Keith Baker’s quirky card game Gloom, published by Atlas Games, is “a game of inauspicious incidents and grave consequences,” filled with dark humor and storytelling much in the same vein as The Addams Family.

The theory behind it, taken straight from the rules sheet, is that one’s reward in the afterlife is based on the misery endured in life; so your object in the game is to make the members of your quirky family suffer as much as humanly possible before sending them to an Untimely Death. The base game supports from two to four players, but each expansion adds enough cards for one additional player, to a current maximum of seven.

Each player selects a family of five members (plus a residence if using the Unhappy Homes expansion) and draws a hand of five cards. The cards in Gloom are transparent plastic, allowing certain symbols to appear through cards laid on top of them, although this can be difficult if too many layers are applied. On your turn, you can play or discard two cards, then draw back up to whatever your current maximum hand size is (default five);  the only restriction is that Untimely Death cards can only be played as your first action. Untimely Death cards send the suffering of a family member — and you can play all cards on anyone’s family, not just yours — and take that character out of play. Only dead family members count for the final scoring, but unless they’ve really suffered you won’t score (many) points. 

That’s where Modifier cards come in. Modifiers affect a living character’s self-worth (point value) by making them experience all manner of inconveniences. These include ailments such as “Plagued by Poodles” and “Mauled by Manatees” (actual flavor text on the card: “They’re fierce, if you rile ’em”), but some can increase a character’s self worth, such as “Starred on the Stage”. Most modifiers also affect the game in some way, such as affecting the hand size of the player who controls the character that was modified as long as that modifier remains on top of the character’s stack, and there’s often a correlation between the point value of the modifiers and how they affect their controller, so strategic decisions have to be made as to where Modifiers get played. It’s also worth mentioning that Untimely Deaths cannot be played on a character with a positive self-worth (including zero), as those characters currently have too much to live for.

The final card type in the base game is Event, which are wild cards that do different things. Some may swap modifiers, others draw cards, and a few can be played outside of your turn to counter other cards. The Unhappy Homes expansion also includes Mystery cards, which can only be played on residences. The card types are color-coded and for easy reference; Modifiers are black with gray text, Untimely Deaths are gray with black text, Mysteries are blue with gray text, and Events are red with gray text in the base set — although this is incredibly difficult to read and was changed to gray with red text for the expansions. The other two expansions, Unwelcome Guests and Unfortunate Expeditions also introduce new mechanics: Guests, which are pesky nuisance characters that move from family to family, and Expeditions, which affect the rules for everyone but change constantly as certain cards are played; all of the expansions’ mechanics are optional. 

Gloom is at its best when everyone gets into the storytelling aspect of the wacky Modifiers and Untimely Deaths; if you play it as a heavy strategy game you’re going to come away from the experience disappointed. It’s best when contained to three to five players, as going beyond that introduces a lot of down time; game length can be shortened by reducing the number of characters in each family, as the game only ends once one player’s family has all met an Untimely Death — with the lowest (i.e., most negative) score winning. Play time can therefore vary wildly, with the base game taking around an hour. Also, despite its name and theme it is best to play Gloom in a well-lit area due to the difficulty in reading some of the cards thanks to the transparency. The base set can be found for around $25 and expansions for about $13 each, although you’ll also want to invest in some sort of card carrier if you’re going to venture beyond the base game.

When I talked about Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer last time, I made constant reference to Dominion, the first such “deck-building” game to gain popularity. For those who haven’t experienced Dominion, this column is for you. I’m not going to cover any of the expansions, as I have not played them; this will only cover the base Dominion game. 

In Dominion, up to four players start with a deck consisting of some copper Treasure cards (which also exist in silver and gold for more purchasing power) and some Estate victory cards (which, along with the upgraded Duchy and Province versions, are the only way to score at the end of the game but are otherwise useless). Stacks of these six types of cards are available to purchase during the game, as are ten “kingdom” cards. These cards are selected (either randomly or according to a suggested arrangement) from the twenty-five different types available. The last type of card are “Curse” cards, which are negative-VP cards inflicted on players by one of the kingdom cards. (The box’s “500 card” count includes 40 additional cards that are either blank or placeholders.)

On a player’s turn they use the five cards in their hand to execute one action and one buy (purchase), in that order. An “action” is playing a kingdom card to generate some effect (more gold, additional action[s], drawing extra cards, additional buy[s], etc.); some actions are “attacks,” which affect other players in the indicated ways unless a given player has and reveals a “Moat” (reaction) card (which has its own action use). A “buy” is using Treasure (and other coins gained via actions) to acquire a single card from the matrix and add it to your discard pile for future shuffling into your deck. Once these two phases are complete, the player discards any remaining cards in their hand and draws five new cards (reshuffling his discard pile as necessary).

This continues until one of two endgame conditions occur. Once three of the kingdom piles are exhausted or all of the “Province” cards have been purchased, the game ends on that player’s turn. At that point, each player determines the value of all of the VP cards in his deck with the highest total being declared the winner. Ties are broken by whoever took the fewest turns, although it is still possible for the game to end in a tie.

While Dominion is a very solid game which has won a large number of awards in the last few years (including the 2009 Spiel des Jahres), it has a few flaws that keep it from being a favorite in my group. The first and most obvious is the need to have essentially-blank VP cards taking up valuable slots in your deck. It’s not impossible to have a turn that consists of a five-VP draw and is essentially wasted. The other obvious problem is the default limit of one buy; should you somehow draw more cash than you need, the excess is also wasted. The one action/one buy nature of the game has several other ways to result in a less-than-optimal turn; on the other extreme are the turns that go on forever as one player keeps chaining cards that give additional draws and actions — often ending without being able to buy anything worth all of that effort!

There are other potential problems with the game in its base state, especially if you use a random assortment of kingdom cards (having a lot of attacks but no Moats gets ugly fast, for instance), but I don’t want to give too much of a negative impression here. Dominion effectively opened the doors of the deck-building game genre, and is still popular for its ease of play; it’s currently the #7 overall game on BoardGameGeek, after all. I’m told the various expansions address many of the base set’s issues, and a few are capable of being played by themselves without the base set. I’m still not a fan, but I do respect Dominion for paving the way for its genre.

Dominion is available for $44.99 at local game stores or around $28 on Amazon.

One of the newest trends in board gaming in recent years has been the rise of “deck-building” games such as Dominion (and its various expansions) and Thunderstone (and its own expansion). The latest addition to this nascent family is Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer, the first publication from Gary Games, which boasts at least three Magic: the Gathering Pro Tour winners on its design team. 

In these games, players start with a very basic deck, usually consisting of ten cards, and use them to purchase and/or conquer additional cards with stronger powers. Ascension is unique among its deck-building peers in that there is not a set matrix of cards available for purchase. Instead, six cards are laid out from the 100-card “portal deck” to form a center row between the deck and three stacks of “always available” cards of two slight upgrades over your starting cards and an easy-to-defeat enemy of essentially infinite numbers. The cards in the center row are immediately replaced as they are purchased or banished (sent to a stack called “the void”, to distinguish it from each player’s personal discard pile), providing a constantly-shifting environment to which players must adapt as the game progresses. From two to four players are given a starter deck consisting of ten specific cards, drawing five of them to begin the game and at the end of each round (after discarding any remaining).

Cards come in one of three types. The most common are Heroes, which are one-shot effects that are played to generate runes (money), power (combat strength), honor (victory points), additional draws, and/or the ability to banish weaker (read: “starter”) cards from your deck in order to improve your overall draws. These Heroes come in four types, representing their general flavor and abilities. Like Heroes, Constructs also come in the same four types and generate useful effects, but unlike their counterparts Constructs remain active once played, providing their benefits every round. Both Heroes and Constructs are purchased by spending runes. The third type of card are Monsters, which can be defeated with power. Once defeated, Monsters are banished from the center row (rather than added to the player’s deck); in addition to providing honor, many Monsters also have an additional ability when defeated, which can include forcing opponents to discard one or more Constructs that they have in play among other effects.

Each game begins with a set number of Honor points (represented by plastic stones in values of one and five) available and ends at the end of a complete player cycle after that starting pool has been exhausted. Every non-starter card is worth an indicated number of Honor in addition to the stones gained via defeating enemies and/or the abilities of cards. Whoever has the highest Honor score wins, with ties being broken in reverse turn order — in other words, the first player always loses ties and so on down until the last player, who always wins ties.

I greatly favor Ascension over other deck-building games. I like the flexible structure of the player turn and multiple potential paths to victory. In my experience, too many games of (non-expanded) Dominion degenerate into “acquire tons of gold, purchase largest VP cards, repeat until game ends”, and I didn’t like the “dungeon or village” action segregation of Thunderstone, which frequently resulted in “wasted” turns during my only play of it thus far. Ascension occupies something of a sweet spot in between the other two, always allowing the players options without dead draws (aside from a single rune or single power without any way to draw more cards). This keeps the action moving; a game of Ascension can usually be completed in an hour or less. Also greatly in Ascension‘s favor is the quick set-up time, as there is no need to randomly select which cards are available for a given session; you just keep the “always available” and starter cards separated (easy to do when scoring at the end of the game), shuffle the other half, count out honor stones, and you’re good to go for another session.

Available for around $40 from most game retailers or around $36 on Amazon, the 200-card Ascension is a little lighter than Dominion (500 cards) or Thunderstone (over 500), but makes up for it somewhat by including the plastic Honor stone counters and a game board that provides the layout and turn reminders — plus unlike the other games, you use all of the cards every time instead of just a subset. The board isn’t really necessary, however, and makes the game ship in a box about three or four times larger than would otherwise be required. Ascension-specific sleeves and a card box are forthcoming, but you should be able to pick up generic equivalents for a nominal fee (the cards fit into Magic-sized sleeves) at any gaming store. I would recommend doing so, as the one complaint I really have about Ascension is the feel of the cards while shuffling. I’ve shuffled a lot of cards, both sleeved and unsleeved, and Ascension‘s kept giving me a nagging sensation of almost tearing the lamination off while doing so. Unfortunately sleeved cards don’t quite fit into the provided box insert, which is fairly generic (unlike Dominion​’s custom-tailored card-sorting tray). It’s an odd flaw considering the game’s pedigree, but ultimately a minor one for an otherwise top-quality game.

Modern strategy games can make a game out of just about any theme you could imagine. Farming, virulent outbreaks, colonial settlements, electric grid management… the list goes on. So it should come as little surprise when you learn that Thurn and Taxis is about setting up a postal carriage service in 16th-century Bavaria and its surroundings. 

Thurn and Taxis, designed in 2006 by Andreas Seyfarth (the creator of the top-rated Puerto Rico, among other titles) and his wife Karyn, earned several awards in 2006-7, including the prestigious 2006 Spiel des Jahres. 

The board consists of twenty-two cities connected by a network of roads and spread over nine color-coded regions. Each city is represented in the deck by three cards; six of these cards are arranged face-up as options for your mandatory draw each turn (or you could take a gamble with the top card of the deck, sight unseen). You must then place one card from your hand either on one end of your current route (towns must be connected by a road and the route cannot cross itself) or on a new route (trashing any previous route you may have at the time). Finally, you may then close your current route (if it is at least three cities long) and set up offices along it in one of two ways: 1) place in office all cities within a single region of the route; or 2) place one office in a city of each region spanned by the route. After closing a route discard down to three cards in your hand. If you close a region of sufficient length, starting at three cities and working up to seven, you may upgrade your carriage house one level.

In addition to the unique office placement rules, Thurn and Taxis also makes one of four special abilities, represented by various post office personnel, available on each turn: the cartwright allows you to virtually extend your current route by two cities for the purposes of upgrading your carriage house (the route must still be at least three actual adjacent cities); the postal carrier allows you to place two cards on to your current route (on either end); the administrator allows you to discard all six of the face-up cards and replace them with new ones before you draw for the turn; and finally there is the postmaster, who allows you to draw two cards in the same turn — and which must be selected if you begin the turn with no cards in hand, such as on each player’s first turn.

The game ends at the end of the round in which at least one player either obtains his fifth carriage house or places his last office; the highest carriage house obtained by each player is the only one scored. Setting up an office in each city within a region (or within two smaller neighboring regions) earns bonus points, as does having at least one office in each region. Additional points can be awarded by completing routes of certain lengths. All of these bonus points decrease in value as subsequent players earn them, rewarding those who can accomplish the various challenges with speed. There is also one final bonus point awarded to the player who first achieves a game-ending condition. Unplaced offices are then deducted from your total — a potentially harsh penalty if you’re not ready for the game to end — and whoever has the highest score wins. 

What makes Thurn and Taxis fun to play are all of the strategic choices at every turn. Which power will help you the most? Do you want to close your route now or try to extend it another turn for additional points and offices?Can you even extend your route with any of the cards available to you… and will those cards still be there by the time you get to draw them? What’s the most efficient way to score this route that contains two cities in three different regions? Careful use of the various powers usually helps to mitigate the luck factor in not drawing any useable cards, but trashing a route does still happen from time to time. 

A typical game of Thurn and Taxis will last from 45 minutes to an hour, and is best with three or four players (two is also supported) of ages 10 and up. Copies can usually be picked up for under $30 at gaming stores, or for under $25 on Amazon.