Card Game

Foothills

The men who built the railways arrived with sound boots and got their shovels on credit; they were issued tickets, in payment for their work, which could be spent at the Tommy Shop or (more likely) on beer! As a ganger, or foreman, you are responsible for your own team of navvies as they travel through Mid and North Wales: digging the track beds, laying the rails, and occasionally helping a passenger or two along their way. Foothills lets you participate in grand-scale railway construction while paying attention to the small details; manage your navvies' work carefully, and you should be able to let them go to the pub at the end of the day.

Foothills is a tactical and intriguing two-player card game from new designer Ben Bateson and the designer of Snowdonia, Tony Boydell. Using your five action cards cleverly, collect resources, remove rubble, build track and stations, and use the action spaces you unlock, all the while collecting more victory points than your opponent. In the end, the player with the most victory points wins!

—description from the designer

Bon Appetit!

Welcome to Bon Appetit, where we serve the most exquisite and rarest dishes in the world! The finest culinary achievements of our time are within your reach! There is one minor indulgence we will have to ask of you — we only take payments in precious gems.

In Bon Appetit! you will compete with your friends to have the greatest meal of the evening. Each turn players use precious gems to bid on various dishes which are presented before them. The winner of each bid will not only collect valuable victory points, but also a delicious skill which can be used during future auctions. However, with the value of gems changing each turn, you must constantly stay on your toes to make sure that it is you who leaves the most satisfied with your meal. When all dishes have been auctioned off, the evening will come to a close. The player with the most valuable dishes is the winner! Bon Appetit!

—description from the publisher

Gloom: Unquiet Dead

Publisher Blurb:

The Game of Inauspicious Incidents and Grave Consequences! In the Gloom card game, you make your eccentric family of misfits suffer the greatest tragedies possible before helping them pass on to the well-deserved respite of death. Just mix the 55 transparent cards in this set together with your copy of Gloom to add morbid new Modifiers, Events, and Untimely Deaths.

Unquiet Dead also introduces Stories, Undead, and Timing Symbols. The families of Gloom have many skeletons in their closets. In Unquiet Dead, the spooks come out to play. Mad scientists can Reanimate Relatives or Invent Invisibility. Vampires and shape shifters can Terrorize the Townsfolk and Go Mad in the Moonlight. Will you Give Up the Ghost, or will you hold onto it?

STORIES: These cards give your families even more to fight over. Whoever claims a story gains a special benefit ... but how long can you keep it?

UNDEAD: There are seven special Modifiers that allow a Character to become a supernatural creature -- a vampire, mummy, ghost, ghoul, wereduck, invisible person, or haunted portrait. These Undead Characters are both living and dead; you can still play Modifiers and Events on them, but they also count toward your Family Value and toward ending the game.

TIMING SYMBOLS: Card effects in Unquiet Dead have symbols to let you know whether a card has an Instant effect that occurs when the card is played from your hand; an Ongoing effect that lasts until it is covered by another card; or a Persistent effect that can last as long as the Character is still alive ... or Undead.

Gloom: Unfortunate Expeditions

The Gloom: Unfortunate Expeditions expansion adds one player and 55 cards to the game. Here is a description of the expansion from the publisher:

In the Gloom card game, you make your eccentric family of misfits suffer the greatest tragedies possible before helping them pass on to the well-deserved respite of death. Just mix the 55 transparent cards in this set together with your copy of Gloom to add morbid new Modifiers, Events, and Untimely Deaths, and a new family of intrepid explorers who've faced misfortune across the globe. These days Colonel Bumpersnoot is really more of a bargain hunter, while Lady Bumpersnoot struggles with high society -- but she always loves to have guests for dinner. Their Towering Treehouse is included as a Residence card to use with the Unhappy Homes expansion.

Unfortunate Expeditions introduces expeditions into the game. Only one expedition can be in play at a time. An expedition's rules affect all players as long as it remains in play. When you play a modifier of untimely death that has an expedition symbol, resolved the immediate effects of the card, then replace the current expedition with the one shown on the card. Some cards also have special effects that occur if an active expedition is already in play when the card is played.

Gloom: Unwelcome Guests

The Gloom: Unwelcome Guests expansion adds one player and 55 cards to the game. Here is a description of the expansion from the publisher:

In the Gloom card game, you make your eccentric family of misfits suffer the greatest tragedies possible before helping them pass on to the well-deserved respite of death. Just mix the 55 transparent cards in this new set together with your copy of Gloom to add morbid new Modifiers, Events, and Untimely Deaths, and a new family - the malodorous Malone mob - including The Broken Arms Hotel as a Residence card to use with the Unhappy Homes expansion. When Boils Malone brought his family overseas to “get away from the heat,” he wasn’t expecting quite so much rain!

Adding an extra level of strategy, new persistent effect icons on cards allow their special effects to continue to be active even if covered by another card. A persistent effect ends only when the attached character is killed.

Also inside are five Unwelcome Guest cards. Deal one or more face up to the table’s center at the start of the game. Guests “follow” the card types noted on them; no matter where it currently is, a living Guest immediately moves to join the family of the character on which one of its “trigger” cards is played. All its Modifiers are moved with it, and it’s considered a member of that family until it moves again. This may delay the game’s end if a final play draws a Guest to the near-winner’s family.