In the Bag: Miskatonic School for Girls

Miskatonic School for Girls - Funded Kickstarter Project

In this game, players draft cards for both themselves and the other player as they try to build the deck that allows their girls to stay sane until the other player's girls go insane.

The cards are themed for Lovecraft with lots of odes to the stories while not always being direct correlations.  The faculty cards are pretty funny as many are representations of The Elder Gods in very flimsy disguising.

I have not yet played this game.

In the Bag: Cthulhu Playing Cards

Cthulhu Playing Cards - Funded Kickstarter

The Call of Cthulhu playing cards are designed from box to card backs, to suits, to jokers, to court in theme and all created specifically for this deck.  These are normal playing cards in use, just very well designed and themed.

The original product on the Kickstarter was a Limited run.  This did not last through the project and all subsequent cards were part of the Unlimited collection.  The difference can be told by the color of the card backs.

In the Bag: Bang! The Bullet

Bang is a game where players have shootouts with each other while, depending on their character, they have different objectives of who needs to live and who needs to die.

This is the core game along with three expansions in one nice package.

I have not yet played this game.

In the Bag: Zombie Dice 2: Double Feature

This expansion to zombie dice adds a bit more strategy, fun, and narrative to the core zombie dice game.  You can add any or all of the three new dice to the original to add different elements.  With the red dice, you add Santa Clause.  The black die with white type is the hero and the black die with pink pink type is the damsel.

I have not yet played with the expansion, but it is supposed to add a movie-like feel to the game.

In the Bag: Zombie Dice

Zombie Dice is a really fun press your luck filler game where players roll dice trying to get as many brains as they can without taking three shots.  If they take three shots, they don't get any brains for that round.

Play

We played this a few times to start of an evening and close it out and it worked really well.  It helped people transition in and out of gaming mode and went by very quickly.

Pros

A very quick and fun game that works great as a transitional game.

Cons

There's not very much going on here, just press your luck.  It doesn't try to be more, though, and seems to know exactly what it is and does it very well.

In the Bag: Gloom: Unhappy Homes

This expansion pack adds 55 new transparent cards to the game along with a new family, Le Canard Noir, Residence cards are introduced as are mystery cards.

I have not played this expansion at this time.

In the Bag: Gloom

In Gloom, you play one of four odd families that live very gloomy lives.  During the game, you want to make your own family as gloomy as possible and kill them off while they are this way, while other players want to make your characters happier and kill them when they are the least gloomy.

At the end of the game, players add up the gloom on their dead characters and the one with the most Gloom wins.

Plays

I have only played this one once and it played a bit awkwardly as nobody had played it before.  It also gets better and better as players get into the crazy actions that their cards are performing and start a narrative about the characters.

Pros

This is a really fun storytelling game while also being an interesting point scoring game.

Cons

You will need the right kind of group to really enjoy this game.  One that likes to spin a yarn and doesn't mind the negative and gloomy nature of the game will thrive.

Give it a chance if you feel the group could be right though, as in our group, the narrative aspect increased as the game progressed and made it allot of fun.