Basics of how to play
Gloomhaven is a massive card and tile board game for 1 to 4 players. Ideally 4 players meet regularly to play through the story. When you start playing, there are 6 unique classes to choose from. At first you won't know anything about the classes, you'll just see their symbols, and select one.Once selected, open up your envelope and use the content to build your very own character.
Gloomhaven is what is called a "legacy" style game, so there are changes to the game as you play on. At times you will have to rip up cards or add stickers to the cards or the board to make permanent changes to the rest of the game.
Once all players have their first character, they venture out on a scenario. With 4 players, each scenario can take between 1 to 3 hours. Refer to the rules book for how to set up the scene: you will use certain tiles, traps, monsters etc, and set up a room only after opening the door. There are a lot of interesting monsters and bosses to verse that you won't find in any other game as they are made by the Gloomhaven creators! But before you even get to the battle, there's a whole slew of things to do in town such as buying items or interacting with NPCs. If you leave town for your mission, you may have a road encounter, which, as it is a legacy style game may be very different depending on your previous choices in the story.
When you enter a scenario, you will bring a personalized deck of cards with you. During each turn, you select two of these cards to play. On each card is a top action and bottom action, as well as a basic attack and basic movement. You can choose to use either an attack or top action, and a move or bottom action from these cards. In the middle of the card is a number representing initiative or speed. Once you've chosen your cards and the round begins, you can change your mind about which action you'll take from those cards. There is a lot of thought that can go into each round. To add to potential strategy, on each mission everyone has a personal goal to achieve. When you achieve your goal, you are rewarded.
Speaking of goals, when you create a character, you will also get a life goal. It's been a lot of fun to keep these goals secret and use them to create a story for my character which ties in with the race and my personal ideas, and play around that to keep my team mates guessing at what it is. Once the life goal is complete, your character retires. Forever. Generally you'll be rewarded with something, like one of the other classes, or a mystery envelope. You make a new character and that character joins the party!
What do I like about Gloomhaven?
The characters. The story. Even NPCs that you may come across in your travels have interesting backstories. The story really draws you in, and now that we've finished the main story, there's still so much left over! We still have the expansion, side missions, a class we haven't unlocked, and mysterious envelopes to open!
The classes are very unique. The creators have made unique races, and backstories for those races, and some classes have very unique mechanics to keep up the variety. My group has enjoyed helping each other with selecting cards which have good synergy together, and due to this have found some ridiculous combos which make the characters shine. Each class also has a solo mission which unlocks a unique item made specifically for that character to enrich it even more.
The figures are very well made with intricate details. For those with a creative streak you will love being able to paint your favorite characters in colours of your choosing. Below is my painted figure of the first charter I played. This is one of the starters you can choose from.
There is SO MUCH CONTENT! Like I said, I've played over 120 hours. There is still a lot of content remaining as I've mentioned above. The community is also huge, so fans
have created apps and accessories
to assist with things like tracking life and what missions you can and
can't do. The base game does have all you need, but these are nice to
assist with clutter. I could definitely recommend Gloomhaven Helper which my group even set up a screen on the side of our games for! It's a really excellent app that's helped a lot.
I'm really looking forward to trying the digital version so will probably post about it too later on.
I would love to see how other people have painted your miniatures so please show me photos in the comments! To keep this post spoiler free, if you post anything about classes after the first 6, please post a link to your content with a spoiler tag. On that note, if you are a reader who has not played, Gloomhaven is worth every cent, so I recommend buying it now!
If you would like to see the beta digital version before buying, my husband will be streaming it on https://www.twitch.tv/foxetious in the next few nights or so. Give him a follow to get notified when he goes live with it if you're interested :) You can also join the Gloomhaven Discord here if you do get the beta to discuss feedback.
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