5 tips to How to get the most out of your Gloomhaven Campaign! [minor spoilers]
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- Опубліковано 25 лип 2024
- We are loving Gloomhaven after a few false starts that made me question whether we'd keep playing this massive game. I thought i'd put together a few tips on how to improve your gameplay experience. Minor spoilers!
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The rules specify state that monsters will attempt to avoid traps if they can though
Pro tip. I put the map pieces in an accordion file sorted by letters. Saves a lot of time and frustration trying to find pieces and I just use that tray to hold the books and envelopes.
Yo. Thank you!
Tip 6: Play Jaws of the Lion first. So good! And such a great introduction to this enormous game!
Yes! Get gaming within 1 hour and learn the game over 5 scenarios. Got me hooked.
The monsters treat traps as obsticales , unless they can't move otherwise
I used a large tackle box to store the contents. It needed very little modifying to fit the cards and carry the books. Got it at walmart for $40.00.
Good video. Just about to start my campaign (solo). Will check out the app!
This is aa excellent video. I've played about 8 of the scenarios and was getting frustrated. These tips have helped my greatly! Thanks SO much.
Thank you so much, I think 8 in is a perfect time to start doing things like intentionally growing the prosperity!
This is such a great video and absolutely necessary tips for enjoying Gloomhaven more!
Other than the monsters \ trap error in the video, this was very informative for new players! Kudos!
Kevin Melillo Monster allways avoid the trap unless it is the only way to get at attack distance of heroes.
Good vid bro, I’m about 7 games in, made a lot of similar adjustments thru my own down falls, but like u said you get better at the game every time you play, which includes all aspect, software and organization where my most helpful improvements since unboxing but I’m eager to go craft some doors after watching your video. When one door closes another one opens...hehe
Good tip on the doors, I'll loot my old heroquest boxes. it even has open and closed doors, so that should work well.
I was just going to say this. I just dug HQ and AHQ out of storage, so I've got plenty to work with.
Great video... only about 6 games in for us. As you said, organizer and app support for the enemy are key! Also, *spoiler light*- download a scenario flowchart. Best advise, get in character. If your character is an emotionless a-hole... you make your decisions based off of that. Thanks for the video!
My character (a Scoundrel) only cares about money, for events and deciding on which scenario to do...functions a little differently during a scenario (cos enemies) but I have been the one to loot the chest during the last 3 scenarios :D
I used the inbox packing to hold all the monsters... took me about 5 hours to unpack the game and cut out each spot for the monsters to sit in.. help to limit the amount of time for each set up and only cost me time.. i do not use software cause its not hard to keep track of anything... plus use dice to track monster damage, this work nicely
Great video, thank you! One thing I wish I had done is tracking the quests better and not jumping around because one sounded more interesting/better rewards/etc, staying with quests makes for a more cohesive story. Also, getting organizers was huge for us. Last thing is playing consistently. Our group wasn't able to play for extended periods of time, which made following the story difficult. I'm looking forward to going through the entire game again :)
100%, we hopped around a lot too, which made it feel like nothing was happening until suddenly we finished off a bunch of stories in a row.
Remember: You don't have to play characters till retirement. You can bail on them if you have an incomplete or goal. You probably should aim for retirement if you can pull it off though.
Also, don't be the only guy in a room full of enemies unless you have invulnerability or something. It's often smart to open a new door and then go back to suck the enemies in.
Also, invisibility forgiveth a multitude of sins.
Thanks for the charity tip. I will start doing that.
Just got the Go7 gaming organizer... so beautiful
Very dry and boring tips but super essential, as someone who's played around 60 scenarios now I 100% agree! Gloomhaven Helper makes the game so so so much easier to keep track of. You can even adjust individual creature levels, input summons, play random scenarios, such a great app! If you have the money, a token organizer could be good, but since I don't use such large swaths of what came in the box between monster cards and damage tracking I just put all of the tokens in ziploc bags. I have them divided up into creature type bags (Inox, undead, bosses,...), terrain types, summons etc. it makes set up and take down so much easier. So even if it's just ziplocs you have to organize! And without the ziplocs I don't think I could get everything back in the box without it overflowing.
I also use baggies for organizing. Works just fine.
Donating is a good thing, however, it sounds like the actual solution to your hardcore potential rage quit problem is to not play hardcore.
I agree, my group likes to play hardcore and then complain about the ramifications, I'm more of a story difficulty mode kind of person myself. They also love rogue-likes, so I think its related.
Yeah, I also feel like hardcore just doesn't really do much for Gloomhaven. Your character dies, but you can still play the same class. The other players won't be able to tell the difference at all and you'll just have a slightly smaller pool of items and cards. I guess you could make a rule that you can't immediately come back with the same class. Might make it more interesting 🤔
Gloomhaven Helper is still free on Android and has in game adds unless you pay $4. It is available now for IOS and cost $5, no free option. Thought id mention this.
(1) and (5) maybe the helper, but run it by hand until you fully understand monsters and effects
Thanks!
Im setting a game together of all new timers im most experienced and i only ever played one game like this once. What are some ways to play or house rules that might make things a little easier but not game breaking easy. We are not playing for some crazy hard challenge. I assume we should play on each mape on somewhat easier setting but with lower experience from that will it make late game impossible?
Great video!
Monsters would normally walk around a trap instead of springing it, even if it means not reaching its opponent this turn.
Yes, but if you have monsters walk around a trap in Gloomhaven, you're cheating, they are forced to walk into the trap if thats the most direct line to their target, thats the rules of the game.
@@skaterzea Thanks! We were doing that wrong which affected some of the games (but not others). I really hate the gloomhaven rulebook, I just think the BGG forums do such a better job of explaining the rules than the rulebook itself that I have to continually go look there. In this case, I should have followed my own advice and looked through that section of the FAQ
Yeah, i was talking from a rulesbook perspective, not from a logical point of view (even tho it gives the same result). But it seems this misunderstanding has been cleaned up :)
When I brought it up this last week into our game, it felt like it would be a big deal, but resulted in not much changing because I was playing a cragheart obstacle build and controlling the pathways enemies could move. Thanks though, it was hugely important this weekend when I retired my cragheart and we no longer had those obstacles
@@GreyWizardInsights Confused by this. It literally says in the rulebook that monsters go around traps if they can. If they are blocked in and have no other way to reach a character other than going through the trap, they then go through the trap....
Thanks
Is it good to bad or good as a group, or as individuals. Thanks for the great video.
Meant to be group. But someone can solo the other option the group doesnt choose n reaps the rewards/ disadvantage on their own.
Four - is it based on each character or the group as a whole? For example, can I be villain mage, but our tank is good hero, our rogue is funny guy etc.? Do the cards affect a hero or or does it count as a group?
Thank you for your answer
Everything is the group in terms of road events and city events, so you have to vote. In our case, we had heroes and villains with a tie breaker which often resulted in alternating cards cancelling each other out. I stopped “roleplaying” this board game because “roleplaying” seemed counter to the “legacy” aspect of the game and unlocking new stuff and instead focused on whether we wanted to go up or down in reputation . Every once in a while I ended up voting based on my character’s perspective and it almost always ended up being a waste of time 😭
@@GreyWizardInsights You never roleplayed Gloomhaven, because your character wouldn't be part of such a group. Your heroes had to fight against the villains in your group and after that, there are only heroes or only villains left and the other are dead or in prison. You see, if you roleplay Gloomhaven, there's no problem with the legacy aspect. The problem was to roleplay NOT.
A couple of your tips could be replaced by "read the table of 'Special Conditions for Opening Envelopes' on p.49 of the rulebook and play toward the ones you can figure out how to pursue" - both donations and pushing toward a more extreme reputation are listed there (as is retiring a character to unlock the Town Records).
My top tip for Gloomhaven, at least when playing using the game pieces rather than helper apps, is to put coins on the sleeves for monsters that are revealed when a room is set up (and not on ones which are spawned/summoned during play) to track which ones will drop a coin when they die. I don't know whether the helper app reminds you which monsters drop coins (or even whether it tracks it)
100% on the donations, page 49 is what encouraged us to push for donating. But I don't understand what the reputation stuff does since there isn't anything you can do to gain more (or less) reputation, is there? We discuss as a group each card, like really debate, which answer might give us more reputation, 20+ missions later we're at I think 4. Our high was 7, our low (after 0) was 2 I think. There is no rhyme or reason to what causes it to go up or down, I see a lot of people complaining online with similarly "stuck" reputations, while other people seem to have no problem at all hitting 18 rep (one guy said he hit 18 rep in 18 games, which I call BS, but whatever). For a while, we were trying to answer based on the way our characters would, then we became more persistent in trying to "game the system" to get us above 10, but at this point, I don't think its really possible "for us" to catch up with a goal like the 20, we've made a serious dent through the first 1-30, and too many wrong decisions I think have eaten away from a lot of cards that otherwise would have affected our reputation.
Nice tip on the coins! We put the monsters in upside down when they are summoned, but putting coins on the sleeves is a neat idea
@@GreyWizardInsights
Yeah, there's not a whole lot you can do to force reputation to move, but you can at least pay attention to the hints on events and avoid the obvious traps. Short term, your reputation can move unpredictably, but if you stick with being nice/nasty it'll tend to move up/down over time. It is more of a long-term thing than an immediate goal, though.
Oh, and it's very hard, even impossible, to reach a stage where you're unable to reach +20 (or -20 if you're being evil) unless you run out of scenarios altogether - there are some recurring events that affect reputation, so unless you get unlucky with the shuffles and the timing of adding new events, you'll keep having opportunities to move up (or down).
Thats good to know, I knew some of them go back in, but I had the feeling (without looking through because I'm trying to avoid spoilers) that the ones that "did something" like affect reputation, were generally removed
@@GreyWizardInsights
Yeah, there are quite a few that are either strictly one-shot, or which only recur until they have a (significant) effect, but among the ones that do keep coming back, some give reputation on the right choice.
I think the video explained the issue right from the opening sentences. This is a game that scratches an rpg itch. The best rpg part to the game is doing city and road cards. We always discuss what we would do as our characters when we play. Our Vermling feels compassion for other Vermlings; our Brute just wants money; our Spellweaver wants to try out a new spell; our Tinkerer believes he is above menial labour. We talk it out and then make a logical decision. We don't try to beat the game by gaining reputations or getting advantages. We let them naturally happen if our team is worthy of it. By the time we were at +10 reputation or so we universally decided that our little mercenary group were heroic and trying to help the common people. We must be if we are at +10 reputation. So that swayed our decisions a little more from then on.
New sub, liked these tips.
Just got the game and currently sleeving cards and sorting the foam organiser out. I’m going to hold off on the Helper app. I’d like to use all the lovely stuff I paid for. That may not last long once I start playing the game of course. In which case I’ve wasted a lot of money on card sleeves!
We still use the equipment cards, the class action cards, and for the players, the decks of RNG, we just try and automate the monsters as much as possible. As far as the app, the board game doesn’t give you any way to keep track of initiative so people can know when it’s their turn so I still recommend trying the app even if you don’t use any card replacements!
Lots of stuff here doesn't really need sleeving. The most important thing to sleeve is the attack modifier decks. We also sleeve the player decks and the city / road decks. However, we only sleeve the cards we're using at the moment. This also helps keep track of things - when you earn a card on level for example we record that by sleeving it. But I wouldn't bother sleeving equipment, for example.
I find that sleeved cards slip around a lot more so I'd reverse it, wanting the equipment cards sleeved and not the combat modifier decks, do you have some sort of "grippy" sleeves?
@@GreyWizardInsights No, they're very slippery sleeves. A little awkward to handle sometimes but protection is my priority. I find shuffling them very easy as they interlock as it were. I have made a faux leather board to play on, so whenever I need to put it away I just chuck it all under the bed. Never have to set up or tear down, one less reason to use an app. I was thinking I could sell them. It looks very nice if I say so myself. The closest thing I found are felt notice boards but they're rather expensive and most have a frame which I didn't want.
Great tips, well delivered. Just bought the game and the broken token organiser so a pretty hefty investment. Many thanks to you for sharing these tips.
"Android is usually a disappointment, but in this case it helps him"
The best thing about Android is that it's open. This is the essential trade-off between open and proprietary platforms. You don't even need to run Helper networked. You can just run it on a single laptop so everyone can see it.
Well now you can buy helper and it works great.
But for running it on a single laptop then you lose the advantage of secretly plugging in your initiative and having it auto sort the players and monsters. I’d rather pay personally (now that its an option)
15:00 what do you mean by this? The monsters are supposed to walk around traps.
Unfortunately, I said this wrong because in my group, I built up my Cragheart to be heavily obstacle based so we would create channels and put traps there. If there is no other way for the monsters to approach, they will walk through traps. Because we based our entire strategy around funneling monsters through death columns, I misspoke in the video, sorry about that!
with your advice "be consistent", I think I'd agree and add on "just play a white hat" the rewards are muuuuch better, and overall a more enjoyable progression arc. Perhaps I'm wrong, we're only about 35 scenarios(mostly main quest) through, so I could be wrong in the long run...
great video btw. I'd love to see more gloom content!
I'm planning on more for sure!
it takes me like 10 mins to set up a game, and my only organizer is about 30 clear, labelled baggies. You dont need an organizer of any kind
Thats great for you. I'd love to see a recording of how you do it, if you ever do one, post a link here so I can see!
@@GreyWizardInsights Next time we play I will :) Dont get me wrong, an organizer would be quicker still, and prettier, but I just dont want people to be detered from the game thinking that the expensive organizer is a necessity.
You don't need an expensive organizer, but I'd argue that you do need something that accomplishes it...be it baggies, tackle boxes, files folders, etc.
2 x plastic containers (‘Plano’?USA) for monsters and objects.
1 x small plastic container for little bits.
3 x deck boxes for player cards and mod decks.
And for outside the box, 1 x expanding file folder with alphabetical labels for map tiles.
Did you make sure to only use the city and road events 1-30? Most people who seem to have issues with those cards didn't and got way later game cards earlier than they should have.
Yup, we did indeed! We're on game 18-20, and our reputation is 3, no way to make it go up, except make whatever decision we don't make....every time. Partially this is a problem with randomness, but when helping out people makes us lose reputation because we're "too good for menial labor" and when we lose reputation for not helping because "the kid looked up to us" or whatever, it feels pretty random which will give us reputation and which won't.
What is the alternate organizer? Are they relatively the same, quality-wise? Keep up the good work, bud
E-Raptor makes something, amzn.to/2tBk54Y It looks more about storing than playing with it, and I like how broken token's can be pulled out and used to play with.
The other one is Daedalus, which is an awsome name for a company, but they don't sell on Amazon, www.daedalusproductionsinc.com/product/quick-start-insert-for-gloomhaven
It looks cool, if anyone can compare between the 3, chime in!
I highly recommend Folded Space. It's the cheapest organizer at around $35 shipped to the US. Shipping for the broken token is close to $15 on it's own. Plus, no wood dust to deal with, just easy to glue laminated foamcore. It's very sturdy. The map storage isn't great (none of them are) so I got an accordian folder on Amazon and just carry it alongside the box. Set up for a scenario can be ~10m (if everyone actually helps instead of sitting around BSing!)
The Folded Space organizer (which looks cool) can be found here: www.foldedspace.net/store/gloomhaven/
I don't have an issue with wood dust, and didn't have to glue anything except the map holder with broken token, so I think there are advantages either way. I might buy the folded space just to do a comparison review.
There's also meeple realty which I own which is decent. But speaking from experience I think the broken token ones are the best ONLY because of the monster tuck boxes and if you have only one campaign going.
Folded Space is the cheapest. It's also lightest, being foamcore rather than wood. Map tile storage is bad, but that's common to all the organisers I looked at (even Broken Token's doesn't go beyond "here's a tray for them"). The biggest failing I've found in use is that it tends toward "buckets" - relatively large boxes that contain an entire category of things rather than separating by individual types (for example, many of the overlay tiles end up in a single box) - the real nuisance is the condition token storage box - having to root through 60 or so assorted tokens to find a disarm token...
Meeple Realty is the one I bought - more expensive than Folded Space, but cheaper than Broken Token or Daedalus. It has labelled storage for monster standees and map overlay tiles, making finding things during setup significantly easier. The storage for cards isn't particularly designed, rather left flexible, with a caddy with plenty of space and a supply of dividers to let you decide your own arrangement - whether that's a pro or a con is up to you.
Broken Token, while I don't have experience with personally, I have seen in use, and seems pretty good. The two unique selling points are the monster tuck-boxes (holding the standees and ability cards, but not the stat sheets) and the active character trays (which do require you to store the empty envelopes for your characters separately, but do include storage for the mini as well as the cards).
Daedalus, at least when I checked, was the most expensive offered, and there are reports that it has trouble storing everything, with monster standees either being a very tight fit, or impossible to actually fit. There are also reported issues with storage for item cards - initially, all the cards fit in specific places, but during the campaign, items will be unlocked, and there's nowhere to put the cards that no longer want to be stored with their original groups. There are also some very mixed reviews of their customer service, and they're the only one of the four I know much about that are said to need glue.
Our organizer system:
1) accordion file with lettered sections for map tiles
2) Clear box "Monster zoo" with alphabetized and numbered, labeled baggies for all the monster tokens/cards and one "boss" bag
3) Clear box for condensing the main game materials (character stuff, road/city cards) so we didn't have to lug around the big box
4) Double sided tackle box for all the tokens and other little blippies the game has
5) Gloomhaven helper web app is great especially on a touch screen laptop, if only just for initiative tracking, but it does more!!
6) 3D printed stuff from etsy- we got 4 card holders for characters' discard/lost/hand cards to keep the table cleaner. Before that we just made place mats with drawn-in "card zones" to keep it straight
also watch the videos about gloomhaven AI questions 1-10 and 11-x i forget, i think 15? It's a guy explaining how the AI prioritizes targets and does combat. I didn't see it until I was 1/3rd the way through the scenarios haha.
Unfortunately, now (June 2023) Gloomhaven Helper is no longer available, and Broken Tokens organizer is out of stock.
Interesting take. We did a video of tips to cover common mistakes but I think a really good topic might be to cover what to do and what to avoid when playing. I wonder about mentality of players going in might make a real difference.
That and of course, needing an archive of all the rules! :D
Should have used Gorilla Wood Glue....works miracles over duck tape! I've now built several Broken Token organizers (6 to be exact) and wood glue is the way to go...
I used wood glue, but the maps grids are crazy abusive of it since the top of the box is crammed on it and its constantly pulled in and out.
I don't think level disparaties are all that bad in Gloomhaven. Sure having a few less hp is tough, but having a higher level ally while the lower level ally keeps monster levels lower and that can make a decent difference.
Level disparities aren't that bad, I agree. Making less gold because you had to lower your level kinda sucks for the higher level person though.
Has the higher level to be a tank character? To be a tank with 2-3 level lower is probably hard?
Can you replay gloomhaven after you finish it?
You can, if you buy the refresh pack, but then when the expansions come out, you’ll be sad you cant continue your original campaign. Personally, I prefer to play new groups in the same world that we’ve already explorer. You can play the game just fine, even if you might be a bit more powerful depending on which classes people upgraded in the last but who cares
Gloomhaven helper is now on ios!
I can't wait to use it in our next game!
It cost $5
I played a level 2 character in a scenario with a level 8. Can confirm: it sucked.
I literally couldn't hurt any monsters. I went on a six game losing streak until they retired that character and our party level got more balanced
Why/how did you get some players to lvl 8 with only a prosperity lvl or 2? That means your lvl 8 players were using some pretty low level equipment too
@@GreyWizardInsights not all of us play all the time. I sat out a lot of scenarios while others played often
@@MrDanielKrauss yes, but you automatically get free levels to match the current prosperity level, so I would have expected the prosperity level for a lvl 8 party to be a minimum of 4.
With all players being level 9 (max lvl), the "normal" difficulty states that you should play scenarios on level 5. Anything above 5 is considered harder and more challenging, even for MAXED characters.
To see which level of scenario you have to play to be on "normal" difficulty, you take the average level on your party and divide it by 2, rounding it up. So with 3 players maxed on lvl 9 and one player on level 2, you would be at total level sum of 29 (9+9+9+2); so average is 29/4=7,25. You divide the average, so you get 7,25/2 = 3,625, and rounding it up gives you scenario level 4.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Gloomhaven Helper now exists in two versions: 1) An *ad-supported* free version (we would often be forced to return to the starting menu after an ad, although our current status in the scenario was preserved); 2) A *paid* version without ads on the Android App Store and the iOS App Store. Apparently, the iOS version is optimized for iPads, and is clunky on iPhones.
Thats awesome!!!! Thanks for sharing, I'm so happy he changed his mind about IOS, I'll definitely buy it
Would a monster move even it isn't necessary but the card says move + 2 attack + 1?
It doesn’t move unless it needs to, but that’s the maximum movement if it does move
@@GreyWizardInsights so IF the monster moves it needs to move all it's move points?
@@MarioReischer Hi
No, it simply moves in the direction to the nearest player or (if 2 or more tie in distance) to the player with lower initiative. It does not have to spend all movement points.
If the monster can move + can exectue a ranged attack + is adjacent to a player, then it will move 1 hex away of the player if possible (so it will loose the ranged attack penalty for standing too close)
@@benjaminmeusburger4254 Ah! Got it! Thanks! :)
@@GreyWizardInsights No. This isn't correct at all. The rulebook has like 2 pages dedicated to this. The monster moves to get into the position to deal maximum damage to its focus (and others if it has more targets). That's all. If it doesn't need the maximum points, it doesn't use them. This is spelled out over the course of 2 paragraphs in the book and it even has 2 diagrams to help explain it.
Would you say that having a evil party is more difficult to play than a heroic party? I really like the idea of an evil party but every reward that takes reputation away from you also takes prosperity... And that sucks...
I think it "is" more difficult. If the game wanted to create an atmosphere similar to "Fable's Good vs Evil", it fails because evil doesn't give you personal compensation to account for the slowdown of the city meta-game. Maybe the next edition or the digital version will let you become a thieves guild boss or something.
@@GreyWizardInsights but there isn't an other way to unlock the moon character that I want so much, second I always enjoy playing evel party's on d&d which is much more fun than doing the right thing... Do you think it's stupid to play a evil party to unlock a character and then work your reputation up? I guess it will be much easier to gain reputation than to lose it... What I don't understand is why the game pushes you in a subtil way to chose the good path... Like... Why should gloomhaven punish you by loosing prosperity when prosperity is only used for your next character level? Silly, it just makes you take a path just to not lose that money invested on the church
This is meant to be a roleplaying game, so you aren't meant to have viable optimal paths at the expense of the roleplaying. If you take away the "game" mechanics, and instead look at it as the world of gloomhaven, and that each choice made by the players has an effect on the world, then it often makes sense that when the players choose a disreputable choice, as influencers in the world, they're often tearing down their city's civilization, with the result being that the city is poorer for it.
I do wish that there was an option to build the city up in way that the prosperity could be high, even if those with the wealth are say the thieves guild instead of the wealthy class.
But from a game mechanics perspective, I think by the time you unlock moon, you'll have gone through most of the cards and so you should know the end result of the cards as they start coming back up and you can manipulate the reputation very solidly. I don't think that happens until 35-45 games in though.
@@elmono8894 There are two personal quests for unlocking each class that isn't a starting class. Gaining or losing reputation is an alternate method of unlocking the sun and moon classes. It's basically just a bonus for reaching that level of reputation.
Why would you choose a brutal variant when the game is already being not fully enjoyed by everyone?
1 person doesn't care, 1 person loves to rage against unfairness (one of his favorite types of games is rogue-like dungeon games), and the main proponent for the brutal variant who wants this to be more like D&D than it is a board game. To be fair, its pretty easy to not die, but we also have a lot less gold because we can't "risk" things this way, I'd recommend against it.
Almost finish the game and we all want to replay while doing the hardcore mode but we feel there needs to be some legit escape/run option. Seriously who knew a lv 5 ooze was such a bad ass, let me lick my wounds and come back
@@arthurnorcome3967 We simply house-ruled the escape option (and used it only once in 30+ games). Reach one of the entry-hexes.
so far we had 5 death :D (playing a little nastier rules by overlooking some rules in the first 10 games by my fault)
Who is that on the T shirt you're wearing?
Black Widow, a character from Marvel comics.
I think it's cool that after some events nothing happens. That's how life is. Also, if someone gives me the option to steal something and I decide not to, it makes sense that nothing would happen.
I'm not sure what cards you're referring to, I wasn't talking about "You see something interesting, do you want to do it?" "Yes" "Naah". I was talking about all of the cards that are like "Do you do X or do you do Y" and most of the cards result in nothing.
For us, most cards nothing interesting happens, that is how life is, thats why I play games.
@@GreyWizardInsights: i also dont know which cards you are talking about, but we have never had a card where all options resulted in nothing. Overall, most of the times we have something happen after an event :)
I didn't say both options resulted in nothing, I'm saying 5 or 6 cards in a row where the selected choice results in nothing. And these aren't choices to "do something" or "stay at home", these are choices to Do X or Do Y., and doing X might result in something, but doing Y results in nothing happening. Or maybe not having the right race means nothing happens, or not having enough reputation. Reputation, by the way, which stays the same because choosing to help in one instance results in a loss of reputation because the town thinks its above heroes to do manual labor, but then we lose reputation when we don't do manual labor because the kid asking for help gets disappointed we didn't go help build a wall (which is also manual labor).
In real life, I suppose it would happen that people are fickle and judge people inconsistently, but in a game, it'd be nice to have more obvious Dragon Age style "be a hero" or "be thugs" type of results, here its almost like they flipped a coin on each card.
I use fishing tackle boxes. Super bulky but super cheap and very easy
Great tip! I used to use fishing tackle boxes for D&D stuff all the time! I forgot about them. :)
I just got my copy of Gloomhaven, and I wanted to let you know I found your video here useful, and I didn't feel like you let any big spoilers out. Unfortunately, my group can be a bit of a pill when it comes to picking up new games. They'll hate a game based on their own misunderstanding of the rules and/or mechanics, and tend to lock themselves into it. So, with some of the tips you gave I felt it could help to avoid some of those traps. Otherwise, I guess I'll need to find a new group. :p
There is a printable rules reference sheet/s on Board Game Geek that works well (boardgamegeek.com/filepage/158565/gloomhaven-condensed-rules-reference). I created my own for things my group was doing wrong or for situations that wouldn't come up all that often and I refer to it nearly every session.
Very useful tips, thanks!
My gaming group comes from RPGs and loves to play for the story experience, so I house rule every campaign game to maximize the variety of scenarios and min-max the characters so we play not to master a game but to enjoy the story, the surprises and (like a completionist) experience every item, event and monster in the game. So, we've modified the rules to not focus on strategy/challenge but on completing/experiencing the story (even though it has a lot less than a lot of other games):
1) Forget the loot rules. Pick up everything by walking over them and share the loot at the end to maximize your purchase power.
2) Card limit, schmard schimit. I know, I know, this is a big one and 'breaks the game' but as a completionist you want to experience every tactical card (combo) and putting every card in your action deck when you level up is just too much fun. Also, it helps with faster leveling (see #5) cuz you've got more cards to play/discard for XP.
3) Losing is retiring. If your character 'dies' during a game, retire him/her and pick a new one character. There are too many characters compared to the number of scenarios and you want to experience them all, right?
4) Use the scenario chart (see Boardgamegeek.com > Gloomhaven > Files) to plan out which scenarios to do before you do them. Some lock others and you want to play as many as possible.
5) Play fast, role-play hard and don't worry about the nitty gritty of each and every rule instance. In the end, all of these tips are for gamers who have enough campaign games to last years without buying new ones (and who is going to stick to that?) so if, like my group, you just want to experience Gloomhaven's (almost) 100 scenarios for the storylines and the leveling up, don't be shy to gain XP and gold fast. Use the 'Easy' level to limit monster strength (they're just fodder, right?) and discard cards for the XP whenever you can. Sure, by level 3 already you'll feel like a superhero (so feel free to move from Easy to Normal or Hard) but the point is to have a fun romp, discover some secrets and not 'grind until you master a strategy'. Have fun!
I 100% support this, my group has been leaning more and more for “easy” mode during campaign games because I am literally selling unplayed games at this point because we just won’t have time to play
To each his own I guess. However, to me this really sounds like a weird gloomhaven experience - basically throwing away big chunks of core mechanic (loot, gold, proper XP acquiring rate, card limits). What's the point in getting in dungeon, even if it's hardcore mode hard level, if you've just setup everything in a way that makes your session super easy?
Also, as another person coming from RPG world, I really can't get my head around the thought of knowing every scenario, before you even delve into the story. It would be like telling your DM "Yo, we don't have time for the campaign, so just give us a quick recap, where we can go and what we can do and how all the things might end, and then we'll tell where we are going".
Anyway, again, everyone is allowed to play the way they want to, I'm just getting impression that based on the rules your group has, you are far more interested in the scenario(s)/story, and the game with it's mechanics kinda gets in a way to experience it, so the natural simplification would be to just read scenario book.
Google "Gloomhaven YASS" for my personal favorite storage solution. All you need is 3 Plano 3600 boxes, one Plano 3601 box, and some ziploc bags. Much cheaper than the Broken Token kit, and will still fit in the game's box.
This IS a legacy game, but where do you rip up cards (you say about this in 11:46) ? I'm currently 150 hours in, probably 70-80% content done and I haven't physically destroyed a single component, maybe apart from seals on envelopes, but certainly no cards. I think if you are ripping up your cards in Gloomhaven then you are doing something wrong there.
Lukasz R Yeah...there’s no ripping up cards. He must be taking the little symbol that looks like a ripped up card too literally.
The cards are removed from the game, on bgg in the faq they say you can destroy the cards or if it bothers you too much you can save them in a memory box or something. But why would you? You can’t play the game again as is, because there are stickers all over, and what are you going to do with a bunch of cards that should never be re-added? I toss them, I don’t have space to hold onto every possible little thing that I once played with but don’t need anymore
@@GreyWizardInsights What??????? I'm running 4 different campaigns and never had any problem. Reseting the game is easy, stickers on map can stay, you can print new maps, you have removable stickers, you have on BGG many sheets better then ones in the game. Use you imagination. Don't destroy anything, never ever!
@@swvi9459 Just because I am curiouse; Why are you playing it over again and again, are those parallel session with different people or sequential to explore different constellations?
@@benjaminmeusburger4254 Different people, total restart of everything. And why not? Gloomhaven is a game of around 100+ hours to complete, of course that people won't have always the time to play it, but they don't want to miss anything. Sure, it spoils the game for me in some cases, but it's not that game has Shyamalan's twists in it :D
Whats your beef with Android? The way you said that sounded like it really hurt you at some point.
Organization: The box already comes with an organizer. Your cards are already sorted for you. It isn't hard. After that? SANDWHICH BAGS! They've worked for countless games for countless years. It isn't complicated!
We tried that, no one wanted to setup the game and pack back up the game each week as it was taking more than 10 minutes each time. To get to that magical less than 10 minute number, it took more organization. Seeing as there is at least 4 organizers on the market now, there is a large demand for something better than sandwich bags and all the cards stuffed together in the tiny boxes, but if its working for you to use sandwich bags, keep on doing what you like!
@@GreyWizardInsights
I agree that the boxes are "better", but they also cost a pretty penny. That's my main gripe. You have to spend a ton of time setting them up plus pay a bunch of money for them, all to get a little bit of reduction in setup time.
They also require a lot more room to stack, which requires more room dedicated in your living space solely to Gloomhaven.
I agree with the setup. If I could change one thing about the game it would be setup times.
But properly labeled sandwhich bags and just keeping the cards orderly in the slots isn't too bad. A few rubber bands here and there and it's not too bad.
One thing that I do is if I know I'm going to be playing a bunch over a short span of time is just leave the game setup. I then dump all of whatever tiles and creatures I'm using into my "current" sandwhich bag and it's a 30 second sort once you pour them back out.
the "leaving the game" out strategy is what we did before we had the organizers. I hated it, because my house is a working studio half the week so its embarrassing for models to have to be careful when putting their costumes, purses, whatever on the big table that is both our gaming area and the central table for us next to my 15x25 studio space. Its part of what motivated me that it was worth it to invest some money. For other big games, like arkham horror, I bought a bunch of nifty boxes from office depot and they worked great, but in this case, I specifically wanted something that would fit entirely inside the gloomhaven box but still have those fast setups. I think someone else commented that with the software, it removes a lot of need for many of the cards, so if you're using the software to the fullest, you barely even need the cards in the game and can probably organize it pretty well if you just move the cards to some other box. Heck, a good portion of the broken token organizer is dedicated to those neat individual tuck boxes for the monsters, but we use the gloomhaven helper which means we don't even need the decks. We've been piling the monster decks elsewhere, I don't know how long I'm going to stay motivated to hold onto them before I give up and just toss them.
Push/Pull cards....
That's how you get enemies to "interact" with traps ;)
use HeroQuest doors haha
I loved the heroquest things, i lost it when i moved though and never got another copy 😿
I'd make a lvl 1 character for 60 missions it's that much fun
9:07 say it to the Witcher :D
You don't feel like the Witcher is generally always heroic? He's a bastard guy who acts like he doesn't care, but he seems to always do things for the right reasons.
@@GreyWizardInsights He's 100% neutrally
@@dawidsieruga He's neutral in terms of alliances with no loyalty to any of the factions, but when in the series does he turn his back on people who need saving (who haven't already betrayed people)? That makes him a hero IMO.
l liked the video, but why the "Android Hate" ? :-)
I had just had a Samsung phone that I hated so much I switched to an iphone 6 months or so in. I still hate that phone and its stupid Bixby button. >_>
After each scenario, we do our city / road events, shop, donate, make all the decisions about what to do next, all that jazz. That way, the game owner can set up the next scenario ready to go, so at the start of the session everyone can just sit down and start playing.
Don't worry too much about monster pathing. Yes, it's good to know and follow the rules. But it's not worth grinding the game to a halt to get some complicated situation exactly right.
Assign admin jobs. One person in our group, for example, is responsible for putting down loot when a monster dies. A different person is in charge of elements. They remember to do it, no one else has to. Makes everything run smoother.
Assigning jobs is not only a huge help for making the gameplay smoother, but it also keeps them invested in the game and off playing with their phone. I do it in all kinds of games (I make the new person the banker, or give them control of certain tokens, etc). Great tips!
Didn't mind the donation spoiler one bit. My whole group was scratching our heads why we were stuck at Prop 2 until 25 scenarios in then we sorta figured out it was something to do with donations.
Now I keep looking for the trick to improve reputation, we’re stuck between 3-4 and can’t seem to reliably make it go up.
Heh. Before we started to play, we did read rules and. What affects what and the prosperity level seemed be very important if you were qoing to retire or whatnitems would be available... so we started donaying heavily from the Beginning... the problem was that none of us retired for very very long time ;) but new item were nice if we just could afford them.
The worst part of this is that you just start level 6 or 7 o 8 and there is not character development any more. Because sometimes the challenge of level 1 character is much more better than fully equiped hero.
What slog are you talking about. It's a board with many pieces, its great.
You must not have read the rule book....
I’m not enough of a genius to memorize everything and hold onto it forever, so read the rule book, but not enough times obviously! Thanks for your input!
People are insane when it comes to spoilers in this game.They get seriously UPSET over trivial information.
Surprised Apple owners play on hard mode
Half the group has Android, and they are, indeed, the ones wanting hard mode. I own both, but I'm going to sell my Android phone too because I just don't use it anymore, which is similar to the fact that they love Rogue-likes, and I buy Rogue-likes but then end up regretting it and stop playing. :/ 20 years of Windows & Linux (I'm the CTO in my day job of a corporation that builds software products), but Android is definitely hard mode and I just don't have patience for it anymore. :/
Constructive criticism: you would benefit tremendously from a script.
Please don't provide tips that are untrue. Monsters ARE NOT designed to and WILL NOT simply walk into traps. The design is for traps to act as obstacles and monsters WILL ALLWAYS look for a "trapless" route when determining focus of their AI.
THE ONLY EVER WAY for monsters to "voluntarily" (so no push/pull/forced movement) spring a trap is if there is no other possible route AT ALL, to a tile from which they could perform currently drawn attack.
So if they could move around the entire room in 5 turns without springing a trap, or go through trap and attack now, they will see trap like an obstacle and go around the room.
I find it shocking that 3 years after you made the video there is still no pinned comment with clarification and no mention of the error in the video description.
I stopped at the spoiler...
Game dosnt reward boring people?
Clearly you havnt had red berries yet XD
Why am I watching gloomhaven videos when I don’t even have the game??
Do you have any interest in the Steam Game version?
Wanted this game as a solo dnd lite game. Honestly would have been less complicated to just play dnd. This game is just too much. To many rules, to many things to keep track of. If I had a group to play with to split the knowledge of the rules it would be great, but you practically need a college course to learn this game.
The pc game is in early beta, but you won’t be able to unlock additional characters until next year I believe . Otherwise, yeah, I feel you, we have to delegate to the entire group, it’s not easier than d&d, it just replaces the dm with the group doing work instead
Not a board Game but try to buy forcthe King in Steam,It may be a video Game but works as a really cool board game
@@anon2447 Its on my list now, thanks!
@@GreyWizardInsights you're welcome, btw when you unlock Lore remember: Herbalist=Op support
I Usually go Blacksmith (tank)+Herbalist+Nuker for team comp, buut sometimes i vary the tank
Dude doesn't like Dead of Winter either, right?
I like it, but I also don't like it. Compare Dead of Winter to a game like Who Goes There. In Who Goes There, everyone keeps working towards similar goals, even the betrayer, and in my experience, a bunch of strangers can play Who Goes There and have fun socially as a group, where as Dead of Winter generally isn't a good way to bond strangers into friends. If you play with the same people every week and you know your group can goof around with Dead of Winter by all means enjoy it, but for me, I'll choose Who Goes There almost every time
@@GreyWizardInsights mostly I was referring to the Crossroads cards, the ones that are drawn on every player's turn, but seem to only do something about 1 in 8 times or so. They add an interesting randomness, an additional threat, and if they happened every turn it would be too much.
Oh, 100%, the difference to me is, for those of us who play Gloomhaven once or twice a week, we're only drawing each of these cards once or twice a week. Because of that, if you get a "nothing happens or nothing happens unless your reputation is higher than 10 etc" you might literally play a month before something happens (which has happened to us). To a certain extent, this is just randomness, but rmsgrey has been pointing out that there are some cards that recycle, so once we finish going through the original set of 1-30, we'll be left mostly with cards that we know how to answer them to "make" something happen. Not ideal, but it is what it is.
Oh, 100%, the difference to me is, for those of us who play Gloomhaven once or twice a week, we're only drawing each of these cards once or twice a week. Because of that, if you get a "nothing happens or nothing happens unless your reputation is higher than 10 etc" you might literally play a month before something happens (which has happened to us). To a certain extent, this is just randomness, but rmsgrey has been pointing out that there are some cards that recycle, so once we finish going through the original set of 1-30, we'll be left mostly with cards that we know how to answer them to "make" something happen. Not ideal, but it is what it is.
Damn, the organizer costs almost as much as the game.....come on people, I think we can come up with a much better option!!!!!....unless you are RICH, then you can buy me the organizer.
There are alternatives, check out folded space
@@TheMightyPirateTm I did see Folded Space...I never go by the first thing I see on the Internet as I always do plenty of research.....thank you......but I will not be getting Gloomhaven anyway.....looking at others.
Gloomhaven helper is actually $5, not free.
thats only for IOS though correct?
You did a video for begginers and you are showing secret Characters...? Oh man... Spoiler Alert!
You don't rip up cards in Gloomhaven. And at the price point this game costs, ripping them up i'd consider that person a fool. You simply discard them into a pile removing them from the draw pool. That is all. This game is NOT legacy Pandemic where you only ever play it once and need to buy another copy.
You can play this without ever destroying anything.
Why not, they said in the FAQ that its optional, so why not just rip them up? And what does the price point matter? This game is cheap compared to many of my other games. After the cards have enchantments, and the board is covered with markers, what are you planning on doing with the old cards honestly? I doubt I'll ever finish Gloomhaven, at 20+ games its still one of the games I've played the most, but I have so many other games I need to experience and play through that I'll probably have this game forever and still have stuff to experience and do, the last thing I'd want to do is to keep track of still more junk that I'm holding onto for...what? So one day 20 years from now I can give the game to someone and tell them to scrub off the stickers and start over? Thats not going to happen for me.
@@GreyWizardInsights You can play more than one campaign with different groups of people by not ripping the cards up. Notably the city and road event cards would be the first to run in to issues in this scenario.
The prosperity chart is marked up, there are stickers all over the board, the cards for certain classes have enhancements, "resetting" the campaign each time we play with different people just wouldn't work for us. Instead, we're treating it as one world, and we socialize and tell stories about what happened in each different campaign to affect this shared world, which to me feels fun. Its your game though, play it how you like!
The prosperity chart is marked up, there are stickers all over the board, the cards for certain classes have enhancements, "resetting" the campaign each time we play with different people just wouldn't work for us. Instead, we're treating it as one world, and we socialize and tell stories about what happened in each different campaign to affect this shared world, which to me feels fun. Its your game though, play it how you like!
The prosperity chart is marked up, there are stickers all over the board, the cards for certain classes have enhancements, "resetting" the campaign each time we play with different people just wouldn't work for us. Instead, we're treating it as one world, and we socialize and tell stories about what happened in each different campaign to affect this shared world, which to me feels fun. Its your game though, play it how you like!
Mate, you said read the FAQ but few minutes after you say the monster are supposed to move on their own traps, you lost me. Go read the faq.
That’s fair, it’s so embarrassing, because I play cragheart and the first thing I did most games was create enough obstacles to force the monsters to channel in towards us slowly, we became lazy and I forgot why the monsters were hitting their own traps. 😭😭 I own up to that mistake, sorry again!
Please put a spoiler warning I would have rather gone through the consequences they get told min max optimal strategy.
There is no spoilers here. He is speaking of game mechanics. They are not consequences as u state. And its not an optimal strategy.our group is happy to steal, but we defend our city and dont murder, so we have 0 rep...we go up n down +5/-5 but average in middle...which isnt enough to unlock either character from reputation...or gain rewards from event cards that require rep. Its a flaw in the game and he is correct to say its better to stick with doing good or bad deeds as the game didnt intend for u to hover in the middle. Things unlock at 10 +/- we get to 6 and then go back to 0...we been playing over a year. He made the game for good /bad...we are chaotic neutral and you do miss out.
Unlocking the characters for good/bad reputation is in the rulebook on the last page - same section with the information that you unlock something with spending gold for blessing.
Furthermore you can simply reduce the merchant costs by positive reputation, that pushed our group to positive reputation simply through the rule book ...
Id rather make a work around that does not pushish you for not being pure good or pure evil so you can RP a more reasitic charecter. Star wars had the same over simplistic moral rewards bar and I was not a fan. At least some games that have them do have rewards for staying neutral
Whenever I watch videos like this I can't believe how many people struggle with games and how thankful I am for the group I have. You think road and city events are useless because you don't get your own way all the time? Do you get your own way all the time in life? Here's a tip....think before you choose. You think people should quit because they come back as lower level characters? We are 10 games in with zero deaths and a 100% victory record because we work as a team and think tactically. If you die that's your punishment but you really shouldn't be dying often. If you are maybe decrease the difficulty level of the game if you're new to gaming. As for storing it I must have a magical box because I manage to get all my stuff back in neatly with the lid maybe raised 3mm.
I'm always shocked by people who get all these rules wrong. Like, "I thought I was an ally to myself." HOW!? The rule book explicitly says "you are not an ally to yourself". It's VERY clear. I watched another video where the guy wasn't letting monsters attack after he revealed a room, meaning he was getting possibly two free turns on them every room reveal. The rules devote at least three sentences to this exact situation. It's really not that hard.
I hit a nerve apparently, sorry about that! I just rewatched, I don't remember saying verbally or even implying some of what you said.
Road and city events? I never said that events are useless because we don't get our own way. I did say that roughly a lot of the time, because of randomness, nothing happened, which is different than me complaining that we got our own way. I'm ok with bad things happening too, though when something did happen, our reputation often went up, or went down, to the point that 20+ games in, we're still at 3-4 which is high enough to make sure that still other cards won't ever take effect, and low enough that still other cards won't take any effect.
box. I never said we couldn't get things back into the box, I'm not sure where that came from.
I stand by my words that for "most" people that I know, a box organizer is vital, but not for the reason you think I was saying it. I never had any problems getting everything "neatly" back into the box, I don't think it was even raised 3mm. My problem was that if the game takes more than a few minutes to unpack, or more than a few minutes to repack, we'll just play something else. For most of us, choosing to game is at a cost of sleep or something else, we game because its fun and awesome, despite the fact that most of us will have to wake up early the next day (like 6ish hours of sleep early). Most gamers I know are like that, at least on the west coast. Before the box organizer, unpacking and repacking the game would come at the cost of gaming or sleep, now its fast and easy. If your group can get it packed neatly and unpacked neatly in less than 10 minutes each, then you rock, if you don't care that it takes more time than that, lucky you, enjoy your slower paced life, but for us that just isn't reality.
@@GreyWizardInsights
One thing I think Isaac could do is organize the punchout cards better. They are completely random. There's no reason at all they couldn't just put all the bad guys onto 2-3 sheets and group them together. I think the disorganization to start when punching things out just compounds the confusion when everything is laid out on the table.
What I've done is that I haven't punched out everything. I only punch it out as it becomes necessary for a scenario. That means at only 7 scenarios in I have a ton of stuff still in the punchouts, drastically reducing my search.
I think there was a cost reason behind why they printed them the way they did, but nice call on not punching things out early, I think punching everything out really hurt my brain when trying to grok what was out on the table. :(
DorkSideGaming I think you've just highlighted a problem that's getting bigger and bigger with our society. Even the smallest inconvenience is too much trouble. If things are so bad on the west coast with work etc that 10 minutes packing puts you off playing a quality game then maybe the fault doesn't lie with the game but with the way work etc is making you a slave to it rather than living. Makes me sad that people fall into that trap that they are so busy working that they forget why they do it in the first place. It's a lesson we should all learn that if we can't afford a few minutes to rebox a game there is a serious problem with our life and there are other choices and other jobs. Either that or maybe you're being a little over dramatic?
Tax writeoffs
Had to skip through this video to get to your actual points, so much rambling, tangents and pauses! And seriously, out of all the words out there to choose from, you chose to be rude and used "bipolar"? It's so easy to use another word that ACTUALLY describes what you are talking about. Coincidentally someone in my Gloomhaven group has bipolar. Of course it has NOTHING to do with how they play the game. That's not how bipolar works!
Growing up as a child with adults that had bipolar disorder felt like a form of hell that has haunted me my entire life (and my siblings), so I have a very negative view of the disorder (not of people who have it, its not their fault), sorry, no reason to use the term, I'll avoid it in the future! As for my rambling, I definitely was doing the videos as a bit more vlog style, but more recently I've decided to make it 80% content, 20% vlog so hopefully they're less "rambly" without becoming cookie cutter like so many other youtube channels.
Soft people use software with board games.
20 min video with 5 mins of info. tone it down.
Tip 1: Don't play Gloomhaven.