Free Association

The Free Association module box: Illusion Dreams, Mirror Clients, Bric-à-brac Notebook tiles, Scholarly Research cards and Rendezvous Objective cards, with their solo rules.

Short tag: [FreeAssoc]

Five small modules to mix and match with the base game (and with Nightmares). Card pictures: the components photo in the BoardGameGeek gallery.

Illusion Dreams

Setup: after setup step 13, shuffle the 6 Illusion Dreams into a deck beside the Latent Dreams.

Play: when you draft a Client (not your starting one) you may draw an Illusion Dream instead of a Latent Dream, placed the same way. To trigger it you pay a formula of Insights and other resources (for example an identical pair of Median Insights and 4 Coffee). It then gives exactly the Therapy points needed to Cure the Client, and lets you trigger the Reputation track. When the deck runs out there are no more.

Solo: the Id never draws them.

Mirror Clients

Five double-sided Clients showing the four Professors and Freud. They work like Routine Clients; once their Grief Layer is gone, each time you trigger the Reputation track you may also use the Mirror Client’s effect (before or after the action below Freud’s marker).

Setup, choose one:

• A. Instead of drafting Routine Clients (player setup 10 and 11a), take the Mirror Client of your player color, choose a side and put it in your Primary Office Room with a starting Grief Layer. Freud’s Mirror Client is not used.
• B. Lay out players + 1 Mirror Clients (shuffled and randomly flipped) with starting Grief Layers instead of Routine Clients, and draft from them as usual; box the leftover.

Solo: take two random Mirror Clients, keep one (either side) in your Primary room with a starting Grief Layer; the Id gets a random Routine Client as usual.

Bric-à-brac Notebook tiles

Setup: after player setup step 10, lay out players + 1 Bric-à-brac tiles effect side up. With your Client and Dreams (step 11) you also draft one, and place it in the space right of your starting Notebook tile.

Play: when you complete your second column, trigger the Bric-à-brac tile’s one-time effect and flip it — it does nothing more but still fills its space. You may replace it like any tile.

The effects shown across the six tiles, each triggered by the second column: Generate a Minor Insight of each quality; Generate a Median Insight; Elevate and Transfer an Insight; gain 3 Coffee; gain a Bright Idea and 1 Coffee; gain a Heart-Shaped Box; publish a Treatise or gain a Research card; trigger any Notebook tile on your board; advance Freud 1–3 Locations or move your Professor to Freud; advance Freud 1–3 Locations. A tile’s Freud-portrait tag counts as the tag of the Location where Freud is.

Solo: you take two at random and keep one; the Id gets none.

Scholarly Research cards

Setup: shuffle the 12 Scholarly Research cards (marked with a seal) into the Research deck before setup step 15.

Play: as normal Research cards; their effects let you play more Research cards and publish Treatises at once. Three of them carry two Volumes: when used for a Treatise they must fill its two leftmost Volumes, and they can’t be cited.

Solo: the Id uses its in-play double-Volume cards whenever it can.

Rendezvous Objective cards

Setup: after setup step 18, lay out three random cards face up and three face down, and make three sets: a face-up card half over a face-down one, near the City Map. The top card shows a requirement and one Idea space per color; the bottom card shows the reward.

Play: during your turn you may put an Idea (from your supply or the Meeting Table) on a top card if your Professor is with Freud, you meet its requirement and you have no Idea there yet. Trigger the bottom card’s effect; the Idea stays for the rest of the game. You may do several cards in a game, but while none of your locked Ideas is free you may use only two of the three.

The requirements (top cards) and rewards (bottom cards) are dealt separately, so any pairing can come up:

The two columns are not pairs: read each down on its own.

Solo: the Id never uses them.