Game Details
Name	Obsession (2018)
Complexity	Medium [3.10]
BGG Rank	63 [8.11]
Player Count	1-4
Designer(s)	Dan Hallagan
Artist(s)	Dan Hallagan
Publisher(s)	Kayenta Games, 4GAMES, Boardgame Mall, CMON Global Limited, Giochix.it, Lucrum Games, Maldito Games, Strohmann Games, Super Meeple and TTGames CZ
Mechanism(s)	Action Retrieval, Deck, Bag, and Pool Building, Hand Management, Open Drafting and Solo / Solitaire Game

Participants

• Mark
• Logan
• Bailey

Rules missed

• When the market is refreshed, put the tiles in reputation order. After season two, remove any 1 reputation tiles during refresh

Photos

About the game

From Boardgamegeek:

You are the head of a respected but troubled family estate in mid-19th century Victorian England. After several lean decades, family fortunes are looking up! Your goal is to improve your estate so as to be in better standing with the truly influential families in Derbyshire.

Obsession is a game of 16 to 20 turns in which players build a deck of Victorian gentry (British social upper class), renovate their estate by acquiring building tiles from a centralized builders’ market, and manipulate an extensive service staff of butlers, housekeepers, underbutlers, maids, valets, and footmen utilizing a novel worker placement mechanic. Successfully hosting prestigious social activities such as Fox Hunts, Music Recitals, Billiards, Political Debates, and Grand Balls increases a player’s wealth, reputation, and connections among the elite.

Each turn, players choose a building tile representing a room or outdoor space in and around their 19th century British country house. The tile chosen dictates the event that can be hosted and the guests to be invited. Players must carefully plan, however, to have the proper staff available to service the event and support guests as needed. The reward for success is new investment opportunities, permitting further renovation of the estate (acquisition of more valuable/powerful building tiles), an increase in reputation in the county, an expanding circle of influential acquaintances, and a larger and highly-trained domestic staff.

Throughout the game, a competitive courtship for the hand of the most eligible young gentleman and lady in the county presents specific renovation and reputation objectives. The player who best meets these objectives while accumulating victory points will win the hand of the wealthy love interest and the game.”

Gameplay

A mix of luck and strategy will deliver victory in the final courtship, allowing you to capture your love interest, and likely the game.

Players each start with the same set of improvement tiles. They must then navigate their way through 4 seasons of courtship. Each season rewards the winner with extra VPs and an additional powerful card added to their hand. Each improvement tile and card in the player’s hand have a reputation level that must be reached to use them. So increasing reputation is an important part of the game and can earn lots of extra VPs.

Final Thoughts

We played the builders market refresh incorrectly, so some advantages of gaining very powerful improvements for cheap, would have mitigated by the higher cost of those improvements. The cards are very thematic with their flavor text which matches their characteristics with the benefits they provide. Anyone who enjoyed the series Downtown Abbey, will enjoy the theme of this game. Very much looking forward to playing it again.

Game Details
Name	Vast: The Crystal Caverns (2016)
Complexity	Medium Heavy [3.64]
BGG Rank	916 [7.10]
Player Count (Recommended)	1-5 (2-5)
Designer(s)	Patrick Leder and David Somerville
Artist(s)	Kyle Ferrin
Publisher(s)	Leder Games, 2Tomatoes Games, Mandala Jogos, MS Edizioni and Quality Beast
Mechanism(s)	Action Points, Dice Rolling, Grid Movement, Hand Management, Line of Sight, Modular Board, Pick-up and Deliver, Pieces as Map, Role Playing, Secret Unit Deployment, Take That, Tile Placement and Variable Player Powers

Participants

• Katey – winner (cave)
• Sean
• 3P
• 4P

Rules missed

• Cave includes the number of crystals added to the number of treasure when determining the number of omen tokens to draw at the start of its turn.
• Goblin tribe suffers malaise whenever rage reaches 0 – all tribes lose 1 population.
• Goblin tribes discard assigned monster cards when scattered.

Photos

About the game

From Boardgamegeek:

“Vast takes you and your friends into the torch light of a classic cave-crawling adventure, built on the concept of total asymmetry. Gone are days of the merry band of travelers fighting off evil. In Vast, you will become part of a new legend… Any part you wish!

Play as the classic, daring Knight, the chaotic Goblin horde, the colossal, greedy Dragon, or even the Cave itself — powerful, brooding, and intent on crushing the living things that dare to disturb its gloomy depths. Each role has its own powers, pieces, and paths to victory…and there can be only one winner.

As the ultimate asymmetric board game, Vast: The Crystal Caverns provides a limitless adventure, playable again and again as you and your friends explore the four different roles in different combinations. Play one-on-one in a race to the death between the Knight and the Goblins, or add in the Dragon and the Cave for deeper and more epic experiences, different every time.”

Final Thoughts

Katey and I began this game with our kids, Avery & Emmett, but they lost interest as we slowly learned the nuances of the game, so we finished on our own. Because Vast is an asymmetrical game, it can take a bit of getting used to, and you might need multiple playthroughs to learn all of the characters (we played twice). But once you have it down, Vast is a pretty cool game. The balance seems well-tuned; in our second game (we each played two of the characters in the suggested 4-player setup) the cave won, but both the knight and dragon were arguably one turn from victory. We both liked the rock-paper-scissors element of play – the goblins are trying to kill the knight, the knight is trying to kill the dragon, the dragon eats goblins, and the cave is trying to collapse and kill everyone (we didn’t use the thief). Vast was lots of fun and Katey and I are looking forward to playing again, and checking out the various expansions available.