Gloomhaven Catch-All

polypusher wrote:
bepnewt wrote:
bhchrist wrote:

I know if it is just the pie, then players get to determine which element is created. What does this mean? If it is just that a fire element is generated, then why have the first one and the colon?

My assumption is if there is an element currently infusing the field, the demon changes it to a flame and it goes to the right side of the element board ( ie. starts over ). If there are more than 1 on the board, players would choose which gets converted to flame.

-BEP

This. The flame demon will eat anything up there and turn it to Fire, even Fire. Note he does nothing with that bit if there are no inert elements

Good, as that is exactly how we played it. I thought it was strange that there was no commentary or specific rule on it.

To Jolly Bill's comment, a big strategic component to facing elemental empowered monsters is to try and use the elements ahead of their turn to deny them the benefits provided. Some scenarios start each round with certain elements at strong and remove all other elements. Makes for some interesting card play and decisions.

I'm looking forward to when we're playing characters that have more chances to do that! The Brute and Tinkerer aren't super huge on using elements.

Finally got the updated health trackers, rule book and solo scenarios in the mail yesterday. Looking forward to not trying to impale cardboard to track health and XP anymore.

Took long enough to arrive.

Minotaar wrote:

Finally got the updated health trackers, rule book and solo scenarios in the mail yesterday. Looking forward to not trying to impale cardboard to track health and XP anymore.

Took long enough to arrive.

?
I would have mailed you my trackers a month or two ago. I have all the trackers I need. Of course, I don't go so far as to color coordinate dice with the characters and monster. That would be crazy. You would have to have a lot of dice for that. Living Bones don't need to have white dice and Spellweaver purple and Scoundrel green. Nope, not at all. Who would do that?
IMAGE(http://www.cephalofair.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/dice.jpg)

I like keeping the dice out of my diceless game. #nomorepolyhedrons

My mind thief hit retirement. I’m sad to see him go. I got him to level six. He was really fun. Way more fun than the Tinkerer (He has about two missions and I unlock the saw class). I’ll for sure play him again once I play all the classes at least once. But I did unlock the angry face class....

Spoiler:

Doom Stalker! I really like the idea behind him. Setting “Doom” tokens on enemies and using them to do different stuff. I can’t wait to play him and figure out how to make it work. Not a fan of the all summons and traps, so I might spec him more on the Doom and range attacks.

So far we have unlock three spear class, angry face class, “deserve” secret and Envelope B.

Very sad to see my Spellweaver closing in on retirement. Likely won't make level 6. She is an absolute blast to play. I was telling Minotaar tonight that my son and I should be playing on hard. We have really only been in serious danger on losing one scenario out of 11. The past one, we were on level, as I was 4th level and my son was on 5th. We pretty much beat the piss out of it. Would have enjoyed unlocking a few more cards for her with the added gold and XP. Still having a blast, though.

I feel you with retiring a character that you love. Im having withdraws from my mind thief. I had a little bit more control with his retirement but I figure I would revisit him eventually.

I found that losing a scenario isn't bad at all. There is a good chance you know what you did wrong and how to improve. I learned if you lose, you shouldn't brute force the next attempt. Really look at your cards and figure out when you should use each card and rebuild your hand. Where are traps? Can you use them? How should you handle a high shield monster? Maybe i need more push cards to push them into a trap to bypass shields?

Probably my most satisfying experience is this exact experience I had with a solo scenario that I lost five times in a row. Once I say down and reengineer his cards and how I view him the scenario was night and day difference of how smooth it went.

On the angry face class:

Spoiler:

I played a solo scenario with the doom stalker with my tinkerer. I like him! He's doom mechanism is cool. I think I still like the mind thief better but he's way better than the tinkerer. He probably does better with a tank character.

Is there a way to figure out which punch-out monster image is which monster? I am trying to organize the box via the "Plano" method but have yet to actually play the game. So absent an glossary from the web, I feel like I need to dig into the narrative story to figure it out....?

Edit: Found it.

My wife and I started setting the game up around 9:30 AM this morning. We had read through the campaign section of the manual and started reading through the playing a scenario part. We got the map set up and started reading. We got itching to actually play, so we decided me would do a practice run of the first room, looking things up as we go. We also spent some time reorganizing things once we knew what was getting used each game.

Once that was done we reset the board and played the first room for real. I made a stupid move and we ended up doing worse. By then it was time for lunch (a late lunch at that).

We hopped back in and completed the second room, looking many things up because we either forgot the details or wanted to make sure we were doing it right. We had a short break here and there and now it was time for dinner.

After dinner we finished up and ended up playing, including time for some breaks and meals , almost 12 hours. We took our time obviously, but I think we have a decent grasp on the game and next time we should be able to do a scenario in a couple hours I think. I didn’t mind spending all the time on it today, but my wife did.

We won, but we did cheat once - which we allowed only since it was our first game and my wife made a card misinterpretation. She was a tinkerer, and up until that point all of her attacks were ranged attacks. I said my brute was going to go up ahead and she planned for that. Well, she played her card and I was like, ummm you can’t attack anyone with that because it’s a melee attack. My guy would have been hung out to dry and killed. We rolled back the moves for that turn and she re picked her cards, knowing that card wasn’t ranged. We ended up winning the room easily after that. So, I feel guilty, but we allowed it since it was a learning experience.

I’m pretty fond of the game. My wife is OK with it, but not that crazy about it. I think if we didn’t spend so much time on it it would have been better for her. Also, she got upset that she fell just short of her battle goal.

This morning my wife and I are just laying in bed and she says, "Can we talk?", because sometimes I just want to lie there and go back to sleep. Then she says, "The thing that bothers me about Gloomhaven is that there aren't any consequences for failing a scenario, other than if you play with the optional permadeath. Even if you do, you get to make another character that is probably about the same level as the one who dies so it doesn't even really matter. The thing I like about Pandemic Legacy is that the rules change and it keeps things fresh, and your characters that we've built up can die and you need a low level replacement".

I told her that this is more about the battles and choosing how you want to develop you character. For those that are further in than 1 scenario, (without spoiling anything) do things get changed up at all, or any big surprises?

She wants us to come up with some custom rules, such as if one person gets exhausted in battle, the other can either try to finish on their own, or try to escape by picking up the character and getting out of the dungeon. If the other character stays and wins, than they both live. If the other character stays and gets exhausted, they both die. If the character escapes carrying the other character then they both live but lose the scenario.

Also, are there any consequences for losing a scenario ever?

With the standard rules can you just keep trying a scenario until you succeed?

I'm enjoying the game because I like the battles more than she does.

robc wrote:

Also, are there any consequences for losing a scenario ever?

With the standard rules can you just keep trying a scenario until you succeed?

We've only lost one scenario, and in my experience, there is no significant consequence for losing a scenario. You keep your XP and items, and you can either replay the scenario until you succeed or choose a different scenario if one is available.

robc wrote:

Also, are there any consequences for losing a scenario ever?

With the standard rules can you just keep trying a scenario until you succeed?

I remember that if there's a special treasure in it (i.e. labeled with a number), it gets checked off and when you replay it, that chest is no longer available.

Yes, that scenario is open for anyone to play now.

robc wrote:

For those that are further in than 1 scenario, (without spoiling anything) do things get changed up at all, or any big surprises?

I'm not that far in yet, but I think the Reputation mechanic sort of fills that role of changing things up. From the rulebook:

A party’s reputation has a number of implications:

• Many events have consequences that are only applied if the party meets specific reputation
requirements.

• When buying items, players modify the cost based on their reputation. They receive a reduction in
cost at a higher reputation and an increase in cost at a lower reputation. These cost modifications are
written next to the reputation track on the party sheet.

• Certain sealed envelopes are opened when a party reaches specific positive and negative values of
reputation.

You can lose access to other scenarios in the story line based on your choices you make, but not really on lost scenarios, to my knowledge (haven't lost a scenario yet, so only going on rules as I understand them). Yes, you can keep trying the scenario. I would caution against custom rules until you have a few scenarios under the belt, but you have to do what feels right to you.

There are emerging stories from the scenarios and some of the road and city events (still waiting to meet the youngster we helped out of a jam in the city - added a city card into the deck). The impact that may come closest to what you describe are the reputation based on choices you make. This can have repercussions, as some results change on event cards based on your character class and reputation level. Again, this shows up after a number of plays.

I guess you could make the case that barely missing a battle goal is a lasting consequence.

Really, thought, if she is not a fan of the tactical combat and coordination, it could be a bit of a chore. The selection of your character deck, dealing with negative starting conditions from road events, adjusting your attack modifier deck, selecting your perks, choosing equipment are all factors that feed into the outcome and build connections to the character, along with the story itself.

The different monsters and maps can create unique challenges to work together to overcome. One might create elements each round that can boost enemy abilities and wipe out or convert other elements. Perhaps you build your deck to counter that. Maybe the objectives necessitate covering the whole map. Do you split the party with high movement cards and equip an invisibility cloak for tight spots or do you stay together and hope you don't get exhausted?

With two, you should get to the point that gameplay itself is 1 to 1.5 hours a scenario. My pattern is to ask my son which one he would like to tackle next. I will then do all the set up and call him in when it is ready to go. We also tend to return to Gloomhaven after the scenario and take care of any purchases, City events, tithing, perks, etc. so that we are ready to roll next game.

Thanks for the info everyone. I'll try to get her to play the game as is for now and then adjust it after we get some more play time.

There are very few consequences for losing scenarios.

BUT

There ARE some significant choices regarding which scenarios you choose to complete, how they impact the world and your ability to play other scenarios. We're a double handful of games in and we've already picked a side in at least one conflict that has created consequences at the world level (in a global achievement that means we now can't officially do some of the scenarios).

The flavor of the world seems to be such that there aren't a ton of 'good guys' running things and your characters aren't exactly good guys either. So losing a scenario just means you don't progress whereas winning a scenario allows you to progress and make choices that impact the world. You're not saving the world, or saving Gloomhaven (at least as far as we've seen so far). You're just making your mark on the world and see how that change escalates across multiple conflict zones. It's really interesting that way, but it has been frustrating now that we've been consistently losing at a scenario (#5 for those interested [edited, i had said #7 by accident]). We're deciding how much we want to keep bashing our head against it or whether we should go elsewhere and maybe comeback with different characters or after we've unlocked better items.

Maybe take some notes about things that bug you as you go. You might find a good basis for some house rules after a bit. Try not to focus on solutions at first, just what's rubbing you the wrong way. After some time you might find you understand why its there but maybe you can figure out an alternate way to balance things, or just some small tweak that addresses it while only cheating a little.

One example is the end of scenario bit. When you finish a map and all that gold is lying around with no logical reason you can't just scoop it all up it feels wrong not to get a little something. Its for balance purposes, the characters were designed around what gold they can manage to pick up during a game, not in collecting all of it all the time.

A compromise I and others have adopted is to just have 1 extra turn for gold getting. For most characters that's just move and stand on a stack. Its cheating, but only slightly, and alleviates the bad feeling

Jolly Bill wrote:

It's really interesting that way, but it has been frustrating now that we've been consistently losing at a scenario (#7 for those interested). We're deciding how much we want to keep bashing our head against it or whether we should go elsewhere and maybe comeback with difference characters or after we've unlocked better items.

Spoiler:

Ah, Vibrant Grotto. Very tricky, depending on your party. I enjoyed the challenge. That may have been our first non-kill all objective. Really need the mobility (movement cards, boots equipped) and loot cards available. Do you have a Scoundrel or Spellweaver in your party? If not, you could always joint play and additional character or replace a character as you mentioned. There are some tactical solutions as well that can draw enemies away that you either get lucky on or figure out after a playthrough. I think we finished it with the Scoundrel exhausted and my Spellweaver making a mad dash for the last plant/chest.

Wait, maybe I screwed that up. (i meant #5)

editing above comment.

Jolly Bill wrote:

Wait, maybe I screwed that up. (i meant #5)

editing above comment.

Spoiler:

Ah, I bet my response made no sense whatsoever then! Five is the Crypt one with disarm to start. I think that is one you will want to beat. Some good story and plot stuff from that.

We kept banging our heads against a certain foe in Gloomhaven

Spoiler:

Jekserah - town square fight. So we decided after 3 failed runs against her undead hordes to get out of town for a while and have completed 3 other scenarios. I feel bad imagining that there is still an ongoing battle between her forces of undeath and the beleaguered city guards just waiting for us to come back and tip the balance. Funnily only one of the original 4 to go up against her is still in the party as we had a wave of retirements

We had a crazy second scenario. I'll keep my comments generic so not to spoil anything.

When we revealed one of the rooms after the first, I thought it was going to be tough. Surprisingly we were able to take out the main threat within 4 rounds and thought it would be smooth sailing. I had 8 health left, along with a potion. We still had a fair amount of cards left.

Unfortunately, I was over confident about my health because one of the enemies could hit for 4 damage and also drew the 2X damage modifier card. I was now out of action...if I had only used my potion. My wife's tinkerer has 4 enemies to deal with, 2 being elite. She was able to take one down but had to stay in range of one of the elites. She got hit and brought down to a single HP. She managed to heal herself and whittle away at the enemies. On her last turn she had an attack card that did 3 damage. Her last enemy had 3 health.

She just needed to draw any attack modifier except a negative one. And she did, so we limped out of there with a victory. The kicker also was that I achieved my battle goal because I needed to have 3 cards to less in my and and discard pile. When I became exhausted, my hand when to the 'lost' pile or whatever that one is called.

If I had only used my potion instead of saving it so I could get its full effect, it would have went much much more smoothly.

My potion philosophy has been, since it's essentially a free action, just use it as soon as you can gain the full benefit. No one's likely to heal you when you're 3-5 down from max HP.

robc wrote:

Unfortunately, I was over confident about my health because one of the enemies could hit for 4 damage and also drew the 2X damage modifier card. I was now out of action...if I had only used my potion.

Did you choose not to lose a card to prevent taking damage? You can lose one card from your hand or two from your discard pile to negate all damage from one source, regardless of the amount (just damage, not conditions). That is a rule that we forgot to utilize our first few games but is a pretty important one with big burst damage attacks like the one you described.

bhchrist wrote:

...
Did you choose not to lose a card to prevent taking damage?

This one rule has made some scenarios go from impossible to doable.

bhchrist wrote:
robc wrote:

Unfortunately, I was over confident about my health because one of the enemies could hit for 4 damage and also drew the 2X damage modifier card. I was now out of action...if I had only used my potion.

Did you choose not to lose a card to prevent taking damage? You can lose one card from your hand or two from your discard pile to negate all damage from one source, regardless of the amount (just damage, not conditions). That is a rule that we forgot to utilize our first few games but is a pretty important one with big burst damage attacks like the one you described.

I completely forgot about that rule and was reminded of it later. It definitely would have helped!

That rule is the number one reason the game is all about card mitigation. You're never really ko'ed, you usually just run out of cards. That's why using a card ability that makes the card go into the Lost pile is such a big deal. I try and pick cards to use that don't rely on Lost so much.

That was also primarily when starting out as a Brute. Our Tinkerer and Spellweaver are designed to be a little heavier on the Lost usage, but no matter how you shake it, losing cards is still a big choice.

WAIT WHAT? Gloomhaven thread? Noted.

All I want to say is yay! Today is Saturday, my official Gloomhaven day. We’ll be running two to three scenarios this afternoon. I love that my wife is engaged enough that she’ll play games for 8 hours straight. There’s no way she’d do that for a General game day but is fine to for Gloomhaven. That’s still the biggest praise I can level at the game and why I think it’ll stick in my number 1 game spot for a while.