MINDCLASH Cerebria - The Inside World

The game seems fun, at first it seems like playing gloom gives you the upper hand because their passive abilities are more powerful ! However if you strategize the right spirit movements you’ll be fine! So I do think that bliss should’ve gotten a diff ability for love but eh I just don’t use her.... so bottom line if you have 4hours and wanna play Id say go for it !

Analysis Paralysis defines this game for me. I was a kickstarter backer and have played the core game with four players a few times - this games theme and art are amazing, the gameplay is interesting and tactile, however the layer of 4 actions, one energy refill, and 10+ choices every round make every turn devolve into a hard analysis of the board, a feeling of being stuck in the middle of a choice, and eventually a series of choices that change the board so much the next play has to reevaluate their own approach. This game is beautifully made and I would recommend it for someone who likes complex area control games and is willing and has a group of people who are willing to sit down and learn the game, with the understanding that it will take a long time and a few full games to understand the flow and strategy. This is not a game you can just pull out with a new group or even pull out once every 6 months - it takes time to learn and a group to play. Pro - Beautiful components, models, and art Solo play option to learn or challenge yourself interesting theme and lore (very unique) thematic writing and artwork Area control mechanics with a cool twist Con - Analysis paralysis is central to the learning process Poorly designed graphics for action / choice mechanics - the whole group found them hard to read without a reference book Hours to learn, hours to play, not beginner friendly.

I’ve played this game with my wife several times, and I have to say it’s the best attempt at a 2-player area control game that I’ve yet played. I’m a big fan of games like Rising Sun and Blood Rage, but can’t always get those to the table when we don’t have a third (or more) player to join us. Cerebria is the perfect solution to that problem. Here’s the thing about Mindclash Games: They make very complex games that offer a LOT of game in each box. Despite some cute artwork, this is not a game for little Timmy, lest he be a savant. You play your first, “basic” game with nearly HALF of the gameplay mechanisms that make up the “full” game. And it’s still going to give you a lot to learn. (I suggest watching the official Mindclash Games video tutorial on YouTube, also referenced in the rulebook.) By our fourth game, my wife and I finally pulled out the special abilities listed on the mild and strong emotion cards, and we suddenly had the other half of the game to learn. We still have yet to try out the “B” sides of the player boards, which mix up gameplay even more. My wife and I have both experienced some AP (analysis paralysis), but that doesn’t really strike me as a bad thing in this case. You have a lot of potential actions to take during your rather long turns, and it’s that wealth of decisions that keeps us coming back to a particular game. I would not think this is a good game at over 4 players, however, in part because of AP, but also because the game state will change so much between turns that you may have difficulty strategizing. The game is amazing at 2 (in particular if you enjoy area control games), and though I can’t officially comment on it at 3- and 4-player counts, I’m sure it’s excellent and I’m looking forward to teaching it to friends. If you enjoy the complexity of this game, I highly recommend checking out some of Mindclash Games other games, such as Anachrony and Trickerion.

Before I go into what an amazing game this is, let me lay down some of the mechanics and who will like this. Cerebria is at its core a gentle area control game that doesn't rely on direct combat to control the areas of the game called Realms and Frontiers. The game mechanics offer up so many choices of how you can play your characters, called Spirits that you can if you wish really go in deep and plan some complex strategies of your upcoming movies. However, and this is where the gentle aspects of this game come into play, you can be less strategic and really just experiment and try out new combinations of powers. It only takes is a good understanding of game-play and then you can make it what you want it to be, you and your accompanying players are the creators of this world. There are multiple scenarios that can trigger end of game, and as I said with so many directions you can choose to take, the team playing experimentally with new combos can have just as good a chance at winning as the strategists in your Group. Your teams of 2 players or 1 player controlling two spirits will either take on the role of the Bliss emotions or the Gloom emotions. Player(s) will select 2 of the available 4 mats to add to their team as they begin playing the game and trying to shape the emotional landscape of an emerging world. Games can end in perfect harmony with the emotions all sharing equally in the future world, or through the multiple end of play scenarios one of the two emotional sides will be more in control of that created world. Teams will take turns alternating between the Bliss and Gloom player mats using special powers and playing cards on the board which are beautifully drawn Emotions, which often too have their own powers and abilities. As you score goals, called Aspirations, you'll begin constructing a tower in the middle of the Origin, whichever team accomplishes more of the goals will have more of its influence added to the tower. So enough about the "how to" stuff. I think you'll like, no love, this game for so many reasons, one of the highest among them possibly is just how beautiful this game is to bring to the table. It is colorful, the card artwork is whimsical and very well done as are the player mats. Great quality put into all of the components, the Willpower gems and Essence tokens are wonderful and add a lot of immersion to the game. With all the pieces being so nice you really enjoy moving them all around the board and using them. We jumped into playing this game about two weeks ago and since then we have played as of last night on Christmas actually our 12th game. Hooray for long holidays! Anyways, we went into learning this game and were amazed at how much stuff was in the box. There are so many cards, mats, options, additions, subtractions, and variants to the game that we knew we were taking a pretty complex and heavy game to the tabOur Group is fine with that, we love it in fact. Let me say this is where this game and it's instruction book really shine, so do not be overwhelmed at all by this game or other reviews. This game will hold your hand in the beginning as you dive into its world and will walk you through some very easy to follow basic games, you will quickly gain understanding and have tactics and things you want to try next time by the end of your first game. At that point, you can start introducing some more of the play options each time you play to get familiar with each new mechanic. To be honest there is a lot of things you can do, but once you grasp the basics it's very intuitive, even though you have the possibility to do 10+ things, each turn you'll be focused into a much smaller range of actual options based on what your Spirit needs. If you're out of Willpower for example you know one action is going to be spent gathering more, likewise if you're out of Essence your choice will be a simple one. So even though each turn you have the availability of more than 10 actions, you will not be locked into minutes of deciding what is the best move or thinking you don't know what to do next. Cerebria will guide you and you will react to what your opponent(s) previously did on their turns. Using this, "add a little" each game approach we went from playing the base game to fully including and understanding every single mechanic and option of play by the end of our third game. By this time we now have 3 possible end game conditions that are available, our Spirits have their own unique powers, our Emotion cards can be empowered into more powerful versions of themselves, and we haven't even flipped over the player mats to side B yet. That's our current goal is to now move on to side B and learn the even more specialized powers of our Spirits. I can easily say that replay ability of this game is endless. In our experience we had 3 learning games, each game played faster and faster. We have games down to 90 minutes now as an average most times. The 9 games after that we really dug in and started trying to develop our own personal strategies, which were never the same. As we begin fine tuning our own personal emotion decks along with the new abilities on Side B of our player mats I can only see more and more games of this being played, no two ever the same and each being a great unique experience. We still have even more to do with this game as I said above, and we're excited to play the cooperative variant where battle the game. You may also see in my pictures that I did buy the expansion for this game as well. The miniatures are amazing and we love them so much I'll be painting ours, but I'll talk about the expansion in another review. Cerebria has already taken the top spot in my wife's personal favorite game list and very possible may steal my number one spot as well before long. As I mentioned we are 12 games into it now, we have mostly played this as a 2 player game, each of us controlling 2 Spirits. Our last 2 games of Christmas though were 4 player games were we each control only 1 spirit and you play as cooperative teams of Bliss vs. Gloom. With us already having played 10 games we easily taught brand new players the full game in 1 game, and then the second they played with us was one where they themselves already started to grasp all the strategy and began making interesting moves we had never considered. All in all I want to recommend this game so highly to anyone who just likes gaming. This game rates higher on complexity than most you may be familiar with but again do not let that scare you. If you enjoy area control, deck construction, strategy, upgrading your character, cooperative or team play, and just want a beautiful game that has so much replay ability that I personally don't think you'll ever tire of, add this one to your shelf. I'm so happy we got this one, and that my wife loves it so much. I'll drop a review of the expansion later, I really do want to paint my minis first and I'll have to grab some more players to teach the new expansion rules to, so look for that sometime if you're interested. The expansion though is not needed at all for this base game. Buy this, love it and play for a long time.

Ein sehr gutes Spiel mit wunderschönen Komponenten. Zu zweit gefällt es uns schon sehr gut, ist aber vermutlich mit mehr Spieler*innen noch besser.

Well packed from Amazon, the insides slightly less good. Risk for edge damage to the content. Anyways, this is as an excellent game but not for the beginners of the board game hobby. You have 10 actions available each turn and you have 3 actions to take per turn. Including some abilities above that. It’s somewhat opaque what you want to do in the beginning. Or the first few games to be honest. But once you’ve started to see through the many mechanics you can start to really enjoy and explore the game. Would recommend for those that have the time, friends and tenacity to go through it. Not for beginners or one-play-and-done players.

el producto ya venia abierto y se ve que usado y se compro como nuevo pesimo control de calidad

El juego es excelente visualmente, ya quiero probarlo para comentar más

El juego me llegó con la caja precintada, pero el juego no era nuevo, ya que había mucho material destroquelado y colocado de forma evidente que ha sido manipulado. Posiblemente será una devolución de algún cliente que lo han vuelto poner plástico a la caja para simular que es nuevo. Aún así parece que no falta ningún componente, al menos que me haya dado cuenta al revisar, pero no deberían venderlo como si fuera nuevo cuando no lo es. El juego en si muy recomendable, la tienda no mucho.