Gloomhaven - How to Play - Actions and Abilities

in this video we continue the gloomhaven series and look at how all the stuff on your character's ability cards work and we also look at how the end of the round works so if you've missed any of the previous videos you can find a link to these and the playlist down in the description when you take either the top or bottom action in gloomhaven you start with the top ability and work your way down some actions have only one ability while others have more than one separate abilities are mostly noted by this larger font size however there are times where space is a concern and a smaller font size is used for an ability but in these situations the smaller font size text is separated by space now if you're bringing over one of the jaws of the lion characters abilities are separated by this nice dotted line now text using the smaller font size directly below your ability represents either effects conditions and augments that can be used to enhance your ability so let's see what all this stuff does let's jump right in with the move ability so when you use the move ability you can move up to the number as shown next to this ability just you can't move through walls so if you have a move three like craigheart does here with the bottom action on dirt tornado he can move up to three spaces since this is up to three spaces i could also choose to only move craigheart one or two so now let's add some other characters and enemies to the board when you take your move 3 you can't move through enemy characters but you can move through your allies you just can't end your turn in the same space as your ally now let's add some obstacles and difficult terrain to the board by the way obstacles are noted with the green border when they're shown in the scenario guide and difficult terrain with the purple border your character cannot move through obstacles but they can move through difficult terrain it's just difficult it takes two points of movement to enter a hex with difficult terrain instead of one in this example craig hart again has this move three and this time he's got two obstacles these tables and then he's got this rubble which is difficult terrain he's got a pesky banded archer over here shooting at him and he wants to get a little closer so craigheart can't move over the tables but he can go through the difficult terrain just takes one point of movement two points to enter the difficult terrain and so that's two three his move is over oh no your character can move through traps and hazardous terrain but as soon as you enter a hex with a trap the trap springs and depending on the trap it either damages your character where the damage equals two plus the scenario level or applies a negative effect as is the case with a stun trap after the trap springs it's removed from the game you can then continue movement if your character enters a space with hazardous terrain this inflicts half the damage of a trap rounded down but the hazardous terrain remains on the board traps are noted with the red border and hazardous terrain is noted with this orange border in the scenario guide so for this example craigheart still has his move three but he's got two traps these are spike traps and then he's got two spaces of hazardous terrain so if he wants to get over to this banded archer he can trigger the spike trap so for this example we'll say the scenario level is one so you take two plus the scenario level for three trap damage and removes the trap and then he can continue movement to get adjacent to this banded archer alternatively craigheart could go through the hazardous terrain trap damage would be three damage so it's half of that rounded down so he would take one damage and then move through hazardous terrain not quite adjacent where he wants to be but he only would take one damage instead of three hazardous terrain again remains on the map if the move ability has this jump symbol under it this means your character can now jump over enemy characters and all the terrain we just mentioned you just have to treat the last hex of movement as a normal move because your character will be landing and coming in contact with the spot so for this example the spell weaver is going to use the move4 with jump and she takes this ability and wants to position herself here and she can just move one two three four jumping over the obstacle and the hazardous terrain avoiding the damage from that so just remember the last movement point of jump you have to land on the ground again and suffer the damage of whatever's there if there is something there if you have a character with the flying trait or a character who acquires the flying trait flying works just like the move action with jump except you don't have to worry about landing in the last hex of movement movement can stop over a hex with a map overlay tile like obstacles and traps that we spoke of earlier and you won't have to suffer the adverse effects since you're not coming in contact with them so let's continue on with map overlay tiles now what happens when you land in a hex with a closed door overlay tile in this case you're going to stop flip over the door and reveal all the monsters and other overlay tiles in that room then finish your movement if you wish and finish the rest of your turn any new revealed monsters with lower initiative than yours will take their turns after your turn is complete so with this said you can open a door populate all the monsters and map overlay tiles and then back away if you have enough movement or charge in if you still have movement so then we move on to treasures and coins you can move on to hexes which contain treasures and of course coins and this can be to your advantage because at the end of your turn you must loot whatever is under your player character also known as end of turn looting you don't need to have the loot ability on a card to do this so if you loot a treasure just remember to mark it off in the player guide as you can only loot in number treasure once all right so now that we're finishing up with move i just want to remind you not to forget that you can always use the basic action of a move 2 from the bottom action of your card this is a normal move without jump when taking this action the card just gets discarded after the action is resolved none of the text nor active or lost icons apply now we move on to the next ability so the next one we look at is attack again we'll start basic and then slowly build to show all the wonderful things that can accompany your attack when you attack in gloomhaven attacks are made against monsters only not your allies so let's start with the melee attack and by the way melee just means something like close combat so you have to be in a hex one space away from your enemy to use it and there can't be a wall in between you and your enemy to use it so in this example i'm gonna attack this normal bandit guard one hex away from me using the attack 3 from thieves nak i start with a base damage as shown next to the attack symbol i draw an attack modifier and add or subtract this from the 3 base damage so in this case i draw an attack modifier card of a plus one i add that onto my attack three so i have an attack of four and then i apply damage tokens to the monster stat card this monster has six hit points so only two more points of damage are needed to defeat it so that's the basic melee attack for another example let's say the elite and the standard monster were flip-flopped and now the scoundrel is attacking the elite she uses her attack 3 from thieves neck and adds her plus one modifier so right now she applies four damage to the elite however if we look at the bandit guard's stat card we see that the elite has a shield one so we have to subtract one from that four so she inflicts three damage on the elite and that elite is number four so those damage tokens go here don't forget that you can always substitute a basic action of an attack two for the top action of your card this is a normal melee attack too since you're substituting this basic attack for the text printed at the top of your card none of the text nor active or lost icons apply and the card just gets discarded after the action's performed now let's expand upon your attack knowledge if you see this little bow and arrow symbol below your attack ability it means that this is a ranged attack a ranged attack lets you attack from as many hexes away from your enemy as shown next to the range symbol so on the tinker's turn the tinker uses the top action from enchantment field which is an attack three with a range three so that means the tinker could attack any one of these three enemies with its range three and so in this case the tinker is just going to attack this standard bandit guard so he draws an attack modifier which adds zero and since this is a standard bandit guard there's no shield so he just applies three damage to the bandit guard number six since the bandit guard he was attacking had a number six printed on it now i'll add two small things to keep in mind when performing a ranged attack if you're using a ranged attack and you're only one hex away from your enemy then you're going to be at a disadvantage and all that means is that you'll have to draw two attack modifier cards instead of one and you have to use whichever attack modifier card is worse also in order to target an enemy you have to have line of sight the only things that block line of sight in gloomhaven are walls and closed doors not obstacles enemies or allies you have line of sight if you can draw a line from any corner of your hex to any corner of your target's hex [Music] now that we know how melee and ranged attacks work let's look at attacks known as area attacks if your attack shows a gray hex with red hexes this is a melee area attack the gray hex represents the hex where your character is located and the red hexes represent the hexes impacted by your attack when you perform a melee area attack you have to have line of sight to each hex in the area and as you'll see when attacking multiple enemies you draw one attack modifier card for each enemy also don't worry with area attacks as your allies won't be targeted if they fall within your area so let's look at an example on the brute's turn where he has an area attack which is a melee attack the gray hex shows the hex the brute needs to be in and the red hexes are his enemy hexes we see the brute is in the gray hex and so we can orient this any way we'd want and so there's two possibilities here the brute could attack these three hexes and attack both of these enemies with the sweeping blow or he could attack these two enemies attacking these three hexes no enemy in this hex with the sweeping blow as well so he has to make that decision and since the elite has shield one he decides since this is an attack too that he'll do more damage to the standard for each one of those targets the brute must draw one attack modifier card so for bandit guard number six he draws a modifier of zero and applies two damage to guard number six for bandit guard number five the brute draws a plus one and applies three damage to bandit guard number five ranged attacks that affect an area don't have a gray hex all you have to do is be in range and line of sight to any hexes shown in red on your attack ability and you'll attack each monster in that area if you're not in line of sight then you can't target the hex for an example on another turn the tanker decides to use ink bomb for its first action so ink bomb is an attack 4 with a range 3 and gain 1 experience for each enemy targeted and there's something new on this card we'll talk about which is an element infusion i'll get to that once we make the attack these three hexes show the hexes that will be affected within that range so let's look at the board so move the card down here so we can see it better so in this case the most targets he could hit for enemies is if he attacks like this cluster of three here now don't worry he can't affect his ally you can only target enemies he couldn't target these two standard bandit guards because they're not in a cluster like these they'd have to be adjacent to each other for him to affect both of them so he decides to attack the elite vanderguard and the standard bandit guard and attack so they're in a range actually a range two he could hit those or he could decide hey range 3 and affect these three hexes it doesn't really matter in this case what he decides as his target hex as long as he targets one of these three or four hexes here he can hit both of these so this is an attack 4. the tinker draws an attack modifier card for the standard bandit guard on number six and gets a plus one so that does five damage to standard bandit guard six so he defeats standard bandit guard six removes him from the board and places a coin in his place and then draws an attack modifier for this elite and just does an attack 4 to bandit guard 4. and since that bandit guard has a shield 1 the tinker inflicts 3 damage to bandicard 4. which i can just use these since this one's gone and apply those there this also says gain one experience for each enemy targeted so i targeted two roll two experience up for the tinkerer and lastly we get this element infusion symbol and so the element infusion symbol means if i performed any part of this attack at the end of your turn you would move the token over to the strong column during the cleanup phase all elements get moved one column to the left we'll see how to use these elements in a moment last but not least since this card has the law symbol that goes in the tinker's lost pile now let's look at cards that have the word target below the attack these attacks let you target more than one enemy within your range and you get to specify the targets they just have to be different targets and just like we've seen before each target has to be within line of sight so for this example let's say it's during the beginning of the game and the spell weaver decides to play fire orbs fire orbs is an attack three range three target three so that means she can target three separate targets within her range and she gains one experience for each enemy targeted and then gets to move the fire element so the spell weaver actually has three enemies she could target let's start with bandiguard 5. she's within range three of the standard bandit guard five so she draws an attack modifier card ooh and that's a good one two times so attack three times two is six so if we look here a standard bandit guard has 6 damage so she defeats bandit card 5. for her second target she attacks the elite bandit guard draws an attack modifier plus one adds that plus one to the attack three so it's an attack four and since this is an elite bandit guard it has shield one so that attack four gets reduced to an attack three and that bandit guard is number four so she places three damage on the monster stat sleeve for her last attack she's at a disadvantage and attacks this standard bandit guard she draws two attack modifiers and uses whichever one is worse they're both zeros so she doesn't add any to her attack but gets to apply attack three to bandit guard six so the spell weaver gets to gain one experience for each enemy targeted since she targeted three enemies she gets three experience and then she moves the fire element here over to the strong column since this card has the law symbol it gets placed in the lost pile so target is what's called an attack effect and attack effects increase the power of an ability just like we saw with target push pull and pierce are other attack effects push lets you move your target a number of spaces away from you and you get to decide the direction you just need to make sure that each hex your target moves is farther away from your character just like movement your target can be pushed through its allies but not its enemies poll works opposite of this pull lets you move your target a number of spaces closer to you and you get to decide the direction you just need to make sure that each hex your target moves is closer to you the last attack effect is pierce and pierce just lets you ignore that many points of shield for an example of the pierce attack effect the brute plays the action trample he has an attack 3 with a pierce 2. he can ignore the one shield since this is an elite bandit guard so the brute draws an attack modifier card and has a plus zero adds that zero to the attack three so it has three damage right now that it will inflict on this bandit guard since this bandit guard is an elite it has shield one but since there was a pierce effect the shield is ignored and so the brute gets to inflict three damage to the bandit guard so there are several conditions both positive and negative that you can find on pages 22 and 23 of the rulebook you'll see these underneath your abilities many times your attack abilities and these conditions get applied to your target when you use your ability and by the way the ability the condition is part of doesn't have to even be successful for the condition to apply for instance if you drew a null card for your attack modifier even though the attack would not inflict any damage the condition would still get applied to your target and by the way when a monster is stunned it can't perform any abilities at the end of its next turn the stun tokens removed so there are several conditions you'll see in the rule book and i'm not going to go through all of those right now but what i recommend is any time you encounter one of those conditions just look it up and that's kind of what i did and over time they started to stick a little bit more every time you can skip abilities or things that are included with your ability unless they have a negative effect such as discard a card reduce your hit points etc those you have to use however in order to get things like stand-alone experience or an elemental infusion where these things are in large print on your ability card at least one ability has to be performed or part of that ability has to be performed if the experience or the elemental infusion symbols are next to the smaller text then you'll need to do the thing in the smaller text to get the infusion or experience we covered experience in the start here video but if you're asking what's an elemental infusion well that's what we're going to talk about next below some of your attack abilities you'll see this little symbol where it shows one of your element tokens with an x over it in any case where you see this this means if there is an element token in either the strong or waning column of the element infusion table you can consume that element by moving it to the inert column and augment your attack for this example the demolitionist takes his turn and is going to use the top action from implode and the bottom action here from explode that's a move for and then it's got this augment where if he consumes a fire element he can add two to his move so the fire element was put here on a previous turn by another player and so the demolitionist can consume that by sliding it over into the inert column and now he augments the move action from explode turning the move for adding two to it and turning it into a move six the demolitionist wants to get over here to be in between this elite bandit guard and the standard ban it guards so he moves five one two three four five doesn't use the last point of movement which is okay and that's where he wants to be so he's done with the first action and he discards his card for the demolitionist's next action he uses a top action from implode this is an attack three and then he chooses to augment that by consuming the leaf element and he gains a plus one so he's got an attack for and will inflict the muddle condition and then gets one experience so he consumes the leaf element by sliding it to the inert column and he's going to attack this bandit guard which is an elite bandit guard he draws the top card from his attack modifier deck and gets a plus two so that is a plus six on this elite bandit guard the elite bandit guard is number four and elite bandit guards have a shield one so it reduces my damage down to five so it gets a five damage token has seven damage nine to defeat it so two more to defeat it but then it also gets this muddle token and what muddle does is it gives this bandit guard disadvantage until the end of its next turn at the end of its next turn then the muddle token is removed and then lastly the demolitionist earns one experience with attack there is a lot to absorb by the way you'll also see some of these attack effects conditions and the elemental infusion augments affect abilities other than the attack ability as well you'll see an effect like movement perhaps now that you know how to use them with attack abilities you'll know how to use them with other abilities too so let's move on to some much simpler abilities that you'll encounter on your cards the first one we're going to look at is healing and yes healing is so nice especially when you're getting low on cards and low on hit points when you use the heal ability you can always heal yourself no matter if the card shows a ranged heel or says self this is something i missed on my first couple of plays i would use my character's ability to heal another character and only if it said self i would heal myself so for an example of heal the brute uses the heal 2 range 1 from eye for an eye and he decides to use that on himself since both the demolitionist and the spell weaver are out of range so at the end of the brute's turn he moves the leaf element token to the strong column and just remember you can't consume the element that you moved on your turn other characters can consume those elements on their turn however after you the loot ability acts as a ranged ability and lets you loot all spaces with line of sight to your character's position remember when you loot a treasure immediately look toward the rear of the scenario guide to see what you found and then mark off the treasure that you found it numbered treasures like this can only be looted one time and then get marked off and don't forget that your character always has end of turn looting where regardless of the abilities used on their turn they can loot coins and or treasure in the space they occupy at the end of their turn alright so active bonus actions have these symbols on them when you take the action you move it to your active area where the effect takes place either until the end of the round if it has this symbol or until certain conditions are met if it has this persistent bonus symbol for the shield ability shield works about the same for a character as we've seen it work for the monsters one thing to keep in mind with shield however is it only applies to damage caused by an attack for instance it wouldn't apply to damage you get from a wound at the beginning of your turn for the tinker's second action on his turn he uses the flamethrower bottom action shield one and this also affects him and then any adjacent allies we know it's an active effect because it's got the symbol down here so that gets placed in the active zone and this symbol tells us that it's good till the end of the round then it gets placed in the discard so until the end of the round both the tinker and the brute have shield 1. at the end of the round then the card gets placed in the discard pile if your ability card had the loss symbol then at the end of the round it would get put in the lost pile so the retaliate ability is put on actions that get put into your active zone so when a retaliate ability is active any enemy who attacks you from an adjacent hex receives the retaliate damage retaliate damage is not treated like an attack so no attack modifier card is needed you just apply the damage to the monster right after they attack your character also there's some retaliate abilities that affect ranged attacks too they would show a range symbol and any enemy within that range who attacks your character receives the retaliate damage the other kind of active bonus is a persistent bonus these usually are cards that have counters on them they're used for cards that have the summon ability and for things like the mind thief's augmentability when they have a counter on them the cards stay in the active zone until you use up the bonus for a summon the card stays in the active zone until your summoned ally figure dies and then for cards like the mine thief's augment they stay in the active zone until they're replaced with another augment card for the second action on a different turn taken by the brute he's going to use the bottom action from warding strength this is a persistent active ability so it gets placed up here in the active zone whenever you play a persistent active ability that has these little spaces on it for counters you take one of your counters and place it in the first space on the left upper left in this case every time the brute uses this effect he's going to move this counter one space to the right and so what this one says is on the next six sources of damage from attacks targeting you gain shield one so anytime he gets attacked he's going to move this counter one space to the right so whenever he uncovers one of these experience markers as seen here he gets to gain one experience as well the last time he uses this this token slides over here to remind you that the card's done and it gets placed in the lost pile because of this icon here let's look at the next persistent bonus ability of summon and this is one to use if you feel a bit short-handed during a scenario as this ability lets you add an ally to the battlefield most of the time i just use them as a meat shield more or less to divert the monster's focus in my games they haven't lasted too long so i don't name them or get too attached so the spell weaver takes an action on her turn and plays the bottom action from 8 from the ether that is summon mystic ally so when you summon another ally to the board you place it in an adjacent space next to you then add a summons tracker matching the same color and number as your token and the tracker goes on your ability card she also gains the two experience from this card and takes that right away so what does your summoned ally do once it's summoned well it doesn't activate the term it's summoned however on each subsequent turn your summoned ally takes its turn directly before yours in the initiative order when it takes its turn you don't control it but instead it follows the automated monster rules that we look at in the next video and it always takes the actions of move zero attack zero in that order it uses your attack modifier deck for each attack it makes so for this example let's say it's the spell weaver's turn in initiative order directly before she takes her turn her summoned ally gets to take its turn so if we look at the summoned ally card we can see that this ally has a move to attack three with a range two and two hit points so remember allies always follow the move zero attack zero in that order so first thing it's going to do is move if it needs to so we'll talk more about monster focus which applies to allies in the next video however in this case this banded archer is the summoned allies focus so it doesn't need to move it's just going to perform an attack three so it draws one of my attack modifier cards it's a negative one so it inflicts two damage to the banded archer the card remains in the active area until either your summoned ally dies or your player is exhausted or the summon disappears in a circumstance where the card gets removed from your active area lastly let's look at the augment card specifically the ones the mine thief has since for a starting character these are unique to him so let's look at an example where the mine thief uses the top action for a second action and uses this augmentability this is actually an attack one with the attack one you get this augment on your melee attacks add plus to attack so now the mine thief can make a melee attack against this bandit guard with an attack three he draws an attack modifier with a negative one so it's an attack too and he inflicts two damage against this bandit card 6. he gets one experience and gets to put this card up in the active space it's a persistent ability and says when another augment is played discard this card so from this point on while this is in the active area the mine thief gets plus two to all melee attacks pretty cool now that we know a lot more about how cards work let's look at the end of a round in more detail than in the previous videos at the end of the round all active round bonus cards get discarded or lost if they have that icon on them if any card was drawn either from a monster ability deck or attack modifier deck with this circular symbol on it shuffle the entire discard pile back into the draw deck next move all elements in the waning and strong columns one column to the left and players may perform a short rest if they would like oh no when you take a long rest you get to choose which card from your discarded cards you lose whereas on a short rest it's randomly chosen from your discard pile so that's another advantage of taking a long rest over a short rest [Music] so now you're beginning to know enough to be dangerous the next video focuses on the monster's turn and i'll put this in the playlist and post a link here as soon as it's released so stay tuned and let me know when you beat this game

Channel: Modern Cardboard

Views: 9,682

Rating: 4.9814816 out of 5

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Id: rT_obufiL28

Length: 35min 11sec (2111 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021