Gloomhaven First Impressions (Spoiler Free)

Gloomhaven is a board game I wanted to play since release but getting a regular group to commit to a Legacy campaign is hard…

So, I played it on Steam instead!

Players will take on the role of a wandering mercenary with their own special set of skills and their own reasons for traveling to this remote corner of the world. Players must work together out of necessity to clear out menacing dungeons and forgotten ruins.

Gloomhaven Game Play

This is just a very brief general gameplay overview with no spoilers.

The gameplay is very simple at its core. Obviously, there is a story around what you’re doing but it boils down to: Go to a Place, Kill All baddies, and Receive a reward. I don’t mean to sound flippant… but in reality, it is what it is.

But what is interesting is the card play.

You select two cards from your hand, and each of these has two abilities. You choose the top half of one and the bottom half of the other. The first card you select also determines your initiative for the round.

Then a monster card is drawn for all the monsters which determines their initiative. Then characters activate from lowest initiative to highest.

Monsters all have a monster card that tells the player how they operate. As mentioned previously, players use the top half of one of the chosen cards and the bottom half of the other.

These actions allow you to move, fly and jump around the map depending on your character. You can also attack and use other effects with your card abilities.

Combat

Attacking is done via the attack card damage plus a flip from a deck that can give from -2 damage up to +2 damage. There is also a chance you will deal no damage at all or even deal double damage!

Positioning and effects may cause a combat advantage or disadvantage. if this is the case two modifiers are drawn and the best, or worst is chosen.

The defender’s defence value is then applied and damage is dealt.

Players have the option to take the damage or burn a card from hand their hand or two from the discard pile to prevent the damage. If a player drops below 1 HP or can not play two cards in a round, they are exhausted and are removed from the scenario.

It’s worth noting that the cards also contain a ‘default action’ which means you’ll always have the option to move and/or attack on your turn.

Activated cards are discarded from the player’s deck, some are permanently ‘burned’ for the scenario and won’t be used again. To get cards back into your hand you need to rest. When choosing cards you can short rest by randomly ‘burning’ a discarded card to return the rest to your hand.

Or, instead of playing cards at all you can take a long rest to heal 2 damage, recover all discarded cards and refresh spent items.

Each scenario is different with the goals changing but once they are met, you win!

Theme

Hard to say without playing a campaign.

Initial thoughts are generic fantasy just like any other fantasy-style game. Not saying that’s a bad thing, I like it. But, nothing special jumps out.

Gloomhaven Summary

As big and expansive as it is and I feel bad saying this, it is just another dungeon crawler. If I want to play a fun dungeon-crawl board game with an overarching story I will always go for Arcadia Quest first.

But of course, there is a lot of digital competition for dungeon crawl games with maybe my favourite of all time being Baldur’s Gate.

The game of Gloomhaven has two major plusses for me:

1. In the board game, you unlock new content which is always more fun when it’s physical. I haven’t played it, but I believe there are perks and new characters or something? That excitement is missed digitally.

2. The card play is really fun if not a complete pain due to it being really difficult! I really like games where you use cards in your hand to pay for the cards you play like Marvel Champions. But here you might want to use both the top and bottom half of the same card, but you can’t!

I do find it very hard and I may have to look at some strategy guides for the board game to see how to best use the cards, I’m really struggling! 🙂

The Digital Game

The digital game is still in beta at the time of writing with the campaign not expected until 2021. But the tutorial is really good and takes you step by step on how to play the game.

Another cool feature is if you hover the mouse over a keyword it tells you exactly what the keyword does. I wish board games had this 🙂

The tutorial not only includes scenarios designed to help you understand moving and attacking but also resting and evading damage. Not many tutorials in games force you to just survive undamaged to complete it and thinking that way seems to be key to this game

Resting is also a gameplay element but I’m really struggling to balance attacking and avoiding with managing my hand of cards. But, it’s better than just spaffing all your card out each turn willy-nilly. It’s a nice puzzle to solve.

Overall I enjoy Gloomhaven and I will probably stream a campaign on Twitch when it’s live. Assuming I’ve watched tutorials so I’m not playing like an idiot!

Jesta ThaRogue