Gloomhaven - How To Play - Start Here!

gloomhaven is big and yes it's a bit on the complex side but one thing i'll say is that with all the adventure and secrets waiting to be unlocked in this box it makes it well worth your time to learn so if that's what you want to do then let's get an understanding of how this game works [Music] so gloomhaven is a massive cooperative adventure board game set in a fantasy landscape around this peculiar little town of gloomhaven players create characters from one of the six starting classes classes range from big and tanky like the brute to small and ingenious like the tinker and of course there are several others in between if you're coming over to gloomhaven after playing jaws of the lion you can also bring those four classes over to gloomhaven as starters in this game as well let's first look at the big picture of how a party will play through a campaign in gloomhaven a campaign in gloomhaven can be made up of a party of two three or four players or you can even start a campaign solo and that's the way i usually play the difference when you play solo is that you'll take on the role of two characters in a scenario instead of one so whether playing as a group or playing solo your party will focus on many scenarios over several gaming sessions and the scenarios will intertwine with a progressing plotline during scenarios players and or characters work together to do things like figure out how to defeat monsters grab coins and treasures and then meet the objectives as defined in the scenario guide to successfully complete it but as players continue to work their way through the scenarios in the campaign each character will also have personal goals that they get from their personal quest card and from their battle goal cards that they'll want to attain to unlock secrets and progress their characters along believe it or not a personal quest will also allow a character to retire and by the way retiring isn't necessarily a bad thing in gloomhaven it's the trigger that will unlock one of the secret classes in the box for you to continue your campaign exciting so all of this sounds a bit like playing a pretty incredible rpg that slaps a bit well gloomhaven really has a lot of these rpg elements in it but the difference is that no one has to give up the fun of playing a character as a game master isn't required this is because scenarios are already created and the monsters in this game are automated also have you ever played an rpg with no dice well there's no dice in gloomhaven believe it or not so the big question in gloomhaven remains how do you actually beat gloomhaven well to answer that i think you're just going to have to play through it to find out alright so the storyline that your party follows is driven by the text presented in the scenario guide at times like when your party starts the game you may only have one scenario available to encounter as a party but as the game progresses and your party successfully completes scenarios you will unlock new locations gain achievements which you'll need to begin some other scenarios and earn other rewards like gold experience and other things that we'll talk about later after unlocking a few locations and earning achievements gloomhaven adds the choose your own adventure element to this game where the party will usually have fun choosing which plot path to explore or which side quest to explore if players fail a scenario they won't unlock the new locations nor will they gain any of the achievements or rewards however the group or the party can play the scenario again and choose whether or not they want to lower the difficulty a little bit to make it easier so we'll look at what happens during a scenario in just a moment but first i want to talk about what happens at the end of a scenario so at the end of a scenario you and the party have the option to continue directly to another scenario that would be a scenario you've already unlocked and meet the requirements to begin or your party can choose to visit gloomhaven and do what i like to call gloomhaveny things which we'll talk about in a moment whenever you decide to go to that next scenario whether it's directly after completing a previous scenario or after visiting gloomhaven then your party must complete a road event before starting the new scenario because thematically you'll be traveling now the only exceptions to encountering a road event is if you fail the previous scenario and want to attempt it again or the new scenario is linked to the previous scenario or linked to gloomhaven this is noted in the upper right corner of a scenario page road events typically present a small situation where your party will usually get two options to choose from and then depending on which option you choose as a group you would apply the outcome many times negative as stated on the back of your card so for example let's say your party just successfully completed scenario one black barrow they could go directly to scenario two barrel layer without encountering a road event because barrow layer is linked to scenario one black barrel and you can see that in the upper right corner of the scenario page however if your party decided they wanted to go to gloomhaven to do those gloomhavening things i talked about after completing the scenario black barrel then when they're ready to attempt scenario 2 barrel lair your party would have to encounter a road event card so hopefully that makes sense so i said after a scenario your party also has the option to go back to gloomhaven after finishing any scenario and it doesn't matter if this scenario was successful or failed going to gloomhaven lets characters do things like buy or sell items at the market they can level up their character when they have earned enough experience of course they can encounter one city event card which is handled similar to a road card except the outcomes are usually a little more favorable and they can do a few other things there so now that we know a lot about how scenarios flow from one to another and how parties travel around it's time to take a closer look at how a scenario works a party can move to a scenario that they have already unlocked and meet the requirements to start they will determine how hard the scenario will be by figuring out what the scenario level which we'll get into much more detail in the next video level determines things like how hard the monsters are going to be how much gold and experience they'll earn etc so next players set up the scenario using the map tiles map overlay tiles and of course the monsters with their standees stat cards and ability cards someone in the party reads the introduction text and any special rules character miniatures get placed on the starting spaces as noted by this icon it's now go time yeah by the way i put a link to the entire gloomhaven playlist in the description and right at the end of this video where you can find the ultimate setup guide video that shows you everything you need to know on how to get your party started if you're interested in continuing on so a scenario is made up of a series of rounds during each round each character takes one turn and each monster takes a turn as well turns are taken in initiative order which we'll look at more in a moment but that just means that turn order can most likely vary from round around rounds continue until at least one player successfully completes the goal as noted on the scenario page or the round fails when all players become exhausted or fail to meet a specific goal set forth by the scenario so at the start of a round a player can either take a normal turn where they play ability cards or they can take a long rest if players take a normally turn like they normally will each player selects two ability cards from their hand and then chooses one of the two cards as their leading card now this leading card determines initiative order as we'll see in a moment by the way a character has an ability deck that can be modified the size of this hand equals the amount of cards as shown in the upper right corner of your player mat so once selected these ability cards get placed face down in front of each player and if a player chooses to announce a long rest at the start of a round then during a turn with a long rest players can return some of their cards their hand heal a bit and then refresh their items which i'll talk about more in a moment after all the players have their cards selected or announced that they're taking a long rest then a monster ability card is drawn for each monster type after that initiative order is noted by this number with the chevron above it from each character's leading card and from each monster type card so then initiative order is noted from lowest number to highest number lois goes first and then the turn gets passed to the next highest number and so on now in gloomhaven there are no initiative order tokens like there are jaws of the lion so usually you just see who has the next highest initiative number and keep taking turns until everyone goes if players are taking a long rest since they won't play cards for their turn their initiative is set at 99 after each character and monster takes their turn the round is over and then there's a small cleanup phase during cleanup some decks of cards may get shuffled certain cards may get discarded or players may take a short rest which we'll look at later so when it's your turn in the initiative order and you don't take a long rest you'll use the top action from one of your ability cards and then a bottom action from the other one it doesn't matter which one was your leading card and it doesn't matter if you use the bottom action from one card first or the top action from one card next the main thing is you have to use one bottom action from one card and one top action from the other card when you use an action from one of your cards you'll use each ability listed in that section starting from the top ability and then you'll work your way down to the bottom and not only do you have the option to use what is listed in the main area of the card but you also have the option on your turn to substitute either an attack two for the upper portion of your card or a move to for the lower portion of your card so for example the spell weaver could use the fire orbs action from one card and then instead of taking the attack two from flame strike for her other action she could substitute the move to instead of taking the attack to after a player uses either the top or bottom action from an ability card it usually gets discarded if a card doesn't get discarded then the card is either activated or lost some cards are activated when played and are placed at the top of a character mat where the effect of the card lingers for a set amount of time or until certain requirements are met if the action has this little symbol where it shows this card with an x icon on it then the card gets placed into the more permanent loss pile and that's not a great thing as we'll see you may see this next to your stronger actions and it's going to be tempting for you to want to play stronger actions because they do a lot but you want to be careful about how many of these cards you lose and i'll explain that more in a moment when you play actions you many times will be trying to defeat monsters by moving your character to a strategic location to inflict as much damage as possible with a melee ranged or area attack also actions can be improved by activating items and equipment that you've acquired when you use an attack ability on a monster you draw the top card from your attack modifier deck to modify your attack results this lets you know how well your character did so this deck is similar to how you would roll like a d20 when attacking in certain rpgs but instead of rolling you draw a card just to see how well your character executed the ability the cool thing about having a deck of cards to perform the d20 function is that over time your character will be able to unlock cards to modify and improve the outcomes you get from this deck [Music] so now that you've attacked if you've connected with a monster and damage it then check your damage against the base hit point stats as listed on the monster stat card applying any special conditions and then place damage tokens on the monster stat sleeve many times you'll be fighting many of the same type of monsters at once so anytime you place damaged tokens look at the number on its standee and place a damage token on the corresponding number on the monster stat sleeve it's a pretty good way to keep track of all this madness aside from performing attack abilities characters have other abilities like shielding healing and some let you do cool things like summoning other characters to the board to help your party and possibly get you all out of a bind oh and how could i have almost forgot about looting this includes looting treasures that may be found in the map or looting the coins left by monsters as they're removed from the map treasures are numbered on the scenario guide so if a player loots a treasure you'll look up the treasure number in the scenario guide to see what they found at the end of a scenario coins are converted to gold at a rate for your level as seen on the scenario level table on page 15. also remember that during a scenario characters are also motivated by their special secret battle goals and sometimes will take actions to achieve these so you might wonder why other players are taking odd actions on a turn and that might be why so when playing your actions your character may also get to earn experience experience gets tracked on the blue side of your hitpoint experience tracker dial experience hopefully will accumulate from scenario to scenario and after reaching certain experience milestones your character will be able to level up the next time they are in gloomhaven of course not during the scenario that would just be weird as cards are either discarded lost or placed in the active zone your hand of ability cards will start to dwindle at the start of a round you have to have at least two cards to play from your hand otherwise your character will become exhausted and that means they'll be unable to continue the scenario with the rest of the party to get cards back in your hand your character will either have to take a long rest or a short rest long rests as we talked about earlier are announced at the beginning of your turn but short rests can be taken on turns where you play actions at the end of the round in the cleanup phase the basics of when your character takes either a long or short rest is that you move all the cards from the discard pile back to your hand but by doing this you have to randomly discard one of those to your lost pile so the more you do this the more cards you lose and you can only get lost cards back to your hand if you have a special ability to do this if you aren't able to get at least two cards in your hand at the beginning of a round then your character will become exhausted where again all cards are placed in the lost pile and their characters removed from the board and they can't return until the scenario is over now the difference between a long rest and a short rest is that during a long rest you can also heal 2 damage and refresh all of your spent item cards but you have to forego taking actions that round whereas a short rest occurs during the cleanup phase and that's after you play your actions the point here is pay attention to how many cards you're losing so you don't unintentionally become exhausted so we've talked a bit about how your turn works now let's take a look at the monster's turn monsters take their turn in initiative order from the number listed on the ability card that you drew for each monster type at the beginning of the round when it's time for a specific monster type to take its turn each monster of that type will be activated elite monsters with this yellow base activate first and if there's multiple elites on the board they activate from lowest number to highest this is followed by the regular monsters with the white base and these activate again from lowest number to highest so when a monster takes its turn you follow the ability list from top to bottom on its ability card this is similar for how you would do it on your turn if an action isn't present on that ability card the monster does not get to perform that action for the turn monsters have automated rules you'll need to learn to determine who from the party they will attack this turn this is known as the monsters focus and we look at this more in depth on the video dedicated to monster automation i'll put that in the playlist once it's released as monsters attack and hit characters when a character takes damage hit points are either tracked on the hit point side or the red side of the hitpoint experience tracker or the player can randomly lose one card from their hand or two cards from the discard pile to avoid taking the damage we already know what losing cards does to a player but if you don't or can't lose any more cards to negate damage when a character's hit point dial reaches zero the player becomes exhausted once all monsters of that type have activated then move on to the next turn in your initiative order rounds continue until either all the players fail the scenario if they all become exhausted or rounds continue until at least one remaining player successfully completes the scenario this means they have to meet all the scenario goals and they can do this even if only one character is not exhausted and able to meet the scenario goal when a player group successfully completes a scenario they'll be able to read the conclusion text for that scenario and see what unlocks and rewards they acquire in this section of the scenario guide or on the scenario page players will find out what new scenarios they may have unlocked what party or global achievements they have gained and things like what additional gold items prosperity along with other things they have earned or unlocked players also exchange coins they looted for gold and collect bonus experience for completing the scenario things like experience and gold is tracked on each player's character sheets and things like locations and achievements are tracked on the party sheet also if a player meets their battle goal for the scenario they'll get to mark their character sheet with a check mark or check marks depending on the battle goal for every three check marks a player accumulates they unlock perks which allow them to improve their attack modifier deck by adding better cards to it or deleting unwanted cards from it now for each new location a party unlocks they get to place a sticker matching that location at the coordinates as shown on the map board also for each global achievement that a party unlocks they'll place a global achievement sticker on the map board as well so right now i'm playing a couple different campaigns one solo and then one with my kids so i'm not placing the permanent stickers on my map board i ended up finding these sinister fish stickers which i believe are sponsored by cephalofare games they're like old color forms if you remember those they're kind of like a peel and stick piece of vinyl that removes very easily so i could take those off when i'm not playing one and stick other ones on there later i put a link to where you can get those down in the description then like we talked about earlier players can decide whether they want to go to another scenario or go visit the town of gloomhaven so just a couple more things now that we know how you gain things like gold experience and prosperity let's look at how this affects things you can do in gloomhaven so in gloomhaven characters can spend their gold at the market to acquire items or they can sell some of their existing items to get gold prosperity that your party earns is linked to a few things and the market is one of them the more prosperity you earn as a party the more prosperous gloomhaven is and the more prosperous gloomhaven is the more items that will become available at the market when the prosperity increases in gloomhaven you get to add additional cards to the market as shown on page 43 of the rulebook also if you add a new character to your party the new characters level starts at or below the current prosperity of gloomhaven the last thing prosperity does is it brings all characters up to the current prosperity level so characters can level up to the current prosperity of gloomhaven if they aren't already at that level players can also level up in gloomhaven if they have enough experience there's a table on page 44 of the rule book which lets you know how much experience you'll need to level up when leveling up a character gets to add one more powerful card to their ability card deck or hand from their new level they also get to check off one perk on their character sheet which lets them add cards to their modifier deck and more so speaking of the market you and your party track the reputation of your party on your party sheet and depending on whether your reputation is positive or negative affects the prices items for sale the market are going to be the better your reputation as a party the cheaper items get in the market the worse your reputation is as a party the more expensive items are in the market you had better watch your reputation as a party or at least understand the consequences of your reputation so hopefully now you have a good overall understanding of how this game works knowing the big picture at least for me is the key to making sense of all the finer points we're going to cover in the rest of the videos in the series i recommend either clicking on the playlist or if you want to start setting up your party jump right into the ultimate party setup guide and we'll see you there

Channel: Modern Cardboard

Views: 28,400

Rating: 4.961977 out of 5

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Id: 8jIwaVb4oXY

Length: 24min 40sec (1480 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020