Gloomhaven Catch-All

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Wanted to see if any others got a chance to play Gloomhaven yet. I just got done playing the first few scenarios with friends and am overjoyed at how well put together and fun it is! I'd be more than happy to answer questions of those who are interested in it, but more than anything wanted to get the conversation rolling on the game itself.

I like painting minis, so I took the liberty of painting the starting 6 classes for the game.

I missed the KS, but a local store is expecting a shipment next month. The game looks super fun, I'm just trying to figure out if it would get any table-time in our house. Any impressions are greatly appreciated .

A friend and I Kickstarted it. He'd been amped for months. I was meh. My whole world turned around when I got the box. It's 20 pounds of game, with a dearth of content.

I got the minis unpacked, and I had fun painting them. There's the 6 starting classes that it comes with, and you unlock the other 11. It's tough to describe just how organized and well put together everything is compared to most every other game out there, but it's great. You'll want some art supply organizer boxes for the cardboard, perhaps a vertical file for the maps and a couple sheets of business card holders if you wanna get super organized (which I would recommend as it cuts down on setup/tear down time).

The game play is great! For everything being run "automatically" by the board it's a game of true teamwork. It can be difficult, but it's worth it. You're constantly pressed for time as your hand of playable actions is slowly lost, at which point you're exhausted and can't continue. Certain abilities on the cards force you to discard them making your path to exhaustion quicker, so you need to decide if that ability is worth it and then press on.

Every time you attack you pick from a deck of attack bonuses or negatives in your personal attack modifier deck. As you level up you can modify that deck by removing negatives and adding positives to it so you're more effective. Plus leveling gets you new and better ability cards for your hand, more hit points...etc.

All in all it feels like a wonderfully crafted tabletop RPG that just happens to not need a Dungeon Master. I really can't recommend it enough.

I received my copy today but haven't done anything more than open the box. Sadly I'll likely end up playing solo .. but it still looks fantastic.

Arise, thread!

I watched these 2 videos and they were very helpful with the rules.

Spoiler:

We did some filthy skimming before the one game we've played and we missed 3 things that I can tell so far. 2 were inconsequential and one would have helped us a bit.

I recommend these highly. I learned about this guy's videos over in the main board game thread.

I'm really looking forward to getting this to the table some more.

-BEP

Shut Up and Sit Down just did a review of it as well: https://youtu.be/mKc5XhvkC8M

Can anyone say how well it plays solo or with 2 people? My gaming group leans toward the casual, so I doubt I'll ever get 4 for it.

bhchrist wrote:
MeatMan wrote:
imbiginjapan wrote:
Pinkerton wrote:

That is a really nice setup! Your gaming group is very lucky!

It's basically me and my wife

If you're playing Gloomhaven with only two players, (1) definitely go with level 0 difficulty, and (2) good luck ... you'll need it!

Actually, I would suggest that you each play two characters, which you probably already planned to do. It will definitely give you a better chance of survival.

Does it ramp up after the first couple scenarios? I am playing two player standard and we got through the first couple levels on normal with one exhaustion between the two rounds. Spellweaver and Scoundrel. Some close scrapes but it felt about right.

I was expecting to play one character each. It seems like two would add a lot of overhead. I haven't seen too many people complain about it being overly hard with just two characters, as you do scale down the average level and total number of enemies to compensate. Additionally I keep hearing the first couple scenarios feel tougher than most as characters don't have a ton of gear and players get a feel for how to play. It seems like the main downside I can see is that fewer characters retire over the course of the campaign which means fewer unlocks.

Rise, thread!

Most all of us now have our copies from the second shipment and the General Boardgame thread is flooded with GH talk and it is showing up on other threads, this seems a good spot to throw out some questions. Spoiler tags for anything spoilery, please. MeatMan's suggestion for a two player run was to start at level 0 difficulty and consider running two players each. I have read others playing two players on hard. That prompted some questions that would be interesting to get the communities thoughts on. Feel free to answer as many or as few as you want.

What numbers have you been playing with?

What characters did you start with?

What difficulty level?

Has anyone alternated starting characters (one scenario with one, the next with another)?

Any general feedback on you early experience?

Any equipment that you have really liked or perks that have been helpful?

Have you retired a character yet? If so, was it difficult? Did you play the unlocked class or one of the other starting classes?

Have you had anyone "drop in" to your party for a scenario or two? How did it work?

Personally, I have played the first two scenarios on standard level one in a two player party. We have unlocked two others out west in the mountains in addition to the #3. I am a Spellweaver and my playing partner is a Scoundrel. Without a tank character to soak up damage and having the two lowest card count starting characters (8 card hand for Spellweaver and 9 for Scoundrel) we have had to be very economical with loss cards. The card to recover lost cards in the Spellweaver deck is a necessity and the timing of when to play it seems like it can make the difference between winning and losing.

Normal difficulty seems right so far for us, but I am not sure if there is a ramp up moving forward or for the "side quests" vs. main path. I guess we will find out.

Loving the game so far and find myself thinking about playing it a fair amount. It is verging on becoming the Hamilton of board games for me. I have read that the ability for someone to drop in and out from a party works really well. My best friend bought it and sees it more as a solo play for him, but it might be fun for him to play a bit with my party and to play a character in his party from time to time. Any issues that those with more experience could see with this?

What numbers have you been playing with?

4 players

What characters did you start with?

Brute, Tinkerer, Mindthief, and Spellweaver (me)

What difficulty level?

We played the first scenario at level 1 (normal) and got wiped, mainly because we were being a little wreckless while trying to figure out our characters and the best way to play them. After we retconned it as if we passed, we had the option of a side quest and did it before playing scenario #2. For both of those last two quests, we lowered the difficulty to 0 and still suffered one exhaustion during each.

Has anyone alternated starting characters (one scenario with one, the next with another)?

No. The four of us each played the same characters for the three scenarios we played.

Any general feedback on you early experience?

I would simply suggest playing the first one or two scenarios at level 0 while you try to learn how to optimally play your character, not to mention learn the game itself. IIRC, the difference in reward is slightly less experience gained compared to level 1.

Any equipment that you have really liked or perks that have been helpful?

I played as the Spellweaver, which only gives you 8 cards. (The rest of the party had 10 or more.) Having so few cards means the Spellweaver potentially has the higest risk of becoming exhausted due to running out of cards. For this reason, I felt that the stamina potion is essential to playing the Spellweaver. It lets you recover two cards from your discard pile, which means you don't to do a rest resulting in a card going into your lost pile.

Spoiler:

The Spellweaver does have a single-use ability on one the cards that lets you recover all of the cards in you lost pile, which is great, but it's possible to lose that card during a rest.
I actually ended up buying a second stamina potion to ensure that I would not become exhausted due to my low number of cards.

Have you retired a character yet?

No.

Have you had anyone "drop in" to your party for a scenario or two?

No.

With all that said, I really enjoyed our first session and look forward to resuming our playthrough.

I've run through the first scenario twice so far. first time as a two player for myself and the other 'rules guy' in our group then again with the full 4 player count. Looks like this is going to turn into a regular Saturday campaign game. Seems like a good option to fill that D&D niche without needing a GM.

Where was this thread back in February?

Today I played the first scenario with my 13 year old D&D playing son. I played the Cragheart and he played the Mindthief. As suggested, we played at level 0, which was fortunate as we had a road event that reduced us 3 health at the beginning of the scenario. I liked that the Cragheart has some buffs which helps him be more powerful, and my son's favorite ability was mind controlling an emery to attack another. As you play, you lose cards, which amped up the pressure to finish. In the end, I sacrificed myself in the last room by buffing up an AOE attack and softening up the enemies (and then getting exhausted), which allowed my son to come in and wipe out the stragglers. A win by the skin of our teeth.

My son really had a lot of fun. At this point, I'm a little more hesitant. First, it took us over 2 hours, which granted we were learning the game, but overall it is a big time commitment. Even at level 0 the game was pretty difficult, and for me cooperative games are generally not successful when it it too easy to fail. Finally, grabbing loot in order to get it seems particularly unfair in the final room. For this game, I house ruled that we got the loot in the final room, since otherwise my son would have been trying to hoover up the loot while keeping an enemy alive, which seems unlikely.

This is the first "legacy" game I've been able to play, so I had a lot of fun adding stickers and tearing up cards. I like the meta is to upgrade the city, in addition to your characters. There are grand goals afoot. We wil play the next scenario, and see how that goes.

I ordered these on Monday, the 18th, in the afternoon:
Gloomhaven Removable Stickers

With shipping to Oklahoma, it was $12.61. They arrived either Wednesday or Thursday - we were out of town until Thursday around 4:30pm, so I'm not sure, but it was probably Thursday.

The cheapest on Amazon at the time was $25.00.

-BEP

Seeing talk about reusable stickers, I'm debating whether to try and play GH legacy-style (really destroying things, permanent markers, permanent stickers, etc) or try to maintain replayability.

I went through Pandemic Legacy Season 1 with my gaming group and didn't permanently destroy anything, etc, but really now that I know the plot, between the difficulty of scheduling a group, overall time commitment and the lack of surprise, I'm very unlikely to replay PLS1.

GH appears to be huge in scope (I see 100+ hours mentioned in the Ars Technica review) and my gaming group is monthly at best, so I'm inclined to assume that I play it solo once through, but...does anyone know if either of these actually work:
- Having other players drop in and out of an ongoing solo campaign?
- Running multiple groups in parallel out of a single box via reusable stickers?

I haven't played my first game yet, but after watching this review:

I think I'll pick up the Broken Token organizer before opening everything up as a long term game-time saver.

Eldon_of_Azure wrote:

I think I'll pick up the Broken Token organizer before opening everything up as a long term game-time saver.

I spent quite a while trying to figure out to organize the game, going through several options: CD sleeves, Planos, GMT trays, even cutting pieces out of the black insert to see if I could fit things together better.

Ultimately, after many hours spent trying, I broke down and ordered the BT insert. I don't regret the purchase at all; the thing is amazing, and still has some room for expansion cards and whatnot if they come out. There's a LOT in this game and you can't store it via the traditional board gamer methods.

Love that the BT allows for chits to be flat not vertical as it makes it easy and quick to find things.

Cod wrote:

GH appears to be huge in scope (I see 100+ hours mentioned in the Ars Technica review) and my gaming group is monthly at best, so I'm inclined to assume that I play it solo once through, but...does anyone know if either of these actually work:
- Having other players drop in and out of an ongoing solo campaign?
- Running multiple groups in parallel out of a single box via reusable stickers?

The first would be ok, as you can level them via prosperity of the town and just let people play anything you've unlocked. If you play solo though you need to run a couple characters which is a lot of overhead.

The second scheme I don't see working very well. The stickers are 'removable' only in the sense they won't ruin the surface underneath. They not only go on boards but on cards. I don't see how you could realistically remove and restore a whole campaign state every time. It would require copious note taking.

There is the option to play 'casual' mode which is just playing a scenario without impacting the campaign state, but you'd just be seeing missions multiple times if you did it that way.

Minarchist wrote:
Eldon_of_Azure wrote:

I think I'll pick up the Broken Token organizer before opening everything up as a long term game-time saver.

I spent quite a while trying to figure out to organize the game, going through several options: CD sleeves, Planos, GMT trays, even cutting pieces out of the black insert to see if I could fit things together better.

Ultimately, after many hours spent trying, I broke down and ordered the BT insert. I don't regret the purchase at all; the thing is amazing, and still has some room for expansion cards and whatnot if they come out. There's a LOT in this game and you can't store it via the traditional board gamer methods.

I got the insert from Daedalus and it makes setup a breeze as everything is labeled. This is the first game where I've felt something like that is necessary.

I wanted to answer BH's questions and I'll keep it spoiler free. Been playing since 1st edition came out and we've done several dozen scenarios.

What numbers have you been playing with?

4

What characters did you start with?

Spellweaver, Cragheart, Tinkerer, and Brute (me)

What difficulty level?

Normal

Has anyone alternated starting characters (one scenario with one, the next with another)?

Negative, we kept it going.

Any general feedback on you early experience?

The early on difficulties mostly had to deal with appropriate card management. Some cards are just better than others, mostly due to efficiency. A card that instantly goes into a loss pile is a HUGE deal, and really must be worth it. I highly recommend checking out the class guides that are on reddit. That community is very well moderated with spoilers, so it's safe to navigate over there and the guides are very well thought out.

Any equipment that you have really liked or perks that have been helpful?

Stamina potions are relevant for almost every character so you don't exhaust before the scenario is over. They're pretty much an extra turn or two. For melee characters I can't emphasize how a good pair of boots can help, especially if they Jump.

Have you retired a character yet? If so, was it difficult? Did you play the unlocked class or one of the other starting classes?

Each of our players has retired their starting class now, and we've unlocked several new characters. Everyone pretty much plays the new class (one time another player and I both unlocked the same class once so I opted to go Scoundrel and they took the new class. S'ok, the Scoundrel is a wonderful change from Brute, love her).

Have you had anyone "drop in" to your party for a scenario or two? How did it work?

We did once, and it scales pretty darn well. Just remember to follow the equation for what the difficulty ought to be and you'll be okay. We had a friend drop in and take up the Mindthief as a level 2 character (since our town was Prosperity 2 at the time) and it worked quite well. You can play some easy catch up as the lower levels don't need as much XP to level and you're getting more per scenario playing with higher level characters. Though most of your XP will come from your cards, usually, so it takes some creative playing to maximize that as well.

MeatMan wrote:
Spoiler:

The Spellweaver does have a single-use ability on one the cards that lets you recover all of the cards in you lost pile, which is great, but it's possible to lose that card during a rest.
I actually ended up buying a second stamina potion to ensure that I would not become exhausted due to my low number of cards.

Minotaar wrote:
Spoiler:

Don't forget MeatMan, you choose the card you lose on a long rest, and even if you short rest you and you pull that card you can take a point of damage and re-pick a different random card to lose. That card is integral to the Spellweaver's play!

If anyone has any questions on the game or wants to PM me about it, I'm more than happy to help!

Got in our 4th scenario yesterday and first game since getting to level 2. We kinda breezed through it without a lot of damage taken (none by me or my summons and only 3 points by the Scoundrel). The room set of the scenario (#8) up really worked to our favor.

Spoiler:

This was the warehouse and the desks that forced you to snake around were great with the combo of jump and ranged attacks. The Scoundrel also drew the 2X attack card on a turn that an attack from invisibility was performed and it would have cause 20 damage if one of the bosses had that much health to begin with.

I think we have something like 7-8 possible scenarios in front of us, including 3-4 random ones popped from chests or Road events. We have been thinking of upping the difficulty to level 2 from level 1 for the next scenario. Maybe we will test it out on one of the random scenarios. Trying to get my friend to drop in for a scenario as well just to play it with more enemies on the board. He just played his first scenario solo running a Brute and Scoundrel. Looking forward to doing some cross game drop-ins to get a feel for some of the other base characters.

I think we're about 8 scenarios in at this point and still really enjoying the game. Dork is playing the Brute and I'm playing the Scoundrel. At the beginning of our last scenario, he was level 3 and I was level 2 and we both realized we weren't setting our HP wheel to the correct HPs. In fact, I was starting with 7 HPs for some stupid reason and had been probably since our third scenario. He was still using 10 HPs for his Brute. We knew that we got more HPs as we leveled, but just forgot to bump them up - and in fact, I bumped mine down. How silly we felt...

City and Road events - we always pick the worst option. Always. Except for the last Road event we did, we chose the one that was less bad. We looked at that as a win.

We're struggling with Reputation. We got 2 points, then lost them. Blarg! We're really trying to make choices that should boost our rep and we're always getting it wrong. The card that made us lose our 2 rep was totally bogus:

Spoiler:

We literally stumbled upon a corpse and then a city guard wandered up and saw the blood on our clothes. We could have killed him and hid the 2 bodies or tried to talk our way out of it with the truth. We chose talk/truth and they found that the wounds didn't match our weapons so we were absolved of the crime, but we still lost 2 reputation. We call BS on it.

We only have 2 checkmarks for Prosperity, and I'm hoarding my gold for when we open up level 2 for Gloomhaven because I want better Phat Lootz. I should probably buy something with the coin now to help me along until then, but I've always been a hoarder of money in any RPG - P&P, Computer, or Board Game.

We are slow players. We're both AP prone, so the first few scenarios took soooo damned long. We're getting better now that we're more comfortable with our abilities, but we still over-analyze.

We finally failed a scenario, the last one we ran. Between his scenario goal and some suboptimal play by me, we didn't get it done. It was close - he exhausted with 2 archers left on the board and they both drew a +1 ATK against me and torqued me hard right at the end. I was hoping to scoop up 2 coin tokens on my last turn but they had immobilized me right at the end, too. Confounded Archers! *shakes fist*

We're playing on level 1, and even though almost every scenario seems like it's going to be tough, we end up pulling it out ( except for that last one ). I like the idea that we don't go through them knowing that we'll survive. Playing on level 1 seems perfect for us.

I wouldn't want to play with 3 or 4 players. Our games would be unbearably long.

-BEP

Are you guys doing any house rules?

We've talked about being able to trade coin and items but haven't done it, yet. It may upset the balance of the game a little, but, it's our game/story and we don't mind changing things up to make it more fun for us. It we end up unbalancing it, we can always up the difficulty.

-BEP

How does one open up 'side quests'? It's related to personal quest goals and we haven't seen any.

bepnewt wrote:

Are you guys doing any house rules?

We've talked about being able to trade coin and items but haven't done it, yet. It may upset the balance of the game a little, but, it's our game/story and we don't mind changing things up to make it more fun for us. It we end up unbalancing it, we can always up the difficulty.

-BEP

We totally ignored the 'no trading/sharing' rule. We're not going full communist, but if one person wants to get some armor to stay alive, but they are 5 gold shy, I'll happily pay the difference to have our party stay at full strength longer.

bepnewt wrote:

I think we're about 8 scenarios in at this point and still really enjoying the game. Dork is playing the Brute and I'm playing the Scoundrel. At the beginning of our last scenario, he was level 3 and I was level 2 and we both realized we weren't setting our HP wheel to the correct HPs. In fact, I was starting with 7 HPs for some stupid reason and had been probably since our third scenario. He was still using 10 HPs for his Brute. We knew that we got more HPs as we leveled, but just forgot to bump them up - and in fact, I bumped mine down. How silly we felt...

City and Road events - we always pick the worst option. Always. Except for the last Road event we did, we chose the one that was less bad. We looked at that as a win.

We're struggling with Reputation. We got 2 points, then lost them. Blarg! We're really trying to make choices that should boost our rep and we're always getting it wrong.

We only have 2 checkmarks for Prosperity, and I'm hoarding my gold for when we open up level 2 for Gloomhaven because I want better Phat Lootz. I should probably buy something with the coin now to help me along until then, but I've always been a hoarder of money in any RPG - P&P, Computer, or Board Game.

We switched to using dice for health (ours and enemies) and XP after the first game and that has been much better for us. The dice are right on our board. Those wheels were set off to the side and didn't always stay where we turned them. Plus, with all the D&D dice, we can color code them to match!

I love how different the experiences can be, depending on card, scenario choices, treasure chest, etc. We are at Level 2 after four scenarios and one or two prosperity ticks away from the next level of loot. We got reasonable fortunate in our road and city events, including one that did not have any payoff other than adding another City event into the deck. I can't wait to draw that card, as we suspect that it might be quite good. Also I popped a special item helmet template for the market from a chest that is tailor made for the Scoundrel.

We are trying to make decisions that are somewhat in keeping with my Spellweaver and my son's Scoundrel. Super fortunate to draw (and accomplish) two 2 star scenario achievement cards, so unlocked two perks from that (and the two one star cards) as well as from another from leveling up. For the Spellweaver, that means two (-1) cards are out, replaced by two (+1) cards, along with a +2 ice added to the deck.

Given this and that we are kitted out pretty nicely with equipment, we may kick up to Hard for the accelerated XP, gold, etc. to level up the characters faster. I love the Spellweaver, but know I have a finite time with her before she retires, given my hero quest.

Spoiler:

Explorer, I think. 15 Scenarios then retirement-perfect for the Spellweaver's backstory

I also want to start giving $ to the church in town to see where that leads.

bepnewt wrote:

We are slow players. We're both AP prone, so the first few scenarios took soooo damned long. We're getting better now that we're more comfortable with our abilities, but we still over-analyze.

I wouldn't want to play with 3 or 4 players. Our games would be unbearably long.

-BEP

There are times I really want to play with 3-4 just to see more enemies on the battlefield and to have a tank to wander into the area to combo with our abilities, but two is a really fun number to play with. We don't get too bogged down. I am probably worse than my son, but not AP territory. So far, scenarios have lasted around an hour of play time. I can see that going up quite a bit. Need to get my fiend to drop in to test it out.

My group are the full player count of four and we have been role playing our characters. This means we are ideologically split on road and city events. We ended up having an impromptu scissor paper rock tournament to decide whether we helped a merchant fix his wagon or robbed him blind. I am a scoundrel who is all about hoarding money, we have a brute for muscle that will happily abandon the rest of us to our fates if it will advantage him. A good hearted tinkerer trying to make the world a better place and a mind thief who is pretty neutral and generally leans towards good.

After four scenarios we are minus 2 rep and prosperity isn’t going up very fast.

I’m excited to play again this afternoon. Our Mindthief is busy getting drunk in the tavern so my wife will be stepping in either as the cragheart or spell weaver.

imbiginjapan wrote:

How does one open up 'side quests'? It's related to personal quest goals and we haven't seen any.

We’ve found one in a treasure chest

Spoiler:

in the very first scenario

I got the game via KS, along with the removal sticker pack. I just haven't delved into it because A) I don't have a core group of people to play it with yet, and B) storage. I'd love to get the BT kit, but apparently they no longer sell it on Amazon (and I've got a lot of Amazon credit right now). None of the other storage methods seem readily available either, so I'm trying to cobble something together.

What is the consensus for single player - yay or nay?

bhchrist wrote:

So far, scenarios have lasted around an hour of play time.

Man, that would be nice. We take _at least_ 2 hours to do a scenario.

Rubb Ed wrote:

I got the game via KS, along with the removal sticker pack. I just haven't delved into it because A) I don't have a core group of people to play it with yet, and B) storage. I'd love to get the BT kit, but apparently they no longer sell it on Amazon (and I've got a lot of Amazon credit right now). None of the other storage methods seem readily available either, so I'm trying to cobble something together.

I did the Plano Box method. See my post in the Board-Gaming thread:
Plano Box Method for Gloomhaven Link

I got them at a local Academy store in the fishing section for ( I think ) $17 total. Not as good as the $75+ ones that are pretty sweet, but definitely serviceable.

LeapingGnome wrote:

What is the consensus for single player - yay or nay?

I don't play games solo, but this is one I would give a shot if I did. Two players is good, especially if your classes synergize a little.

-BEP

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