Cerebria: Emotional Turmoil with a Purple Pillar 

Matt is now in serious danger of becoming typecast as a worm for the rest of his career.

"I use eight willpower, play Ennui, and spin the wheel of intentions" "THAT'S EMOTIONWANG!"

It amazes me how often I find myself watching your videos while not particularly interested in the board game. The fact that you've managed to make board game reviews as entertaining as they are informative is a great feat and one you should take pride in. Thanks for the great content :)

“I’m exhausted from me” hit me way harder than it should have.

Worm-Matt is best Matt.

Omg I was thinking exactly “is this cones of Dunshire?”

"The bones of this skeleton are made of squeaky toys." Artistry, right there. I would buy your fantasy book, if you every wrote one.

"If that's what's in the box, then that's what's in the box." Sums up so much of what actually matters when considering a game.

It looks like the smell of a lush store

I love this game!!! It has everything. Complex strategy, great theme, making your own private decks. I only play it two player competetive but it has been a blast. He is true that it is a very mean game. You are not building empires next to each other and hoping to get more points. You are crushing the hopes and dreams out of your opponent. (For the mtg people; it's not like playing your fair tribal deck, it's more like playing lantern control.) But if you can live with the game being very competitive. This is great. It has it all. Deck construnction, upgrading your character, area control, unique player powers, large strategic depth. It is a beast. But, if you manage to tame it, it is a great beast to have.

"It's like being assaulted by a rainbow" Now that's a box quote :-)

My favorite mind clash game and top 5 boardgame. I LOVE IT!

I get what you're saying about the game being difficult to learn, but I must fall in the middle of that venn diagram, because I LOVE this game. I find its theme engaging and interesting, the sheer number of moves you can do pretty cool, the gameplay pretty quick (usually runs 90-120 minutes) for a game of this heft, and the table enjoyable. I guess I fit that small niche, but I'm glad I do and I love this one.

The moment Matt dropped the word "worm" I started holding my breath.

I agree with everything. The player count, the hard work of learning the game via the novel... sry, rule book, the amount of time to play it, the game being overdesigned, the theme obstucting the rules and understanding of how it works, the overproduction etc... and still both myself and my play group absolutely adore Cerebria. It's one of the go-to games of my group, together with Great Western Trail. My suggestion: try it out with someone who knows the enitre ruleset by heart. You just might become enamoured with it.

"Cones of Brainshire" and "heaping layers of emotion-wang" are both excellent additions to my list of Matt-isms.

I've never been eight minutes through a SU&SD review before and still had this little understanding of what the hell the game actually IS. It looks like a _mess_.

I absolutely love how you guys always review based on what's in the box. Thank you so much for keeping that promise

I know this will sound weird from a 33 year old Eastern European man, but I love you Matt. I want to buy you a bear, have a laugh, get into arguments, get frustrated by arguing too much, have a laugh again, say goodbye, go home, have a soup, go to sleep, REPEAT. Also, good job on the Desire cosplay! You gave a new meaning to the word! Cheers!

This worm thing is getting out of hand. Then again, maybe it lands them a sleeping bag sponsorship? Matt’s simile game is in fine form this review. Have this game on the shelf, and am wondering if I will ever be brave enough to play it.

This is just the kind of game I hate. The type I will never be able to play because it takes 4 years to explain the rules and by then my friends and family have died of starvation

0:53 Call me petty, but did you just fade into an example where the token was blue-side up, from a picture where it was orange, and flipped it back to orange? What a loop I was thrown for.

Quinn's hey Matt how is the review? Matt in a sleeping bag: oh you know.

Two minutes into this review I figured out it's a kickstarter game. Five minutes in I figured out there's no way I could convince anyone who's not a professional board game player/tester/reviewer to sit through an explanation of how to play. The next 15 minutes didn't tell me anything more about how the game works (it's a confusing mess, got it), but it's pleasant to hear Matt chatter.

It's this kind of review that I love from SU&SD. Nobody delivers this kind of insightful and slightly silly review like Matt. This game is definitely not for my family, but I didn't have to spend loads of money to find out that the beautiful box and board were masking a monumental morass of monstrous emotions and methods. Nice job, Matt, and thank you SU&SD for all you do!

QUINN: (bzzt!) Sonory! HOST: That's emotionwang! AVA: (bzzt!) Schaudenfreude! HOST: That's emotionwang! MATT: (bzzt!) Ennui! HOST: Hm. Judges? MATT: Wait... MATT: Optimistic ennui! HOST: THAT'S EMOTIONWANG!

"Days your mental health is so shredded that you just want to be with nice people but you can't really deal to talk to them much." I felt that. I have those days often. Those days are wonderful for plonking down Caverna or a Feast for Odin and just building up your little board.

Thanks for reviewing Cerebria Matt! The game is REALLY heavy and you nailed it describing how everything sounding so similar just makes it more confusing. I do agree though that beneath all that fluff there is a really interesting puzzly game that burns my brain in the best way. Keep doing these more nuanced and complicated reviews, these perspectives are always interesting!

I love how many times you've switched positions on this game, which is oddly meta considering the theme. I've lost the game while controlling the tower, though, so it isn't the best indicator of who's winning. Not to mention scoring a fragment (the pentagonal chunks) means that it's one less fortress you have out. This is definitely the hardest game I own from a teaching perspective, mainly for the reasons Matt stated, but there's something about it that just does it for me. It's certainly not an evergreen, but sometimes you just want to spend all your brain power on a game. Great review, Matt.

Matt is very good at this.

Yea i have the amazingly beautiful painted kickstarer edition and we finally attempted to get it to the table. And after a nightmare of a time trying to figure out that rulebook, which has a seperate rule book if you want to play with 6 players we got it to the table and watched a video it still took us 2 hours to probably get to a playing state that felt somewhat competent. I do say that when we played it with the 2v2v2 mode the teamwork started to shine a lot more as the third team is actually a chaos force that is trying to either make things balanced, or make one side better then the other so you're forced to work together more to make sure they don't mess up any plans and i think that really helps the game.

Totally understand the reservations you mention. Teaching time though: We were teaching the (basic) game in 15-20 minutes at Essen. Some groups demoing it even played an entire game through in 45 minutes (after the teaching time). But I do agree, learning from _purely_ the rulebook is a pretty daunting job.

There's something so compelling about a floating, purple Matt head.

The only purple pillar I'm interested in is a purple worm sleeping bag cosplay

Really enjoyed Matt's stint as Tiny Tim. Or is it Tiny Matt? Tiny Matt. Coining it here officially.

But can I assemble a Spectrum of Sadness?

It takes a lot of effort and creativity to make a game so mechanically simple feel like the most complex game there is. But like the theme, the complexity is just the cover. It's an area control game, and areas are divided into smaller areas. You get points for controlling certain areas and you get points be controlling certain areas.

I think I must also be at the center of your diagram, as I love Cerebria. I also really love the team game, and somehow find myself very interested in other people's turns in this game, which is not usually the case for me with long down-time games. For those confused by the rules from this video, but interested in checking into Cerebria, I highly recommend watching some how to play videos. Yes, it's big and complicated, but I find it a lot more orderly than it's presented here, and once people know the rules, it's really not that long a game in play time (easily comes in at 2 hours or less). All that said, though, I do agree it's a niche game, as I've met only a few other people who are as into this game as I am.

This game is deep, seriously deep, as was Trickerion before it. A team-based area control game that can feature unique player powers, emotions with powers, and even a 3 2 player team for balance. It can be a lot to absorb. It is also one of the most elegant and rewarding games I have played. Yes the rules explanation for even the basic game is dense, but if it let things like that bother me, I would never have played Trickerion or Anachrony. Do yourself a favor and find a video of the game actually being played, or find someone with a copy and give it a whirl. It is worth the effort.

Sounds like the perfect gateway game for alien lifeforms.

I won when I played it, yet the game actually made me angry and I hated it. The game manual look gorgeous but seriously it was a constant pain. It took me 5-6h to parse through the rulebook and play it. It has not left the shelf since that one painful game.

Here I am writing a comment because Matt told me I didn't have to, and because that outro is hilarious.

Agree with all of the individual points here, but still really enjoy this game. Steep learning curve for sure, bad manual, all of that. But we like the open + hidden scoring aspect quite a bit, the player board upgrades are fun. Keenly planned absorbs are incredibly satisfying. The obelisk doesn't bother me. We've had a game where it was clear we weren't going to win. We conceded. I play plenty of games I thought I was winning in and then lost at the very end scoring that were way more disappointing that giving the win to the winner "early". My group is a few games in and the biggest issue now is the length of waiting for turns, but I actually like the time to chit-chat with my team mate. About our feelings.

I'm a simple man, I see Worm-Matt and am happy

I was wondering why my worm sign detector had gone off when I clicked on this video

So much mileage out of Worm-Matt. I am honestly impressed.

Eurogames: when "you want to be with nice people, but you can't really deal to talk with them much." Sums up how I use Eurogames to relax, even when I'm feeling burned out :)

14:06 This is why it has one of the best solo modes in an area control game that i have ever played...absolutely fantastic solo game...

The thing about complicated games is, they usually are complicated to be more "realistic". It makes you feel like "maybe I actually could have won WW2." or "Maybe I could run a business." In this game why would I want to memorize a bunch of complicated rules just to find out whether or not I'm happy or sad? Or be king of the board that looks like unicorn vomit.

Matt is such a delight. Emotion matt is incredimatt

Lads and ladies, we've got ourselves a box quote: "Cerebria could be a real thing." - Matt Lees, SUSD 2019.

Joy is the villain of Inside Out, great outro 😅

Thank for saving me from this experience, also brilliantly done Matt!

LOL I was literally thinking about that film while he was explaining this game and than Matt mentions the movie and leaves me Inside out with emotions;P

I bounced off this game so hard. I absolutely do not get the love of it.

Shut Up & Sit Down has worms. I have some worming paste I use on my cats, I can send it in if you want.

I went paintballing once. That board looks like my worst bruise after two days.

I've always wanted to play Cones of Dunshire.

14:05 stop talking directly to me, I can't afford it right now, I've...I've got uni to think about, and...and. Yea, I'm just going to buy this game and love it, thanks Matt, you did this!

This game was added to the "board game reviews" playlist no less than three times lol

Happy matt is nightmare fuel

Beware! don't be tricked by the chaos gods. This is the works of heresy.

1:17 A SAND WORM, GRAB IT!!!

yeeeeeeah too much going on with this one. I have both Anachrony and Trickerion which are both by Mindclash who also made this and one thing I find with their games is that they are visually intimidating. The only difference is that Anachrony is actually a REALLY easy straightforward worker placement game and Trickerion is as well. This just looks......oof!!

Wheel of intentions wend, wend, wend Tell me the action I must intend

Despair, harmony, anxiety, hope, that’s emotionwang!

While I understand the reservations you mentioned and how a lot of people would agree to them, I do want to address the Identity tower and scoring. If one team performs really well, the other team is required to shorten the game by removing one of the shared objectives. This should prevent any team from feeling like they are being dragged along for another hour plus of gameplay. During your plays, did you remember this rule? I find that a lot of my games have had the players disregard the scoring in the tower (more so than the tracks in other Eurogames) because who is winning can swing from one big turn to the next, especially late game. As far as teaching the game, it will take some time to get all of the rules running smoothly for all players, but most people will be pretty well off to start playing just from watching this video. I don't recommend this game to everyone, as I know that it will probably not be as popular as other games from MindClash, but I really don't think that the game is as difficult to learn and play as is often suggested (though I will admit that I am probably biased). Thank you again for taking the time to review the game and for providing what I thought was a pretty unbiased and realistic video on your impression of the game without discouraging anyone from checking it out. I do appreciate how, if you guys cannot recommend a game, you mention who you think would enjoy it.

Brilliant. And I still don't know whether I should get the game...

A card game version just came out, as far as I can tell its set collection, fairly straightforward. This could only exist in the realm of the abstract, perhaps in a Salvador Dali painting

Even though I'd never want to play this game, I'm still kind of glad that it exists. It makes a lot of missteps, but in a way that will make a lot of people looking at it better designers.

You guys missed the mark big time on this one. Guess it was too cerebral for you. Best game of 2018 hands down. I’ve played 25 times.

Love your work man - your reviews are pure gold.

For the love of crumpets! I like that phrase.

I've got The Cones of Dunshire already, maybe I'll pass on this one.

1) This was a really interesting review, full of neatly constructed arguments and hypotheses which posed questions I will be returning to for a while, I reckon. Thanks for writing it, and for writing it so well. 2) The throwaway delivery of "like chasing a goblin through a hall of mirrors" was beautifully judged and, I found, delightful.

Got the KS with the painted miniatures and I love it is a great game imo combining thinking and relaxing. Sometimes I like to introduce new people to boardgames using this ( sounds crazy but I cannot describe to you the faces of amaze they all do)

Cones of Brainshire 😂

Another entertaining and informative review!!! Top notch lads!

Reminds me of a lovely game Paul once showed us, called The Hexes of Hyperspace.

Ahh, thick layers of emotionwang.

I'm fairly certain I'm also the type of person that would fall in the middle of the Venn diagram and I understand why someone recommended this to me. The issue is it has sat on my shelf unplayed for about 18 months now because I just cannot get the right group together.

Except in Inside Out there are no bad emotions which is the whole point ...

Interesting point about the obelisk/scoring. My friends and I found out a long time ago that the End State of the game and the Final Score must not be visible at the same time or else, just like you said, people will feel defeated before the game ends.

I experienced a very weird emotion when playing this. I win the game with a teammate yet I didn’t feel happy or fulfilled, but more like I had been dragged along by the game. The game seemed to play me instead of me playing the game.

6:19 Suddenly I wish I was watching a review of Klask.

Hope vs despair?

Lovely as always!!!

I'm always happy to see worm matt

shouted "Yes!" by reflex for the worm

The goofs are strong with you, brave young worm!

1:30 - OK, so I know what was written in the script here was probably "oh come, lord... Rid us of these.... Moths", but phonetically, there's another way to parse the start of that sentence that still makes sense, but is far more puerile.

I'd put money that this is an unironic attempt at making cones of dunshire with an inside out theme. The theme seems almost deliberately chosen to get in the way of rules explanations and make everything unnecessarily complicated. Also, IT'S ABOUT THE CONES

Matt, you are the greatest !!

This seems like a game most worth pursuing for solo play. Solo play won't make the rule book better, but it solves the problem with teaching or waiting for a turn which is obviously a drawback here. The theme is interesting enough, to me, to make it worth the effort.

This is a tough one. I got to play it at HeavyCon last year and greatly enjoyed the game experience (and the play group). But I don't think I ever care to play it again - it's so much, I wouldn't ever want to teach it, and can't imagine playing it with a new group. Cool idea, but just too much.

PHWOOOOOOAR ! Look at the setae on that !

Thanks for another great video

This is great, this channel is great

Does anyone know what board game was shown at 13:00? It looks amazing at first glance, would love to know.

I kind of love the sadness of playing with cardboard characters after watching the Nemesis preview where they're not so keen on the tall plastic miniatures :) Can't decide what they love! =D