Mine arrived! The base package anyway, no shipipng details yet on the accessories, coins, etc.
This thing is damn heavy!
So now that some people have been able to play this game for a bit now are there any good comparisons of actual Frosthaven to Gloomhaven?
My Haven time is all digital, as the group I play it with is scattered across the country, but I’d like to know how excited I should get for the inevitable digital version of this.
I perused this reddit thread on the topic just yesterday. According to it you should be excited for a digital release.
We’re partway through our fourth scenario, so, not too deep yet, but we’ve definitely put in time. Fundamentally, it’s the same as Gloomhaven. If you liked GH, you’ll like FH. I would probably describe it as Gloomhaven++. There’s a modest amount of new stuff for the tactical game–status effects/conditions, terrain types, etc. All new character classes, of course, and that’s a big part of the game. (FWIW the starting six seem to be somewhat more complex on average than the GH starting six.)
The biggest change is the town stuff. You now build up Frosthaven–collect resources (other than money) and build buildings to unlock things. This has ramifications most noticeably (so far, for us) for items: items are much more limited and (so far) are “crafted” with different resources instead of bought with money.
We loved GH, and are well on the way to loving FH. What remains to be seen is how the scenario design quality compares. I wasn’t such a fan of the Forgotten Circles designs, which tended toward puzzley and gimmicky, but so far the FH scenarios have not gone in that direction. But, again, too early to really tell.
Thanks for your thoughts! The play of the different classes is really what shines for me in Gloomhaven, so I’m glad the new classes seem to be liked. That said, character advancement tends to be my biggest issue with Gloomhaven later on. Leveling up is a big draw, but we’ve got a long way to go in the campaign and yet we’re at prosperity level 7. Having a character hit max level so fast after you start it doesn’t feel right. I know enchantments are the way you progress a character from there, but they are so expensive(especially for high level cards) that it feels like a lot of grinding just for a very incremental boost.
Does it seem like Frosthaven has done anything to address either of those things?
No idea! We haven’t unlocked enhancements yet, though I know they made the rules more complex about what kind of enhancements go on what cards. Similarly I don’t know how fast you progress through the town prosperity; we haven’t gotten any prosperity yet.
I will say that we started at lower levels (maybe even level 1, I don’t recall) in our last group of characters (despite having prosperity at 7 or higher) . We played all the way through Forgotten Circles with the same four characters, up to level 9. We were careful to retire at the same time (maybe even fudged it a bit) because obviously bringing a level 1 character into a level 7 party is a recipe for weirdness. It was a good decision, though.
Not so easy to adjust like that in the digital version. The fact that you also ran into this on the tabletop and house ruled to adjust for it makes me hopeful it was a widespread complaint that they would have worked to improve for Frosthaven.
Fair enough. I remember now what we did, I think: finished the GH plotline with two characters, and carefully played a few more missions to have them retire at the same time (within RAW). We then started FC with four characters (double handed) at L1 and kind of tailed off tracking retirement goals, though we didn’t actually complete them. This was over a year ago, though, so I may be misremembering.
Level 7 early on is pretty high. Did you have a bunch of early retirements and lucky road/town events? I think it is more typical to have to prioritize prosperity to be at prosperity 4-5 by the time you’ve each retired a character.
Also, the rules in GH and FH don’t make it mandatory to start at max starting level.
That said, in Frosthaven, the max starting level is half your prosperity rounded up, rather than your prosperity. So they did make a big change. I don’t know if you level up Frosthaven prosperity more quickly, though.
Didn’t mean to imply we’re early on, just that we’ve still got a lot of content left to go. I’m on my third character, for what it’s worth. Hit level 9 tonight but am a long way from retirement (we may have to end up replaying scenarios for me to do so). We haven’t gone out of our way to build our prosperity level but sometimes it feels like we get a string of encounters that provide it.
Glad to know they’ve changed the formula for Frosthaven.
Whew, just spent the entire morning punching out and organising it, ready for the intro scenarios this afternoon. Not that it matters, but there didn’t seem to be a big baggie for bosses as indicated, unless it’s the one that the standee stands come in.
My add-ons still haven’t arrived, so I think I’ll stop after the intro and wait for the sleeves and in particular the removable stickers before carrying on.
I remember thinking the same thing. I ended up just using the biggest bag that I could find, which I think was the one that the stands came in, but at that point everything was unpacked and there were just a ton of bags floating around and I picked the biggest. As you said, not that it matters.
Edit: nope, I think it was a different bag. Here’s a photo, not that it will help you at all.
I just used a large baggie I had spare from some other game. I feel like it’s probably best to keep the stands bagged up.
Yeah, there’s a place you could put them here, but I still keep them in the bag, as I also use that compartment for cards removed from the game.
FYI we used the app this weekend while playing and it really does help streamline tracking the enemies and health/status/etc. of the heroes. We didn’t need to get out the monster cards and sleeve them into the organizer sleeve with their level up and have them laid out taking up table space, nor did we need to keep their individual action decks on the table - we had an iPad set up with all that information on it and two of us could reach and update the app as needed. It also creates the loot deck, another huge time/space saver.
And plugging in the character iniative values and drawing cards for the enemies was great - there was a bit of a learning curve (we later found the tutorial that literally answered all the questions we had during the day, so do that and there is no curve) but by the second scenario we realized we won’t be playing without it. We did not use it for the Monster combat deck though, we enjoy the manual process of pulling those cards up (and we still had to use or own character combat decks anyway), but other than needing standees we were set and advancing the scenario we were on also auto-added the new enemies that revealed sections brought to the table. Very, very hand stuff. Well worth the eight bucks for the app, imo.
Sold. Will try it
I’m still waiting for my copy to get shipped. At least I’ve got time, since one member of our Gloomhaven group moved away.
I also ordered the player dashboards from LaserOx, and I’m starting to think those might come in before the game itself.