Gloom for Two

I visited a friend last weekend, and I took Gloom with me.

We played one game with two players, and this time the Unhappy Homes expansion was used.

Families involved were the circus folk again and the artist family that came with Unhappy Homes.

When Mr. Giggles went into politics, Darius Dark had to find some new ways for the circus to thrive. After all the stars that were still working for him were the Bearded Man and tattooed lady who won't show her tattoos... Thumbelisa had already been eaten by bears.

Answer proved to be animals. Lots and lots of different animals. Manatees, mice, porcupines... you name it. And most of them were the most violent individuals of their species. Just about all of them turned against their master, too.

But fear not! Circus receives a very disturbing star indeed in the form of Samson O'Toole, the Bearded Man. He was accused of witchcraft at several points of his career and he was finally burned by a mob. Sad thing here was that he didn't die...

The artist family was shaken by many, many scandals. That's somehow fitting, I think. I do have one good piece of advice, though: Never, ever eat at the Duke. It may give a temporary boost to your career, sure, but people were dying all over the dishes, getting poisoned and suffering from dysenteria. If that sounds somehow doable, just wait until you see all the ghosts and poltergeists and whatnot mourning their last supper.

Simon Simone lived a rather interesting and colourful life that I'm not even trying to remember in detail. This was because there was a curious shortage of Untimely Deaths. I'm not expecting to see a bigger stack of cards on a family member in my own lifetime. Post-game I took a look on the remaining cards, and every other card was an Untimely Death there, so it wasn't only imagination and bad choices on discarding cards.

There being only two players probably made the situation only worse, when there were less people drawing cards from the deck.

I'm not entirely sure if that counts as a tragedy in itself.