Gloom

You know those days when you feel down and all you want is to make other people suffer? Well now you can have that with Gloom. This is one of those games that the game group picked up because of Table Top and I know I was super thankful we did.

In Gloom you select a family that you will weave into a story using cards. The story is of suffering and… well gloom which eventually ends in their deaths. The goal is to have the most miserable family. The game ends when one player finally kills off their entire family. *note this is an imaginary family*

Play progresses by each player laying down a card and telling a story as to why/how this event happened to the character. There are positive and negative modifiers on a characters mood. You want more negative modifiers on your own characters and more positive on your opponents. So a characters life could progress something like this. Mister giggles was “mocked by midgets” because of his silly name, but “found fame at a feast” (opponent play) due to his happy giggly nature, but at this feast he was “sickened by salmon” after he “found maggots in the meat”, and later that maggoty salmon caused him to be "distressed by dysentery," and eventually died from being “consumed from within” by those maggots in the meat.

The story can go as simply as that or can be more elaborate. The better the group is at story telling the more fun and darkly hilarious the game becomes. What effort you invest in the story comes back in some unexpected ways. I found that when I play Gloom I really don’t care who wins at the end. I just have a blast listening to my friends being so creative in the interweaving of the story.

The downsides to Gloom come from the basic deck having such a limited supply of cards. I highly recommend looking in to the expansions to allow for a greater variety in the story cards. Otherwise the basic game starts to get formulaic and repetitive. Also make sure you play this game with people who are in the mood and capable of spinning a story. I’ve played with some people who really weren’t into the mechanic or weren’t in the mood and it just killed the fun for the rest of the table. With the right group the game flows and is dynamic.

So to sum up get Gloom if you have a creative gaming group with a slightly dark streak in them, the story telling will have you dieing of laughter. This game is an excellent way to get some Gloom out of your system.

Killer bunnies

Killer Bunnies sounds like a ridiculous name for a game but that name suits the ridiculous fun you will have playing it. It took me a while to get my wife into playing this game but when she finally attempted it she fell in love with it. I have to say it is very popular among the female players.

The point of killer bunnies is to collect carrot cards which ultimately decide who the winner is. Essentially these carrot cards are your lottery tickets for the winner of the game. Some people dislike this mechanic as they feel it makes the game play pointless. I say the pointless weirdness is what makes the game fun. This mechanic opens the chances of winning to a novice or someone who is having extremely bad luck with card draws. As long as you get one carrot card you have a chance of winning.

To start the game each player gets seven cards. For beginners make sure they have at least one bunny in their hand. Now you need to plan 2 turns ahead as you will be laying 2 cards on the table as your top and bottom run cards. You should now have a hand of 5 cards, one top run card and one bottom run card. There should be a central draw deck and a discard pile.

On your turn you flip over your top run card as your play, do as the card says. Following that you move your bottom run card to the top run position, select a new bottom run card from your 5 card hand and draw a replacement.

I should now point out that there are multiple types of cards. The most common is the run card. This type of card must be played through the top/bottom run positions in order to be played. Bunny cards and weapon cards are of this type. Play immediately cards must be played as soon as they are drawn and a replacement card is drawn for your hand. Usually these kill a bunny but not always. Bunny money is played immediately as well, this is saved in a pile by the lucky player that drew it and can be used on their turn to make purchases from the store(s).  "Special" cards (yes they are called special) can be played instead of using the run cards or you can move them through the run positions and save them face up which allows them to be played at any time. Very special cards can be played at any time.

Now there are cards that cannot be played unless you have a bunny and you cannot win without a bunny in play. This makes bunnies very important. So you need to protect your own bunnies while eliminating other players’ bunnies to limit their play options. The game becomes a giant bunny killing fest as you try to collect carrots. This sounds gruesome but the ways in which bunnies are killed is often quite hilarious (food processor or the Trojan bunny)

Adding to the fun of the game is the huge pile of pop culture spoofing references (some quite obscure.) As some of these cards are played you can help but laugh.

There are a huge number of expansions and versions of this game. Kinder bunnies (a more kid friendly version) Killer bunnies and the quest for the magic carrot (basic core game) and killer bunnies: conquest are all compatible with one another. We have purchased all of the current expansions for these and have combined them into one giant deck. I have to tell you, buy these one at a time and familiarize yourself with each before proceeding to the next. The rules begin to get more and more complex as you add expansions. The biggest problem with combining these is a fun 45 minute game becomes longer and longer. More and more carrots are added and bunnies seem to become rarer.

My biggest criticisms of this game are that the number of cards that cannot be played unless you have a bunny is just too large. For a player who finds themselves without a bunny a significant portion of the game can be played without being able to have any effect on the play. Expansions must be purchased in order or certain cards are useless to have as they only affect certain previous expansions. I prefer to buy what I want as I want it. And of course as I said, when combined into a giant game you suddenly have a marathon game that at one point took 7+ hours to play. With all of the added stores and special rules cards/dice/tokens etc the game is epic in setup with all expansions included.

Even with these criticisms I highly recommend buying one of the base games for your shelf. The cute carnage is great for a laugh and this game will get regular rotation on game nights. I really wish I remembered to bring this along for Easter.