Matt_W…dreamkiller 🙁
Sorry about this. Setup/takedown time were one of the many reasons I got rid of it. When I organized it, I bought GMT chit trays for all of the standees and tokens and chits, and an expandable file organizer for the tiles. It didn’t all fit back in the box, and still took about 30 minutes to set up. The Broken Token organizer, which costs nearly as much as the game, looks like it might streamline the process though.
Thanks, was just looking at the organizer and it’s far too much when compared to the game itself. Ugh. Well, I’ll just leave it boxed a while longer then. Until I can get someplace to keep it setup for at least somewhat extended periods of time.
Yeah, leaving it setup is the ideal way to do it. It’s like a 100+ hour campaign, though, so be ready for it to be a feature on your table for many months. I will warn you that punching and organizing the game initially took me about 6 hours. There are hundreds of monster standees that need to be sorted into 30 or so types, many, many cards to sort into many decks, and a whole pile of map-feature tokens that are double-sided so nearly impossible to sort in any comprehensible way.
The various card types aren’t sorted into decks already? Good grief! Still, I’m glad I bought it, but have no idea when I’ll be able to actually play it. Like 90% of my digital games!
Much as I’m down on Gloomhaven (and I think it’s the most overrated game of all time), the core gameplay is actually really good. The way the cards work, the exhaustion mechanic, the synergies between the cards, the asymmetric character decks, and the legacy-style deckbuilding are all really neat and well thought out. I just didn’t care for the repeated skirmishing, the art, the fiddliness and especially the setup and takedown times. I recommend using an app at least to track monster stats during combat. This is a good one:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.esotericsoftware.gloomhavenhelper
There are also apps to track your campaign and to present scenarios without spoilers.
Whoa! Big thanks. I thought I had heard of some apps to help with various admin/tracking for GH, but having the links and names really helps
The Broken Token organizer helps a lot and is worth every penny, but it’s still more setup and teardown than I am personally prepared to ever deal with solo. (But then I never boardgame solo because setup/teardown on basically anything is more than I feel like dealing with.)
It absolutely deserves 120% of the hype though. Best boardgame I have ever played.
Yeah, I’m usually a bag and band guy, and think most organizers are not very useful, but this one is an exception. The fact that you can just take all of the trays out and be set up to play is a big deal. Also BT is a local San Diego company and some of their employees are in my boardgaming group, so support them–they’re good peeps!
There are certainly a lot of people who agree.
Just do the ‘cheap’ Plano box thing for Gloomhaven (runs $20-30 for the four boxes you’ll need? It’s been a couple years since I bought them) You really, really, really don’t need a fancy organizer that costs as much as the game itself.
I really enjoyed my (too brief) time with it. It really felt like a nice little 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons game that nobody had to DM. Pre-made characters, pre-made adventures, some fun little choices to be made, and a whole boatload of tactically-satisfying combat.
Yup, this. I’ve said for years that I have no interest in playing a DnD campaign- they tend to just boil down to combat, and I have boardgames systems that are much, much better at that. Gloomhaven is the best of these, especially how it integrates the progression/campaign/etc.
Now, talk to me about a ton of weird indie RPGs with a focus on anything but combat and I’m totes interested. But that’s a conversation for another thread.
You don’t need any sort of organizer. But you get what you pay for, and the Broken Token organizer is elegant and useful in a way that a cheapo cobbled together solution isn’t. Enough to justify the extra pricetag? That’s between you and your budget, but I have no regrets.
(And FWIW, it’s maybe 60% of the price of the game at current MSRP. Only spendier if you got the original KS pricing.)
The Plano solution isn’t cobbled together, it just isn’t as showy. The game itself does a great job of telling you what you need for each scenario. You have one box with tokens for general use (status/wounds/money/etc) that’s out and open during play, and the other couple boxes are pulled (and labeled) before the scenario to set up, then put back in the box. Everything fits back in neatly. But hey, you like paying as much to organize one game as the total cost of several more, you do you, as the kids say.
I guarantee you that the Broken Token organizer is more organized, nicer, and easier to use. Again, whether it is enough of those things to justify the additional $60 or so is up to you but this is a 60-plus session game at a minimum, so I feel like the premium treatment is especially easy to justify in this case. (And frankly, I have very little more room for new games either on my shelves or in my schedule, so spending that money on making the games I do own easier to play is a win-win scenario for me. YMMV.)
I have a silly maintenance question I have no idea where to post:
I just got in the mail VP’s Barbarossa Campaign. The components aren’t what I have been seeing online: they have to be punched out from quite thicker boards compared to the ones that were apparently in the original version. It seems like an important upgrade. But there is an issue: they are covered in some invisible black powder which I suspect must be some badly skilled aerograph leftovers. It’s everywhere, and makes the fingers very dirty.
I am hesitant to use a wet paper to try and wash them one by one, as I fear it might damage the counter — it’s thick paperboard, but it’s still paper in essence. Anybody faced anything similar and got a solution?
Very common residue from the VP games. They usually include a little towelette of some kind to clean the pieces. To me a while to clean off my original Darkest Night when it came, using dry paper towels. I would definitely not use water though.
These are laser cut counters! The black stuff is soot.
I’m jealous, my game’s components are not of a very high quality.
Use a damp towel to take out the soot. Just damp, not wet. Dry towels can work to, just don’t rub too hard.
Do you have photos of the new counters?
Thank you very much for the instructions, the cleaning is underway.
I’ll get photos once this is done. The counters sure are clear cut, especially the rectangular ones. They are quite thick, like a couple of standard counters being stuck on one another.