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!
Oh thank god, it’s not just me. This mirrors our two-player experience as well. We want to love this game, but we’re just finding the exhaustion mechanic and intended difficulty setting un-fun. Seriously considering some pretty absurd house rules that would make the game a pushover, but do wonders for my blood pressure.
I got my Plano boxes today after work, so I set about getting them sorted and configured. It was pretty easy, but there is one point where I had to use a knife to cut one of the walls away to enlargen it enough to fit all the triple-hex tile overlays, and that was a little scary. But I got it removed with a box cutter finally and that was the only real hurdle. Also, the box cutter came in handy for trimming some of my laminated cards up so they fit a bit better, so I recommend one of those for this.
That’s technically the wrong box for the tokens on the far left btw - I ordered a 3601 “slim” for them but it didn’t come in, so they may be a bit of a PITA to get out of those deep compartements until I get that transferred to the right box (which should be Tuesday). But for now it should work well enough.
FYI, although you lose something in the free shipping, Bass Pro Shops make up for the dearth of Plano boxes on Amazon by having these in stock pretty much by default.
Here’s my 2-player campaign I’m currently running with a friend. This is a non-campaign mission setup (so non-spoilery). We’re running Mindthief/Scoundrel and we’ve been having a blast. Out of the 5 scenarios we’ve played so far we’ve beat maybe 2 on the first try and failed the rest multiple times but have always wanted to immediately try again.
Yeah, there’s really only so much you can do with tile layouts. I think the only real spoilers are stuff about the unlockable character classes. Maybe some of the treasure items and monster abilities?
Speaking of which, do you guys look through a monster’s ability deck when you’re fighting it? I’m the kind of guy who likes to know what components go into the gameplay, so I’ve been checking the decks to see what kinds of special things the decks allow monsters to do. For instance, skeletons can stack up their attacks but zombies can heal. I feel that kind of stuff is good to know, not just for gameplay reasons, but because it adds a nice bit of flavor to each monster. That’s Gloomhaven’s main strength to my mind. Not the legacy nonsense, but the way monsters are trying to be more than just bags of hit points.
