Tabletop Tuesday - Gloomhaven Impressions

Welcome to another edition of Tabletop Tuesday - Your weekly exploration into games of dice, cards, luck and more of the Tabletop world.

This week's game...the game of magic spells and cursed wells that is Gloomhaven.

Players: 1-4
Time: 90-180 minutes
Genre: Strategy / Role-Playing




Ranked #1 as BoardGameGeek's most popular game currently on market, Gloomhaven is a bold new board game that strives to bring deep tactical gameplay with a dynamic world and seemingly endless narrative.  Think of it as a slightly more accessible Dungeons & Dragons, but even so, the amount of rules and pieces to be found are still incredibly intimidating, and not for the feint of heart.  With a hefty price tag (currently due to supply / demand) and overwhelming size (the box weighs 20 pounds!!), I can't necessarily recommend this game to just anyone.  I myself have only played a few missions among friends, to which it feels like we've only just scratched the surface of what this game has to offer.  With that said, I can share the basic gameplay concepts and structure of the game, and hopefully these impressions can help determine if this game is worth keeping on your watch list or not.

You're going to want to invest in some sort of organization system should you purchase this colossal box of a game.

Each player chooses a character from a small starting selection, and then selects a secret backstory / main objective for the character.  You begin in the town of Gloomhaven, where city events can unfold and items can be bought.  Players can then use the map to choose from available missions and set off on adventure, where road events will also occur.  These events follow a choose-your-own-adventure format, where players are presented with a short narrative and choices to make, which may hold permanent or temporary effects for the mission to come or change the world itself.  Once arrived at the mission location, a brief synopsis and goal is given in which players may have to defeat all enemies, find a treasure or other such similar goals to complete.  Each player is also given a secret mission objective for just that mission.  This is meant to add a flavor of independent strategy to the mix, but the cooperative nature of this game usually makes these objectives easily apparent and mostly irrelevant.

The mechanics of performing a mission is particularly interesting as players start by constructing a deck of moves available to their level.  Each card has a top and bottom half, in which players will choose two cards each turn, electing to use the top half of one card and the bottom half of the other.  Depending on the character, these halves can vary in attack types to magical buffs and more.  Players can also choose just to to a standard attack or move of 2 should they not want to use the special moves listed, as some special moves can only be used once per mission.  Each time a card is used, it goes to the discard pile, and cannot be regained until the player performs a rest, although each rest will remove one card from play in that mission, slowly dwindling the player's arsenal of available moves, so speed is of importance (and helps missions not last forever).  Each card also has an initiative value, which the player chooses the desired value between the two cards.  Each player (and the enemies) reveal their moves at the same time, to which the turn order (and target of enemy aggression) is determined by who has the lowest initiative.  When attacking enemies, there is also a separate deck which is used that determines if attacks hit, miss, deal extra or less damage, generate elemental effects, and so on.  Add into the mix trap tiles, varying enemy types, and treasure to be collected, there is an overwhelming amount of decisions to keep track of and make in any given turn.  You may even want to consider downloading an app to help track monster actions and health if needed.  The game is advertised that each mission should take about 30 minutes per number of players, but expect a bit of a learning curve and longer playtime for the first few missions as each player becomes accustomed with the game.

Make sure you have a large table for needed gaming space.

After completing a mission, players are then awarded gold and exp, and depending on the results / choices made during the mission, new scenarios will open accordingly.  This cycle repeats as players grow stronger, the town grows in prosperity, and new characters to be revealed as old characters retire.  The nature of this game is designed to be what seems to be an extensively long experience, one we will likely never see the end of.  And there are hints of interesting twists to be found, like hidden messages and codes to be deciphered.  But the overall experience is largely the same throughout from what I described above.  You'll make some simple narrative choices, and then have some fun beating up fantastical baddies in good old dungeon crawling fashion.  If you don't mind the tedium that comes with extensive amounts of setup and cleanup, there is a considerable amount of fun to be found here that amazingly replicates the joys and complexities of dungeon crawling found in any video game, but in tabletop form with more tangible satisfaction and general comradery to be had.  I recommend this game for those who enjoy role-playing, but also have a fair share of patience.  Not only for just playing this game, but for picking such up at a reasonable price.  That may take a long rest of waiting to be sure.

If you have any questions about Gloomhaven, let me know in the comments.  Otherwise, look forward to more posts and impressions on gaming goodness.  And if interested in more affordable and accessible narrative-driven experiences, see here for more info on Risk Legacy or Pandemic Legacy.