO's discard pile.
In its actions, EGO is guided by the open aspiration. If it currently wins this, EGO works towards its hidden aspiration, which is then revealed.
During a revelation, EGO can use WP to lower the players' score in the corresponding scoring category in his favor. Otherwise, the revelation works as you would expect from a multiplayer game.
A strong opponent
EGO is one of my favorite solo opponents. If you understand the underlying concept of the preferences according to which EGO carries out actions, the individual moves can be dealt with quickly. During the first few games, you will need a little longer and will have to look things up more often. Playing solo as a first game is therefore twice as challenging.
David Turczi's signature style is clearly evident in the sequence of actions. The semi-predictability allows you to adapt to your opponent, even if you can't plan with 100% certainty. EGO's individual actions are "stronger" than the actions available to the players.
By influencing the collected WP during a revelation, even less effective actions by EGO are well balanced out. Especially at the beginning, you really have to fight hard to gain a foothold, as it is easy for EGO to remove emotions and fortresses. The difficulty can be finely adjusted using various small adjustment screws, although the standard is already the sweet spot for me.
EGO also works well in cooperative mode, although this is the least enjoyable mode. The game works better with two players playing against each other.
The majority of my games of Cerebria I played solo, so I can warmly recommend the game to even the most expert solo players. Together with Chronossus from Anachrony For me, EGO is one of the outstanding solo opponents that imitates a human opponent in a realistic and logically understandable way without distracting from your own game.
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