[Music] Hi, my name's Paul Grogan, and welcome to the Gaming Rules official how to play video for Cerebria: The Inside World, designed by Viktor Peter and Richard Amann, and published by Mind Clash Games. The Mindscape of Cerebria arises from the Origin. Two opposing forces, Bliss and Gloom, are competing against each other to shape the world in their own image. Their agents are the Spirits who invoke Emotions in their struggle for control of the five Realms. Through a series of revelations the two opposing forces build the Identity in an attempt to gain domination. Cerebria is a dynamic, team-based, objective driven, area control game. Each player takes on the role of a Spirit, a powerful entity representing Bliss or Gloom. Players take turns to perform actions and manipulate Emotion cards within Cerebria. There are two main ways to score points in the game. The common Aspirations are major objectives which can change dynamically during the game. Achieving these, along with the team's own hidden Aspiration, allows the team to build Cerebria's identity by stacking Fragments, which are worth points at the end of the game. Also, in the full game each team is striving to achieve their own Intentions, which score them more points. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins and becomes the guiding force of Cerebria. In this video I'm going to be explaining the rules for the four player basic game. The rules for the full game, as well as the two to three player variant, can be found in my other video. Because Cerebria is a team game, players on the same team should share information and discuss strategy and tactics with their teammates, including showing them the cards in their hands. However teammates cannot share Essence, Willpower or cards with each other. Players divide into two teams, Bliss and Gloom. Teammates sit next to each other on the appropriate side of the board. Then attach the Origin board to the main board using the base piece. Place the origin board in a random orientation, but ensure that the spheres are aligned with the Fortress locations. Place 7 Willpower into each of the spheres and the rest of the Willpower into two general supplies, one nearest each team. Each player chooses a Spirit from their team. Unchosen Spirits are returned to the box. Take your Spirit Board along with your corresponding figure, either the standee, or if you have the deluxe version, the mini. Each Spirit Board has an A side and a B side. In the basic game all Spirits should use the A side. Place an action tracker token on the leftmost action space of your Spirit Board this side up, then take 2 Essence in your team's colour, and 4 Willpower from the general supply, this is yours to spend. Place the rest of your team's Essence on the board near you. Place the team board for each team between the players, use the A side in the basic game, and place 3 Ambition tokens with the inactive side face up on the Ambition spaces. Each team takes their Fragments and Intensity tokens and places them nearby. Each player then builds their Emotion deck to use during the game. First, remove all of the cards with the arrow icon on the back. These are the strong Emotions are not used in the basic game. Separate the rest of the cards into 2 decks, one with a small icon on, and one without. One deck is for each player. For your first few games it's recommended to use a starting set of Emotions for each player. These are listed on page 10 of the rulebook and contain Emotions with easy-to-understand powers. Once you are familiar with these you can try out the Spirit specific Emotions on page 35, or even create your own decks, which must be 16 cards with no more than two copies of each card. Shuffle your Emotion deck and place it facedown on the corner of the main board nearest you. Draw 2 cards from your deck to form your starting hand and then turn the top card of your deck face up. Throughout the game the top card of your Emotion deck will always be face-up. Take the deck of common Aspirations and remove Reflection and Sensibility. These are only used in the full game. Shuffle the deck and deal out the cards face up in a row, the leftmost one is the current Aspiration. Each team takes their deck of hidden Aspirations and again removes Reflection and Sensibility, Shuffle your deck and place it facedown on your team board. Each team should then secretly look at the top card of their deck. If this matches the current common Aspiration reshuffle your deck and try again until it doesn't match. Your top hidden Aspiration is a secret goal that your team is trying to achieve, and it can never match the current common Aspiration. Randomly determined which player will go first and place their player order marker near the main board, then randomly determine which player from the other team will go second and place their player marker next to it. The other markers are then placed so that player order alternates between the teams. Whoever is the starting player gets 2 extra Willpower, but then also flips over their action tracker token. In the basic game the Spirit figures are placed on the board in specific positions, as shown in the rulebook. There are also starting Emotion cards, 2 Brightness and 2 Bleakness, and again, for the basic game, these start in specific spaces as shown in the rulebook. Place an Essence token of the appropriate color from the general supply onto the leftmost space of each Emotion. This indicates that Emotions current intensity. The initial placement of Emotions determines which Realms and Frontiers are controlled by which team. I'll explain Realm and Frontier control more later in the video, but for now just place them as per the set up image in the rulebook, with Bliss controlling the Realms of Willow of Values and Cradle of Senses, and the Frontiers here and here, and Gloom controlling the Realms of Land of Desires and Valley of Motives, and and Frontiers here and here. Each player starts the game with four wild Vibe tokens. For your first game place them on the leftmost spaces of the actions Move, Invoke, Quell, and Fortify. This denotes that you begin the game with these 4 actions unlocked. Once your experienced at the game, each player in turn order chooses where to place their initial 4 tokens. You can choose to unlock fewer actions but have some of them upgraded. But do not unlock the Empower action, that's only used in the full game. The decision of which actions to unlock and which ones to upgrade will be based on the cards you have in your hand and the current Aspirations. Place the rest of the Vibe tokens in a supply nearby. With setup complete you're now ready to begin the game. In the order of the player markers here, players will take individual turns. Once all players have taken a turn play returns to the first player and then play continues. There are no game rounds, just players taking turns one after another. On your turn you take 3 actions, and you move your action marker one space to the right to help track the number of actions that you've taken. In the basic game there are 9 different actions that you can take. 4 Spirit actions, shown on your Spirit Board, and 5 Realm actions shown on the game board. Also, once during your turn, you can use your Absorb ability by flipping your action tracker token over. And in addition to that you have 3 Ambition abilities shown on your team board, which you can use before or after any action if your team has enough Ambition tokens At the end of your turn you either gain 1 Ambition or draw 2 Emotion cards, and then if you have no Willpower you gain 1 Willpower. You then refresh your action tracker token and play passes to the next player. However, during your turn when you absorb, if any of the spheres are emptied of Willpower the game is immediately interrupted and a revelation is resolved. Each team reveals and evaluates their current hidden Aspiration, and the current common Aspiration is also evaluated. Based on how each team performed, Fragments will be added into the Identity, and then new Aspirations will be determined. When the final common Aspiration is resolved, or a team adds their capping piece to the Identity, the current player finishes their turn and then the game ends. Points are scored based on the Fragments in the Identity, and the team with the most points wins. Before I go into the rules in detail I want to explain about controlling Realms and Frontiers, as this concept is essential to many aspects of the game. Control of Realms and Frontiers will change over the course of the game as the players will manipulate Cerebria's emotions. There are 5 Frontiers in Cerebria, each one of them is made up of a triad of emotion slots. If only one team has Emotions in that triad then they control the Frontier, which is indicated by placing a Frontier control marker here. But if both teams have Emotions in the triad you need to compare their intensities, which for each Emotion is the highest numbered space with an Essence on it. So here Gloom has Dislike with an intensity of 2, but Bliss has a total of 3 intensity, 2 from affection and 1 from Brightness, so Bliss controls this Frontier. If Gloom were to increase the intensity of Dislike to 3 then neither team controls the Frontier and the marker is removed. Controlling a Frontier is useful for one of the Aspirations, but there are other benefits too, which I'll cover later on. There are 5 Realms in Cerebria, and each one of them is influenced by 4 emotion slots, 2 in the Realm itself, and one on each adjacent Frontier. Control of a Realm is determined in a similar way to that of a Frontier, in that you add up the intensity of all of the Emotions there. So in this case Gloom has control of this Realm and the Realm control marker here, this side up. But Emotions on the edge of a Realm can be blocked by opposing Emotions between them and the centre of the Realm. For example, if Bliss place Trust here, then even though it's got a lower intensity, it blocks the Bleakness from influencing the Realm, and thus switching control of the Realm to Bliss. In addition to this each Realm may be influenced by the presence of a Fortress. A Fortress adds one or two to a team's intensity, as per the token, which is placed here. In this case Gloom has a major Fortress providing 2 intensity to the Realm, equalling that of Bliss' Emotions, therefore neither team controls this Realm. Controlling of Realm is useful for one of the Aspirations but again there are other benefits too, which I'll cover later on. As mentioned earlier, there are five different Realm actions available to you in the game, and you can take the same action multiple times on your turn. The first important note is that you can perform any of the Realm actions, no matter where on the board your spirit is. To perform a Realm action you must pay the cost in willpower shown beneath the Realm's name. This is 1 for most Realms, but the Network of Thoughts cost 2. If however your team currently controls that Realm, the action costs one fewer Willpower, meaning that for every Realm except the Network of Thoughts, the action is free. But remember you only get to do 3 actions per turn. Let's go over the different Realm actions now. The Valley of Motives is an Inspiring Realm, it allows you to gain Willpower. You simply spend 1 Willpower to gain 4 Willpower. Make sure you take the Willpower from the general supply, don't take it from any of the spheres in the Origin. The Willow of Values grows Essence, the essential energy source for emotions. After paying the cost to start the action you can then exchange any amount of Willpower for Essence. So here I choose to exchange 3 Willpower into Essence The Cradle of Senses is the hub of contact with the outside world. This action has two steps. First, pay one Willpower to draw the top card of your Emotion deck, and remember the top card should always be face-up. So after you've done this remember to turn the next card face-up too. And second, you may if you want to pay 2 Willpower to draw another card. You can actually repeat this second step as many times as you want to, as long as you have the Willpower to pay. The Network of Thoughts is a way for Emotions to travel through Cerebria. To perform this action pay 2 Willpower and take any one of your team's Emotion cards from a slot anywhere on the board and place it into a slot adjacent to your Spirit figure. If your Spirit is on a Frontier then the only slot that's counted as adjacent is this one here. And if your Spirit is in a Realm then these two slots are counted as adjacent. For example, here Delight moves the Emotion of Sociability, along with its Essence and token, to a space adjacent to Delight. This switches control of the Frontier to Bliss. The Land of Desires allows Spirits to focus attention on Emotions, nurturing them with Essence. This action has two steps: First, pay 1 Willpower and choose an Emotion that is adjacent to your Spirit figure, and then place one Essence from your Spirit Board onto that Emotion, in the next space. Then you may pay any additional amount of Willpower to add that many Essence onto the same card. So here for example, the Bliss Spirit of Delight uses the Land of Desires to add one Essence to the Excitement Emotion. This means that Bliss now has 2 total Intensity in this Realm, which is the same as Gloom, so the Realm becomes uncontrolled. Then Delight spends another Willpower to place a second Essence onto Excitement, giving bliss a total of 3 Intensity in the Realm, and thus taking control of it. All of the realm actions are summarized on the quick reference cards. In the basic game all Spirits have the same 5 Spirit actions shown on their Spirit Board, and in fact the Empower action is not used in the basic game, so I'm just going to cover the other four actions in this video. Now there's going to be a lot of detail in this chapter, and you probably won't remember all of it, but once you understand the iconography on the Spirit Boards things will seem a lot simpler. All of the icons are actually explained on the back page of the rulebook, and I know there's a lot of them, but hopefully as I go through the individual actions you'll see how each one is relatively easy. An action can only be carried out if it's unlocked, which means there must be a vibe token on the leftmost space of that action. It's recommended for your first game to place your for starting wild vibe tokens like this, meaning that all of these actions are unlocked. However, if you were to start with them like this for example, then you could not carry out the Invoke action until you unlock it. Any of the vibe tokens on other spaces of an action row mean that that action is upgraded, and as you can see here the upgrades do not have to be taken in order. Now, immediately after declaring the action that you're going to perform, and right before you carry out that action, you may place a new vibe token on that action. To do this you must discard one Emotion card from your hand and take a vibe token from the supply that matches the vibe on the discarded Emotion. Your discarded card goes face-down at the bottom of your Emotion deck. If the action that you declared is not yet unlocked you place that vibe token on the leftmost space. This unlocks the action and you can then perform it. So yes ,you can declare that you're about to perform an action which is currently locked, but then you must first unlock it with a vibe token before performing it. If the action is already unlocked you place the vibe token on any of the upgrade spaces, but there cannot be two of the same color vibes in the same row. The wild ones have no color. When you perform an action you may use any number of the upgrades. They're all optional and you can use any or all of them as you like. The third upgrade on each action has the same effect, and it reduces the total cost of that action by one Willpower. This discount applies to the total cost of using that action. There are ways during the game that you will be able to unlock and upgrade actions, and the following rules always apply: You cannot upgrade an action that has not yet been unlocked, you must unlock it first before it's upgraded. and vibe tokens on the same row must be a different color. Now it's time to go through the actions and upgrades one by one. The Move action allows you to move your Spirit around the board. The main action is to pay one Willpower and move your Spirit one space along the path. You cannot move to a space with an opposing Spirit, but you may share a space with your teammate. The first upgrade is Haste. This allows you to pay one additional Willpower once, to move one extra space. You can pass through but not end your move on a space with an opposing Spirit. This upgrade is Surmount, and it allows you to pay one Willpower to end your move on a space occupied by an opposing Spirit. For example, you are playing Delight and have the Move action fully upgraded. You could therefore choose the Move action to move two spaces, and you could end your move on a space occupied by an opponent. This would cost you 2 Willpower in total. 1 Willpower for the basic action, 1 for each upgrade, and then a discount of 1 for the third upgrade. The Invoke action is the main way to get more Emotion cards on the board. Pay 2 Willpower to play a card from your hand into an empty Emotion slot adjacent to your Spirit. Remember, if your Spirit is on the Frontier only this space is adjacent, but if you're on a Realm then both of these spaces are adjacent. When you play a new Emotion, place one Essence from your Spirit Board onto the shaded Essence space. This changes the total Intensity that you have on the board and may change the control of the corresponding Realms and Frontiers, so you should re-evaluate them at this time. Also, each Emotion has a power, some of which trigger when the card comes into play. The full details of all of the Emotion cards can be found on the Emotion reference sheets Anything with a small arrow next to the name means that it has a coming into play effect. When you play an Emotion be sure to look up its effect on the reference sheet. If you do not have any Essence you cannot perform the basic action. The Bolster upgrade allows you to spend 1 Ambition to give the Emotion 1 extra Essence when it comes into play, and this Essence comes from the general supply not from your own supply. Spending an Ambition means flipping over one of your Ambition tokens. Remember, you start the game with no Ambition tokens, but you can choose to gain one at the end of your turn. The Inner Force upgrade allows you to spend 2 additional Willpower to take the first Essence you place on the Emotion from the general supply instead of your own supply, meaning that you can now perform this action even if you have no Essence of your own. The Quell action allows you to remove an Essence from an opposing Emotion adjacent to your Spirit figure. The cost of this is 2 Willpower and 1 Ambition, and you must also have an Emotion card in your hand with a vibe color that matches the vibe of the opposing emotion that you're trying to Quell Note that only the colors need to match, the actual icons are different for each team. You don't lose the card, you just need to have it in your hand, so you reveal it and then put it back into your hand. You remove the rightmost Essence from the quelled Emotion, and if the last Essence is removed from a card, its discarded and placed face-down on the bottom of the other players deck. Note that the starting Emotions of Brightness and Bleakness do not have any vibe. They can be quelled as long as you have a card in your hand, and if they're removed from the board they're returned to the box. The Subdue upgrade allows you to pay 2 additional Willpower once, to remove 1 additional Essence from the opposing Emotion. And the Extinguish upgrade allows you to pay one additional Willpower to avoid having to reveal a card when you perform the action. This means that you can perform the action even when you have no cards in hand. The Fortify action allows you to affect the Fortress location in a Realm. The Fortress location of a Realm is this space here, and you can only affect such a space if your Spirit is on one of the three spaces adjacent to the Fortress location. The main action could only be taken in a Realm where the Fortress location is empty and the opposing team does not control the Realm. Know that your team doesn't need to control it, it just cannot be controlled by your opponents. You then spend 3 Willpower and place 1 of your Minor Fragments, the small ones, on to the Fortress space along with their +1 Intensity token. This means that for determining control of that Realm you now have 1 extra Intensity. The Exalt upgrade is used if the opposing team does not control the Realm and you already have a Minor Fragment on the Fortress location. You spend 1 Ambition, in addition to the 3 Willpower you spent for the main action, to replace your Minor Fragment with a Major one, and then you flip the Intensity token to the +2 side. Note that this upgrade works a little differently to the others in that it sort of replaces the main action, but you must still pay the 3 Willpower to activate the main action, and then the extra Ambition to power the upgrade. So, building a Major Fragment as a Fortress when you have nothing there requires 2 separate actions, the first with the main action to get the Minor Fragment, and then another action using the upgrade to replace the Minor Fragment with a major one. The Raze upgrade is performed when your Spirit is adjacent to a Fortress location with an opponent's Fortress. You pay 1 additional Willpower and 1 Ambition, and instead of adding your own Fragment you either remove an opponent's Minor Fragment, or reduce their Major Fragment to Minor, replacing the Intensity tokens as needed. A note: unlike the other two parts of the Fortify action you can use the Raze upgrade in a Realm controlled by your opponents, and this icon here means that if you do use the Raze upgrade you gain 1 additional action to use that turn. A quick note about the Fragments: These components are intended to be limited, and near the end of the game if the type of Fragment you need is not available you cannot complete the action. For example, if your opponent has no Minor Fragments remaining then you cannot Raze their Major Fragment Fortress. So, what do Fortresses do? Well, the +1 and +2 Intensity tokens gives that amount of intensity when determining control of the Realm, but they also contribute to the Aspiration of Fortitude. And more importantly than that, there's a way that they can be added into the identity during a revelation, which as explained earlier, is points at the end of the game. I'll explain this part more when I cover a revelations later on. The Empower action is not part of the basic game, so simply ignore the bottom row on your Spirit Board. I'll explain this action in my other video where I cover the full game. In addition to your three actions you can perform each of your team's Ambition abilities once on your turn. Using an Ambition ability is not an action, you just use it before or after any of your other actions, but you cannot perform the same ability more than once on a turn. These abilities require you to spend Ambition, which is a shared resource between you and your teammate. You start the game with no Ambition but various effects will gain you Ambition, and you represent this by flipping these tiles over. You're limited to 3 Ambition. The 3 different Ambition abilities are printed on your team board and are as follows: Spend 1 Ambition to place a vibe token on one of your Spirit actions, either unlocking a new action or upgrading an existing one. Spend 1 Ambition to rotate the Origin clockwise by one step, and spend 2 Ambition to gain one additional action this turn. In addition to your three actions you take on your turn, you can also perform your Absorb ability once, before or after any of your actions. To do this you flip your action tracker token to the inactive side, just to show that you've used your Absorb ability this turn. And remember, the first player on the first turn of the game starts with this token inactive, so they may not absorb on the first turn of the game. When you absorb, choose an Origin sphere adjacent to your Spirit. If you're in a Realm only the sphere nearest you is adjacent, and if you're on a Frontier then both of the
nearest spheres are adjacent. You then take a specific amount of Willpower from that sphere and add it to your supply. You start by taking 2 Willpower, but you get an additional 1 for each adjacent Frontier that your team controls. If your spirit is in a Realm it's adjacent to two Frontiers, so in this case you would get 2 additional Willpower, for a total of 4, as you control both adjacent Frontiers. If your Spirit figure is on a Frontier it's only
adjacent to that Frontier. So in this case you control that Frontier so you would get 3 Willpower in total. Also some Emotions have powers which modify the amount of Willpower that you receive. If there isn't enough Willpower in the sphere just take everything you can. Then you receive an additional bonus depicted on the sphere that you took the Willpower from. The Sphere of Humility allows you to take 1 Essence. The Sphere of Diligence allows you to take 2 Willpower, from the general supply not from the sphere. The Sphere of Knowledge allows you to add a vibe token of your choice to any of your actions. The Sphere of Creativity allows you to draw one Emotion card. And the Sphere of Commitment allows you to pay 1 Willpower to gain 1 Ambition. If the sphere is empty then it's time for a revelation, which I'll cover in the next chapter. But whether there was a revelation or not, the Origin is rotated one step clockwise. The steps of the Absorb ability are summarized on the player aid. Revelations are the most important moments of Cerebria. The aspirations of the Spirits are evaluated and new Fragments are added into the Identity. A revelation is triggered immediately when a sphere in the Origin is emptied as a result of a Spirit's Absorb ability. And when this happens do the following: Each side reveals their current hidden Aspiration, the top card of their Aspiration deck. Each side then checks their own Aspiration and the common one, to see if they have accomplished either of them. This always involves determining which team has more of something than the other. For example, the Aspiration of Attitude is accomplished by controlling more Realms than the of the team. Controlling the same number is not enough to accomplish the Aspiration. And note that you cannot accomplish your opponent's Aspiration, but by having more of whatever is required stops them from accomplishing it. For example, the current common Aspiration is Openness, which is based on control of Frontiers. Bliss currently controls two of them and Gloom only controls one. Therefore Bliss has achieved this Aspiration. Bliss' own Aspiration is Liveliness which is based on the total Essence on Emotions. Gloom has 7 total Essence, compared to Bliss' 6. Therefore Bliss does not accomplish this Aspiration, but neither does Gloom, because it was Bliss' own Aspiration. Gloom's hidden aspiration is Fortitude, gained by having a higher total Intensity from Fortresses. Gloom has a Fortress, and Bliss does not. Therefore Gloom has accomplished this
Aspiration. A team that accomplishes one Aspiration adds a Minor Fragment to the Identity, which in the example earlier, is the case for both teams. However, if a team accomplishes both the common Aspiration and their own hidden one, then they add a Major Fragment instead. If, when adding a Fragment, a team does not have the right piece available, this triggers the end of the game at the end of the current turn. But that team will get to add to their capping piece to the top after all other Fragments have been added that turn. The current common Aspiration is then turned face-down. If neither team added a Major Fragment this turn then the next Aspiration in the row is the next common Aspiration. However, if one team did add a Major Fragment, then the other team must choose and remove from the game, one of the remaining face-up Aspirations, The new leftmost common Aspiration is the current one, which in this case is the same one as before. Each team returns their just resolved hidden Aspiration to the box. If a team added a Fragment to the Identity, either minor or major, they simply check the new top Aspiration secretly to see if it matches the current common Aspiration. If it does, shuffle the deck and repeat until a different one is on top. If, however, a team did not add any Fragments to the Identity, then they get to look secretly at the top 3 Aspirations of their deck. Choose one, shuffle the rest into the deck, and then place the chosen one on top, which cannot be the same as the current common Aspiration. Then check the Fortress location adjacent to the emptied sphere. If there's a Fragment there that was placed there before the current turn, that Fragment is added to the Identity, and the Intensity token removed. Fortresses built or exalted this turn cannot be added into the Identity. And finally, place 7 Willpower from the general supply into the sphere that was emptied. Willpower is not supposed to be limited, so if you run out just use some other tokens as a substitute. After the revelation the player's turn continues, with the Origin being rotated. And again, all of these steps can be found on the player aid. The basic game of Cerebria can end in one of two different ways. After a revelation, if there is no further common Aspiration, the game is coming to an end. This could happen because the final common Aspiration was scored, or because the final one was removed during the revelation. Or, if a team would score a minor or major Fragment during a revelation but has no more pieces of that type, than in this case that team adds they're capping Fragment to the Identity after all other Fragments, including fortresses, have been added. If either or both of these conditions occur, the current player finishes their turn and then you proceed to final scoring. Points are added up based on the Fragment pieces in the Identity. Minor Fragments score 3 points, Major Fragments score 5 points, and a capping piece scores 4 points. In case of a tie the team with the capping Fragment wins. And if neither team have the capping Fragment, than in the case of a tie, the game ends in a draw, with Cerebria in complete balance. I hope you found this video useful in learning how to play Cerebria. For more of my videos please consider subscribing to my channel, and don't forget to check out my other video where I cover the rules for the full game and the 2-3 player variant. This includes Strong Emotions, the Wheel of Intentions, and the Empower action. If you have any questions about the game at all please leave them in the comments below. Until next time take care and thanks for watching. [Music]
