Cragheart Class Guide & Review Discussion (Gloomhaven)

hey gloomers and welcome back to nerdhaven my name is mike and today we're going to be talking about the craigheart uh i have tim with me on the channel today he plays in our campaign and he played the crag heart for us and this is going to be a guide but in a little bit of a non-traditional guide we're going to be having more of just a normal conversation talk about the class the the cards that were picked the different combinations things that tim liked about the class all weigh in on things that i observed playing from the side we're going to do the best that we can to keep this guide as spoiler free as possible there might be some things that we might make a very loose reference to but it won't be black and white and um you know so let's talk about the craigheart the the class is very versatile it can be somewhat of a tank it can heal a little bit i can do some ranged or melee attack has some aoe or single target really has a lot of different things that it can do and in full disclosure like let's talk about what our class makeup was so we have a brute a mind thief and a tinkerer to go with the craigheart when we started and because we had the brute i think tim didn't really play it maybe as tanky as some others might play so just keep that in mind as we talk about the class and uh and how template it um so the craigheart itself has a hand size of 11 cards and has a starting hit point uh of 10 hit points at level one so he's pretty tanky he's uh you know he's got just as many hit points and cards as the the brute does um so let tim let's jump right into it um when we were looking at all the new classes and we had the six starting classes to pick from you picked craigheart why why did you like the credit card no not i think what there was a lot of reasons uh it felt safe at the time it was a new game uh having that many hit points that many cards and the just felt good it felt like something i could do i saw i didn't have to put myself at risk with low hit points i didn't have to figure out a lot of strategy with just only being melee and figure out all those mechanics uh i also picked up because of that versatility you mentioned it could do a lot i could do a little bit of everything um in hindsight too i think i came from mike's previous dnd campaign and right after we ended that campaign i played a uh goliath barbarian yep and i wanted to throw rocks in that campaign yeah this guy shows up and he could throw a rock some more yeah this guy i'll tell you when we were playing d d um we had to come up with like a magical rock item that we gave to his character because he liked throw it around so much and he we made one that like came back to him every time he threw it so when we opened up gloomhaven this is a character that picked up rocks and threw them he's like yup that's what i want to play yeah uh excited like that with every just had i checked all my boxes i wanted to do a little bit of everything i didn't want to get pigeonholed a pigeon held into a certain role or anything and it i i appreciated what i did uh throughout the campaign just because there were times when my healing was necessary and at times i really needed to get up front and take some hits because you were low as the brew what times i needed there was multiple targets and i needed to muddle them to kind of help us survive a little longer i used a lot of the cards and i never really had any kind of disappointments yeah it's good yeah and i think between the two of us we never really felt all that often like oh i really need a heal right now we were both able to soak up enough damage and when the heels made sense and it sort of worked out with the cards that people played we got our hit points back up to be able to take the next hits but you know there weren't many times that we felt like we couldn't really move forward or we had to make our decisions based around how many hit points we had and i think having both of us in the class um i don't know how different it would have been if it was one or the other yeah i think that also comes into play with how since we didn't need to heal so much i didn't have to heal us so much i could heal the guys that had like six hit points so that they had half our hit points when they did get hit with that one attack in the wrong spot yeah um so the heels meant more to them than it did to us as it was such with so much uh hit points right okay well you know one again non-spoiler uh but without giving too much away uh your personal quest made it so that you were uh pretty light on items and enhancements once we did unlock enhancements so um you know we we won't say why but your your items pretty much didn't change from your starting items other than what you got from loot in the in the dungeons so we'll we'll get into items a bit towards the end but uh let's let's jump into the cards and talk about what are the cards that make up you know your hand as you're playing a craig heart so first let's go through and uh the first one is opposing strike so the opposing strike card it's a 46 initiative on the top is an attack three it can attack two targets and uh you basically have to targ attack targets that are on opposite sides of you and you get an xp for it and on the bottom uh you have on uh on the next six melee attacks targeting you you gain retaliate two uh but that's a loss once you go through uh and use all six of those uh so what do you think of that card did you did you use it at all and what were your thoughts i used it in the beginning because i thought it would be better than i thought than it was uh but this wasn't in melee as much as you were so i never got a chance to use the retaliate function as as well as i could i think kind of it kind of from my perspective then it kind of limited me to sticking in melee more often when i really wanted to be more of a jack-of-all-trades being able to bend what the party needs at the moment yeah when i was looking at this card as we were talking about the the prep for um for this session i kind of got jealous of this card because this is the brute you know i was always in in the front um and i was like oh this is actually a pretty useful card one of the problems with retaliate you know as i think some people probably know by now uh you have to play it you have to get retaliate early enough in your turn in order to have it in play before you get attacked so you probably want it on something that's really early initiative and you need to get attacked you don't know what the monsters are going to draw so they might draw a card that doesn't have an attack so like it's really fickle it's it's great when it works out but it's hard to find a reliable way to get retaliates off with this card it sort of just sits out there and it activates when it would when it would apply so i think if you were playing a more tanky craig cart it probably would have been more valuable but i think that makes sense yeah well sad yeah so uh next card's crushing grasp uh this is a 35 initiative it's an attack three with a mobilize it also creates earth and on the bottom it has a loot one thoughts i use this card a lot uh the initiative was solid i use i use there's a lot of things that i can do that were eat up earth uh immobilize is always good because i think most of the time half a part half our party is pretty squishy and uh even in the beginning i don't think we've mentioned this yet but we kind of went through this idea we wanted to be just like a greedy not bandit crew but put ourselves first so having a loot card yeah right no i you know every i think that's glue behave it in general we're all being selfish but in particular you know i think we said you know we're not good or bad um we maybe have changed a bit since then but it was sort of where mercenaries like i want money yep so having a loot card which was one of the few in the decks i that i saw was like a necessity for me i just i needed it right it helped all right great uh so next card is avalanche it's an attack four gives you an experience this is a lost card on top uh and sorry it's a 75 initiative uh it's a small aoe so you can target two uh two characters that are right up in melee range you can consume earth to do an extra plus one to attack and gain an additional experience and uh on the bottom you can create two single hex obstacles and adjacent empty hexes and create earth i i used this card a little bit later on when i started to notice the uh synergy with uh obstacles and the crowd car i didn't really see it at first uh so i didn't i didn't really play this until i probably hit level uh i'd say three or four uh again creating earth is cool but with such a high initiative and and again again a very melee focused thing and my i didn't really see the long picture of uh how beneficial having obstacles and creating obstacles can be i didn't use this card until later on yeah i i noticed that too i think me being on the other side i didn't necessarily know where the cards were coming from or you're getting them as you were leveling but you definitely played more the obstacle game as we played along all right great rumbling advance so this is a heel for range two it creates earth and uh on the bottom it's a move too and all adjacent allies and enemies suffer one damage also creates earth and it's a 29 initiative i love this card i i think it was always in my hand throughout the whole game until my retirement uh healing four is huge always uh creating earth was always is icing on the cake and uh the move too and then a j uh having the jason allie's enemies take one damage it was problematic at some times uh which i'll probably like repeatable um phrase i mentioned a lot uh but being able to do damage directly is always beneficial uh when we see those shields i don't have any like super high attacks um when you see those shields up and having being able to do direct damage um always helped especially since it was like a adjacent uh enemies thing yeah this was a big shield killer you you'd always pull this thing out anytime we were fighting shielded enemies and sometimes they're enemies that you know they have a base shield and then they'd play an ability that gave them more shield and you're just looking at them like i'm not going to bother attacking these things this turn um but this thing was sort of your your catch-all for those situations and um yeah i i remember you playing this quite a bit all right next card is massive boulder it's an attack three at range three uh all allies and enemies adjacent to the target suffer one damage it also creates earth and on the bottom it's gonna move four i know it's one of your bigger move cards and this is an 87 initiative so this is a bit slower of a card yeah uh just to follow that piggy back off the point on uh rumbling advance uh massive boulder was again just really beneficial there's a card that went down the road um in a little bit about um why this why this card was especially good but again take having enemies multiple enemies take one damage and having a solid move uh and creating earth it was something again i always played yeah and again the move four you know i think to start that's probably your biggest yeah it's your biggest well it's your biggest non-loss move um so that's huge all right next card backup ammunition so the top is a on your next four ranged attack actions gain add target and you get an xp every time you do that once that goes through it is lost and on the bottom it's a move three with a 77 initiative that's the card i was talking about with uh the massive boulder backup ammunition was a good uh good combo yeah uh you you could have two areas of targets to all and uh attack them twice let me fix that you can have two adjacent uh separate enemies group of enemies get attacked with a range attack and then each of their adjacent allies would take the one damage uh an added bonus to adding an experience again it's just icing on the cake right uh move three is good um but the persist effect is is real solid yeah and if you can get a bunch of enemies stacked up i mean that it you know it sounds like you're talking about just two enemies that are next to each other and you can use it for that but there were times you'd have three four five enemies they're all kind of in a cluster and you drop this thing on them and now like everything's taken two damage at least um so that that could do some damage to a room yeah especially when uh like bosses uh summon that was yes to have they had guaranteed to have an adjacent square for sure all right next card it's a rock tunnel it's a 41 initiative the top is destroy one adjacent obstacle and get an xp and the bottom is loss to move five with jump and immobilize all enemies that you move through and get an xp uh again i use this one i think the opposite of uh of avalanche i use this one more often in the beginning um i think the like move five with jump was needed uh but the fact that it was a lost card has made it difficult to kind of fully use right but having the plus five with jump and the immobilizers there's so many situations especially considering my retirement quest that i need to get somewhere right yeah it's not you know it's not a great initiative my sort of rule of thumb on any lost card is the other side better be something that i'm comfortable using regularly and you know how often are you next to an obstacle that you just want to destroy and that's what you want to do for your turn like i don't know it doesn't feel like it's all that great all right uh unstable upheaval so this is a 13 initiative this is a blazer attack three target all adjacent enemies and you can consume earth to target all enemies up to two hexes away instead you get an xp for that and all adjacent allies suffer two damage again that's a loss on the top the bottom is also a loss uh all allies suffer one damage and then you shield two affect all allies get two xp uh until the end of the turn uh that stays up with the shield so while it's fast both halfs are top what were your thoughts on this one i like that card it's the fastest initiative card that i saw on my five levels um i get i did kind of have to ask my party how many hit points they had yeah the shield i think it came in use two or three times maybe not not too often but there are situations where um multiple enemies are about to do or attack one on its own on a low health target and the shield two is better off than the one damage they'll suffer from unstable upheaval with the top half again i think i used it more early off when i started playing um having earth having being able to attack three with from two squares away um that was pretend there was a lot of times when the setup was just right and there was a lot of damage done uh but again a repeatable thing that i see a lot of the crackhead cards is ally suffering damage and that became more of a problem recently than it did uh it was always a problem but it became a problem later on right all right great next card is crater so that this is a six to one initiative the top half is an attack three uh at range three you can consume earth to do a push two and get an xp for it and the bottom half is a loss uh all adjacent allies and enemies suffer one damage uh right right in tune with everything else we've been talking about uh you also do a move forward jump and get an experience for it and all adjacent allies and enemies suffer one damage on the other end again you can consume earth to do two damage instead and get an additional xp i like this card again i the raw damage considering how straight like uh frustrating shield was um i really like just doing raw damage just straight through it uh especially because like if the if the enemies go before you and you had a plane attack and they do shield it just kind of it it rains on your day yeah uh it being a loss kind of stung but there were situations and again there were i think there were more times than not to be honest when i was like hey can you guys take one point of damage because i could do three points of damage over there right uh it's not more because it's the bottom card and i'm moving i usually have the top card to do something again offensive so i might damage my allies leaving them departing them but i was able to do more damage to the enemies and overall it usually kind of worked out yeah i think there were a couple of times with the jump on there where you might have been sort of pinned in a corner against the wall and some enemies or whatnot and normally you know if it was just a regular move you wouldn't even be able to move out of there to to do sort of the um the move portion of this but you jump to the other side you could go through the enemies with the jump there and then hit them on the back end so um pretty neat card yeah all right dirt tornado this is an 82 initiative uh the top half is a big aoe uh targets uh i can't even do the quick math here it's uh seven uh targets you can do in a big circle uh it's an attack one at range two you can consume earth to do plus one attack and gain an experience and you would muddle all allies and enemies in the targeted area the bottom half is a move three i use this card a lot uh one of the items that we'll talk about later it paired up really well uh muddling is solid and i think it helps a bit uh and i think i think it just has being a new player too and so seeing that size aoe yeah it's always just fun i i know uh the class we unlocked when i retired i showed you some of their his aoe or their away right and we were just like we were mind blown we were just insane yeah uh and this is and this is like kind of the juvenile elementary version of that we just saw this huge aoe you know most these cards i think the most is like two red squares right this one had seven and even with like slow attacks being able to do that much damage especially when entering a room a lot of times when you enter a room i've noticed that the enemies are grouped up and it's always nice to again with ant bosses that summon or enemies that are grouped up to be able to attack all of them and muddle right move three solid it's good and initiative 82 is bad but you have all the cards yeah the nice thing about range too is you you can sort of start the aoe at range and you can reach stuff that's pretty far away from you so if you if you were sort of making up ground from being in another room looting something which i think you know unfortunate for me you were you were doing sometimes um you could sort of you know barrel your way back in and catch up and and drop this and at least contribute to an attack when you're still pretty far away with this card so helpful there all right good uh next card is earthen clawed uh this is a 38 initiative it's an attack two at range five you can consume earth to immobilize and get an experience and the bottom half is a heel two at range three i don't think i ever played a game without this part of my hand having a ranged heel is always nice having that range of attack is always is especially nice um immobilize is beneficial but i think the five range is what really right uh five range in the heel was the really highlights of that card that i are the reasons why i kind of kept them in my deck on my hand most the time if not all the time right yeah that about sums it up yeah it's pretty straightforward yeah all right so now we're into the x card so these are sort of the uh the additional cards that are available to you at level 1 if you want to sub them in so the first one is heaving swing this is a 57 initiative it's an attack 3 with a push one you may push the target into a hex with an obstacle in this case destroy the obstacle and the target suffers two damage and you get an experience and the bottom half is add plus one attack to all of your ranged attacks this round uh this was a card i wish i used more uh in hindsight yeah there's something there's some things i would have done differently we'll talk about that later but um when i first saw it it just felt kind of messy like kind of really situational um having and adding one attack to all it would have been useful in the card we just talked about before they're 28 yeah yeah now the attack one's sort of an attack too um yeah a lot of targets yeah uh and the but the top half just kind of not scared me off but i didn't i didn't really see its value and even i think when we first talked when we first started playing we talked about how the x cards are a little more advanced and a little more uh complicated for the newer players i think it's one of the reasons why i kind of stood away from it and then i as a learning player i should have looked back more often on my ex cards and just kind of see how they fit right as my deck kind of evolved makes sense yeah all right next one is forceful storm uh this is 53 initiative it's an attack three at range three and it's a small aoe you can hit three different targets all clustered together uh also disarms and you get one experience for each enemy targeted and also creates air for a loss the bottom half is add plus two attack to all of your melee attacks this round forceful storm again i didn't use it that much i kind of wish i did now they look at it now they understand the game better um again if if i partner with heavy swing that's that's 12 damage and a disarm and a potentially free uh experience i think the runway another reason why i looked away is i didn't see that much wind effect or consuming wind effects in my uh my air effects in my deck uh so i just was like oh i could create that but does it really like when i'm gonna use it does anyone else really use it i don't know so i just stayed away from it yeah um and again i think enforceable storm i think is this i mean the bottom half of the card i think it's the kind of the same thing i wish i used it later on more uh but i'm learning as a player still so yeah all right uh last x card is nature's lift it's a 64 initiative heal two at range three and targets two and on the bottom on your next six ranged attack actions when air is strong you can consume it to do plus two range uh you also get an experience on the second fourth and sixth uh use of the card on the bottom yeah i only saw one use a one card that created air and i don't think anyone else in the party could at the time uh so i to be able to use to have such a strong condition to be able to use that card when earth is strong you can remove it and you basically need it six times right it just didn't feel worth it so i just i never looked at that card yeah yeah as the brood i had i had um i had some ways to use there that were helpful but it was never you know it wasn't like oh you got to play this card it's you know it's it's killing me if you're not creating air for me so a whole lot of synergy with other stuff all right great well that's it for all the level one cards uh so from here we're gonna go into level two cards and talk about the two cards that you had available to pick from and we'll talk about which card you picked and why and we'll go through uh all the way through level five so um you know we didn't we didn't say this before but uh you had made it through level five before you retired your character it'd be hard for you to sort of weigh in on um you know the the value of any of the cards beyond that so we'll just end it five but let's start with level two so the first card is explosive punch this is a 28 initiative you destroy one adjacent obstacle of any size and attack four target all enemies adjacent to the destroyed obstacle it also creates earth and gives you 2xp but it's for a loss and the bottom is a move for the other card is sentient growth it's a 78 initiative it's an attack two at range three a small cluster of three targets it has a heal to affect all allies in the targeted area and on the bottom you can do a move to heal one all adjacent allies attack one all adjacent enemies so which card you pick and why i picked sentient growth it didn't even seem like a much of a decision for me uh to have such a particular circumstance for explosive punch to be good to have me be next to an adjacent next to an obstacle and have more than one enemy next to an obstacle next to that same obstacle to do x amount of foil x times four amount of damage was good but it just seemed too circumstantial not too situational um essentially growth on the other hand was almost like the counter card to everything i didn't like one of the things i didn't like about the crack car is how often i uh dealt damage to my allies yeah and this like i said was the was the yank to that yang uh it was nice to be able to being able to it being an aoe heel it'll be an a we attack or both and kind of vice versa with a move too i could better position myself to do what i need to do and that might include deal and deal damage which was just it seems like an easy pick even with a subpar initiative yeah and i think again because i was sort of the primary tank as the brute um it gave you even more versatility where you know if you were playing craigheart as sort of the primary tank you might need not need to heal other people all that often or other people might not be in range of enemies all that often but it was pretty common that you'd be attacking monsters that i'm sort of up up in their face and uh i just sort of happen to benefit from a heel just by happening being next to them so yeah i enjoy that card for sure all right great so uh let's go to level three so we have the first card is clear the way it's a 43 initiative you move one adjacent single hex obstacle to an empty hex within range four then you do an attack two to all targets adjacent to the moved obstacle and get an experience if you consume earth it's plus one attack and additional experience and on the bottom it is a lost card for a move five jump and you destroy all obstacles and disarm all traps moved through uh you also get two experience for that the second card is blunt force it's a 21 initiative that's an attack for and you can consume earth to do plus four attack gain two additional experience as well as one experience for the use and then on the bottom half it's a move to retaliate one to yourself gain an xp uh i chose clear the way here i think this is when i started to see the frequency of obstacles and how the credit card benefits from them and the fact that i could it's a little easier to set up being next to an obstacle and then tossing it to enemies versus being adjacent and hope them being adjacent or creating ones adjacent to me uh and moving five with jump is awesome and on top of it being able to destroy obstacles and traps um there are times when the doors are just blocked off by traps and being able to disarm them kind of opens up a lot of strategies and different out like ways to approach the room yeah this is a pretty standard go-to um you know usually it wouldn't be early in a in a scenario but maybe halfway through towards the end there'd be some sort of loot surrounded by traps or whatnot or um you know some of the scenarios maybe the there were obstacles or traps that we had to sort of traverse if we didn't have jump um and some of us did but maybe some of the other classes like tinkerer for example doesn't have a lot to to get you over obstacles and so having this card in your pocket to be able to use and drop and just sort of clear a path so that we had easy movement through um it played its role there for sure yeah and blunt force uh it would have been my hardest hitting attack like single attack hands down right with uh with potentially eight damage but um as a loss to do it once and like you mentioned before the situation of retaliate even with a somewhat low initiative right seems really risky yeah and again you not being the primary tank you know are you even necessarily going to be getting attacked even if you did get it off before the the enemies did all right good uh so let's go to level four so two level four cards we have rock slide 81 initiative the top is create three single hex obstacles in empty hexes within range four and all allies and enemies adjacent to the created obstacles suffer two damage it also creates earth and gives you an xp the bottom half is move six the movement must be in a straight line and the other card is uh kinetic assault 19 initiative the top is a move one attack four and the bottom is a retaliate three range three four uh get plus an additional two xp and it's a lost card uh here i chose rockslide uh i think out of the five or six times actually probably use it more than that but i think out of all the times i've used the rockslide card i use the bottom half once and it just happened to be that perfect six six open squares line uh but creating creating the obstacles and again seeing how obstacles uh mesh with track hard being able to create them where i want them within a decent range and again they just do that direct damage that can't be shielded um on top of earth on top of experience i just i feel like the top half of the card more than overcompensated for the situation situated situa situation is where i'm making apparently yeah the the circumstances for the bottom half of the car to be used um efficiently uh move one attack four is pretty cool um and retaliate range three is pretty cool but to lose it uh right and i don't think it's that good if if it was like a persist effect without a doubt i would have done even if it was like two or three rounds i would have done something like that but just to have it active once this doesn't seem that well good yeah i mean the fact that rockslide isn't a lose i think this is the card where really started to feel like you found the class this card would impact more than the round it was played in because you you're not only replacing them to be strategic about you know playing them off other cards and doing damage or whatnot but you could funnel enemies into sort of a certain uh pigeonhole or um you know just change the layout of the room that we were in uh so you know and you can't block a doorway but you're creating more than one obstacle so you know you can uh you can do a lot of different things with that so we we saw this used quite a bit in a lot of creative and interesting ways all right and uh last level we're gonna go through is level five so the first level 5 card is petrify it's a 47 initiative you kill one normal enemy within range 4 and create one single hex obstacle in the hex in which the enemy died creates earth and gives you 2xp for a loss and the bottom is a move three immobilized target all adjacent enemies the other card is stone pummel this is a 32 initiative the top half is an attack three muddle with giving you an xp and uh i'm not even going to try to describe the shape of this so just look on the screen if you want to see how it works but uh you basically end up targeting four uh four enemies that are sort of spider view what's that like an x-wing fighter yeah that's a bad that's a perfect description uh and then the bottom is uh on your next four melee attacks if possible destroy an adjacent obstacle for plus three attack and you get an experience for all four of those attacks when it kicks off i remember making this decision because i think it was relatively recently uh petrify at first seemed more you see kill kill a normal m kill an enemy just seems so nice especially with that range uh it being normal it being a lost card uh yeah i had to go with stone pummel uh that aoe is really nice uh being able to muddle is really nice it not being a loss on the card and still getting experience is nice and uh with the card before rock slide with creating three uh obstacles being able to uh use the bottom half of stone pummel became that much more usable that much more frequent right uh again for getting four experiments running three attacks that's that's a decent amount of numbers that's a decent amount of damage right so i had to go i had to go with stone fumble that round to that level yeah you know what's weird is the bottom half of petrify i don't know i feel like if you just flipped those around it might be more useful because you can immobilize and then back away and avoid some damage but like how often are you going to move in and immobilize something and then they're not just going to attack you anyway like you'd probably be their focus so i don't know it just seems again like pretty highly situational depending on your kamikaze card almost yeah right so um you know maybe if they're ranged they're they're enemies that tend to be ranged that might be useful because you're sort of forcing them to stay right on top of you but all right so the those are the uh those are the cards we picked so um let's dive in and talk you know just in general what were some of your favorite cards your favorite combos anything that stood out to you as far as you know this is a card that was just always always there when i needed it uh anything like that i think uh and i didn't i i wish i had more time with it yeah a part of me which is i didn't retire as soon as i did right but uh having that kind of control and seeing so much synergy with creating obstacles and it being reusable had doing i think i feel like creating three obstacles uh creating earth energy and getting experience multiple and the two damage again and just bypassing shields right repeatedly repeatedly through a dungeon is was amazing it was so good yeah it was never there was never really a situation i was like uh this is this won't work here right uh there were some situations that worked a lot better but this always had some kind of benefit to do it to it yeah i'm trying to get any other big cards um i know we talked we already talked about massive boulder paired up with uh backup ammunition um though yeah that combo was always even though the funny thing about that is it just it was probably even more satisfying than it was useful it was useful but it just i don't know every time it happened you just felt like everyone around the table was like yeah i don't know it just felt good yeah even i think oddly enough i think there's one of the few situations that digital gloomhaven was even more satisfying okay you get that little mouse click on each on each target you had drop a hit point drop a hit point drop the hit points yeah it was just so much damage and yeah i guess you still kind of do that with the uh tracker you use but um seeing the that many health parts go from here to here right it just was always satisfying good stuff any other cards no i think that's everything else kind of i i would pick cards a little differently um but yeah i think those two those two and that that those two in the that one card in the um that combo was always satisfying yeah all right good stuff uh so items so i know you started with boots of striding and the minor power potion uh you ended up picking up a helm from scenario 82. um we're not going to spoil what that is but if anybody wants to know you can go and look that up and uh that that was a helmet you ended up having uh again as we said before your personal quest um due to what you were trying to achieve there you ended up not having many items um talk about the items that you did have the or at least the uh the boots on the potion the boots helped i noticed i used i feel like i've used the boat the boots of striding were they boots are striding yeah yeah i use them more on the longer movements i have a lot of like four and five movement cards and be able to move seven is is that's right in the back of one room into the next room over uh but having that much movement was just beneficial especially with the card that had jump and the card that could destroy obstacles and traps uh the cards that'll like move forward jump and deal damage to enemies having the extra two range to do that was huge especially with what i was trying to do there were times i needed to stick around or stay back for a little bit and when i needed to get up front i could do that and all it took was a rest to get them back makes sense uh what was your favorite thing about the class i think again it's it's my favorite part was the versatility still uh in hindsight i think i still would have built a little differently but the fact that so many of the cards came up and seemed clutch at least once if not multiple times i felt really good like oh man we really need to heal i have a heal oh man we really need some aoe damages against these little minions oh i have somebody weak damage it was always satisfying that i unless i played the card at the wrong time so i used too many lost cards in the beginning which i learned that lesson early on i usually had the tools to deal with what was around the corner what was in the other room and if i did make a mistake i usually had the hit points and uh hand size to deal with it it wasn't really it was never really uh a major issue uh i think i exhausted a lot of cards maybe once or twice yeah maybe and even then i i think that was because i just blew lost cards too fast um a lesson i think i just had to learn the hard way yeah okay i you know what's funny is this is going to be my first time playing next time we play it'll be my first time playing bru without you that's great so you know i keep talking about this and i'm trying not to turn this into a guide about brute but knowing that i could sort of share some damage with you that you sometimes would be adding some extra heals to me it's it somewhat allowed me to go to sort of a light tank build where i focused a bit more on damage uh yeah and i'm curious to see how that plays out and i'm so much higher level than the rest of the party now that probably won't matter because they have so many hit points but um yeah i mean it's going to be a definitely a change and that for sure it could impact how how i end up playing yeah i think it's one of the i don't remember benefits but one of the maybe hidden pros and hidden like gems of this game is that as the classes work together you have to adjust kind of modify what you do when the classes retire when the classes when you're level six and everyone else is level three and when these items come in and you start to know the game better and you start to realize like oh these things have more synergy we've been playing for like a year and a half and i'm i'm still a noob um but i'm still i'm still excited i'm still to see like when i hit level five like oh how's this one card work yeah how's this and it's it's just there's a lot of benefits to this game that you don't really think about until a year and a half in when until you start retiring characters and you start doing more and realizing oh these this class is a certain theme that i picked out and this actually works out really well and you these hidden combos and between yourself and your own cards and the other players and the other characters yeah yeah so you know before we kind of start to wrap things up um i know you mentioned to me you know as the game progressed you started getting antsy and looking forward to retirements do you want to talk a little bit about that and uh what what sort of caused you to want to move on to the next class yeah one i think i was i might have been building it efficiently and i couldn't i couldn't go back and pick other stuff without kind of hindering like a level five card is usually better than that one level three card you didn't pick right the fact there was so much um impartial damage like no matter who i was around i was i was gonna i was gonna deal allies i was in they'll damage my allies i had to continuously ask hey how many hit points do you have and then when some of these squishy guys have like six or seven hit points dealing two damage is a big deal like like with one right it does four damage it's not uncommon i get for a monster to do uh and i don't like that i didn't it felt weird that there was such a heavy drawback to do something usually not as rewarding as what i paid for yeah and then looking back as i built it efficiently i realized that there were certain builds i could have done i could have focused on more ranged i could have focused on like a tanky heel i could have focused on like the obstacle thing which was probably the route i would have gone uh but like it's something i just i could have done more research on but i think it's i had fun learning that experience i had fun learning that though obstacles weren't that common and seem kind of out of place at level one and two three and four their game changes and the more the more obstacle manipulation you have the better you have with crowd control and damage and manipulation and a part of me is uh like i'm just eager to try new stuff like i went a lot like if i almost felt like bittersweet about retiring because when i retired i had x amount of classes to pick from but if i waited i'd had i'd have even more class that's true and and and the more pieces of the puzzle there are the the more i enjoy the game in general that's why i love d and d and that's one of the reasons why i love this game and the fact that the classes are hidden are it's it's it's that hidden fruit it's that forbidden food that you kind of want to like what is what is what is circles what is the triforce what are those things right and with some of the other class words we had one retirement before myself and uh he went to circles and my those mechanics in my class kind of interfered with his right and the class i'm going forward with i think works exceptionally well with his uh like cards and skill set right so i mean so i'm interested to try a completely new experience with stuff that i was worried about before is now a pro now it's not something i can work with and benefit from yeah all right great so just mas overall we talked about what you do differently um i don't know did you like the class did you love the class did you hate it i i enjoyed it it's hard to tell because i it was the class i learned the game with sure so i don't know if it was the class itself that i loved or the game but um i'd recommend it i'd if anyone wanted to play a crab car i'd tell them to go for it and just the only advice i'd give would be to do a little more research maybe and figure out what kind of style you want to go for the jack of all trades was nice but i think you'd be more optimized if you focused on something a little more specific like ranged or obstacle manipulation uh but there's also a lot there's also a style of fun way being able to do a little a little bit of everything not great but having that kind of jack of all trades pocket knife in your pocket is always nice to have all right well with that i hope everyone found this guide helpful and insightful and if you're interested in playing craig hart then maybe this gives you some things to think about before you jump in um i'm curious what did you think of this format if uh if you'd like to see more of this when we have other retirements please leave a comment below tell me what you thought and um that's going to be it for this video so if you like this video please like it if you want to see more of my content please subscribe to the channel and thanks for watching and i'll catch you on the next one [Music] you

Channel: Nerdhaven

Views: 1,268

Keywords: gloomhaven, frosthaven, board games, cragheart, guide, review, podcast, discussion

Id: 36jl9DyI0Xo

Length: 45min 22sec (2722 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 21 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

We just started our first Gloomhaven campaign and I’m playing a cragheart so this video was super informative. So far we gave only played once and we got destroyed in the first encounter

[u/KumbajaMyLord]

Curious how different one can value certain cards.

For example, Heaving Swing is one of the best starter cards, in my opinion, (I mean a level 7 and level 9 cards are basically upgraded variations on it) and it only gets better later when you have more obstacles available. Attacks with Push are great in general (Retaliate? What's that? Oh Look, a trap!), but with the obstacle destruction push, it is just really really nice. It was one of the first cards I enhanced with a +1 on Push to get more of that direct damage bonus.

Nature's lift top is also pretty solid at early levels.

Earthen Clod on the other hand I dropped very quickly.

[u/S2MacroHard]

that pip on dirt tornado should be removed

[u/macgamecast]

I regret not pulling in Craig into my jotl run with Demo. I used a scoundrel instead. Later playing Craig in GH he’s just meh for me despite being level 5 or 6.