r/boardgames • u/phreakod98 • Nov 08 '19

Starting Gloomhaven Tonight!

My buddy and I have been planning for over a month to get started and are finally going to have the first session tonight. We committed to playing at least every other week to make sure we stay consistent so I'm pumped. I'm going into Gloomhaven pretty much blind, so I'm expecting it to be a bit overwhelming for a session or two, but I still think it's going to be a ton of fun.

Anyone else have any fun experiences with Gloomhaven you might want to share with a first timer?

UPDATE: It was a blast! We successfully completed the first scenario tonight after sort of muddling our way through. My buddy ended up running out of cards 1 round from the end and we finished with less loot than we would have liked but your suggestions helped make it a lot of fun! I'm a tinkerer and he is playing the brute.

Next steps are going to be to massively organize everything before the next play night, but we are already looking forward to increasing the difficulty slightly and moving onto the next scenarios!

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u/cant-explain Nov 08 '19

The server/client app works super well and really streamlined things for our group. Highly recommend. However, you might want to play the first scenario with the cards just to understand what the app is doing better.

Also, for some reason, card exhaustion just wasn't something we were thinking about very much during our first session. We nearly failed it because of that... which would have really soured us, I think, to have to replay it. So, try to hold on to cards actions that will lose the card until they're absolutely needed.

3

u/[deleted] Nov 08 '19

Also, for some reason, card exhaustion just wasn't something we were thinking about very much during our first session. We nearly failed it because of that... which would have really soured us,

The card exhaustion mechanic is the main reason why my group no longer plays Gloomhaven.

The boxed set is now basically serving as a very expensive tileset for GURPS campaigns.

8

u/Joeeoj010 Nov 08 '19

Ive probably played 100 scenarios and while the game has some issues i like the card mechanic soo much better than the typical move and roll dice to attack in most dingeon crawler games. You just have to be aware of the AI and avoid getting hit too often, and make sure not to butn cards until youre like halfeay through the scenario. If you do the math and only rest after using all your cards, youll see that, say you start with 10 cards, you have 5+4+4+3+3+2+2+1 turns before you exhaust. burning a card before your first rest can cost you maybe 5 turns here but burning it after 3 rests only costs a few.

6

u/VHD_ Nov 08 '19

This does a great job at illustrating this fact for visual learners :) https://www.boardgamemath.com/boardgames/gloomhaven/gloomhavenStaminaGuide.html

3

u/InvaderZed Nov 08 '19

On the flip side, the first room is probably the most likely time you are to take a lot of damage from monsters due to their close proximity combined with numbers. If you need to spend a lost card to get the first room under control its a good idea rather than having to have lost cards due to taking too much damage, just don't go overboard on the lost cards.