My copy arrived a week ago. As I posted at the time in the regular boardgaming thread, I found a guy on a Facebook boardgaming group selling his at cost. He’d bought it, spent three hours punching out pieces, then organized it and tried it. And decided he didn’t want it.
He sold it to me for $210 shipped, with included the $70 broken token organizer and a set of removable stickers. He packaged it great and shipped it (though I didn’t ask for it) two-day.
I’ve gone through the rules, but have yet to find time to play. That’ll come this weekend. I don’t really have a local group, so I will probably just get through this solo.
Looking forward to learning it, and glad there’s a thread!
So apparently there’s a pretty solid Gloomhaven mod with a fan-created 10-scenario campaign that is seems to hold up really well. (So, you know, no need for spoiler issues.)
Watched a group of people playing it for a bit on youtube, and it seems like it’s pretty worthwhile.
Once I get a few scenarios into the real campaign of the physical game down, it might be fun to get some folks here together to give it a try.
Interesting that the board game uses “procedurally generated” encounters. Maybe I can steal some ideas (“under the hood” and invisible to players, however) for my RPG Maker project.
Re: the lack of “realism” in looting, it bugged me at first too, but then I made the mental switch of just thinking of those loot piles narratively as potential treasure – like, if you didn’t nab it it was never actually there. I enjoy the efficiency challenge and inter-party tension of maneuvering to grab the loot. If you could just clean house after a successful mission, then the loot might as well be a list in the mission description and not on the map at all. Having it on the map adds an enjoyable wrinkle to the tactical challenge.
Honestly, the shelf I keep Gloomaven on can easily have room next to it for the plan boxes to just be stacked instead of trying to keep them all in the box, I just realized, so instead of baggies for my decks, I’ll just keep using the card storage that comes in the box, I think.
And then the guy that made what I consider the nicest looking double-sided PDF files for labels put them here for download:
EDIT - Someone made an even nicer version, using actual icons for the monsters and tokens so they will be even easier to find. I am replacing my original download link with these as I like them better.
I couldn’t find a double-sided insert I liked for the 3601 (slim) where the tokens will go since I’m not using quite the same tokens, but I guess I could try my hand at making one from an existing file. Maybe that’s what I’ll do this morning.
EDIT - To clarify, I don’t think this ends up being quite as nice a solution as the Broken Token organizer, but assembling that thing looks just outside of my skill/comfort zone (especially given the second point) and it’s a little too pricey. I’ll spend $35 on Plano boxes and another $6 on 50 card sleeves (just for the skill cards, as players will spend by far the most time interacting with those and I suspect we’ll be playing this for a long time to come) and call it good. I’m immeasurably jealous of @tylertoo for getting a copy all ready to go and with those organizers and such!
That didn’t take long. If anyone else is using my red/blue dice solutions and wants to also use a 3601 slim to store tokens/dice, here is what I came up with.
They’re really convenient for stuff like coins and health tokens (or wheat and coal in a Euro game). They take up very little table space and contain things nicely.
We took a big a break and came back to Gloomhaven last night. It felt very comfortable and satisfying picking up that hand of badass cards again. I just really love how as I level up I get more and more specialized but my character never feels too complicated to play after a long break. Can’t wait to play more!
I retired my first character last night! I think my retirement mission was incredibly easy since I achieved it at level 3. It was extremely exciting!
Unfortunately the new character I unlocked is just not my kind of character. But fortunately Gloomhaven planned for this and has enough neat starter characters to make starting a new character still fun. So I’m playing a Scoundrel! My partner is playing a Spellweaver. I’m curious how this combo will play out. We’ve discussed having her more proactively tank with frost armor in missions since our survivability just went way down (I was playing a Cragheart before and appeared to be near invincible).
Any tips for Scoundrel, our team combo, or surviving a really big level difference are welcome!
I went to find the rule to double check and I also learned when a character retires, the city gains +1 prosperity. This is incredibly important, and I had no idea. Also, don’t forget your new character also starts at a character level equal to the cities prosperity (so if the city was at 2.4 and very nearly 3.0 and retiring pushes it into the prosperity 3 tier your new character may start at level 3). Also note any characters currently in the party lower level than the cities prosperity level may instantly level up to match it. Not to mention new items getting added to the shop when you hit a prosperity tier, and you’ll have those to buy from with your starting gold.
I also didn’t know (probably because I haven’t looked at the personal goals yet) that new Road/City events are added after someone retires. Kind of a lot happens after you retire!
