Gloomhaven

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Szlia

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I have been playing this game regularly for while now. We beat the the original campaign doing as much side quests as we could and are now in the process of playing the extension. For me there are two main issues with the game that are making me look forward to the day we are done with it.

1) The game is impossible to balance so it goes without saying that it is grossly unbalanced. Since the only factors that affect the scenario are the number of characters and their levels, things like the composition of the group and the equipment the player have that both have a tremendous effect on the strength and abilities of a party are not factored in. Also the variance in power of some enemies is gigantic depending on how their action deck is drawn. Combine the two, and it's very rare that a scenario hits the sweet spot between bland and impossible. To avoid the blandness, we always play one or two levels above normal, but from time to time, without faults of our own, we hit scenarios that end up impossible to win because we don't have a group that can manage it, because it's poorly designed or simply because it's packed with high variance monsters that randomly wreck us (I guess that also falls under the 'poorly designed' category).

2) The meta narration is not good. Since you can pick and chose in what order you want to do things, there is no flow sense or reason to the overarching storylines. Worse, and this is a light spoiler so you might want to quit reading, there are clues and codes found here and there that hint at some secret story within the story, but that's just smoke blown up our asses because it's incomplete and possibly maybe will pay off over several expansions.

Also 3) many items / abilities / characters are trash.


It all sounds overly negative, but it's still entertaining to play, some scenarios are pretty clever, and since people are always getting new abilities, trying alternate strategies, getting new equipment, changing character class it always stay relatively fresh. I feel it is severely overrated tough.
 

Seananigans

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I have been playing this game regularly for while now. We beat the the original campaign doing as much side quests as we could and are now in the process of playing the extension. For me there are two main issues with the game that are making me look forward to the day we are done with it.

1) The game is impossible to balance so it goes without saying that it is grossly unbalanced. Since the only factors that affect the scenario are the number of characters and their levels, things like the composition of the group and the equipment the player have that both have a tremendous effect on the strength and abilities of a party are not factored in. Also the variance in power of some enemies is gigantic depending on how their action deck is drawn. Combine the two, and it's very rare that a scenario hits the sweet spot between bland and impossible. To avoid the blandness, we always play one or two levels above normal, but from time to time, without faults of our own, we hit scenarios that end up impossible to win because we don't have a group that can manage it, because it's poorly designed or simply because it's packed with high variance monsters that randomly wreck us (I guess that also falls under the 'poorly designed' category).

2) The meta narration is not good. Since you can pick and chose in what order you want to do things, there is no flow sense or reason to the overarching storylines. Worse, and this is a light spoiler so you might want to quit reading, there are clues and codes found here and there that hint at some secret story within the story, but that's just smoke blown up our asses because it's incomplete and possibly maybe will pay off over several expansions.

Also 3) many items / abilities / characters are trash.


It all sounds overly negative, but it's still entertaining to play, some scenarios are pretty clever, and since people are always getting new abilities, trying alternate strategies, getting new equipment, changing character class it always stay relatively fresh. I feel it is severely overrated tough.

TLDR: youve played a game you find to be “seriously overrated” for 100+ hours? Good story.
 
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Szlia

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Seananigans Seananigans there is a social component to tabletop gaming. You don't always play your personal favorite game (I am not sure I even have one... Space Alert ? Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective ? Doom ? Tales of the Arabian Nights ?). Also, an overrated game can still be enjoyable.
 
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Hateyou

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Seananigans Seananigans there is a social component to tabletop gaming. You don't always play your personal favorite game (I am not sure I even have one... Space Alert ? Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective ? Doom ? Tales of the Arabian Nights ?). Also, an overrated game can still be enjoyable.

Agree. For example I really enjoy Kingdom Death but it has flaws and randomness that are sometimes just weird or broken. There are people that worship anything KDM and spends like $10k on it. I love the miniatures, love the art, and it has some really great things going for it, but I still feel it’s over rated/overhyped by the community too.

Haven’t played enough Gloomhaven to say one way or the other, I enjoyed the two sessions we did but also felt it dragged a bit. Will definitely be playing it again in the future, so who knows maybe I’ll have a raging boner for it some day like the rest of the gaming community.
 
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Guurn

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I have been playing this game regularly for while now. We beat the the original campaign doing as much side quests as we could and are now in the process of playing the extension. For me there are two main issues with the game that are making me look forward to the day we are done with it.

1) The game is impossible to balance so it goes without saying that it is grossly unbalanced. Since the only factors that affect the scenario are the number of characters and their levels, things like the composition of the group and the equipment the player have that both have a tremendous effect on the strength and abilities of a party are not factored in. Also the variance in power of some enemies is gigantic depending on how their action deck is drawn. Combine the two, and it's very rare that a scenario hits the sweet spot between bland and impossible. To avoid the blandness, we always play one or two levels above normal, but from time to time, without faults of our own, we hit scenarios that end up impossible to win because we don't have a group that can manage it, because it's poorly designed or simply because it's packed with high variance monsters that randomly wreck us (I guess that also falls under the 'poorly designed' category).

2) The meta narration is not good. Since you can pick and chose in what order you want to do things, there is no flow sense or reason to the overarching storylines. Worse, and this is a light spoiler so you might want to quit reading, there are clues and codes found here and there that hint at some secret story within the story, but that's just smoke blown up our asses because it's incomplete and possibly maybe will pay off over several expansions.

Also 3) many items / abilities / characters are trash.


It all sounds overly negative, but it's still entertaining to play, some scenarios are pretty clever, and since people are always getting new abilities, trying alternate strategies, getting new equipment, changing character class it always stay relatively fresh. I feel it is severely overrated tough.
I'm definitely on the number 2 bandwagon. I'm not sure I'll every finish the campaign but, honestly, I don't even care. This game has been super enjoyable over many many plays. For the 80+ 50 or whatever the insert cost at the time it's very worth it. I'm pretty torn on Frosthaven because I'm not sure I need more of this. I'd be more tempted if they switched the mechanics of the fiddly bits more.

I've mentioned before that I took a break after 25 plays or so and even though it's easy to pick up the gameplay again the story, not so much. Probably because it's not great.
 

Qhue

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2020-03-02.jpg


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Sorry for the low rez. Classes seen at PAX include : Necromancer, Red Guard, Demolitionist, and Hatchet. They are 4 of the 6 'basic' classes at the start of Frosthaven.
 
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Julian The Apostate

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Being stuck in the house for the foreseeable future seems like a great time to start this campaign with the wife. With 2 people is it advised to each play two classes? Any good class combinations we should start with?
 

Hateyou

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Being stuck in the house for the foreseeable future seems like a great time to start this campaign with the wife. With 2 people is it advised to each play two classes? Any good class combinations we should start with?

I’d say one class each or have a third one you can rotate. From what I’ve read four really slows it down, and you’re also not supposed to coordinate your actions, playing multiple would negate that aspect of the game.
 

Julian The Apostate

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I’d say one class each or have a third one you can rotate. From what I’ve read four really slows it down, and you’re also not supposed to coordinate your actions, playing multiple would negate that aspect of the game.


I read briefly on the Gloomhaven reddit not to pick the Tinkerer for 2 player and it said two 2-player combinations that were the most powerful that we’ll probably use to start since my wife is not a gamer, but after that I’m gonna play it blind. Just going to go 1 character each to start to keep game times down.
 

Seananigans

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It’s one of those games that “scales” but is definitely best balanced for 4 chars.
 

Mizake

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Being stuck in the house for the foreseeable future seems like a great time to start this campaign with the wife. With 2 people is it advised to each play two classes? Any good class combinations we should start with?

I would NOT advise each playing two classes, especially when you are just starting out. The game is quite involved, and it takes a few games in to get a feel for all the game mechanics. With each of you playing a single character, that should be plenty since the game scales really well with different player counts.....actually probably the board game that does it best from all those I have played.

Starting classes are Brute (melee/tank), Scoundrel (melee/dps), Spellweaver (ranged/aoe/dps), Tinkerer (support), Mindthief (melee/dps), and Cragheart (melee/aoe/support).

The way the game scales is that with more players, you fight against more enemies, and the enemies are tougher. So certain classes that do AOE benefit when there are more players/monsters in the game. This would be Spellweaver, Tinkerer, and Cragheart - not that you can't play them as 2p, but they really shine when it's 4p. Scoundrel and Mindthief are both great single target dps, and Brute is an OK tank (probably the best as far as the starting classes go) and OK dps.

Although you don't need a tank in Gloomhaven, it does make things a lot easier if you are coming from a background of traditional D&D type games. It's almost always better to kill/disable monsters than it is to heal, so healers are not that important, especially at lower player counts. Tinkerer and Cragheart would be your "healers" out of the starting classes.

So I agree avoid Tinkerer if you are only playing 2p. Spellweaver has a small hand size, uses lost cards more than other classes, and is little more difficult to play if you aren't use to the genre, so take that into account. My two favorite classes to play out of the starters were Cragheart and Mindthief, and those 2 make a pretty good duo. Brute/Scoundrel would also make a great duo. I would not do Mindthief/Scoundrel as that gives you 2 melee dps and not enough variability to deal with all the different types of mobs you will encounter.
 
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Hatorade

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Brute Cragheart is easy mode, Cragheart can do massive ranged damage and brute can do massive melee, both have heals if needed.
 
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Cutlery

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Brute Cragheart is easy mode, Cragheart can do massive ranged damage and brute can do massive melee, both have heals if needed.

I dunno if I agree with that, if I'm ranking the starting 6, brute comes in 5th. And the Cragheart flows really smoothly if you have Earth when you want Earth, and that takes a little while to understand. Spellweaver/Cragheart is really good though, and Brute/Scoundrel can be good, depending on how well you understand game mechanics.

The one thing to remember is that this is not a MMO or typical dungeon crawler. The brute is NOT a tank. In fact, with one exception, you can't really "tank" in this game. Trying to do so will get you murderated in short order. This game is all about understanding monster AI and how to do damage without taking it. It's much more a roguelike than a typical RPG.

Anyway, if you're starting out, I recommend just controlling 1 character each. After you understand the game more you can move to 2.

And btw, Frosthaven Kickstarter appears to be delayed until 3/31.
 

Hatorade

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Cutlery Cutlery I guess you picked different cards, my Brute would attack, move, attack. Or move huge distances and land a massive attack, then shield up and counter hit everything. Brute is really good at getting close and putting up a shield wall. I would routinely run to back of room nearly one shot the boss and soak up the damage.

Crag needed a round to setup but then the next 5 he could pick two(three?) targets with a large AoE like boulder throw you can blast shit for 10ish +1x3 if they clustered.You could spec him to push/pull into objects but situational and requires more setup/luck.
 

Cutlery

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Cutlery Cutlery I guess you picked different cards, my Brute would attack, move, attack. Or move huge distances and land a massive attack, then shield up and counter hit everything. Brute is really good at getting close and putting up a shield wall. I would routinely run to back of room nearly one shot the boss and soak up the damage.

Crag needed a round to setup but then the next 5 he could pick two(three?) targets with a large AoE like boulder throw you can blast shit for 10ish +1x3 if they clustered.You could spec him to push/pull into objects but situational and requires more setup/luck.

I think it's more the fact that the brute's shield wall is ineffective until you get gear (so, beyond a starting character/prosperity) and the fact that a lot of the brute's cards depend on him being in range of multiple enemies. Despite 10hp, he does not take hits well, and things like his cleave require you to be in a bad position to do that. Skewer and Spare Dagger actually ended up being stronger at low levels due to being able to attack at range. He doesn't take hits well, his initiatives mostly suck, and his toolkit sucks.

Yeah, Trample is great, but that's once a scenario, and a move 6 into an attack 6 every time thru the deck is powerful, but it's not more powerful than other classes. I'd rate the Mindthief as being a superior melee to the brute, hands down.

I think I've played thru the brute 4 or 5 times now, and I'd definitely put him right above the tinkerer for power on the starting 6. Everyone else just gets more tools to work with and better early/late initiatives.
 

Mizake

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Although I do agree tanking is completely unnecessary in Gloomhaven, I would disagree that the Brute sucks at it. Really, there are probably only 2 classes in the entire game that can tank, the Brute and the Sun.

I played Brute as my first character as a tank, and he did just fine. Although he doesn't have much tanking ability early in the game, the enemies are easy enough that you don't really need much. Later on, you get better abilities that will help you mitigate more damage. The best thing I found about tanking with the Brute is that you aren't actually a pure tank - you still try and avoid damage, you are able to take some, but you also get to dish out damage/disables.

It's a fairly straightforward character to play, and I feel that it fits well as a starting class. I really enjoyed playing the Brute, although I know it ranks low on favorite/fun character polls.

The Sun class, probably the most pure tanking class in Gloomhaven, I feel does a really good job at tanking, but it's fairly boring to play. I had more fun playing the Brute. If you think initiative sucks with the Brute (which I didn't find), then you are really in for it with the Sun. So many of Sun's cards are 40-50 ish initiative, especially the attack cards. His movement gets gimped by his best defensive card, and his attacks get gimped by his best retaliate card. When playing Sun, I found myself trying to play as a tank, meaning run into as many mobs as possible and soak up/retaliate as much as possible.

Sun does what he was meant to do really well. The easiest time I ever had in GH was in the 4-player group when I was Sun, another was Music Note....I eventually hit level 8, Music Note got to 9, and almost every scenario was a piece of cake.
 

Seananigans

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Last 24h on the Frosthaven Kickstarter FYI. I’m in, GH was a ridiculous ROI and the new mechanics seem neat.
 

Hateyou

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Looks cool, we’ve barely got into Gloomhaven so I’m not in, maybe in retail if we ever finish GH. I thought it had a chance to beat Kingdom Deaths record but it doesn’t look like it will, still a damn good run for how low the entry point is and not really many addons like KDM.
 

Guurn

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I'm in on Frosthaven. I'm seriously considering giving my Gloomhaven to a friends kid later this summer. Here's to hoping I can get him and his kid for a 4 person game with mine.
 
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