Losing To My Shelf

Game Info – Obsession

Designer: Dan Hallagan
Artist: Dan Hallagan
Publisher: Kayenta Games
Year Published: 2018
Player Count: 1-4
Solo Mode: Solo Bot
Initial Setup Time: 10 Minutes
Solo Play Time: 30-40 Minutes
Reset Time: 5 Minutes

This game clearly isn’t for me. The game’s theme, “Pride, Intrigue, and Prejudice in Victorian England“, holds no interest.

I am not amused by family drama or gossip. I’m not concerned with societal reputation. I have no experience managing house staff.

My only brush with a Valet is when I reluctantly consent to one parking my car at some fancy restaurant visited only on special occasions.

So why do I enjoy this game so much? It’s the theme, of course!

“Derbeesure”? “Derbeeshyre”? “Darbeesher”?

I should clarify – it’s not specifically this game’s theme that draws me in. It’s how the designer so tightly weaves that theme into every aspect of its presentation.

Obsession feels very much like a single-minded labor of love.

The solo player assumes the role of “the head of a respected but troubled family estate in Victorian Britain” – Asquith, Cavendish, Ponsonby, or York.

You choose one of 12 solo opponent families to play against, 4 each of “beginner”, “intermediate”, and “expert” difficulty.

Your goal is to gain victory points by improving your estate, making favorable social connections, and increasing your family’s reputation.

If you play your cards right (literally), you might successfully court one of the Fairchild children – the wealthiest and most influential family in Derbyshire!

You’ll need plenty of money along the way. Keeping up with the Joneses (or the Fairfaxes, Fitzherberts, or Gladstones) is an expensive endeavor!

Please drop by the estate (and bring money)!

A Standard game plays out over 16 rounds, representing 4 seasons of 4 rounds each.

During most rounds, your turn will revolve around hosting a social activity at one of your estate locations. Guests invited to attend each activity are played from your hand of cards, which is gradually expanded as the game proceeds.

Activities, and the guests attending them, provide favours in the form of money, an increase to your family’s reputation, another society member added to your available guest list (your hand), or one of several other rewards.

Money allows you to purchase estate improvement tiles, which in turn provide victory points and additional activity options.

As your reputation increases, you are able to host more lavish activities and higher prestige guests, each providing more valuable favours!

We interrupt these activities to bring you some Courtship

Every 4th game round is an end-of-season “Courtship” round where no activities are hosted.

Instead, Courtship involves drawing a Theme Card to learn which improvement tile category the Fairchild siblings currently favor (favour?).

Estate improvement tiles belong to one of five categories – Essentials, Service, Estate, Prestige, and Sporting.

If your estate’s improvement tiles matching the drawn Theme Card represent more VPs than the solo bot has in that category, you earn a VP card and a courtship visit from your choice of Fairchild children.

In game terms, the Fairchild card is added to your hand and available to be played as a guest during the next season.

But if the solo bot’s total is higher, the solo bot earns a VP card of its own and will add those VPs to its score at game end.

A Final Courtship round occurs at the end of the fourth season. Another Theme Card is drawn and added to the previous three, then all estate improvement tiles matching the revealed categories are compared.

The winner of the Final Courtship also wins the hand of their chosen Fairchild (and, more importantly for scoring purposes, the Fairchild card’s 8 VPs)!

Some kennels would look nice on this hillside

Improvement tiles available for purchase are displayed on the Supply Board, in a row from lowest to highest cost. Although there are two copies of many tiles, the Builders’ Market is first-come, first-served.

Improvement tile prices are dynamic. When tiles are purchased, they are removed from the Market and added to a player’s tableau, where they are available to host future activities.

Remaining improvement tiles then slide from right to left to fill gaps, becoming cheaper in the process.

Running the solo bot is quick and easy

Each solo opponent has a unique family card displaying its seasonal estate improvement VP totals for comparison during Courtship rounds. This open information can be helpful in tailoring your estate improvements strategy to keep up.

Bot actions are controlled by the “Solitaire Builders’ Market AI” card and a 20-sided die.

In the multiplayer game, player interaction primarily revolves around the purchase and removal of improvement tiles. In a solo game, the bot randomly removes tiles from one of the six Builders’ Market positions.

The number rolled on the die is cross-referenced on the AI card to determine which improvement tile the solo bot removes. The first column on the AI card identifies the corresponding tile to remove during a “Standard Turn”. The second column identifies the tile to remove if a Monument (a special type of improvement tile) is present in the Market.

Running the bot’s turn consists only of rolling a die, removing an improvement tile, and refilling the Market. Quick, easy, and you’re back to planning your next turn!

A eurogame through and through

Obsession is primarily a tableau builder, with some light worker placement elements.

Purchasing and adding improvement tiles to your estate creates a tableau of expanding available actions.

Your “worker” meeples represent your servant staff, but they are not used to trigger actions, as in a typical worker placement game.

Instead, most activities, and many guests, require an available house staff be assigned to them when they are played.

Servants assigned to an activity will be unavailable for the next 2 rounds, so some planning will be needed to ensure future activity needs can be met.

There is more to the game than covered here.

Objective cards provide long-term goals to work toward, such as collecting specific improvement tiles or adding a certain number of servants. You will draw and discard several Objective cards throughout the game, allowing you to tailor your strategy based on how things unfold.

There is a pool of servants available for hire via Butler-specific activities. Expanding your staff allows you to support more guests required by some of the higher-reputation activities.

Guests provide favours, but many also have VPs that count toward your final score. Some guests actually provide negative VPs and you will want to discard them from your hand via a “Dismiss Guest” favour, if possible.

On the other hand, some guests are “Prestige Guests“, offering very lucrative favours, but usually requiring a minimum reputation level be reached before they can be played.

Special Actions can also be taken at any time to gain a small amount of money, make an expended servant immediately available, or refresh the Builders’ Market. However, each of these comes with a reputation cost that you may not always want to spend.

One must follow the rules of high society

The 16-page rulebook is larger physically than I prefer (11″ x 11″, 28cm x 28cm) but is laid out well. There are several explanations of the thematic relevance of many game elements, but this does not overly interfere with learning the game and provides further examples of the game’s purposeful theming.

The rulebook lacks a table of contents or index but is largely structured to follow the game flow. Game rules are easy to learn and easily referenced.

The solo rules are on a separate page near the end of the rulebook. You will need to learn the multiplayer rules first and then learn the solo mode. But the solo rules differ only slightly from multiplayer, and the solo rules are primarily an explanation of the bot functionality.

A separate 28-page glossary (which does have a table of contents) provides additional rule clarifications and additional thematic context. It also has a “Strategy” section for those so inclined.

The learning curve is further smoothed by some of the components themselves. The “Order of Play” is helpfully printed on your family board and several two-sided player aid cards help you navigate the game’s symbology.

3 reasons why Obsession might be for you

Does Obsession earn a place on my shelf?

I consider myself an omnigamer, but eurogames, solo or otherwise, are not my favorite type.

I find thematic, strategic, or storytelling games to be the most compelling – especially titles that create an emergent, often random, narrative from the game action itself, rather than following a prewritten story.

But Obsession nails everything I enjoy in a solo game – theme, strategy, and emergent storytelling.

The end result is a rare game that fully engages me within its Victorian England setting even though I’m not particularly interested in that era or media set in it.

This is one Obsession I’m happy to have on my shelf!