I think with the calculating attack it is very important to note that if the damage applied is zero (including when you draw a null card), then the effects and retaliate still activate! People may incorrectly interpret especially the null card as a "miss", but such a concept does not exist in the game.
With respect to the rolling modifiers and house rules. We found that with the right deck structure and using the official rules, having disadvantage was statistically better than a straight draw. This didn't sit right with us so we implemented a variation of the house rule you described. Two piles of valid single draws: Advantage - the player choses the pile they would like (so they may select the -1 stun if situationally better) Disadvantage - the lowest number is always selected (removes player choice). Yes this is slightly better than the official rules in terms of favouring the player with advantage, but feels better. (and rewards players for perking into deck consistency)
You also get the lost card back you used in the same turn when you play reviving ether. For example, if your planning to use reviving ether and the other card you have has a bottom burn abillity, use the bottom ability first and then use reviving ether to get all cards back in your hand :) Some examples i like are, Ride the Wind , Icy Wind, Cold Fire etc.
I didn’t know about the charges on items, thank you! As for refreshing consumed items, I believe items like the empowering talisman allow you to use the consumed item again.
Yes that’s right, love that item! I didn’t want to confuse things too much by rattling off all the exceptions to the rules the items and abilities bring in 😉
The way me and my mates houserule the modifiers is the pile variation, with disadvantage we ignore rolling mods so the -1 stun and +0 would simply become -1 without stun
Nice thing about discarding summons and getting the card back with reviving ether is that you get to catch your summon up to you close to the last room if its fallen behind.
Thanks for the clarifications. Good video. My son and I went straight to Gloomhaven digital. Been interested in the board game for some time but I just don't have the space to store such a monster. (Plus the wife would kill me;) I have many board games but this digital version has been fantastic so far. I look forward to it's future.
Jaws of the lion mate. Much smaller. Introduces you to gloom tabletop easily with tutorials and stuff. You get 25 scenarious (20 if you exclude tutorials) and you get to see if tabletop is for you. I cannot recommand it enough if you want to start your journey.
I'm new to the game and oddly the rolling modifier cards to me were the easiest to understand. Maybe the rules are different now but he still doesn't have it quite right. For advantage you don't Only ever draw two cards. When in the case of two rolling modifiers you keep drawing until you get a non rolling one. Then add all cards together.
At disadvantage you keep drawing cards until you have 2 non rolling modifier cards and then select the worst of the two. (can still be a positive outcome) So your x2 damage example would only happen if you draw 2 of those cards in disadvantage. Also there is no 'miss' card in the game, its a 0 damage card, any other effects like poison etc are still applied. It sucks if you draw a 0 damage after rolling modifiers on advantage but that chance is slim and you may still do the other effects.
Just signed up for your Gloomhaven giveaway in that reddit thread, meanwhile had another thread open where I was trying to get rules set up for JOTL. funny that your video was the one I had queued up :D
A lot of these have been modified in Frosthaven, like the advantage with modifiers. There's a reddit post which outlines which rules have been modded and a lot of them are house rules which people played with without knowing haha
My house rule surrounding rolling modifier advantage/disadvantage is: just draw the two cards, if one is a rolling modifier you resolve the advantage/disadvantage and if you picked the rolling modifier, continue as you would when drawing normally (and discard the other card drawn from advantage/ disadvantage)
Not sure I understand, so you treat the rolling advantage card as a selectable card? With disadvantage your supposed to ignore them and with advantage add them together. So are you saying with advantage you would choose the rolling modifier over the other card drawn instead, and then resolve that rolling modifier drawing more cards to get a final result. This is the same as the two piles essentially but with less drawing I guess.
@@MandatoryQuest I meant that I’d look at the value of the 2 cards that you’d draw from either advantage or disadvantage. For example: if you have advantage and you draw a +1 rolling modifier and a normal +2 modifier, I’d pick the +2, since its value is higher at that moment. If you have disadvantage in that scenario, I’d take the +1 rolling modifier since it has lower value and then resolve it’s effect as you normally would afterwards. :) the difference between my rule and yours is that there’s no comparing the end results of the two possible piles created in the end as you can only view the first cards in the two possible “chains”
That’s an interesting way to do it, but that nerfs advantage as RAW you would add them both and have +3 in your example. Feels like a nerf to advantage overall (but blocks the miss) and a buff to disadvantage as with getting rolling modifiers what if that selected +1 rolling flipped into 2X. I don’t think there’s a perfect solution either way to be honest, perhaps this is why rolling modifiers aren’t in JOTL.
If i am right, you do nit draw only 2 modifier cards if boths are rolling modifiers. If both are rolling modifier cards while having sdvantage xou kepp drawing until you hit a numeric nunber. So you could draw 5 rolling modifiers ore more with advantage and still get a 2x or 1 or 0 or -1 or -2.
The game rules for rolling cards in advantage/disadvantage actually makes sence. If you get a stun/ rolling card and null you combine them because a stun with no damage is better than nothing. It doesnt actually take away from the value of the rolling card or advantage because you still get the stun and reshuffle the attack modify deck. The attack with advantage just saved you from an effortless action and refreshes that and possibly more spent rolling cards..
Stun and disarm rolling are the only exceptions really, although you could still lose if you did not have enough stamina to perform another set of actions. All in all they have fixed the problem now in the Frosthaven rules.
When I started playing Gloomhaven digital i noticed a whole handful of rules that my IRL-group had got wrong. How poison works, how shield items work, how range aoe work und duration of conditions to name a few.
@@MandatoryQuest Unintentional house rules :) We treated poison as dmg separate from the attack and thus unblockable by shields. All shield items were treated as the body armors that you were forced to use. For range aoe we thought that a monster had to be in a hex within the range. For conditions we mixed up round and turn which allowed us to stun a monster for two turns if we acted before it in the round.
It is shuffled whenever you draw a card that says so. In basic deck, x2 and nulls all cause you to shuffle, and, if my memory serves, so do Great Tree blessings.
I would not recommend your house rules regarding advantage/disadvantage. It improves your advantage AND disadvantage. The basic rules do not allow rolling modifiers with disadvantage. This makes disadvantages feel irrelevant. But I would not recommend the basic rules either, because rolling modifiers downgrade your deck with advantage. The solution for both is to always make two stacks and ignore all rolling modifiers with disadvantages. This improves the advantage a bit, because your rolling modifiers are now useful for the advantage, and it worsens the disadvantage, because rolling modifiers do not affect the disadvantage with this rule. It also removes the disadvantage ambiguity regarding your rules.
That’s pretty much my rule, you still have rules ambiguity’s though. Let’s say I draw a rolling +1 into a 0 with wound for stack 1, then for stack 2 I draw a rolling +1 into a 0 with immobilise. You still have to make that call on which is worse immobilise or wound in that situation. The only way to remove the ambiguity is to follow the rules as written but only for disadvantage. If there was a better system. Jaws of the lion changes the rules to make them a little bit simpler. You still always draw two but in the case of an ambiguity you take the first card drawn with disadvantage which I think I like and would probably recommend. However with no rolling modifiers in that game they don’t touch on them unfortunately.
@@MandatoryQuest Sorry, but I understood it in your video, that you do not ignore the rolling modifiers with disadvantage. Yes, but you still would get this result if you use the rules as written without the roling +1. If you only draw the 0 with wound and then the 0 with immobilize, they would still be ambiguous in the written rules.
@@JoanneSDread In general I think we can agree the original rules are a bit of a mess to understand. Its nice to see that in JOTL its sort of fixed, but rolling modifiers are completely gone which is a shame. Perhaps in Frosthaven this will be the case too, or we will at least get a clearer/better rule set for rolling modifiers which we can retroactively apply to Gloomhaven too.
@@JoanneSDread I'd say the middle ground would be best in case of advantage. You draw cards until you have 2 non-rolling cards. Ignore all the rolling cards, and take the worst of the two normal ones. If there it's unclear which of those two is worse (e.g. +1 and stun and +1 and an element) you take the first one that you've drawn, as by the rule book. This is basically the same as in the rulebook, with the slight difference that you can never get a x2. For advantage I think that MQs house rule works fine, where you make two stacks, and the player can choose which of the two to use.
@@MandatoryQuest Ambiguity, according to the rules, is resolved by doing whichever was drawn first. In the example you gave (0 with wound or 0 with immobilise) whichever one was drawn first is the one you resolve and this occurs regardless of whether you are attacking with advantage or disadvantage.
Wait i'm a bit confused about advantage/disadvantage. I was pretty sure that the digital version does this: 1) Draw the "base" of the attack (the modifier that doesn't let you draw). 2) Pick the higher base (advantage) or lower base (disadvantage). 3) Show what you draw "on top" of the base card (all the modifiers that make you keep drawing). Now i think the game does what you said, making 2 piles by drawing all the "draw modifiers" behind the scenes, then does a "base" check to see which one is the worse/best picking the pile only using that "base" as reference and showing you only the outcome. Am i missing something?
My take on the digital rules (based on reading it from the menu so i could be mistaken) is as follow: With advantage: You draw cards until you have at least one that is not rolling and then draw one more just for the number (ignore any rolling effectcon that last card) then you pick wichever of the final two is the best plus all the pile of rolling modifier. So you don't have two stacks, you have one stack with two tops you chose from. With disadvantage i'm not sure but i think it's the same as raw: just ignore the rolling effect and pick the worse/lowest number.
07:15 so you multiply the additional poison damage as well? so with smoke bomb and x2 attach modifier it would end up 4 damage only from poison, correct?
Yes that’s right you always include poison before multiplying, however remember poison is not like wound where it always does damage. You still need to land the attack (not draw a miss or curse) to do the additional poison damage as it is added to your attack not separate. Hope this helps.
Picked up the steam game, loving it so far though I can't see myself playing it solo, good thing I have a co-op partner As I play tinkerer, those goggles are amazing for my AoE attacks
Your house rule for rolling modifiers is far superior to the actual actual rule (which I was unaware of), however might be OP. With the official rules on the other hand, having Advantage seems to me to massively de-value rolling modifiers (which are typically rather weak on their own). To the extent that (and assuming your deck has a ton of rolling modifiers) having Advantage is actually a disadvantage. Did that make sense?
Absolutely and its the main reason why the official rule sucks. Luckily they have fixed it for the most part in Frosthaven, and they introduced this into digital now too under the house rule menu in options :)
I've only recently begun playing Gloomhaven (table top version) but I was slightly confused about items that are 'lost'. If I use my starting gold to buy two items and one is lost when I use it - if I use it when I first play a scenario but I lose that scenario, when I replay that scenario without going back to Gloomhaven and use the same character, does that mean that item is then gone forever until I make enough gold to go back and buy a new one? Or do I get it back, or do I choose two new items for the next attempt?
I don’t think it does, but if you hover over the enemies you can see their deck. If you do notice that happen make sure to report it as a bug as they are trying to make it by the book with the rules.
If i have advantage, and draw +1 as 1st card then a Leaf rolling modifier as 2nd card, do I A : draw another card B : not draw another card since I drew 2 cards A or B???
I hope you found your house by now. We started about 2 months ago and have had 5 offers fall through. It's a terrible time to buy a house right now....
We did thank you,. It took us a year and lowering our expectations a bit, but we did get house number 3 but I now need to renovate the whole place! Good luck in your search it’s hell out there right now.
With items with charges, such as the Hide Armor, are using the charges optional? We played the board game yesterday and my brother in law insists that the armor is active as soon as the scenario begins, and the damage mitigation immediately happens from the first two sources of damage. If so, it would be highly unlikely to not have the item spent by the time you need a long rest.
Your brother in law is correct you cannot choose to not use hide armour, and opt to take the damage instead. This refresh rule will come onto play a lot more with higher quality armour you find later.
@@MandatoryQuest So you said above that with Hide Armour, using the charge is not optional, but is this the case with all items with charges, or is there different wording on some so it IS player's choice? I guess the same question applies to cards that give charges as well.
@@ghostlightx9005 well armour items are the only ones with charges. For cards with charges usually the actual card will specify by saying "may" if it's optional.
So, @7:20 Smoke bomb would double the value of the attack pre-draw only? Like if I draw a -1 it only gets applied after smoke bomb, meaning "the value of the attack" does not include any +/- from a modifier card?
Smoke Bomb is a bit weird it does actually double everything. Its kind of the exception to the rule because of how its worded. There is an unlockable character who also has a double effect, and that specifically references attack value so it doesnt double the modifier.
If your first card is a rolling then you would create pile 1 by drawing until you have a non rolling, then create pile 2 the same way. Then you would pick the best or worst. It’s not a great system to be honest, but worked for us initially. I’d check out the new Frosthaven system in my other video on the changes as it’s much cleaner and better.
Just that ambiguity is decided randomly in Digital whereas in physical players would choose. This can lead to certain scenarios being a bit more RnG at times, and summoning characters having a rougher time in Digital too.
I have one interesting one as well: If you miss a target with an attack you don't get the XP that was on the card. You can't just get XP by swinging your weapon in the air.
Rolling modifiers are MEGA strong. They shift the balance of your modifier deck ridiculously. Their one downside is that they can turn an advantage into a crit fail. That evens them out a little bit. If you house-rule that away, the balance of the game skews incredibly. Characters (less so those who play support) who are full of rolling modifiers would DOMINATE. Gloomhaven has a bit of push and pull for most things - this house rule throws away an interlocking piece of the game. I'm not against house rules, but that seems egregious to me. If you build Sun (for example) around those house rules she's so dominant you can often leave your party in the first room and just solo the mission. You could advantage into bless/crit CONSTANTLY with little to no fear of curse/crit-fail? Yikes. Of course, it's no skin off my back - but one thing I like about Gloomhaven is that it's more tactics than it is power-fantasy. I want to eek out a mission with impeccable placement and teamwork, not create a cabal of never-missing behemoths to cudgel the last third of the campaign.
Characters that can abuse strengthen obviously skew things with house ruling advantage. If you are playing or building a character to abuse a certain house rule I would also say its pretty obviously not in the spirit of the game. The fun in Gloomhaven is in the challenge like you say, and not in just stomping missions. Its a very common house rule for a reason as it opens up many perks for characters and allows you to play more care free. There are plenty of fundamentally over powered things in the game as standard (looking at you Eclipse and Three Spears) that you can abuse if that's your plan anyways.
@@MandatoryQuest Fair enough. Not trying to rain on anyone's parade. I'd rather lower the difficulty or take the officially suggested house rule of turning crits into -2/+2 in order to play a bit more carefree. Still, to each their own :)
im not sure why it should be a no-brainer to apply poison as attack effect always first. this is one of the few things wehre it literally makes no difference
Not sure I understand what you mean? it's just to ensure people calculate damage correctly for crits. The rest of the ordering of attacks is just so people understand you don't get the benefits of poison unless it's already on the target. All negative effects attached to the attack only apply if the target doesn't die from the attack.
Me too with my usual group. We just sort of started playing that way thinking it was the correct rule, and we’re far too far down that road to change now.
uhh... ye I played Disadvantage and Advantage wrong... mebi? I mean they're called "Rolling" cards so I always thought they want you to draw another card if you draw it. So my group always just drew attack modifiers until there were 2 that were not rolling. If you had advantage you picked the better non-rolling card and add all the rolling to it. If it was disadvantage you pick the worse one and ignore all rolling benefits. I'm actually struggling to understand what you said. You only draw 2 cards, and if you have advantage you can still miss??? waaaaah?! Why would anyone want rolling cards in their deck if this is true?
It seems confusing that with rolling modifer rule thst disadvantage is good and advantage is bad for you if i understand you. I'm recent new to gloomhaven via digital.
It's not good for disadvantage particularly because you would just ignore rolling modifiers entirely, so you would still hit that miss. It's just that rolling modifiers are not much better WITH advantage that sucks. In Digital though they are just finishing up the patch that adds the new better Frosthaven rules in so we wont have to deal with that for much longer.
Im still confused as to how the END OF ROUND works. It says when all players are out of cards but not all players are out of cards when other are. How do you determine end of round if a player always has 2 cards available to play?? If Hatchet has already LOST 3 cards and the Red Guard has only LOST 1 then Hatchet will be running out of cards and resting before Red Guard is out of cards. There is always a player with 2 cards ready. Im very confused and cannot proceed with my scenario's until I figure it out. Thanks!!!
End of round is when all players have played their two selected cards and all enemies have acted. That signifies the end of the round and the beginning of a new round starting with card selection or the option to rest. Each round should consist of every player playing two cards or long long resting to recover cards instead.
You have advantage slightly incorrect with rolling modifiers. You said that you draw 2 cards at maximum, and that is incorrect. If you draw 2 rolling modifiers, you draw additional cards until you draw a non rolling modifier.
Yeah It’s the small details that matter though. YT sucks for trying to add errata to a video, so I’ve tried the best I can with cards and adding it to the top of the description.
That draw would be ambiguous due to the stun effect having a positive but numerically unmeasurable effect, so you would instead take the first card drawn so in this case the +1.
Ahhh crap we had the same problem as the first house was our dream home, everything else looked rubbish by comparison. We settled for a fixer upper in the end with the goal of making it like the other one 😂
I am confused about advantage on rolling modifiers. So if 1 draw 3 rolling modifier cards and than normal +1 all attack modifiers are added together right? If it ends in a miss shit happens. If i draw a normal modifier and than a rolling modifier i don't get to draw additional rolling modifiers just 2 cards right no more? and the normal attack modifiers are also 2 cards and than only the better? so what i understand is it depends on the first card whether is rolling modifier or normal.
It is always only two cards that you draw regardless. If you have advantage and one of the the two cards drawn is a rolling modifier you add that card to the other drawn. If you have disadvantage you disregard all rolling modifiers and have to take the other card. The order in which you draw the rolling modifier (first or second) is irrelevant. As disadvantage ignores rolling modifiers if you were to draw two rolling modifiers as your initial draw you would need to continue drawing untill you draw a non rolling modifier card to use. Hope that makes a little more sense
@@MandatoryQuest I found this on another webside and now it's better understandable what do you think about the houserule: gloomhavenshop.com/rules/rolling-modifiers/ The Two-Stack Solution just says that if you draw a rolling modifier when you have Advantage/Disadvantage you continue to draw until the modifier reaches a conclusion. That’s Stack 1. Then you draw again, follow that stack to a conclusion (Stack 2) and pick the result that is either better or worse (depending on if you have Disadvantage or Advantage). This method stays true to having two options and taking the better/worse one, instead of having a rolling modifier eat up one of those spaces.
I think it’s a fine house rule in fact that’s how I play it on tabletop. The only draw back to that house rule is if you apply the stack rule to disadvantage too then sometimes it can be hard to say what stack is worse. A stack with -1 damage and a stun, could be argued as better than a +1 damage and no stun for example.
@@_arkoner_2274 If you attack with advantage you draw 2 cards from your deck. If those 2 cards are both rolling modifiers you keep drawing until you draw a card that is not a rolling modifier and then add them all together. If only one of the two cards were rolling modifiers you'd just add them two together. For situations involving ambiguity (say you drew a 0 with immobilise and a 0 with muddle) then whichever one you drew first is the one you use for your attack, regardless of whether this attack has advantage or disadvantage.
Regarding charges when long resting, just play it like you want. It only makes sense that all charges are regained and that's how we play it. You don't *have* to follow rules this strictly.
You do if your playing digital, and although it’s a common house rule if people like to play RAW it’s worth pointing out. I agree it’s an odd rule though, and if your playing tabletop just play it how you feel comfortable.
New Frosthaven update details a new change to the rules to not punish rolling modifier draws on advantage. I'm so happy they have addressed it and made rolling modifiers viable for everyone again.
Did i catch anyone out? What rules have you found tricky to understand? Become a Patron for early access to videos - www.patreon.com/mandatoryquest Grab some sweet merch - www.mandatoryquest.com
Great vid, MQ! This same video style with just AI monster movement rules might be helpful. If you don’t read the rule book and only play digital, people might not know why a ranged monster with disarm is getting cozy, or why a monster moved to another character when it was further away as the crow flies, or even that invisible makes monsters treat the player as an obstacle.
@@MandatoryQuest 2nd a monster movement video. After 5 months of playing multiple times a week we still come across occasional new situations we have to spend time looking up what is supposed to actually happen w/ monster movement.
• An attacker with Advantage will draw two modifier cards from their deck and use whichever one is better. If one rolling modifier card was drawn, its effect is added to the other card played. If two rolling modifier cards were drawn, continue to draw cards until a rolling modifier is not drawn and then add together all drawn effects .
I think with the calculating attack it is very important to note that if the damage applied is zero (including when you draw a null card), then the effects and retaliate still activate! People may incorrectly interpret especially the null card as a "miss", but such a concept does not exist in the game.
Good point that's a very commonly misplayed interaction.
With respect to the rolling modifiers and house rules.
We found that with the right deck structure and using the official rules, having disadvantage was statistically better than a straight draw.
This didn't sit right with us so we implemented a variation of the house rule you described.
Two piles of valid single draws:
Advantage - the player choses the pile they would like (so they may select the -1 stun if situationally better)
Disadvantage - the lowest number is always selected (removes player choice).
Yes this is slightly better than the official rules in terms of favouring the player with advantage, but feels better. (and rewards players for perking into deck consistency)
Thanks for all these helpful vids. Bought my house many years ago but memories of the process will still lead to a cold sweat.
You also get the lost card back you used in the same turn when you play reviving ether.
For example, if your planning to use reviving ether and the other card you have has a bottom burn abillity, use the bottom ability first and then use reviving ether to get all cards back in your hand :)
Some examples i like are, Ride the Wind , Icy Wind, Cold Fire etc.
I didn’t know about the charges on items, thank you! As for refreshing consumed items, I believe items like the empowering talisman allow you to use the consumed item again.
Yes that’s right, love that item! I didn’t want to confuse things too much by rattling off all the exceptions to the rules the items and abilities bring in 😉
The way me and my mates houserule the modifiers is the pile variation, with disadvantage we ignore rolling mods so the -1 stun and +0 would simply become -1 without stun
Yeah that sounds fair. It stops players from getting beneficial negative condition flips which is mostly the issue.
Nice thing about discarding summons and getting the card back with reviving ether is that you get to catch your summon up to you close to the last room if its fallen behind.
Thanks for the clarifications. Good video. My son and I went straight to Gloomhaven digital. Been interested in the board game for some time but I just don't have the space to store such a monster. (Plus the wife would kill me;) I have many board games but this digital version has been fantastic so far. I look forward to it's future.
Nice I’m glad it helped, digital is really awesome and defiantly a wallet and space saver compared to physical.
Jaws of the lion mate. Much smaller. Introduces you to gloom tabletop easily with tutorials and stuff. You get 25 scenarious (20 if you exclude tutorials) and you get to see if tabletop is for you. I cannot recommand it enough if you want to start your journey.
@@mastersrybnik Yeah that's a great recommendation if you want that physical experience without the big initial outlay.
I'm new to the game and oddly the rolling modifier cards to me were the easiest to understand. Maybe the rules are different now but he still doesn't have it quite right. For advantage you don't Only ever draw two cards. When in the case of two rolling modifiers you keep drawing until you get a non rolling one. Then add all cards together.
At disadvantage you keep drawing cards until you have 2 non rolling modifier cards and then select the worst of the two. (can still be a positive outcome)
So your x2 damage example would only happen if you draw 2 of those cards in disadvantage.
Also there is no 'miss' card in the game, its a 0 damage card, any other effects like poison etc are still applied.
It sucks if you draw a 0 damage after rolling modifiers on advantage but that chance is slim and you may still do the other effects.
Just signed up for your Gloomhaven giveaway in that reddit thread, meanwhile had another thread open where I was trying to get rules set up for JOTL. funny that your video was the one I had queued up :D
Haha well good luck! :)
just picking up the game, got it at a steal. thank you for the vid, hope the comment helps!
Thank you and good luck on your GH adventures :)
A lot of these have been modified in Frosthaven, like the advantage with modifiers. There's a reddit post which outlines which rules have been modded and a lot of them are house rules which people played with without knowing haha
My house rule surrounding rolling modifier advantage/disadvantage is: just draw the two cards, if one is a rolling modifier you resolve the advantage/disadvantage and if you picked the rolling modifier, continue as you would when drawing normally (and discard the other card drawn from advantage/ disadvantage)
Not sure I understand, so you treat the rolling advantage card as a selectable card? With disadvantage your supposed to ignore them and with advantage add them together. So are you saying with advantage you would choose the rolling modifier over the other card drawn instead, and then resolve that rolling modifier drawing more cards to get a final result. This is the same as the two piles essentially but with less drawing I guess.
@@MandatoryQuest I meant that I’d look at the value of the 2 cards that you’d draw from either advantage or disadvantage. For example: if you have advantage and you draw a +1 rolling modifier and a normal +2 modifier, I’d pick the +2, since its value is higher at that moment. If you have disadvantage in that scenario, I’d take the +1 rolling modifier since it has lower value and then resolve it’s effect as you normally would afterwards. :) the difference between my rule and yours is that there’s no comparing the end results of the two possible piles created in the end as you can only view the first cards in the two possible “chains”
That’s an interesting way to do it, but that nerfs advantage as RAW you would add them both and have +3 in your example. Feels like a nerf to advantage overall (but blocks the miss) and a buff to disadvantage as with getting rolling modifiers what if that selected +1 rolling flipped into 2X. I don’t think there’s a perfect solution either way to be honest, perhaps this is why rolling modifiers aren’t in JOTL.
If i am right, you do nit draw only 2 modifier cards if boths are rolling modifiers. If both are rolling modifier cards while having sdvantage xou kepp drawing until you hit a numeric nunber. So you could draw 5 rolling modifiers ore more with advantage and still get a 2x or 1 or 0 or -1 or -2.
This video isn't new, so maybe no one reads this, but I bought the digital game although I didn't know anything about the board game. And I love it.
I read it! I think the digital game is not only a great implementation but a great game in its own right. Glad you’re loving it 😀
The game rules for rolling cards in advantage/disadvantage actually makes sence. If you get a stun/ rolling card and null you combine them because a stun with no damage is better than nothing. It doesnt actually take away from the value of the rolling card or advantage because you still get the stun and reshuffle the attack modify deck. The attack with advantage just saved you from an effortless action and refreshes that and possibly more spent rolling cards..
Stun and disarm rolling are the only exceptions really, although you could still lose if you did not have enough stamina to perform another set of actions. All in all they have fixed the problem now in the Frosthaven rules.
When I started playing Gloomhaven digital i noticed a whole handful of rules that my IRL-group had got wrong. How poison works, how shield items work, how range aoe work und duration of conditions to name a few.
Yeah it’s crazy right? Goes to show how much we don’t question rules, once we think we know it the rule book stays in the box.
Would be interested to hear how you were playing those rules? Might make for some fun house rules or another video 😄
@@MandatoryQuest Unintentional house rules :)
We treated poison as dmg separate from the attack and thus unblockable by shields. All shield items were treated as the body armors that you were forced to use. For range aoe we thought that a monster had to be in a hex within the range. For conditions we mixed up round and turn which allowed us to stun a monster for two turns if we acted before it in the round.
I understand the rules like this: you simply draw 2 cards and choose the best/worse depending on advantage/disadvantage, this confuse me alot haha
Nice video. Thanks!
Just started playing the digital version ofnthe game... still trying to figure oit when the modifier deck is refreshed.
It is shuffled whenever you draw a card that says so. In basic deck, x2 and nulls all cause you to shuffle, and, if my memory serves, so do Great Tree blessings.
I would not recommend your house rules regarding advantage/disadvantage. It improves your advantage AND disadvantage. The basic rules do not allow rolling modifiers with disadvantage. This makes disadvantages feel irrelevant. But I would not recommend the basic rules either, because rolling modifiers downgrade your deck with advantage. The solution for both is to always make two stacks and ignore all rolling modifiers with disadvantages. This improves the advantage a bit, because your rolling modifiers are now useful for the advantage, and it worsens the disadvantage, because rolling modifiers do not affect the disadvantage with this rule. It also removes the disadvantage ambiguity regarding your rules.
That’s pretty much my rule, you still have rules ambiguity’s though. Let’s say I draw a rolling +1 into a 0 with wound for stack 1, then for stack 2 I draw a rolling +1 into a 0 with immobilise. You still have to make that call on which is worse immobilise or wound in that situation. The only way to remove the ambiguity is to follow the rules as written but only for disadvantage. If there was a better system. Jaws of the lion changes the rules to make them a little bit simpler. You still always draw two but in the case of an ambiguity you take the first card drawn with disadvantage which I think I like and would probably recommend. However with no rolling modifiers in that game they don’t touch on them unfortunately.
@@MandatoryQuest Sorry, but I understood it in your video, that you do not ignore the rolling modifiers with disadvantage.
Yes, but you still would get this result if you use the rules as written without the roling +1. If you only draw the 0 with wound and then the 0 with immobilize, they would still be ambiguous in the written rules.
@@JoanneSDread In general I think we can agree the original rules are a bit of a mess to understand. Its nice to see that in JOTL its sort of fixed, but rolling modifiers are completely gone which is a shame. Perhaps in Frosthaven this will be the case too, or we will at least get a clearer/better rule set for rolling modifiers which we can retroactively apply to Gloomhaven too.
@@JoanneSDread I'd say the middle ground would be best in case of advantage. You draw cards until you have 2 non-rolling cards. Ignore all the rolling cards, and take the worst of the two normal ones. If there it's unclear which of those two is worse (e.g. +1 and stun and +1 and an element) you take the first one that you've drawn, as by the rule book. This is basically the same as in the rulebook, with the slight difference that you can never get a x2.
For advantage I think that MQs house rule works fine, where you make two stacks, and the player can choose which of the two to use.
@@MandatoryQuest Ambiguity, according to the rules, is resolved by doing whichever was drawn first. In the example you gave (0 with wound or 0 with immobilise) whichever one was drawn first is the one you resolve and this occurs regardless of whether you are attacking with advantage or disadvantage.
Good data to know. Thank you. - never played the board game. Also, good luck on the 3rd house attempt .
Thanks we’ve got our fingers crossed 🤞
Wait i'm a bit confused about advantage/disadvantage.
I was pretty sure that the digital version does this:
1) Draw the "base" of the attack (the modifier that doesn't let you draw).
2) Pick the higher base (advantage) or lower base (disadvantage).
3) Show what you draw "on top" of the base card (all the modifiers that make you keep drawing).
Now i think the game does what you said, making 2 piles by drawing all the "draw modifiers" behind the scenes, then does a "base" check to see which one is the worse/best picking the pile only using that "base" as reference and showing you only the outcome.
Am i missing something?
My take on the digital rules (based on reading it from the menu so i could be mistaken) is as follow:
With advantage:
You draw cards until you have at least one that is not rolling and then draw one more just for the number (ignore any rolling effectcon that last card) then you pick wichever of the final two is the best plus all the pile of rolling modifier. So you don't have two stacks, you have one stack with two tops you chose from.
With disadvantage i'm not sure but i think it's the same as raw: just ignore the rolling effect and pick the worse/lowest number.
07:15 so you multiply the additional poison damage as well? so with smoke bomb and x2 attach modifier it would end up 4 damage only from poison, correct?
Yes that’s right you always include poison before multiplying, however remember poison is not like wound where it always does damage. You still need to land the attack (not draw a miss or curse) to do the additional poison damage as it is added to your attack not separate. Hope this helps.
Picked up the steam game, loving it so far though I can't see myself playing it solo, good thing I have a co-op partner
As I play tinkerer, those goggles are amazing for my AoE attacks
@Steve Fettuccine yeah got the bow too :)
Goggles are OP 😎
Your house rule for rolling modifiers is far superior to the actual actual rule (which I was unaware of), however might be OP. With the official rules on the other hand, having Advantage seems to me to massively de-value rolling modifiers (which are typically rather weak on their own). To the extent that (and assuming your deck has a ton of rolling modifiers) having Advantage is actually a disadvantage. Did that make sense?
Absolutely and its the main reason why the official rule sucks. Luckily they have fixed it for the most part in Frosthaven, and they introduced this into digital now too under the house rule menu in options :)
I've only recently begun playing Gloomhaven (table top version) but I was slightly confused about items that are 'lost'. If I use my starting gold to buy two items and one is lost when I use it - if I use it when I first play a scenario but I lose that scenario, when I replay that scenario without going back to Gloomhaven and use the same character, does that mean that item is then gone forever until I make enough gold to go back and buy a new one? Or do I get it back, or do I choose two new items for the next attempt?
Pretty sure once you buy an item, you never have to re-buy it. They refresh at the end of a scenario whether you win or lose.
I could be wrong, but I think the digital version adds Curse even if the target dies.
I don’t think it does, but if you hover over the enemies you can see their deck. If you do notice that happen make sure to report it as a bug as they are trying to make it by the book with the rules.
If i have advantage, and draw +1 as 1st card then a Leaf rolling modifier as 2nd card, do I
A : draw another card
B : not draw another card since I drew 2 cards
A or B???
B - Rolling only comes into it if its the first card drawn.
@@MandatoryQuest 👍thanks, I dont like it, but if those are the rules, those are the rules.
I hope you found your house by now. We started about 2 months ago and have had 5 offers fall through. It's a terrible time to buy a house right now....
We did thank you,. It took us a year and lowering our expectations a bit, but we did get house number 3 but I now need to renovate the whole place! Good luck in your search it’s hell out there right now.
With items with charges, such as the Hide Armor, are using the charges optional? We played the board game yesterday and my brother in law insists that the armor is active as soon as the scenario begins, and the damage mitigation immediately happens from the first two sources of damage. If so, it would be highly unlikely to not have the item spent by the time you need a long rest.
Your brother in law is correct you cannot choose to not use hide armour, and opt to take the damage instead. This refresh rule will come onto play a lot more with higher quality armour you find later.
@@MandatoryQuest excellent. Thank you for the quick reply!
No problem you’re welcome 😊
@@MandatoryQuest So you said above that with Hide Armour, using the charge is not optional, but is this the case with all items with charges, or is there different wording on some so it IS player's choice? I guess the same question applies to cards that give charges as well.
@@ghostlightx9005 well armour items are the only ones with charges. For cards with charges usually the actual card will specify by saying "may" if it's optional.
So, @7:20 Smoke bomb would double the value of the attack pre-draw only? Like if I draw a -1 it only gets applied after smoke bomb, meaning "the value of the attack" does not include any +/- from a modifier card?
Smoke Bomb is a bit weird it does actually double everything. Its kind of the exception to the rule because of how its worded. There is an unlockable character who also has a double effect, and that specifically references attack value so it doesnt double the modifier.
Why do you make piles if (with advantage or disadvantage) you only need to take two cards anyways (unless you drew two rolling modifying vcards)
If your first card is a rolling then you would create pile 1 by drawing until you have a non rolling, then create pile 2 the same way. Then you would pick the best or worst. It’s not a great system to be honest, but worked for us initially. I’d check out the new Frosthaven system in my other video on the changes as it’s much cleaner and better.
Is there any interesting ai implications of Gloomhaven Digital?
Just that ambiguity is decided randomly in Digital whereas in physical players would choose. This can lead to certain scenarios being a bit more RnG at times, and summoning characters having a rougher time in Digital too.
I have one interesting one as well: If you miss a target with an attack you don't get the XP that was on the card. You can't just get XP by swinging your weapon in the air.
Rolling modifiers are MEGA strong. They shift the balance of your modifier deck ridiculously. Their one downside is that they can turn an advantage into a crit fail. That evens them out a little bit. If you house-rule that away, the balance of the game skews incredibly. Characters (less so those who play support) who are full of rolling modifiers would DOMINATE.
Gloomhaven has a bit of push and pull for most things - this house rule throws away an interlocking piece of the game. I'm not against house rules, but that seems egregious to me. If you build Sun (for example) around those house rules she's so dominant you can often leave your party in the first room and just solo the mission. You could advantage into bless/crit CONSTANTLY with little to no fear of curse/crit-fail? Yikes.
Of course, it's no skin off my back - but one thing I like about Gloomhaven is that it's more tactics than it is power-fantasy. I want to eek out a mission with impeccable placement and teamwork, not create a cabal of never-missing behemoths to cudgel the last third of the campaign.
Characters that can abuse strengthen obviously skew things with house ruling advantage. If you are playing or building a character to abuse a certain house rule I would also say its pretty obviously not in the spirit of the game. The fun in Gloomhaven is in the challenge like you say, and not in just stomping missions. Its a very common house rule for a reason as it opens up many perks for characters and allows you to play more care free. There are plenty of fundamentally over powered things in the game as standard (looking at you Eclipse and Three Spears) that you can abuse if that's your plan anyways.
@@MandatoryQuest Fair enough. Not trying to rain on anyone's parade. I'd rather lower the difficulty or take the officially suggested house rule of turning crits into -2/+2 in order to play a bit more carefree. Still, to each their own :)
im not sure why it should be a no-brainer to apply poison as attack effect always first. this is one of the few things wehre it literally makes no difference
Not sure I understand what you mean? it's just to ensure people calculate damage correctly for crits. The rest of the ordering of attacks is just so people understand you don't get the benefits of poison unless it's already on the target. All negative effects attached to the attack only apply if the target doesn't die from the attack.
I will always use the house rule regarding rolling modifiers. The by-the-book way makes no sense.
Me too with my usual group. We just sort of started playing that way thinking it was the correct rule, and we’re far too far down that road to change now.
uhh... ye I played Disadvantage and Advantage wrong... mebi?
I mean they're called "Rolling" cards so I always thought they want you to draw another card if you draw it.
So my group always just drew attack modifiers until there were 2 that were not rolling. If you had advantage you picked the better non-rolling card and add all the rolling to it.
If it was disadvantage you pick the worse one and ignore all rolling benefits.
I'm actually struggling to understand what you said. You only draw 2 cards, and if you have advantage you can still miss??? waaaaah?!
Why would anyone want rolling cards in their deck if this is true?
The deactivating thing was very useful tho
Don't worry most people either played it wrong too, or just house ruled it to a similar rule as that ;)
It seems confusing that with rolling modifer rule thst disadvantage is good and advantage is bad for you if i understand you. I'm recent new to gloomhaven via digital.
It's not good for disadvantage particularly because you would just ignore rolling modifiers entirely, so you would still hit that miss. It's just that rolling modifiers are not much better WITH advantage that sucks. In Digital though they are just finishing up the patch that adds the new better Frosthaven rules in so we wont have to deal with that for much longer.
Im still confused as to how the END OF ROUND works. It says when all players are out of cards but not all players are out of cards when other are. How do you determine end of round if a player always has 2 cards available to play?? If Hatchet has already LOST 3 cards and the Red Guard has only LOST 1 then Hatchet will be running out of cards and resting before Red Guard is out of cards. There is always a player with 2 cards ready. Im very confused and cannot proceed with my scenario's until I figure it out. Thanks!!!
End of round is when all players have played their two selected cards and all enemies have acted. That signifies the end of the round and the beginning of a new round starting with card selection or the option to rest. Each round should consist of every player playing two cards or long long resting to recover cards instead.
@@MandatoryQuest Thank you. I kept thinking End Of Round was when the whole hand was exhausted LOL I was totally WRONG LOL
Haha no problem glad I helped clear that up :)
You have advantage slightly incorrect with rolling modifiers. You said that you draw 2 cards at maximum, and that is incorrect. If you draw 2 rolling modifiers, you draw additional cards until you draw a non rolling modifier.
Sorry yes should of clarified that point better, I’ll add an annotation. Thanks for the heads up.
@@MandatoryQuest seems inevitable to miss something tiny while discussing gh rules in depth
Yeah It’s the small details that matter though. YT sucks for trying to add errata to a video, so I’ve tried the best I can with cards and adding it to the top of the description.
Great video, and does that mean I can discard a summon card even tho the summon is alive? If I do discard it, does the summon stay alive?
Thanks glad you liked it. Yes you can discard it, but it would die. You always need to have the summons card in your active area for it to be alive.
@@MandatoryQuest came here for this answer, thanks for this comment!
Confusing when they use "attack" in multiple ways.
Yeah it’s often the words preceding it that actually mater
How would you count when you draw +1 and +0 stun when you have disadventage?
That draw would be ambiguous due to the stun effect having a positive but numerically unmeasurable effect, so you would instead take the first card drawn so in this case the +1.
@@MandatoryQuest You mean both adventage and disadventage would take the first card drawn in this case?
@@tszwanchu9 yep that's right
Last thing this game needs is more rules
Im house ruling that reset armour thing, its a dumb rule
the house thing sucks in the same boat but Gloomhaven to the rescue
We finally got a place in January after 2 failed attempts, hope you find somewhere too matey!
@@MandatoryQuest one failed attempt and more house we dont like lol
Ahhh crap we had the same problem as the first house was our dream home, everything else looked rubbish by comparison. We settled for a fixer upper in the end with the goal of making it like the other one 😂
Only digital, as requested
So bloody hard lol
Have never played tabletop
Don't need to now with Digital to be fair :)
I am confused about advantage on rolling modifiers. So if 1 draw 3 rolling modifier cards and than normal +1 all attack modifiers are added together right? If it ends in a miss shit happens.
If i draw a normal modifier and than a rolling modifier i don't get to draw additional rolling modifiers just 2 cards right no more?
and the normal attack modifiers are also 2 cards and than only the better?
so what i understand is it depends on the first card whether is rolling modifier or normal.
It is always only two cards that you draw regardless. If you have advantage and one of the the two cards drawn is a rolling modifier you add that card to the other drawn. If you have disadvantage you disregard all rolling modifiers and have to take the other card. The order in which you draw the rolling modifier (first or second) is irrelevant. As disadvantage ignores rolling modifiers if you were to draw two rolling modifiers as your initial draw you would need to continue drawing untill you draw a non rolling modifier card to use. Hope that makes a little more sense
@@MandatoryQuest I found this on another webside and now it's better understandable what do you think about the houserule: gloomhavenshop.com/rules/rolling-modifiers/
The Two-Stack Solution just says that if you draw a rolling modifier when you have Advantage/Disadvantage you continue to draw until the modifier reaches a conclusion. That’s Stack 1. Then you draw again, follow that stack to a conclusion (Stack 2) and pick the result that is either better or worse (depending on if you have Disadvantage or Advantage).
This method stays true to having two options and taking the better/worse one, instead of having a rolling modifier eat up one of those spaces.
I think it’s a fine house rule in fact that’s how I play it on tabletop. The only draw back to that house rule is if you apply the stack rule to disadvantage too then sometimes it can be hard to say what stack is worse. A stack with -1 damage and a stun, could be argued as better than a +1 damage and no stun for example.
@@_arkoner_2274 If you attack with advantage you draw 2 cards from your deck. If those 2 cards are both rolling modifiers you keep drawing until you draw a card that is not a rolling modifier and then add them all together. If only one of the two cards were rolling modifiers you'd just add them two together.
For situations involving ambiguity (say you drew a 0 with immobilise and a 0 with muddle) then whichever one you drew first is the one you use for your attack, regardless of whether this attack has advantage or disadvantage.
So, you can’t curse if the enemy gets killed during the attack?
Correct, any attack effects are applied at the end of the attack if the enemy is still alive. This is true for push / pull / poison everything.
@@MandatoryQuest The more you know! Thank you for the clarification.
@@andersmoore no problem :)
Regarding charges when long resting, just play it like you want. It only makes sense that all charges are regained and that's how we play it. You don't *have* to follow rules this strictly.
You do if your playing digital, and although it’s a common house rule if people like to play RAW it’s worth pointing out. I agree it’s an odd rule though, and if your playing tabletop just play it how you feel comfortable.
Rule 1: Funny how that one has been changed in Frosthaven.
Awkward rules eh?
I have the original version from years ago. It says you can exhaust any card at any time even an active card.
We use your house rule for advantage, and the official rule for disadvantage. Problem solved.
New Frosthaven update details a new change to the rules to not punish rolling modifier draws on advantage. I'm so happy they have addressed it and made rolling modifiers viable for everyone again.
The "by the book" rolling modifier stuff is bollocks.
Yep, and to be fair its been completely fixed in both Digital and Frosthaven now.
@@MandatoryQuest what was the fix? Two stacks?
@@topcat2757 No not quite, its more streamlined than that but basically you cant miss on advantage now.
Did i catch anyone out? What rules have you found tricky to understand?
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Great vid, MQ! This same video style with just AI monster movement rules might be helpful. If you don’t read the rule book and only play digital, people might not know why a ranged monster with disarm is getting cozy, or why a monster moved to another character when it was further away as the crow flies, or even that invisible makes monsters treat the player as an obstacle.
A A thanks glad you liked it those are some great ones I’ll make a note. I could probably do a whole video on weird stuff monsters do 😂
@@MandatoryQuest 2nd a monster movement video. After 5 months of playing multiple times a week we still come across occasional new situations we have to spend time looking up what is supposed to actually happen w/ monster movement.
Michael Edmonds nice the people have spoken, I’ll put it on the list
• An attacker with Advantage will draw two modifier cards from their
deck and use whichever one is better.
If one rolling modifier card was drawn, its effect is added to the other card played.
If two rolling modifier cards were drawn, continue to draw cards until a rolling modifier
is not drawn and then add together all drawn effects .