MEGAforce Boardgames Night: Gloom

The most recent MEGAforce games night saw three rounds of Kingdomino, wherein each of us won one game, followed by a game of Gloom.

We have played this before, but I've not discussed it on here, so here goes.

Gloom

Gloom is a card game, the aim of which is to heap Misery on your weird Gothic family before bumping them off.

You can also play cards that add Hope to your opponents' families, reducing their Misery scores or even preventing that character from being killed. 

Each turn you can, usually, make two Actions, usually playing an Action Card, and then redraw up to a hand of five.

It sounds pretty grim, but there's a dark humour to it; the cards include such oddities as 'surprised by topiary' and 'mauled by manatees' and the descriptor, unless detailing additional game effects, can be grimly amusing too.

Card play often includes some additional effect; you might play a card on an opponent to add Hope to one of their characters,  but they get to draw extra cards from the deck, or even your hand. Or a card adding Misery  to one of your family might also cause you to discard your hand,  or portions of it. 

But the really clever part is the design of the cards. They are printed on transparent plastic. This means that values added to a character cover up and replace existing values (and make scoring much easier to calculate).

Here you can just see the red Misery scores, but they are covered by the grey 0 and black Hope scores gained from the "blessed by the bishop" card. When properly stacked, you only see and use these top values.

There are other details, such as icons which can grant bonuses when certain deaths are inflicted, such as the heart on Samson's card above, and there are cards which negate or alter others.  I used 'smoke and mirrors' early in the game to prevent Grim inflicting a death on one of his family. 

Strategy 

You can only play a death card on a character with some Misery, and death cards must be the first played in your turn. There are, of course, exceptions to this with certain cards. 

It can be worth killing off another player's characters if they have a very low Misery score to prevent that player harvesting more Misery later.

There seems to be a system in the placement of the three possible Misery/Hope positions. I've not examined this closely, but it felt like the bottom spot came up on Action Cards less often than the others.

Winning 

The game ends when one player bumps off all their characters,  at which point all players add up the top Misery scores for their deceased characters. 

The three deceased members of my family at the end of the game. 

Gloom plays well and can be great fun. This time we emphasised the story element by narrating how the various action cards play, which certainly added to the fun.

It's not a game I'm desperate to play every time, but I'll certainly enjoy another go if it's suggested, earning it a solid place in A tier.

Gloom is produced by Atlas Games and available from them and many other online retailers.