Gloom Second Edition & Expansions Bundle

Most board games require an aggressive strategy in which you have to bolster your defenses while annihilating the competition (or your friends and family). Designed by Keith Baker to appease his overly sympathetic and considerate wife, the Gloom Card Game turns traditional game mechanics upside down by rewarding you as your characters fail, and encouraging assistance to other players.

The point of Gloom is simple: have the most tragic life possible. Each player controls a family of eccentrics that suffer through modifier cards like Pursued by Poodles and Mocked by Midgets, sending their Self-Worth plummeting and lining them up for an Untimely Death. Once one player’s last character passes, you count up the Self-Worth of all the dead characters and the family with the lowest score wins. If you want to disrupt your opponents, play a positive modifier on one of their characters, like setting them up to be Wondrously Well Wed. While the base game accommodates up to four players, each expansion set adds a new deck of cards and another set of characters.