Obsession Board Game - Solo Review!

welcome back to specifically solo this is a channel about solo board gaming my name's Jared today we're taking a look at Obsession this is a game about Victorian England you are a royal family trying to have guests esteemed guests come to your home and also host activities for those guests so how does it play what does the solo mode look like let's take a look at that then I'll come back give you some of my thoughts okay so here we have a game of obsession set up and ready to go you'll notice that doesn't take up that much table space as I always say I have a regular folding table and this is about half of the folding table but you can see there's tons of open space right here so you can even shrink this down a little bit more if you needed to and what are you doing in Obsession well you are a royal family and you are trying to host events get guests to come to your house and build up your Gentry and that's going to score you points at the end of the game also depending on what events you host that'll score you points at the end of the game what objectives you're able to complete and also theme cards and making sure that you are hosting events in all sorts of different areas so there's lots of different ways to score points in Obsession there's a pie chart in the rule book that shows you exactly the points breakdown and the various ways to score points and what's most advantageous so I really like that in the rule book you don't see a ton of rule books with that but I think that was really well done to just kind of let you know hey here's what you're focusing on throughout the course of the game so how does Obsession work well it's pretty simple you've got some worker placement going on you've got some some action selection as well you're also buying from a market that's going to be changing and a little bit of deck building happening as well although the cards you're getting are going to increase your deck but a lot of times you don't really get to pick what cards you're going to get you're just going to draw one so your deck is getting larger but you're not really deciding how you want to put that that deck together so on your turn what you will do is this order of play which is listed right here on each player board so that is very convenient and let you know what needs to happen so I am playing as the C dish family and each family has a little bit of a bonus that they start with and my bonus is that I start the game with reputation level one position four so normally you would start over here but because I am this particular family I will start right there every family has a little bit different bonus that they get another family gets an extra worker some family another family gets money another one gets an extra card in their family to start with so there's different bonuses for each family so on your turn you would normally start with steps one and two but because this is our first turn we are not going to be having to do those because there's nothing to do with those two on this first particular turn so you will host an activity and you can see here you have five starting activities every play has the same five starting activities and when you play solo those are the the same here as well you will pick one of these activities to host now if you want to be able to buy tiles from the Builder Market you'll need money and this family doesn't start with any so I think I'm going to host the event that is going to give me some money so I can show you how you would purchase a tile at the end of your turn so let's say we are going to go ahead and Host this event which is Bowling Green bowls and it will tell you on the uh event that you are hosting the activity that you're hosting what you need so you need two Gentry which is just two cards from your deck doesn't matter what they are but you're just going to need two cards there and you're also going to need a white worker to be able to place onto this tile to host that activity so you will place the activity right up here on your player board and now you will take one of your workers that you have available the white worker you'll place it right right there and then you also pick out two cards from your Gentry that you want to use to have attend this activity that you're hosting so all the cards do different things you can see here this one would get us money down here in this corner this this person gets us two reputation this person either $100 or reputation it just depends this is a card draw on this one card draw or discard a card so there's a couple different things you can do but I think what I'm going to do is Host this with major William Halls and you've got your starting family cards which have this little C emblem up here it's different for every family again we're the Cavendish family so there ours are C so you'll pick two cards out because you need two family members to be able to host this event so or two members of your Gentry excuse me they don't have to necessarily be family members that's important because some things you host do have to be family members and so that factors in so I'm going to have William go to the event and I think I will also have let's see here I will have uh Paul Cavendish go to the event as well so these two are going to the event and they are going to take part in this bowling activity so down here in the corner of Williams card you will see you need a green worker a little hard to see from there so I'll hold it up you'll see you need a green worker there to be able to have William attend this activity so you will take a green worker from your supply there and put him there and now you've got all your requirements fulfilled and you've provided your service which is step five so now you're on to step six which is enjoy your favors you're going to start with collecting money well Earl Cavendish is going to give us $200 so we will grab that here from the board or 200 lb in this game because it is in Europe uh also your activity that you've hosted here gets us $300 so we will take another three or you could just take a five if you wanted to and we get that now this is going going to be reputation gained so we'll move our marker up to here once you move from 5 to 1 you will flip your marker over and go to the next level and these are the other levels you can go all the way up to seven in the standard game nine in the extended game there's lots of variants uh that come in the rule book for Obsession so there's lots of different ways that you can set this up so once you've done that you will now decide if you want to buy a tile from the market so we've got our options here you can see on the builders Market here the prices increase this is the cheapest tile that's the most expensive one down there on the end that purple tile and we also have these goal cards over here that we are trying to get so like this one would give me 16 victory points if I'm able to get the conservatory the flower room and the music room in my you know activities that I can host down here this one is a sporting group so if I get the tennis court the cricket field and the croquet lawn all required for that I could get 13 victory points well the croon is out on the board right here at the 400 spot so I think I'm going to go ahead and take this one now it is discounted 200b so it's actually only2 200 lb to be able to purchase that tile so you'll just spend your money your 200 here and then you will take this and put it wherever you would like you can do these activities as many times as you would like you don't have to go in order of how you lay them out here as soon as you do the activity you could do it again the next turn it does not matter so that will just go right here and we we' picked up that activity so now we can host croquet at our estate if we would like to so now you will clear your board so any workers that you used will go to expended service and it will be two turns until you can get them back because next they'll go to the servant quarters and then they'll go to available service and then you will take this tile and each tile is double-sided so once you host the next activity you will flip the tile over you can see now it's going to get us less money the next time we do it but instead of being -3 points at the end of the game it is now worth two points so that's good that gets us more points so we'll put that right down there and that is the end of our turn also when you flip a tile it has a flower on it that's how you know if you are uh playing with the the first side or the the second side of the tile so now how does the solo Mode work well solo mode in obsession is very very easy to operate so all you are going to do is take this die and this die is 20 sided and you will roll this die and determine if the solo opponent takes a activity tile off the board basically just you can't buy that anymore they don't get any points for it you're just going to discard it and it's not going to be in the game anymore so we'll roll this tile or this die excuse me and it lands on six so we've landed on six now we look at our Builder Market AI card and you can see when we roll number six it would take from position two well we've already got a the tile from position two so it won't take anything this particular turn but let's roll it again just to show you what would happen so now it's a 17 of course it's not going to purchase anything this turn so if you roll that you wouldn't purchase anything let's see if we can get one where it would take something that we didn't already buy yes number one it will take from position one so you will just take this tile which is position one and you will discard it from the game I just usually put them over there just so I know they're not in the game anymore and then you will slide all these tiles down so now these will all go down here and then you will get this bag which this has all the tiles you could possibly draw in it so it's a very nice bag love that it says Obsession on it that's very cool you will just take two so we've got this one the Heritage guest Suite and we also have the English garden so we will just put those since we drew that first and we drew that second we'll put those there and that is the end of this particular turn of obsession so now you would move the round marker to round two rotate your service move these up and then continue hosting activities and just doing that oh also these cards go on a discard pile you would have to pass to be able to get those cards back so I usually just put them right there so I know I can't use them anymore then keep the cards in my hand separate over here so that is basically how Obsession works now one other thing from the solo mode that is different what you would do is you are playing with what is called a closed Court ship normally it would be an open courtship if you were playing just a regular game where you would reveal one of these theme cards at the beginning of the game and then you're all working towards that trying to have the most points in that particular area by the time you get to this courtship space on the board but in the solo mode you play with a closed courtship and you don't know what card that's going to be until you get down there to that that round turn four if you will to determine who's going to score for what in this particular case so if we look there are different solo opponent cards in Obsession this is an in intermediary opponent or intermediate and this opponent is called corn Wallace so you can see here at the end of season one it will score this many points in these particular categories so if we were to say we were down here and it's now time for courtship we will take one of these cards up and it's Essentials so we know that corn Wallace here is going to have a score of three for Essentials so if we also have a score of three which we do right now because we have not hosted this event yet and it is worth three points but when we host it it's worth zero so a little bit of a change there um once you host that event if we hadn't hosted that event yet we would be tied and we would both get a victory point card but if Cornwallis was ahead of us it would take a victory point card that you'll reveal at the end of the game to see what its scoring is if we're ahead in that particular area we'll take a victory point card and we'll hold it or be able to use it during the game um so that's that's really simple how the solo mode works it is not much upkeep at all but it is competitive it's a little bit more advanced than just a beat your own score solo mode where you're trying to beat the score of the opponent but it is very very simple it gets out of the way and it lets you really just focus on the game so that's how you play Obsession that's not a full in-depth overview of course but a little bit of a general idea of how turns happen and how you would play this game and so now that we've talked about this game I'm going to go back give you some of my thoughts what I like what I don't like and what I think about the solo mode okay so now you've got kind of an overview of how Obsession plays you can see it's a worker placement action selection type game it's also got a little bit of bag building going on although you're not really deciding what is coming out of the bag you're just drawing tiles to create new opportunities for you to buy off of the market there that is on the board so an economic aspect to the game as well wanted to start with things that I like about Obsession let's first talk about just the theme of the game man is this game just dripping with theme probably more so than a lot of games that that I've played you really feel like you are one of those Royal houses and that you are having to do important things to get guests to come to your estate and the activities they make a lot of sense you know how family members will do certain things how members of your Gentry will do certain things how gentlemen or ladies will do certain activities that all just makes a lot of thematic sense so I love the theme of this game and this is not something that I'm insanely interested in like in my everyday life I don't really follow the Royals I'm not really into shows like the crown or Downtown Abbey or anything like that but for some reason this game really speaks to me and I really really enjoy this theme so love the theme of obsession another thing that I have to give a positive to is the components they're all very nice the worker meeples are very well done the tiles which you can see here are really nice and thick um the boards are great the money the cardboard money is really thick too so all of that is really well done for Obsession again fitting into that theme it's all modeled after the theme they could have done just dollars they did pounds that makes a ton of sense the card backs look very nice all the different types of workers and what they do look very nice so the components for this game are great so another thing that I really like about obsession is that you are getting something every turn you know some games you are building up to a really big turn or you're trying to collect a bunch of stuff and then cash it in not Obsession Obsession you're just picking out an activity if you have the cards and the workers to play that activity you're going to get that reward and that's going to happen every single turn so whether that is you know reputation whether it's money maybe it's more guests that are now in your deck maybe you use that money to buy a new tile you're constantly gaining things in this game which just feels really good not to mention you have the round tracker where things are going to happen like the Village Fair where you could possibly get money you'll get new objective cards you'll get points for courtship all of that happens throughout the course of the game now I love that that there's just so many ways to gain points in fact even in the rule book there is a breakdown of the different aspects of ways that you can earn points and what the you know most important ones are but also what will help you if you just focus on those things throughout the game as well so love that there's so many different ways to gain points and gain stuff in this game because I like getting stuff and then being able to spend that money or with that higher reputation now I can play some more cards which are even better which get me more stuff so love that part of obsession another thing that I really like is just how simple the game is it makes a lot of sense the rule book there's two different Rule books for the game there's like a rule book and then a glossery which has anything that you might have a question about a specific term maybe a specific sequence that happens in the game a tile all of that is in the glossery and it really just makes a lot of sense how you go about your turn it's not confusing at all you're just picking that activity out and then put you're like okay now I have to have somebody that works for my estate to be able to host that activity now I need to pick out some guests to attend that activity it all just makes a lot of sense and it's very easy I didn't have any trouble at all understanding this game and there's something to be said for that that It just fits into the theme so well that it just the the gameplay goes together super super well and it's super solid so another another like for obsession is the solo mode it's really easy to operate um you're just like I showed you rolling that 20-sided die maybe taking a tile off of the market and then that is the end of the solo Mode's turn and you're just trying to get more points than the solo mode especially when it comes to courtship and those different areas so in terms of how long that takes to operate it's very fast you'll just roll that die and then you are on to your turn one once again and collecting more stuff getting to host more activities so for a solo mode it works great it's kind of like beat your own score but there's different there's enough variability with it and there's different opponents in the box that it feels like a little elevated version of beat your own score it's not running like a full atoma or AI or a bot or something like that but it feels better than just trying to beat your score from the last game so that's an aspect that I really enjoy another thing that I really like about obsession is that closed courtship it's very interesting that you play with that in the solo mode so I think that works great for the solo mode it and you have to work on all different areas you're like okay I can't just focus on sporting activities or Prestige or estate activities I have to kind of get a mixture of all of them because I don't know what card is going to come up and I don't know what my solo player my opponent is going to score for and how many points they're going to get and if I'm going to beat them and you do have to beat them at least in a couple of different categories throughout the game game to be able to win otherwise you're you're probably going to lose and the solo opponents can increase or decrease in difficulty I would play with some of the beginner ones for your first couple games that one I showed you was an intermediate one there's Advanced ones as well but the the fact that it it makes you kind of focus on all different areas is something that I really enjoy because you can't just pick one strategy and go with that you have to really diversify and kind of expand out and it make sure you have a lot of different types of activities and that you're hosting those types of activities so that you get get points for them so another like for obsession is just how simple it is to set up I mean you have your player board you have the round tracker then you have the market you Shuffle some cards up you give yourself some workers pick a family that you're going to play with and you are off and running so that's one thing that I really enjoy is that it does not take long at all to get this to the table and then the gameplay length is good too it's maybe 40 minutes maybe an hour depending on if it's your first time playing or if you know kind of the sequence of events and what happens in a round the first couple times you play you are going to spend time looking at the rule book looking at your player board saying okay what do I do next now okay this happens but once you've played a couple of times you've got that that pattern down or that round tracker down that you can just kind of cruise through that every single turn and the turns can be very quick but also still thinky because you're trying to do what the best possible outcome is for you so I enjoy the gameplay length of this I think it it it does not you know overstay it's welcome at all and it's a great length for this type of game now we'll move on to dislikes which I don't have many of but one dislike that I do have is these cards right here and I'm going to show you these Victory Point cards and then these are the same cards for the theme cards as well these are very very small um they definitely could have been bigger I think that definitely would have helped they're hard to pick up hard to flip over sometimes those are supposed to be hidden information like when you give it to the solo opponent you're not supposed to reveal it to the end of the game I've had multiple times happen where I'm like oh I just because of the way how small the cards are I just accidentally have flipped it over sometimes when I'm giving it to the solo opponent so I would just wish those cards were a little bit bigger that's that's really my only dislike though with the game is is those cards everything else is a positive I've played this a bunch of times it's different every single time in terms of what I focus on or maybe the path that I take and what family members I get I don't have either of the expansions but I know that that adds even more to the game that obviously would give you even more variability and some different ways to play so overall Obsession I really really enjoy this I think this is a fantastic solo game this shows up a lot on best of solo list I forget where it was on the BGG uh top 200 solo games for the one player Guild this past year but it was pretty high up there and I would have to agree this is a great game to play solo good worker placement game uh the tile thing is something that you don't really see in a ton of games in terms of that being such a big aspect of the game of picking up tiles and you're almost like you know creating your own worker placement spots and your own worker placement area throughout the game so obsession is great definitely check it out if you get the chance it is on BGA but unfortunately you cannot play it solo on BGA but you could play with some other people just to get a sense for the game and then if you could find a copy of this pick it up check out the solo mode it is super easy to run like I said gives you a really fun experience well that's it for this review of obsession be sure to check out the other reviews that I have on the channel also have some other videos as well be sure to like And subscribe that definitely helps me out thanks so much for watching until next time I'm Jared you've been checking out specifically solo

Channel: Specifically Solo

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Id: xlFJs82AM7E

Length: 22min 13sec (1333 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 10 2024