Obsession Characters Expansion - How to Play. New unique actions from some questionable characters
[Music] some new questionable personalities has entered the state for their unique actions in Obsession characters expansion and in this video we'll be teaching you how to play the obsession characters expansion game designed by Dan hallan and published by K games in the video we'll be talking about everything which is new with this expansion with the exception of the Cooperative mode which we'll be covering in a separate video and hello everyone it's Stella and Taran from me University all right let's get to the classroom released originally in 2018 obsession is a tableau building game set in darbishire society with players playing as different families trying to restore their wealth and reputation since its original release there's been one major expansion The Upstairs Downstairs expansion whose components are indicated by the letter U the smaller wesex expansion introduced the W6 family with components indicated by the W while there's also been a great deal of promotional content promotional cards indicated by the p and tiles indicated by the B now comes the characters expansion which introduces new components indicated by the letter c the new content for the characters expansion is designed to be played with Edition two of the base game that's any box labeled 2.
something or an addition one with a fix pack that you've later purchased to learn characters you must first be familiar with the base game rules and so if you're not familiar with them or need of refresher there's a link in the video description to our how- toplay video for the game characters is also cross- compatible with Upstairs Downstairs and Wessex but combining it with these is optional as such you don't need to understand the rules for these expansions to understand this video that said I will explain how to handle cross compatibility of characters with Upstairs Downstairs and wesex and if you do want a refresher on these expansions there's a link in the description to our video for those as well the new features of the characters expansion can be broken into four main categories the characters the distinguished family members the other General modules and the Cooperative mode we'll cover the first three of these in this video and we have a separate video to cover the Cooperative game you will need to understand both characters and distinguished family members to be able to play cooperatively characters comes with new decks of objectives and guest cards and some new building tiles and some but not all of these can be integrated straight into the base game without using any characters modules the purple objective deck is intended to be a straight up replacement for the red objective deck from your earlier versions simply remove the red deck in all versions of play and use the purple but pay heed to remove this card if you're not using the wesex expansion all of these cards if you're not using Upstairs Downstairs and remove the two fiery sermons in all modes except Cooperative be clear this is just the fiery sermons other cards with the Raven can remain in the deck the new deck includes one new type of objective the majority bonus to score it you must have strictly more of a certain tile type than either of the two players sitting on your left or right if you have more than both of your neighbors you still score only once there are three new pairs of tiles each treated differently the pony and trap are new and you simply add them to the B for the business rooms add them to the bag only if you don't already have business rooms from a previous expansion if you do already have business rooms in your collection then you can leave these two aside and for the West Terrace replace any previous West Terraces from previous expansions with the new West teres then there's a number of new guest cards which can be split into five categories the ones with the Raven and lab Sneed family are used only in The Cooperative mode the ones labeled Exile are used in the characters module the family cards with the purple frame around one or more of the favors are used for the distinguished family members module the new Charles Fairchild card is a substitute card and you can swap it out with the one from the base game if you want a more powerful Charles Fairchild and all of the remaining cards are standard casual and Prestige guests which you can Shuffle straight into their respective decks for any mode of play these new guests introduce some new favor types the socialites and antisocialites change the number of guests required for a given activity here for example the activity normally takes four Gentry this would be increased to six and then decrease to five due to the presence of these guests adjusting the number is not optional the number can't be reduced to zero if there were a restriction on the original requirement that restriction remains so here for example the fourth guest must also be a gentleman and you cannot invite either of these types of guests to a suite as these always require exactly one guest this favor allows you to pick up one guest from your discard pile back into your hand and this one lets you flip over any one tile as if You' visited it with the exception of the private study or business room next we'll talk about the core characters expansion and characters actually adds two key mechanisms the characters themselves Reverend grantley The exentric Dowager and Constable bucket as well as higgy's Second Chance domestics to set up place the sideboard on the side which shows only one space underneath each character place the three character Maples in their spaces the card space underneath Reverend grantley is now a discard pile for the objective cards unlike in the standard game where discarded objectives go on the bottom of the deck now they're placed face up in Reverend Grant ley's pile you'll deal four cards there during setup and players can always look through Grant ley's pile The Eccentric Dow's card space is for her pile of Exile guests she knows some peculiar people and those are in the form of these Exiles so place the four Exiles from this expansion onto that pile in any order if you have them from Upstairs Downstairs also add sir alist Le Sir Charles Fitz William and optionally Aston web and Fry Fon luding St although not marked as Exiles these are also treated as exiles finally add second chance servants to higgy Second Chance domestics box this will be one second chance footman one second chance ballot and one second chance ladies made per player in the game The Second Chance servants are the same color as the standard servants but much more raggedy in appearance and that's because they're not particularly well-trained servants as we'll see you'll have the option to use them in the game but making use of their disheveled service will cost you some reputation you're now ready to play guests in Obsession are split into three main categories family casual and prestige in the characters expansion the Casual guests are further split into two subcategories respectable and unsavory an unsavory guest is any casual guest with any red colored frame on the favors provided or the victory points a respectable guest has no red frames both types are still shuffled together into a single casual deck but other effects in this expansion will combo based on whether they are unsavory or respectable neither family nor Prestige guests are ever considered unsavory even if they have red frames and Casual EX styes from The Eccentric dowagers pile are also by definition considered respectable regardless of red frames characters also utilizes a change to the passing flow chart which was introduced in The Upstairs Downstairs expansion and so I'll explain that here when you passed in the base game after refreshing your service reclaiming your deck and resolving buildings you have the options to collect 200b or refresh the Builder's Market before buying a tile in Upstairs Downstairs you were given a third option which was to hire servants using the butler's room in the same way that you would have if doing it during a host activity on a standard turn this change significantly altered the economy of passing in the game as it let you use your point scoring tiles more often but still get a very useful action out of your passing turn the passing turn is enhanced further with the characters part of the characters module and in this case on your passing turn you have the opportunity to invite one of the three characters to benefit from their effect on the next turn you resolve this step after evaluating monuments or servants Hall and before claiming your passing bonus and your options are don't invite a character or invite one of the three characters only if the character's meeple is currently on the board and and only by moving one of your newly refreshed footmen to that character's space now take the Maple and store it on your board you'll use its favor effect during the enjoy favors step of your next turn and then during your next clear board step you'll return the maple to its place and return your footman to expended service for the entire time that Maple is away on your board it can't be invited by any other player just to emphasize that sequence again you'll do a passing turn and it's during that passing turn that you'll gain the character it's then during your very next turn that in addition to the normal actions you must resolve the character's favors before returning it and retrieving your footman you must make sure on that subsequent turn that you're ready to take the character's favors and ideally to optimize them when you gain the favor from Reverend grantley you must exchange one or two objective cards from your hand with the objective cards in Grand Le's pile this gives you further capability to optimize your hand of objective cards then pay 00 per card exchanged you must exchange at least one card and must prepare to have at least £100 you need to do so and if you can't find a way to make that happen you can't invite grantley conable buckets favor gives you a way of dealing with your unsavory guests for the activity on the turn after you invite the conable you may ignore the negative effects on any unsavory guests you invite excluding any on American Air's then you may dismiss any number of unsavory guests from your hand activity or discard pile again excluding American AES this English policeman has no jurisdiction you must dismiss at least one guest through the Constable's effect and you're not allowed to invite him if you can't finally forgetting the lore involved you lose two reputation before returning him to the board the third character is The Eccentric Dowager and she works slightly differently immediately upon taking The Dowager look through the dowager's exile pile and choose any one of those guests to invite to your hand this is the only character with an immediate effect however that effect replaces your normal passing benefit and you move straight to the buy from Market step then on your next turn's activity you may optionally invite one additional guest following the same rules as one of the new social light guests before returning her to the board the other new action is is the ability to hire Second Chance domestics this is an anytime action in that you can take the action at any time on your turn after rotation of service and you take the action in addition to all of your other normal steps to do this you must have an available Butler or under Butler whom you immediately expend and then you take one or two second chance servants from the board or one from another player and place them straight in the servants quarters meaning they'll be available from the next turn Second Chance servants can be used in place of their matching colored regular servants in all cases with the exception of inviting characters you must use a regulation footman for this however if a second choice servant tends to a Prestige guest you lose two reputation and if one tends to a respectable guest you lose lose one reputation there's no penalty for a second chance servant tending to an unsavory guest if the second chance servant is on the activity tile lose reputation based on the highest class of guests in that activity here it's a Prestige guest so as before I'd lose two reputation I'd lose one if the highest class of guests was respectable with no penalty if they're all either unsavory or family unlike the fully trained servants who are worth two points at the end of the game these Second Chance servants are worth nothing and they cannot be counted towards objectives the other module which comes with characters is the distinguished family members module and you can use this with or without the rest of characters this module allows players to use improved versions of some starting family cards the distinguished Lords gain £300 instead of 200 the distinguished ladies feature a new favor allowing you to ignore the service requirement on any one other guest in an activity the Air's reward increases the amount of money or reputation gained and the airs now returns a family card to hand instead of inviting a casual guest and the admir bonus goes up from two reputation to three as's unique Dow family member has a new favor to refresh one servant her money favor also goes up from 100 to 200 in setup each player will exchange one of their standard family cards with one of the distinguished family cards and each player must choose a different family member type in this way you'll do a snake draft for your starting houses and starting distinguished family that is in clockwise order from first place you'll pick either your family or which distinguished family member type you'll use and once everyone has taken everyone drafts the other type in the opposite order if you're snake drafting your starting servants in The Upstairs Downstairs expansion then you pick your family and your distinguished family member type at the same time choosing either that pair or your servant if there are five players who need distinguished family members then asworth must take The Dowager otherwise there wouldn't be enough for everyone to go around and if you're playing as Howard from Upstairs Downstairs you do not get to have any distinguished family members in large part because that family starting benefit a cook is quite powerful if you're just playing characters you would have to snake draft Howard the first time around and would skip the second half of the draft you'll have full parti ipation in an Upstairs Downstairs stank draft you just don't take a distinguished family member when you take Howard finally in the two-player game and generally not when how it is playing you may choose to play with two distinguished family members each instead of one and that's how to play the obsession characters expansion and once again be reminded we have a separate video to cover the new Cooperative motor play which comes with this expansion pack and with that thanks so much for watching please like subscribe let me know and share this video if you enjoy it and hopefully you have a great day see you next time