The Ultimate Guide to Gloom The Card Game
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You thought your family was miserable. Gloom is a fantastic card game that mixes story telling with unique game features and mechanics. Let’s dive in and find out everything Gloom has to over. This is the Ultimate guide to Gloom!
What is Gloom?
Gloom 2nd edition card game for 1-4 players created by Keith Baker back in 2004 and was published by Atlas games. The main concept of this card game is to be responsible for making the family that you choose as miserable as possible before they die. The player with the most miserable family at the end of the game after all their family members have passed, wins.
Source: https://www.atlas-games.com/gloom
The Components in Gloom
The cards are translucent which only the visible modifiers are what count to the current state of the family member which is a really cool mechanic that I wish was something more popular in other board and card games.
The component list consists of:
rules sheet
20 Character cards consisting of 4 families with 5 family members
58 Modifier cards
12 Event cards
20 Untimely Death cards
Very simple list which aligns itself with the game very nicely.
How to Play Gloom
Each player will select a family and place those family members face up in front of themselves.
Players will then draw five cards to start the game from a deck consisting of the 58 modifiers, 12 event cards and the 20 untimely death cards.. Modifiers can be positive or negative.
A turn can consist of playing two actions, either discarding a cards or playing cards. You can even do one of each. killing a character (which can only be done as the first action of a turn and only if the family member has a negative score.)
The end of the players turn will allow them to draw back up to the 5 cards limit.
The players will take turns trying to make their own families miserable and killing them once they are miserable while also working to make other families less miserable to make it harder for your opponents to win.
the modifier cards have bubbles on them as seen above that give positive or negative values. Since the cards are translucent, only the viable values are calculated in the total misery that you are putting that family member through.
Your family members are killed using untimely death cards which as stated during the turn description can only be played as the first action on a turn.
How does the game Gloom End?
When a family member is killed off, their point total is locked into place so there is reason to play your cards and tell their miserable story just right.
The end of the game occurs once the first player to have all their family members are killed off. Everyone counts up their misery points and the most miserable family wins.
What Makes Gloom Great
One thing that makes this game charming is the ability to fill up a story of each of the characters that align to the cards that are being placed on top of them. The game runs in a way that everyone playing a card is contributing to the overall plot for a family member.
With that being said, this game works best when being played with your more close friends that you feel you can be social around. The game can suffer if players are too afraid to add details to the story.
Without that story element added by the players themselves, this becomes a number crunching game and nothing really deeper than that.
Another thing that Gloom has going for it would be the ease of gameplay. Gloom is easy to play. It’s also a relatively quick game.
There is minimal setup and the components are very durable. It takes almost no space to store being the nature of a smaller card game.
The game is for a small group and generally works well that way, but if you are looking to play with additional players, there are other sets and expansions that can be added on to allow for more players to join in.
Themed Gloom Sets
Wanting to get a specific version of gloom that has more theme that fits you and your friends playstyle? Well there are many themes out there to choose from. Themes range from:
Gloom of Thrones
Gloom takes on the theme of the popular show Game of Thrones fantastic battles between houses makes this one of our personal favorite themed sets
Fairytale Gloom
Take the fantasy world, something this site loves and mix it with the gameplay of Gloom and you get a fantastic new flavor of the game.
Gloom Munchkin
The creators of this themed set do Munchkin justice with the art really coming through and making this feel like a very unique set.
Cthulhu Gloom
Any lovecraftian fans? Cthulhu is exactly as it sounds and this articular themed set has an expansion for it as well!
Gloom In Space
In space? sign me up, this has all sorts of shenanigans that are out of this world!
Expansions to the Gloom
Yes Gloom has expansions to the base game as well. This is something that I was really happy about.
Gloom Unhappy Homes
This expansion adds residency cards that work hand in hand with the other new card type, mystery cards in this set.
Gloom Unwelcome guests
This expansion brings in a new family as well as a quest family member mechanic that changes up the dynamic on playing with just your base family.
Unfortunate Expeditions
This set also comes with another family that can be added to the base game and new expedition cards.
Unquiet Dead
Even when they die they tend to stick around. This expansion includes story cards that can lead to other effects in the game.
Unpleasant dreams (Cthulhu Gloom expansion)
Though not attached to the base game this is an expansion of the popular Cthulhu set and can be related most closely to the Unwelcome Guests expansion for the base game expansions.
When using all the base game expansions, a player group can reach the total size of 6 players.
Links to all these expansions can be found right here!
Final thoughts on Gloom
Gloom is one of those games that is a blast to pull out every now and them with friends. This game is also a fantastic game to bring out if new players are in the group and you don’t want to spend half an hour going over the rules.
This game offers a unique set of mechanics that is further expanded on with the expansions and offers something for just about anyone that is in the market for a fun, yet miserable time.
This game deserves a spot on your shelves and is very affordable.
Thanks for taking the time to read our Gloom 2nd Edition Review, if you have any questions about the game or want to share experiences of it, comment down below!
