Hey everyone! Today we will be talking about three clubs that all belong to the same category. I can’t seem to put my finger on what they all share, but for now I am calling them the “Zen” clubs. They all give 1 RP and cost 5 Friends.
Hypnosis Club has gone through a pretty large overhaul over the iterations of the game. This card used to have an effect that allowed you to choose another player’s next actions, which ended up being very powerful and somewhat anti-fun since you could abuse this mechanic to force another player to take “useless” actions. Anyway, it now has an effect that gives +5 Teacher Influence, which is actually a very solid ability. It’s difficult to accumulate enough influence in a single teacher to get their rec, and this helps with that tremendously by giving a way to gain a large amount of Teacher Influence at once while getting a RP out of it. Overall, a pretty solid club.
Tea and Meditation is an interesting club since it’s immediate effect is not that great. Instead of spending 5 Friends for -4 Stress, you could just relax once and socialize a couple times to get a better club. However, I realized after play testing that there are a lot of ways to get end of year stress penalties, such as through Poker, low Happiness, and Caffeine Pills. This can be deadly since it can’t be easily countered through relaxing- and if you don’t start the next year there is always the possibility that someone else will force you into breakdown. That’s why I think the -2 Stress yearly effect can actually be seriously powerful, and something that can help counter the end of year stress effects.
Yoga is an interesting club since it pays itself back immediately, but doesn’t get better over time. So while this can make for a solid purchase, it isn’t a great investment for the long term. That being said, someone with low Happiness will definitely want to pick up Yoga as it can help with the low Happiness stress penalties and put them back in a position to compete for pandering influence cards.
What do you think of these “zen” clubs? Let me know in the comments below, and don’t forget to subscribe if you enjoy this content!