Gloomhaven is a fully co-operative, dungeon crawling tactical combat board game for 1-4 players, set in a persistent world with unlockable characters, secrets and a branching story.
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Summary
The #1 all-time rated game on Board Game Geek started off popular and has only been getting more popular with time, and with it now being in more hands over Christmas and with upcoming expansions and sequels, I think it's time this community had its own thread!
Summary
Players will take on the role of a wandering adventurer with their own special set of skills and their own reasons for travelling to this dark corner of the world. Players must work together out of necessity to clear out menacing dungeons and forgotten ruins. In the process, they will enhance their abilities with experience and loot, discover new locations to explore and plunder, and expand an ever-branching story fuelled by the decisions they make.
This is a game with a persistent and changing world that is ideally played over many game sessions, covering 99 scenarios! After a scenario, players will make decisions on what to do, which will determine how the story continues, kind of like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book. Playing through a scenario is a cooperative affair where players will fight against automated monsters using an innovative card system to determine the order of play and what a player does on their turn. Even for a regular game group, Gloomhaven will take a year+ to complete, making it amazing value for money given the price tag of around $140/£120 - that said, it can occasionally be found for cheaper.
Gameplay & Flow
In the City of Gloomhaven
The party can do a few things while preparing for adventure in the often unwelcoming and corrupt inns, markets and back alleys of Gloomhaven:
- Newcomers can create a new character, giving them a name and a personal quest, which can be shared with the party, and create their own deck from the choices given.
- For characters who gained enough XP during the last scenario, you can level up your character, unlocking new tiers of cards to add to your deck and giving you new perks to help swing the odds in your favour during tight battles.
- The shop is available to purchase weapons, gear and other items to help you in your quest. As the prosperity of Gloomhaven increases over your campaign, more items become available to the party.
- A randomly drawn city card tells a small narrative to flesh out the geography and dwellers of Gloomhaven, giving you two choices on how you would like to react to the situation at hand. Depending on your choice, the consequences could be rewarding - or punishing.
- If your next dungeon is not connected directly to Gloomhaven, a randomly drawn road event card can be played much like the city cards, but be warned - they are usually more risky than the city events.
- In the dungeon, following the story intro narrated by one of your group, the real gameplay begins. Each turn, a player chooses two cards to play out of their hand. The number on the first card determines their initiative for the round. Each card also has a top and bottom power, and when it is a player's turn in the initiative order, they determine whether to use the top power of one card and the bottom power of the other, or vice-versa. Players must be careful, though, because over time they will permanently lose cards from their hands. If they take too long to clear a dungeon, they may end up exhausted and be forced to retreat. The moves might involve moving, attacking, healing, shielding, or some other unique supporting action.
just pretend there's two cards here okay - When attacking, the player draws from their attack modifier deck, a separate deck of cards with values of eg. -1, +1, +2 or more surprises:
- The powers of the six elements can also be harnessed during the adventure, leading to the ability to unleash even more powerful versions of your normal attacks.
Character Classes
The game comes with 17 characters, each with their own unique look, feel and gameplay style, though they will often have roots in the traditional styles of offence, tank and support familiar to RPG players. Six are available at the start, with the remaining characters kept locked away in tantalising sealed boxes, only opened when you unlock them through the campaign - usually through a character realising their personal goal, but there are a couple of exceptions. As your character levels up, new cards become available to add to your deck which usually strengthens further the theme of your character - for example, the earth-based Cragheart gains new the potential to pick up nearby rocks and throw them at their enemies, or explode rocks to damage all the enemies around it and other fun ways to manipulate the obstacles dotted around the dungeon.
Available to all players at the start are the squishy but speedy and dangeous psychic Mindthief, the no-nonsense damage dealer Brute, the nimble rogue Scoundrel, strategic spellcaster Spellweaver, rock-smashing Cragheart, and clockwork ally-summoning support Tinkerer.
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The World of Gloomhaven
Like any good board game, this one comes with a board, but in true being very extra Gloomhaven fashion, it's not actually used for gameplay - but rather, serves as a world map and allows you to place stickers on all the locations revealed so far during your campaign, as well as track your party's achievements and Gloomhaven's prosperity. A nice touch to help immerse your party in the world around you as you travel back and forth to the various dungeons, keeps, creepy caves around the world.
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Notes for Newbies & FAQ (I'll keep this updated!)
- The game box is HILARIOUSLY BIG AND HEAVY, coming in at upwards of 10kg! So uh, be warned if you have a bad back, or something.
- The first couple of scenarios can be tough! I highly recommend setting the difficulty to easy (scenario level 0) to start off with. The objective difficulty of scenarios is almost completely consistent, so the game tends to get easier as you become more familiar with the game mechanics and pacing, at which point you can notch up the difficulty in exchange for a better challenge and more rewards at the end of the dungeon. That being said, it's really not a massively complex game at the end of the day, so don't let the box size put you off.
- Along the same lines - you will definitely make mistakes with the rules at the start! Usually not in your favour, too, which might cause you fail the scenarios at first. Don't sweat it too much! After all, you still get to keep the XP and gold you earned. The rule book is really good, and the reference page on the back cover points to the page numbers for any icons for which you need some specifics.
- While best enjoyed with a consistent group, the campaign does not live or die by its players. When starting a scenario, the difficulty is set by averaging the levels of all player characters, so it is fully compatible with people who may drop out or join in, either temporarily or permanently.
- Gloomhaven can be played solo by controlling two characters. Solo board game players seem to have a great time with it!
- The narrative is not necessarily a "main quest with side quests" in structure that you might be used to from video game RPGs - it has a set of smaller plot threads which branch wildly, allowing you to poke around in various dungeons and see what happens, and some of those will result in other branches being closed off to you forever, but you will not really see much of a single, core plot thread to follow. So don't expect a single huge, satisfying, sweeping story. Discuss your next adventure with your party and go with your gut (or your character's personal quest)!
- There is a removable sticker set that costs about £10/$10 can be used in place of the normal stickers that come with the game. Apart from being removable, they are otherwise identical. The set also includes elements usually filled out in pencil on the game board, like Gloomhaven's prosperty level. Great if you want resale value.
- iOS/Android/PC app Gloomhaven Helper, lets you keep the monster stats, the monster behaviour deck, the element tracker board, and the HP/exp dials in the box. While it's fun to use these physical elements first, this will not only save so much time during setup, gameplay and tear down over a single night, this will add up through your whole campaign to many, *many* hours saved. It can be used remotely too, so each player can connect over the net to the same session and keep their initiatives secret until you all draw and keep track of your own character's HP, exp and status effects. Essential.
- for the love of everything that is holy, don't forget you can lose a card from your hand (or 2 from your discard pile) to avoid an incoming attack
- Need advice on the game, a scenario, mechanic or guidance on whether it's the right board game for you? Feel free to ask any questions!
Sequels & Expansions
For those who have played the hell out of Gloomhaven and want more, you can already buy small-box expansion Forgotten Circles which includes a new set of scenarios, and new class Diviner that is available to play immediately, who can also be integrated into your base game before finishing the base game.
The big boy sequel, Frosthaven, has been announced and is looking to be on the same scope as Gloomhaven itself. We don't know much about this, but as all small and big box expansions are intended to be compatible with Gloomhaven with full integration, it seems reasonable expect more content rather than any drastically different changes to the game itself. That being said, the new starting characters are in my opinion, extremely cool aesthetically and in terms of how the characters' themes fit their card decks and I can't wait.
Spoiler Rules
Gloomhaven: Cragheart, Brute, Tinkerer, Mindthief, Scoundrel, Spellweaver
Forgotten Circles: Diviner
Jaws of the Lion: Voidwarden, Hatchet, Demolitionist, Red Guard
Frosthaven: Drifter, Blink Blade, Banner Spear, Deathwalker, Necromancer, Geminate
For unlockable classes, you can use descriptions of the logos before spoiler tags when posting pictures of the character boards, minis, cards or mechanics discussion. In the GH community, the unlockable ones are commonly referred to as Sun, Three Spears, Circles, Two-Mini, Eclipse, Cthulhu, Lightning Bolts, Music Note, Angry Face, Saw and Triforce. Fake example:
is a character I haven't unlocked yet, actually
For game scenario or plot discussion, just use common sense. Better to be safe than sorry, just post the scenario number and name when hiding text in a spoiler block.
Introduce Yourselves!
Got a campaign going already and want to share? Introduce your group with your progress (don't share your nicknames of unlockable classes if it hints at their abilities!):
Scenarios Done: 69
Campaign Started: 6th September, 1969
Current Party: Mindthief aka Sneaky, Cthulhu, Cragheart aka Rockman II, Angry Face
Prosperity: Level 69
No. of retirements: 69
Painted miniatures, questions, surprises, anecdotes, post away!
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