Gloomhaven Catch-All

Amazon has Gloomhaven in stock now for $133.

Against my better judgement I bought a copy. Just one more game, man, I swear!

robc wrote:

Amazon has Gloomhaven in stock now for $133.

Not anymore... those secondary market prices are nuts!

imbiginjapan wrote:
robc wrote:

Amazon has Gloomhaven in stock now for $133.

Not anymore... those secondary market prices are nuts!

That was fast!

Koz wrote:

Against my better judgement I bought a copy. Just one more game, man, I swear!

It’s the only game you need. Ba ha ha.

But seriously. I’ve been selling a lot of my other game because I realize I won’t have time with them and i rather just play gloomhaven for the foreseeable future.

imbiginjapan wrote:
robc wrote:

Amazon has Gloomhaven in stock now for $133.

Not anymore... those secondary market prices are nuts!

You can always use Amazon Financing for 6 months.

My wife just left my FLGS with a large, heavy box in tow.

IT'S HERE!!!!!!!
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I had a Gloom-a-thon with my wife, brother and his gf yesterday. We played 5 missions, we lost 4 of them. We had to go to Easy mode to not fail.

4 player games are hard. Dont let your pride stand in the way of moving down to Easy mode like we did. Instead of about 8 awesome hours of Gloomhaven, we had about 8 hours of frustrating (but still awesome) Gloomhaven. We retired a few characters, got some level ups, got some new gear and had a bunch of fun, but getting beat over and over again did kinda suck.

Maximize the cards you take by looking over some class guides on /r/Gloomhaven. Their big piece of advice is to avoid cards that have a Lost ability as that severely drains your time management. It's all about keeping cards in hand. Get those stamina potions, yo!

Minotaar wrote:

Maximize the cards you take by looking over some class guides on /r/Gloomhaven. Their big piece of advice is to avoid cards that have a Lost ability as that severely drains your time management. It's all about keeping cards in hand. Get those stamina potions, yo!

This. The guides don't need to be taken as gospel, but many give a good rationale behind the decisions of recommended hands, perks, and equipment that can be used to apply to one's own approach. The Spellweaver one gave some great ideas.

I have yet to play with four players, however. The class synergies with two players put a real premium on the coordination of abilities. I imagine that is just as important with 3 or 4 players.

While it's good general advice not to lose cards early (duh) other than the one situation, it wasnt exhaustion that screwed us.

A well balanced difficulty for our plays would seem to balance somewhere between Easy and Normal.

With 2 players, Easy is too easy, Normal is a good challenge. We lose some but usually only in the last round or so. Its tense and exciting.
With 4 players, Normal is too hard, Easy is about right

polypusher wrote:

While it's good general advice not to lose cards early (duh) other than the one situation, it wasnt exhaustion that screwed us.

A well balanced difficulty for our plays would seem to balance somewhere between Easy and Normal.

With 2 players, Easy is too easy, Normal is a good challenge. We lose some but usually only in the last round or so. Its tense and exciting.
With 4 players, Normal is too hard, Easy is about right

Nice. Good to have a feel for the fun level of your group. I can't wait to play with more than two, though I love the pace and coordination with two a lot.

After 6 attempts I finally beat the the Mind Thief’s solo scenario. First one I played. If this is any indication these solo missions will force you to learn your character in new ways. I was trying to brute force it then I realized I wasn’t bringing in the right cards. After some more attempts I finally made the perfect hand and it was waaaaay easier. I highly recommend you play them. I can’t wait to get my Tinkerer to level 5 to do his. Also the reward:

Spoiler:

I got an crazy powerful item that would only work for the Mind Thief or any future classes that uses the augment ability. I’m assuming all solo scenarios will do this.

Also “if you deserve it” spoilers:

Spoiler:

After losing a lot I figure I would treat myself to opening the “deserve it envelope”. Just a scenario. Nothing special unless the scenario leads to something else.

Crockpot wrote:

After 6 attempts I finally beat the the Mind Thief’s solo scenario. First one I played. If this is any indication these solo missions will force you to learn your character in new ways. I was trying to brute force it then I realized I wasn’t bringing in the right cards. After some more attempts I finally made the perfect hand and it was waaaaay easier. I highly recommend you play them. I can’t wait to get my Tinkerer to level 5 to do his.

Crockpot, when did you do yours? Is there an indication in the game or is it just a side game when you get to 5th level?

The solo scenarios book has a stop point written in (2 actually) First your city has to be prosperity 3 or higher. 2nd, your character has to be level 5+ (maybe it has to be 5, not completely sure)

We hit Prosperity 3 and got excited, read the next line about Level 5 and got sad again.

My Cragheart is nearly at level 4, got a little more to go.

Cool. Thanks, Poly. I have not even opened the solo book yet.

For those like Crockpot who have opened the "deserve it" envelope, what did you use as your achievement or sign post to do so? I am thinking about retirement of the first character, prosperity level, or some such thing. Any non-spoilery guidance from experience? Wish you did it earlier or waited longer?

For us it was waiting 6-8 months for Gloomhaven to get here and then finding the envelope hiding in the box (under the insert)

We haven't attempted it. The requirement to actually do the mission is 'bravery' and we haven't decided we have that yet.

Good lord that's a heavy box.

Use your legs. Feel the burn.

bhchrist wrote:

Cool. Thanks, Poly. I have not even opened the solo book yet.

For those like Crockpot who have opened the "deserve it" envelope, what did you use as your achievement or sign post to do so? I am thinking about retirement of the first character, prosperity level, or some such thing. Any non-spoilery guidance from experience? Wish you did it earlier or waited longer?

We waited for quite a while, and had set it aside for when all 4 of us retired a character. Opened it, haven't done anything with it yet.

My Amazon pre-order copy arrived last night. Waiting for release, there wasn't much non-spoiler-y in nature to do but read BGG posts about organizing the game's contents, so it's a little insane how much I'm simply looking forward to organizing the darn thing.

(I'm going modified Y.A.S.S. with a combo of Planos for terrain and markers, GMT trays for monster standees, and CD sleeves for the monster stat and ability cards.)

The plan is to kickoff the campaign this weekend with my two boys. I made them both lift the box last night so they knew what they were getting themselves into.

Welcome to the club! Organizers is a huge time saver. So is leaving most of it set up or mostly set up on the table. Of course, the boss only tolerates that on the kitchen table for so long.

Man, I cannot wait for my gaming tables to arrive...

Anyone stumbled on something like Gloomy Companion with the ability to track monster damage/status effects?

We tried one on Android that only does the damage tracking part, its ok but would require 2 devices or switching back and forth between apps, which is not ideal

I just use Gloomy Companion and use dice and throw the chits next to the standees. Makes it way easy to see who has what.

Man, I haven't gotten to play since I started grad school. Too much work to do. Bummer.

Okay, I need some help understanding how to read the monster cards.

Without doing any spoiling, I'm soloing the first location, and I finally got everything set to go. The first monster ability card I pull is "Move + X, Attack + X"

They haven't moved yet, they haven't attacked yet... what's the +X? And how do I determine how far they move and how much they attack for?

Rubb Ed wrote:

Without doing any spoiling, I'm soloing the first location, and I finally got everything set to go. The first monster ability card I pull is "Move + X, Attack + X"

They haven't moved yet, they haven't attacked yet... what's the +X? And how do I determine how far they move and how much they attack for?

First, move the monster it's regular move +X spaces.
Then attack any legitimate target for it's regular damage +X (modified by combat card draw).

Each monster (type) has a big card you put in a sleeve. Put it in where you can read the stats for the appropriate level and the other 3 levels on that side of the card are hidden.

Each monster will have, on that card, a HP, Move, Attack, and Range value, although the value for one may be a dash if that monster can't do that thing like the Ranged on the Living Bones card in this pic.

IMAGE(https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2602482_md.png)

When you turn a card from the monster's combat deck, you perform that monsters actions in the order on the card. So, assuming a Living Bones of level 0, and you turned a "Move -1, Attack +1" card, for each of the Living Bones that are on the board ( one at a time in numerical order ), you would move them 1 ( 2 movement on the big card -1 for the combat card ) then attack for 2 ( 1 attack from the big card and +1 for the combat card ). Keep in mind that a non-elite level 0 Living Bones can hit 2 melee targets.

-BEP

Definitely realize that:
1) Monsters only do what is on the combat card. So, if it says "Shield 1, Attack +2" then the monster would get a shield of 1 and then it would attack at +2. It would NOT move because there is no "Move +*" on the card.
2) Process the action on the combat card in order.
3) If there is a buff or condition on a monster combat card, it doesn't come into play until that monster's turn in initiative. So, on #1 above, the monster wouldn't get that "Shield 1" until it's turn. If you go before it in initiative and attack that monster, it won't have the "Shield 1" on it, yet.*

* This is my understanding, please correct if wrong.

-BEP

Okay, I was being dumb, completely forgetting about the card. Duh.

However, the card does literally say +X, so I don't know where the X value is. Please note that Rubb Ed has the memory of a botfly.