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× Talk about the latest and greatest AT, and the Classics.

It's time to talk about *playing* Gloomhaven

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01 Jun 2018 16:17 - 20 Jun 2018 14:38 #274457 by Michael Barnes
I will write something more substantial later but 10 scenarios into Gloomhaven (with some fails) and I will say that the hype is real. This is the generation-defining game that has been missing, and it’s influence is going to be mighty over the next several years. It is bar none the best tactical dungeon crawl designed to date.

However there is a huge set of disqualifiers...

- If you do not intend to commit to playing it repeatedly eithe solo or with a group, don’t bother. It is not a one-off, 60 minutes of fun thing.

-It is long and complicated. I play a scenario by myself and it’s about 2-3 hours including setup and breakdown.

- There are TONS of components, and they -must- be properly organized or you will go insane or never pull it out to play. It does have legacy stuff, so you will want to buy the $10 set of reusable stickers.

- It is very thinky and cerebral. It can feel puzzle-y, which I think is desirable at low player counts but not desirable with more. With two characters, it’s compelling. With 4, it’s kind of a slog.

- It’s VERY fussy at first and the first couple of outings you will get clobbered. There is a not gentle learning curve.

- The RPG narrative events/world building elements are kind of overstated. There is a LOT of text in the game, but the city/road events are kind of just “choose one” things where you can usually predict the outcome.

- It is VERY much like getting a game with all of the expansions included at once. This is where the campaign play really matters, as you unlock what would be expansion content in other games as you hit milestone points. Which may vary based on your course through it.

- You -have- to allow failure. Because grinding is actually a thing, and some may find that offensive. But even if you blow it in a two hour scenario, you still get some progressions.

- The IOS App Gloomhaven Campaign Tracker makes the game FAR more manageable. It handles all of the legacy stuff (including making the already superfluous map completely useless), all the character tracking, all the unlocks, everything. And it’s FREE. The thing is, the app demonstrates how half of the material in the box could be regarded as gimcrackery if it were designed to be dogitallly assisted.

It’s a mindblowingly good game that I’m surprised has found so much traction...because if I played it before the hype, I would have said “definitely not for everybody”. And it completely flies in the face of the mass consumption/high turnover rate of today’s hobby.
Last edit: 20 Jun 2018 14:38 by ChristopherMD.

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15 Jun 2018 10:33 #275450 by rafcordero
Replied by rafcordero on topic I have no words...

Michael Barnes wrote: It's a bit sad, when you think about it. Touchpoint titles that gamers used to use as common ground have been diluted in a sea of mediocrity. We're grasping for shared experience in the murky water, and finding the only thing we have in common is that we're wet.

10 years ago, everybody would have been playing and talking about Gloomhaven. It would have been one of those watershed titles that everyone was playing and discussing. It might be today if it weren’t:

- Expensive
- only intermittently available
- a game that demand you play it, like 50+ times to “complete” it
- one of about 200 dungeon crawls released in the past year.


Is it not? It's huge on BGG/reddit and seems pretty broadly discussed on social media. This is the only community I've peeked in on that seems to have a thing against it.
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16 Jun 2018 08:36 #275527 by Grudunza

Michael Barnes wrote: I will write something more substantial later but 10 scenarios into Gloomhaven (with some fails) and I will say that the hype is real. This is the generation-defining game that has been missing, and it’s influence is going to be mighty over the next several years. It is bar none the best tactical dungeon crawl designed to date.


I haven’t been around here much the past several months, so I missed this post, initially, but I had wanted you to play it and to hear your take on it (I owe you $10, I suppose). Glad you’re diggin’ it, but regardless, your view seemed missing from the greater conversation about it.

I hope you stick with it long enough to at least unlock all of the characters, because there are some really fun ones to discover. The scope of how this game was put together, at the quality it is, is almost mind-blowing to me. I tried making one custom character deck, and it took forever, was a pain in the ass, and still turned out wonky in terms of some balancing... Isaac Childress did 19 characters for Gloomhaven and they all work great.

I haven’t played it more than a couple times since the three months in the spring of 2017 where I played it nearly every day (and in a couple cases, all day long). And that speaks to one of your points, that for me, having a specific room in my house dedicated to playing this game (so I could keep all of the monsters and tokens lined up on a table, and not have to repack cards and such) was a must in terms of being able to really appreciate it. Once I decided to finally clear it off that table (to make room for the also great Spirit Island), then it was hard to get back to. At some point (probably when the expansion character comes out later this year), I’ll look forward to diving back in again.
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16 Jun 2018 18:33 - 16 Jun 2018 18:49 #275558 by Gary Sax
Ok. I did it. I haven't played it and I'm not super interested, but I want this thread to exist. And I'm a mod so I'm moving some recent long posts about the game into this thread as a thread starter. Give me a second.

For more, see these threads, which are also pretty good.

therewillbe.games/forum/13-eurogames/199...acters-to-run#261940
therewillbe.games/forum/32-trashdome/199...r-tower?limitstart=0

To start discussion, I hear a lot about upgrading by retiring characters to new classes. So are the later character classes more like advanced characters to understand? Or are they just different but of equal complexity?

edit: most of the posts were doing a meta complaint about Gloomhaven so I left them. But I moved the Barnes post about it in the board games played thread as a conversation starter. Also, if you're annoyed about getting your post moved from the other thread (Grudunza I'm thinking of)---sorry! We're making an effort to get substantive discussion going in original threads if the contributions are weighty enough so people could actually, you know, find them if they want to enter the forums and the community.
Last edit: 16 Jun 2018 18:49 by Gary Sax.
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17 Jun 2018 07:06 #275590 by ThirstyMan
Can someone comment about solo applicability?

This is more important to me than anything as I literally never play with others.
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17 Jun 2018 07:17 #275592 by san il defanso
From everything I can tell, solo play is where this shines. It's probably the most significant solo game since Mage Knight.
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17 Jun 2018 08:54 #275603 by Michael Barnes
I keep teasing more later, but I would say that Gloomhaven is the best solo game I’ve ever played.

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17 Jun 2018 09:14 #275606 by Grudunza
There are specific solo scenarios for each character, though I haven’t tried those. The consensus seems to be for playing solo to start with controlling two characters and move up to three at some point. It’s great enough with two, but it is better with three, combining more abilities together, and progression happens a little faster in terms of unlocking new stuff.

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17 Jun 2018 10:44 #275608 by Sevej
To repeat my question buried in the other thread:

Would the core gameplay work with less expansive material? The upper and lower part card play thingy?

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17 Jun 2018 12:53 #275616 by mads b.
I played a couple of games solo and it failed to impress me. Since then I have played several games with 3 and four players and enjoy it a lot.

I think it initially had to little story to fit my taste for a solo game. It is very much a tactical dungeon crawler. But maybe I would enjoy it solo after having played with more

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17 Jun 2018 15:47 #275626 by dysjunct
All the talk about how great Gloomhaven is with solo play makes me think I should wait for the app.
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17 Jun 2018 16:15 #275631 by charlest
I think it's best with 3 players as you get some competition in the goals and more synergy, especially with the elements.

It is a great solo game as well, just better with more IMO.
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17 Jun 2018 16:47 #275632 by ChristopherMD
These might seem an antagonistic question but not my intention. What exactly does Gloomhaven do that so many other fantasy adventure games haven't done gameplay-wise?
Also with so much content included is dysjunct right in thinking it'd be better as an app?
Has anyone who hangs out here written a review someplace? I trust the opinions around here more than from randoms and don't care for video reviews.
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17 Jun 2018 17:49 #275638 by Erik Twice

ChristopherMD wrote: These might seem an antagonistic question but not my intention. What exactly does Gloomhaven do that so many other fantasy adventure games haven't done gameplay-wise?

I actually don't think it's significantly different than the average dungeon crawler like **Descent**, it's simply a touch better in some regards. For example, it replaces dice with cards and introduces hand management. It is still a game about maximizing damage and spending time moving around the board to wack people. Is it better than the average dungeon crawler? I would say so. Is it significantly better? Nah, not really. I would say the difference is similar to that between an okay worker placement game and a good one. You can tell, but it's not groundbreaking.

I do not like the game so take my comments with a grain of salt. Personally, my biggest issue with it is that I don't think any of the decisions are interesting. I don't think about my turns, I just do the same things over and over and that seems to be enough. For example, all I did with the Spellweaver was this:

a) Put shields up. Use Googles+Fireballs to wipe out the initial room
b) Use small, fast spells to finish off what's left.
c) Rest, move to the next room
d) Repeat

I also feel that, strategically speaking, all monsters are the same. That is, I play the same way no matter if my opponent is a zombie or demon, I just see them as differently-sized HP sponges. The only exception are Slimes and I feel that if all monsters were as good as that one, the game could actually be great.

ChristopherMD wrote: Also with so much content included is dysjunct right in thinking it'd be better as an app?

It would. I would say a game with the board takes over 2 hours to play. If you played Gloomhaven on a computer each game would last forty-five minutes at best. There's a lot of shuffling tokens around, tracking damage, checking cards, moving AI enemies and phyisically taking the game out of the box that is very slow.

I'm told you can use a digital tracker for this stuff and, if so, I recommend it because it should help massively.
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17 Jun 2018 19:17 #275643 by san il defanso
I don't think I understood that it was a grindy experience, but that kind of thing is such a drag to me, especially solo. That sounds like an absolute chore to me. Does that mean you are replaying scenarios until you finish? That is like one of my boardgaming hells.
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