Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion GUIDE | DEMOLITIONIST & HATCHET (SOLO)

[Music] hey thanks for stopping by if you've come over for the jaws of the lion guide you're in the right place but you're probably wondering who the heck is this guy and why is he telling me exactly how to play this game well i'm carlo i'm one half of all you can board the other half is my cousin dylan and we're huge glue maven fans we've been playing a lot of gloomhaven as well as the expansion forgotten circles over the past couple of years and i just finished playing through jaws of the lion's solo so i've probably played upwards of about a glue maven scenarios or so i don't claim to be an expert but i'm also no amateur i've written a couple guides for the tinkerers couple other classes from the base game we've even previewed some of the starting classes for the upcoming frost haven game this is our first video guide and i chose to put this together because for a while i wondered what it would be like to play gloom haven solo i've seen a lot of people asking about jaw's lion solo and i figured this might be helpful i played through it with the demolitionist and the hatchet so this guide is mainly focused towards if you're playing as those two classes but the idea here is that not everyone's going to be doing that and i want there to still be stuff that you can get from it even if you're just using one of these classes in a bigger group i'll try and highlight throughout the guide where i made choices that were specific to playing it with two players or what you can change if you're playing in a bigger group so obviously with a campaign game like this there are going to be some spoilers throughout the guide they will mostly be when we're looking at all the you know level two through nine cards in detail as well as the items i'll be sure to kind of give you a warning about spoilers before we get to any major sections also if you want to skip those you can always use the time stamps below otherwise if you want to get right into the nitty-gritty just know the items and cards and such you can use the time scan stamps to skip below otherwise i'm going to take a minute here to just give you some quick context as to why i kind of pick these classes and give some general tips about playing this game solo if you never have before so first off the game comes with four classes there's the two i chose the demolitionist and hatchet and there's also the void warden and the red guard so the voidwarden's more of a support class which tends to be better in bigger groups of three or four and the red guard is maybe a more safer more primary tank the reason i chose the demolitionist and the hatchet together is kind of for the play style they both are a little bit more they're probably the heaviest damage dealers in the initial set as well as there's a bit more risk involved neither one is like a really primary tank for for soaking up a lot of damage so i just wanted to play a play style that involved a bit of risk taking doing a lot of damage and one of the things that if you've listened to experienced players of gluten haven't talked before you've probably heard a lot of people say the best form of defense in this game is a good offense right you can't just run away from bad guys the whole time because they're going to come after you they're gonna they're gonna hunt you down you can't run away from your problems the sooner you face them head-on the sooner you deal with them so if you kill something it can't hurt you instead of you just running around healing and that's kind of what the play style of these two focuses on is um allowing yourself to take damage and get in these risky situations knowing that you can do more damage and kill things off quicker so that is why i picked these two classes um the guide is gonna from this point on uh go into detail about one class at a time first i'll do the demolitionist look at all the cards items and perks then we'll do the hatchet and then at the end we'll talk about uh both of them together and some general strategy now a couple final tips before we jump right in is you'll notice probably the bottom of the box that says this is a fully cooperative adventure game so if you're familiar with the base gloomhaven it was more semi-cooperative you couldn't like share items or and you had secret goals there was a bit more of trying to do what benefited you while still meeting the party's goals this game you are specifically working together you can't share gold but you can use one character to buy items and then just give those items you can trade items you can hand over items for free so you can really do all of your looting with one class if it's easier with that one and then just kind of buy the items for your other class with it so that's one thing to keep in mind take advantage of the fully cooperative nature of this game another thing is uh playing solo you obviously have the knowledge of what both your classes are playing you can decide your cards before you put them down so in that sense you have more control and it's a little bit easier which is why they recommend playing the solo version on hard mode the only harder thing about it without that is that you basically are juggling two sets of hands so there's tougher decisions but because you know what to expect and you can line up the timing it really does help to have that extra level of challenge to put it on hard mode so i highly recommend that and also please please play this with the gloomhaven helper app it's a fantastic app i can't say enough about it if you have any questions about it leave a comment below send me an email carla allianceboard.com i'll help you get this set up and without further ado let's jump right in all right so we're going to start with the demolitionist now this is a class that does not have a lot of health only a nine card hand which is as low as it gets in gloomhaven um but has one of the best modifier decks i've seen especially at higher levels it can get crazy powerful which we'll see a bit later and it's a somewhat situational class in the sense that it does really well when there's obstacles and when there aren't might struggle a little bit but you'll see it as we get into these cards so we're going through all the level one cards first starting with crushing weight so this is definitely one of the best cards for this class especially at level one um obviously the top and bottom are both reusable abilities you're going to get a lot out of either one early initiative and the fact that you're doubling up basically getting extra damage if you're hitting something that's next to a wall so you've got a bit of flexibility there great cards a great card even the top gives you the xp if you can line it up so that can really help you build your xp over the course of the campaign all right next up is one two punch uh another solid kind of workhorse level one card you're probably going to bring this to almost every scenario the initial is nothing special but look at the bottom you've got an attack one you're not normally going to have attacks on the bottom and don't worry about the one because again i said the modifier deck is really good so just having an attack on the bottom will come in handy plus it comes with a loot um because the demolitionist is going to be your main tank you're going to be in the frame where you're going to do most of your looting probably with the demolitionist rather than the hatchet so it's really good to have that and then the top gives you the back to back attack and you're going to see this kind of theme with the demolitionist where you have these attacks or these cards that give you multiple attacks lined up and if you line them up on the same target it gives you a bonus so what's good about this kind of stuff is it allows you first off if you have a really strong target you can really go after that one enemy and try and hit them multiple times and take them down and get that bonus effect but also let's say you stop next to two enemies and one's low and the other one's high up you can use your first attack to try and pick off that weak enemy and then you still have a second attack on the other one so gives you some flexibility these are just cards like this that have the double attack especially for the demolitionist are really useful and the fact that this one lets you push there's going to be traps there's going to be all kinds of stuff in these scenarios so just another solid card not quite as good as crushing weight but still going to get a lot done for you next up we've got knockout the support so this is one of those cards that is going to be at its best when there are obstacles on the scenario if there aren't obstacles there's some scenarios that didn't have obstacles or didn't have many were actually left this behind so again you've got early initiative standard move two if you destroy an obstacle adjacent obstacle gain and exp and perform strength in self so getting the strength in is huge as we're going to see later with this modifier deck as it slims down yeah you're full of awesome cards in there but that means that your null is going to come up more often if it's a slimmed down deck so having advantage from things like strength in or certain items that we're going to talk about later is so useful for this class the top ability is a pretty standard just melee attack 3. it does a bit of reduced healing to that that enemy it attacks so i didn't find i used that part of it as much but again if there are obstacles bring this use it early get the strength and so that your attacks line up and you can pick enemies off sooner next up we've got the big one which is kind of similar to knockout the support it's a move three instead of two the internship is not quite as good but it's another one of these destroy an adjacent obstacle and gain a benefit so this one gives you a blessing instead so obviously the blessing goes into your deck you don't know if you're gonna actually draw it uh unlike the the strength in which you know you're getting the advantage but still loading up your deck with more blessings is never is never a bad thing as the demolitionist plus this one comes with a powerful loss ability on the top um you might remember so when i mentioned that this is a nine card class it means you really can't afford to be losing cards often or you're going to exhaust or it's going to make you have to take more long rests so this is something the top that you would use kind of at the end of a scenario or near the end of a scenario or if there's just a really big clump of enemies and you think you you can pick them off so it's a good one but again if you know you're going into a scenario with no obstacles at all it might not be worth it just for the move 3 and the situational top ability that you might not use so don't bring it all the time but it is a great card next up we've got explosive blitz this card is crazy uh first off this class is almost entirely melee and you get a top attack to range four which is decent like really good range actually a lot of the time when you get these range attacks they're two or three range plus you get fire it's early initiative but what makes this card amazing is the bottom it's a loss ability but it's one of the better ones i've seen in all of gloomhaven to be honest with you this single-handedly won me many scenarios i'm serious this you pretty much plan a lot of your initial scenario around this card move three if you open the door during the movement perform stun targeting all enemies within range three and then you lose it you basically just at the end the scenario you have the map laid out in front of you you can see where the rooms are identify which room do you want to save this for and then you basically tee yourself up the turn before you get one hex right before the door so you're standing as close to the door as possible and then on your next turn when you pop this at the start you your first movement gets you into the doorway you get to reveal the room and then you still have to move left to position yourself and anything within range three i mean it's it's insane sometimes you can stun the entire room sometimes those rooms you go into just to grab a chest or do something and get out and you can do that right away or it just really helps you and your your hatchet get in there safely and buy you some time i can't say enough good things about this card but if you're ever in a scenario that just has for example one big room and you don't have to move around a lot you probably don't need this just for the ranged attack up top but amazing card you'll probably bring this to scenarios even at higher levels next up we've got piston punch so obviously we just went over a crazy stun card that hits all kinds of number of enemies this is the only other stun card you get or at least at level 1 for the demolitionist it's only a single target one but it's reusable so the initiative 42 nothing really special but having a stun especially on the bottom where almost all your bottom moves are our moves or bottom abilities or moves other than that one other attack one but having a stun there's really nice and if you have earth you can also consume that to poison as well so not bad at all the top attack two push to as a standard is pretty solid already and if you can consume the fire getting an attack three with a push uh three potentially and gaining an xp is just solid all around there's no loss on either one so even though the initiative isn't great it's just kind of one of those maybe not workhorse cards again it's not going to be one you bring to every scenario but at least until level two or three you're probably going to see this a lot next up we've got wind up very interesting card this is often one of the best cards to play on the first turn of the scenario because since you're playing as a mostly melee character a lot of the times you can't even get in range to attack something at the start or maybe you want to get something set up using wind up later on when you're in the middle of a battle doesn't do anything to you because or for you because you're basically setting it up to have a more powerful action later so on the bottom you can double the value of your next movement ability be honest i think i might have used that maybe once at most i used it for the top more often think about playing this at the very first turn of the scenario on your next two attacks add plus to attack and once you've done that twice you can get the xp and it's not a loss it's gonna go into your discard pile you can get it again so every time you set this up you're basically giving yourself plus two damage on your next two attacks super useful especially again like i said early on in a scenario gets you set up for some really big turns and it doesn't hurt to have one or two late initiative cards in your ranks in case you want to go late around so windup's a great choice and one that i didn't take maybe every time but more than half the scenarios so now we've got implode and explode we're going to start with implode it's got a really late initiative 88 move three destroy an obstacle within range three i mean personally i didn't find the obstacles really prevented me from getting around as much like yes this class focuses or has a large focus on destroying obstacles but if the destroying obstacle doesn't come with an immediate benefit you're mostly just using it to clear a path for yourself sometimes you might even be clearing a path for an enemy to get to you quicker so i just found that one's a little situational the top attack 3 is never bad and you can consume earth to make an attack four with muddle solid card enough i guess but with a nine card hand i often found this was like the tenth card that i wanted to bring so it just got left out or kind of just made it in once you start to get the level two three you probably won't take this much but it's decent for level one card so now it's sort of counterpart explode so much earlier initiative you've got to move four on the bottom you can consume fire to make it a move six which is awesome the top is a loss ability and it's another one of these kind of situational ones and of all the situational abilities or destroy obstacle abilities that the demolitionist has this is probably the one i used the least just because so here's something i haven't touched on yet when you're playing with three or four players there's more enemies on the map that's kind of how the game scales they don't have more more health or not it's just the number of players you have or characters determines the number of enemies so if you're playing with three or four there's going to be way more enemies around but when you're playing with only two players like this says it when you destroy an adjacent obstacle gain to and perform stun targeting all enemies adjacent to the destroyed obstacle and each target suffers two damage if there's not many enemies in the scenario if you're only gonna you know like trigger this on one or two enemies is it really worth it to lose a card for that tough to say the movement four is really uh is really good though early initiative making movement six a lot of the time it's going to work its way into your hand but again at higher levels you're probably gonna have to find that you're just gonna leave it behind so now we get to the three uh x cards at level one and to be honest there's really only one of these that i made any use of so we'll go over that one first which is level so um we'll focus on the bottom first add plus one attack to all your melee attacks this round nothing crazy special but we've seen that the demolitionist has some of those uh cards or we've seen one so far we'll see more later where you have multiple attacks on the same ability on the top so for something like that you're going to be boosting all of them not bad but truly the only reason i ever brought this card to a scenario is when you have objectives which are highlighted by the yellow borders around the hexagons so attack three add plus three attack and gain an xp if the target isn't objective pretty simple if the scenario has objectives take this if it doesn't leave it behind you have better cards the last two level x cards are both pretty situational and they both both revolve around traps uh i just mentioned kind of how there's fewer enemies when you're playing in a two-player game so making use of traps is harder because if you're laying down traps but you don't actually push anything into them then they're just wasted turns so i don't think i need to go into these in too much detail lobbed charge just lets you create that muddle trap within a hex within range three situational bottom and rubble really with move two creating a two damage trap and an adjacent hex again these are just ones that are too situational and you don't really have room for a lot of situational stuff in a two-player party because everyone has a fairly defined role and yeah i honestly didn't use either of these last two x cards for any of the scenarios but you might do differently so i don't really believe in just picking one set of cards and saying this when you hit this level this is the hand that you take to every single scenario i think it's got to be flexible but the demolitionist is maybe more rigid than most characters and at least at first i went over all these cards i would say at first just take the first night i mentioned which are crushing weight one two punch knock out the support the big one explosive blitz piston punch wind up implode and explode that'll be your best nine card hand at first the only other time you're gonna do something differently than that i would say is if the scenario is heavy on objectives take that uh level card instead and just swap out something like implode or explode that you don't need things will get a little more complicated as we move on and the choices become more difficult the only other thing i want to mention is that uh when i got to the final boss scenario i was only level seven technically i hit level eight when i beat it but so i only really played up to level seven i'll still give my uh advice on what i would have taken at level eight or nine but either way we're going to jump into those level cards now keep in mind this is where we get into some spoilers if you don't want to see any level two through nine cards skip ahead otherwise we'll jump right into those now so at level two you already have some pretty good options and you get what i think is one of your better cards already uh which is robotic enhancement so this was my choice i took decent initiative uh the bottom move four with the movement being unaffected by difficult terrain is actually pretty huge because you don't really have a lot of like jumps and ways to easily uh move around a lot with this character so being able to actually move through difficult terrain is super useful and at the top having an attack 2 stun that's reusable is also just great um there's nothing really like maybe spectacular about the card but it's just one of those super reliable cards that you can always count on it's going to work early in scenarios latent scenarios never ever ever leave this one behind it's one of your most solid cards the other option crash protocol is definitely kind of the more like flashier maybe a little more exciting option i just didn't think it was going to be as useful in the long run and again we get back to it is situational which we don't have as much room for that kind of thing it does give you the move 3 jump and it's not a loss which is awesome obviously it's got that ability where each time you enter a hex containing obstacle you can destroy that obstacle and add one movement and then you can make those enemies suffer a damage so you can somehow kind of cue up for these big moves remove through a bunch of stuff and do some damage but again you kind of have to plan out and line everything up the top ability um is a loss can be really good but again it's kind of situational just because these enemies have to be next to walls so could be good it's not a bad card but for me i just felt like robotic enhancement was the easy choice for something you can always rely on okay level three we are taking fire bombs this is a great card and something that you don't really see a lot of for the demolitionist so let's look at the top first attack two range four target two so first off range four is decent being able to hit two targets at that range when you're normally a melee class is awesome and producing a fire it's got 24 initiative which is one of your earlier ones you don't have two too early initiative cards with this class and then even the bottom the move two is just standard but obviously if you can trigger the extra one destroying the adjacent obstacle gaining xp all enemies adjacent to the destroyed obstacle suffer two damage remember this too anytime i mention something that suffer two damage that means that a shield won't block that so there's a lot of enemies in this game that don't have a lot of health but have big shields and that's where a lot of these demolitionist abilities that say suffer a damage or enemy suffers two damage really come into play so again there's neither one of these lost just one of those like super reliable cards again the other option nowhere to run it does give you some interesting options the bottom with the move three and moving an adjacent trap like moving traps can come in handy but again with not as many enemies it's it's very situational and difficult to actually execute to its fullest the top is obviously a kind of nice loss the attack four add plus one attack for each wall hex obstacle hex objective figure or trap adjacent to target you can do some pretty crazy damage with this but realistically how often are you gonna need to do that much damage to one and then you're gonna sit there trying to figure out how to make sure this next to all these different things just go with the fire bombs especially when you're just playing with one other class you can really benefit from your melee guy having range once in a while and so i shouldn't say guy because the demolitionist does not identify as he or she it's very clearly they which is awesome on to level four which is definitely you want to go with extra fuel here um first off 17 initiative i believe becomes your earliest initiative at this point move five your best move up to this point plus the bottom you can consume fire to add an attack you might be looking at oh yeah but it's only attack one forget it don't look at the attack values on these demolitionist cards because again you have one of the best modifier decks you're gonna have items later that help this out the main thing is you can move five spaces get in an attack with this thing first and then still use the top ability on another card to do another attack it's just great and then look at the top attack three add plus two attack wound and gain xp if the target's adjacent to a wall creating fire again so you're probably noticing there's a lot of stuff where we can create and use fire for the demolitionist there's a bit of earth as well but fire is definitely the more important element and this card both gives you fire and gives you the ability to consume it for something useful and again just super early initiative great card remote detonation has some interesting stuff going on but it's all specific to obstacles and traps which again are a little situational we're not going to trap routes so i won't even focus on the bottom the top you can destroy the an obstacle and perform these attacks but again you're targeting all enemies adjacent to that obstacle these are the type of cards that if you were playing in a three or four player party and there's way more enemies maybe something like this would have more value but for me in a solo game with just these two extra fuel was the easy choice here okay now level five is huge this is extra spoiler level if you if you weren't if you were okay with seeing the cards and that's fine cool but there's another kind of added spoiler to level five in this game for all the classes if you want to discover that for yourself skip ahead if you don't mind the spoiler well here it comes at level five you only get one card option and it's sort of a transformative stage for your class so the demolitionist gets the card mech suit which is just amazing i mean thematically the way the the mechanics of the card itself work i just love it let's get the bottom of the way first because it's a little more simple move to loot one again you're gonna be the main tank you're gonna be in the fray it's better to have the loot on the demolitionist than a hatchet so that's a very welcome addition the top is what makes this card though first off um the box comes with an extra i want to call it a mini but it's kind of a giant giant miniature where when you play the top of this you remove your tiny little uh demolitionist mini and you get this giant mech mini and basically it's your it's a loss but from now on your maximum hit point value is increased by 5 heal 10 self and permanent shield 1 for the rest of the scenario with 2 xp so this is basically something where okay when you first off when you gain that five hit points that first part you don't heal five as well so your your maximum goes up by five then you heal 10. so the ideal time to use this is if you've already lost at least five health in a scenario and you don't want to use it too early because you don't want to be losing cards before you've actually rested a couple times because then it kind of exponentially increases how quickly you're gonna exhaust but if you get you know take 5 10 damage to a scenario then you pop this you basically it's your your second wind your your recharge for the scenario gain a bunch of health and now you've got a permanent shield one for the rest of the time it's such a satisfying card to use when you're halfway through the scenario or whatever and you take your little miniature off the map and put this giant mech down and you know you're just kind of souped up now and can just soak up all this damage it's just awesome and one of my favorite things about this class so easy choice to not go back and take a previous level card take the mech suit okay we're gonna get to the second option dust cloud in a second but i just gotta say drill fist is just too good to pass up here so look at the top i was talking about this before with these abilities where you get multiple attacks this one gives you three so you got attack one attack one attack two remember that you can target the same or different enemies with those it's up to you if you targeted the same enemy with all three you're gonna ignore their shield value add poison and gain an xp so this is what i was kind of saying before if you're looking to really hit one target you can hit them really hard but if you're next to two or three targets some of them are maybe low health or you've got some status effects that affect all your attacks this turn you can kind of spread out the damage kill multiple enemies spread those status effects whatever super useful card bottom ability is also decent uh move two place one of your character tokens on an adjacent normal or elite enemy you and all allies may ignore the shield value i can't honestly say i ever took advantage of that one just because the top is so much better and if you use the bottom then this is gonna have to sit in your discard pile you have to wait till you get it back again so i mean i'm sure could come in handy once in a while but that top is just so so useful uh dust cloud nothing to sneeze at i mean it's a great card 15 would be your earliest initiative at this point if you took it move to destroy adjacent obstacle if you do gain an xp and perform shield 2 for the round not bad to add shield 2 especially again at higher levels you're going to be taking a lot of damage from enemies and at the top even targeting or hitting for attack 2 on all adjacent enemies pushing muddling if you can get into a pack again this is one of those ones if you're playing with three or four players and there's way more enemies on the battle battlefield it might make more sense to take something like this because you might actually be hitting you know three four enemies instead of just one or two if you're playing with two players plus if you're going for more of a build that focuses on using that earth element you might find use in this but the way i played the demolitionist i definitely made a lot more use of fire so drill fist was an easy choice here level 7 brings another really interesting card we've talked before earlier about how this class has very limited ranged abilities but when they come up they tend to be pretty good and this one is no exception micro missiles early initiative with 16 look at this top attack attack two range three target four again with having such a good modifier deck later on hitting four targets it doesn't matter if it's a tack two you've got items you can boost this with you're drawing plus twos and you know crits out of your modifier deck you're going to be hitting hard with this card such a good card especially early in a scenario you're not usually very close to your enemies so having range three potentially hitting four targets like sometimes you don't even have to move right off the bat to dish out some damage first turn um and the bottom move to all objectives within range three suffer three damage produce earth again the top is so good that i'm rarely going to use it for the bottom but if you're on a map that or a scenario that does have a lot of objectives you can definitely make use of that and it'll it'll help you up the other option that i didn't take was insult to injury obviously on the bottom you got the move for added mobilize to all your attacks this round you can consume the earth for the muddle so again if you're going for that earth build you can make some good use out of that the top is a loss the next three attacks targeting enemies you attacked earlier in the same round add plus three attack so if you're going to be kind of you know walloping on the same enemy over and over it kind of helps you but as we're gonna see the hatchet is kind of the specialist in single target focus damage so i don't really worry about that as much with the demolitionist and again micro missiles are just so good and having that flexibility to help out at range and not just leaving that all up to the hatchet is such a bonus for the demolitionist so again micromissiles is an easy choice so level eight i'll take this opportunity to remind you i only technically hit level eight with both classes as soon as i beat the last scenario so i didn't actually play at level eight or make any of these choices um but there are interesting cards i'd like to look over anyway uh gut punch is i mean attack three stun on the bottom we've talked before you don't really get attacks on the bottom as it is and let alone stuns to get an attack three stun on the bottom with 26 initiative as a reusable card is fantastic and then the top attack five if you play blue maybe before you know just an attack five on its own is already solid and then if you can consume elements you can either boost the attack or push or immobilize farm some more xp solid card honestly this is it's not as flashy as the next option but it's probably the one i would have taken if i if i played up to that point your other option is the bigger one which is basically your upgrade on the big one from level one um it doesn't have the thing at the bottom about destroying obstacles still has you gives the move three and look at this one five nine twelve hexes on this thing attack four range two still produces the elements whatever destroy all obstacles in the targeted area all allies in the targeted area suffer two damage so again if you're playing in three or four player groups you gotta be a little more careful because you have more allies you might hit with this i mean it is only two two damage maybe not that much it could be a fun card to use i'm sure but again it is a little situational and gut punch just seems like it would be the better option here i think and level nine we've got okay a couple very interesting cards collateral damage move to destroy an adjacent obstacle if you do gain one or all enemies in the same room as the destroyed obstacle suffer two damage again this is wild like especially at higher player counts imagine you have a room with like eight enemies and you just destroy one obstacle and then run out and they all suffer two damage again with as you go on and you're facing these shielded enemies that are pesky and they this can this can be such a big bonus just having things suffer damage without you needing to pull stuff out of your modifier deck to see if you missed or whatever or using up your good numbers on those um the top is obviously a loss destroying a json obstacle or objective if you do gain one xp and perform attack four push two targeting all the adjacent enemies it's kind of another one of those situational ones where if you can get in the middle of a pack of guys and hit them all it's awesome but i think the bottom is a little more appealing the next one wholesale destruction look at the top attack two attack two move to attack three you can consume a fire just pretty crazy you know stacking abilities there or stacking attacks um and then the bottom is not bad either because you can basically destroy an obstacle ability um or perform and destroy an obstacle abilities if an empty hex within range of this ability contains an obstacle it's a little bit of a tricky one it says don't place destruction token again these are the ones where it just felt like to make use of these you're gonna have to slow the game down a lot i didn't really again you can get to level nine so they're both interesting cards and i think you'd be safe going with either one really so before we move on to the items i'll just give you a quick heads up if you're looking for some advice on what to go into the final uh boss scenario with my nine card hand for that ended up being keep in mind at level seven i took micro missiles drill fist mech suit extra fuel fire bombs robotic enhancement and then the level one cards that i took with that were crushing weight the big one and wind windup is obviously good just for charging up your attacks so i'm not saying this is necessarily the best hand but worked out for me alright so during the little quick start tutorial those first five scenarios you're going to get 30 gold to spend on your first set of items so i'll give you a bit of advice on that and then the rest of the item section is going to be pretty heavy on spoilers due to what points in the campaign that you unlock these items so with your starting 30 gold personally i got the winged shoes i found it was an excellent item you can use that uh that jump early on really comes in handy uh especially because with the demolitionist your movement is so important um you know being able to get into the right spots that you can actually do that melee attack or be the one to tanks that your hatchet doesn't get hit positioning is so so important right from the first scenario so that was 15 gold and i also took a healing potion with the other 10 just because neither of these classes have a lot of healing so yeah i found those worked out super well leaves you five gold to spare for buying another item later and yeah now heavy spoilers ahead for the rest of the items so we're going to look right at what my final item build suggestions are going to be and i'll just go through them for each category and then i'll make suggestions as to if there are other alternatives or other items i used along the way so first off for head item we go with the eagle-eye goggles i'm going to get back them in a second because i want to say that for most of the campaign i actually ended up using the amulet of life which is you know you activate it during your turn perform a heal oneself action heal one doesn't seem like a lot and you're not getting it for that number one but keep in mind heal one gets poison and wound off of you and there's a lot of enemies in this game that are going to have those status effects and because you're going to be the main tank you're going to be taking tons of hits all the time i cannot stress how often you're going to even just get poisoned one turn and maybe someone uses a card ability or something to heal you and then the very next turn you're poisoned again or wounded having this amulet of life is so useful but later in the game maybe when you have other things to stave off damage and you've gotten that level five card i talked about before and stuff you maybe don't need the heal as much and at that point you can probably upgrade to the eagle eye goggles just because you start getting those things like the drill fist which has those three back-to-back attacks you've got all these cards and as your modifier deck slims down you really don't wanna be pulling that null card when it's like a one in 10 or a 112 chance or whatever once you've got that really slimmed down deck so the eagle eye goggles really helps with that next up is uh chest item we are going to go with chain armor honestly this is the only chest item i bought for the demolitionist kept at the entire campaign never regretted it here's what i like a lot about the chain armor okay a lot of the defensive items in this game say like when attacked you gain shield whatever for the end of the round so those ones are you you can't choose when to use them it's if you are attacked that activates immediately chain armor is one that you choose so during your turn gain shield one for the rest of the round so you can kind of maximize this if i know there's only gonna be one enemy hitting me or trying to attack me this might only prevent one damage so i don't really care but if you're running into a new room and there's a pack of three or four enemies that's when you use the chain armor and it might soak up three or four damage instead and because it's a refreshable ability and because this is only a nine card class the amount of times you're gonna long rest throughout a scenario even if it's just once or twice getting to reuse stuff like this and the eagle eye goggles we're going to see a pattern with a lot of these refresh cards the chain armor is just for 30 bucks like maybe the best bang for buck of any item i got in the campaign for this class excellent item so next we're one of the hand items at the end of the campaign i had two single hand items i had the tower shield and the poison dagger obviously one defensive one offensive the tower shield is kind of pricey at 40 but when damaged by an attack gain shield two for the attack so it's a better shield than the chain armor but like i said you can't choose when it kind of just activates but again it can be refreshed poison dagger is great during your melee attack add poison to a single attack what makes this card so good in this class goes back to those multi-attack cards like i was talking about with drill fist and we saw that other level nine one and there's another one at level one can't remember what it's called the one that has the attack one and loot on the bottom but when you're doing these multiple attacks in a row you can use the poison dagger first so that your first attack poisons the enemy and then your follow-up attacks are going to be able to capitalize on that poison so that's awesome and because you're off in the tank you're the one engaging a lot of the time you're going to get in there early poison and then maybe your hatchet can follow up and take advantage of that i when i looked at the items at first i kind of underestimated this one for a while and then once i actually got it into my build and i started using it i found the poison dagger i just didn't really want to give it up another option though that i had at one point that i got earlier in my campaign was the battle axe 25 gold it is a single hand item and it's during your single target melee attack ability turn the attack into the following so you basically turn it into hit both hexes in front of you instead of just one it can be really good but it really depends again it's one of those situational things maybe in a campaign with more players again there's more enemies higher chance of this but i found i brought the battle axe for a while had a few scenarios where it didn't really come in handy so i think i swapped it out for the poison dagger and i was happy with that choice next we want to feed items so you will remember i mentioned winged shoes if you don't come across another minor spoiler here is that the the item i ended up going with uh is the one you unlock in the solo scenario for the demolitionist which is the jet boots and it's just a strict improvement on the winged shoes because not only do you get jump for the movement but you also get plus one move it's also a refreshable item so basically as soon as i found the jet boots in another scenario i just sold off the winged shoes because this is an upgrade but either way you you want one or the other on the demolitionist because you want that reusable jump over and over throughout the scenario can't go wrong with that and now on to the small items uh so early on obviously i said take healing potion first i would almost never suggest this for most classes because stamina potions in this game are just so good for getting back cards which increases your longevity which gives you your best abilities back etc etc later in the campaign the stamina potion is probably going to be more useful than the healing potion so you're definitely going to want to pick one up as soon as you can afford it the 10 gold another one i came across in my campaign ring of strength is awesome because it's you activated and during your turn you gain strength so this will you know you get strengthened you get your advantage again i talked about how that's such a good modifier deck but because it's so slimmed down your null is a little more common than most modifier decks so having strengthened is so so useful especially in these really key moments so having the ring of strength is i wouldn't say essential but once you've unlocked it if you can afford it i don't see any reason to buy a different small item over it okay and another the last small item that i would take it's one i got really really late in the in the campaign is oak charm during your turn perform a bless range 5 action so you can bless yourself bless the hatchet whatever you want your modifier deck is already so good i ended up having an oak charm on both um characters and i think i usually used it to just give the blessings to the hatchet because they benefit from them more yeah otherwise mana potion is an optional other item i had mana potions on each one at certain points throughout the campaign but i didn't find i really ever used them or really needed them all that badly so i mean if you have the space sure they're fine but there are other cards that'll do or other items that'll do more for you in that slot okay so now let's look at perks as i mentioned one of the best modifier decks uh in all of gloomhaven i think so i'm going to just give you a kind of brief order that i kind of went in these i think it's really important to prioritize the remove two minus ones uh both first pretty standard across gloomhaven it's always good to get rid of those um after that there's a very interesting one here for the demolitionist which is remove four plus zero cards i took that third so your modifier deck starts with 20 cards if you've gone with those three as your first right there you've already removed eight cards four of which are minus ones and four of which are zeros so you're already leaving yourself with a lot of these kind of really stronger plus ones you've got your plus two in there um you're already thinning it down quite a bit the next one i took might seem odd but it's the remove one minus two and one plus one card sure you take out the my the the plus one but getting that minus two out of there early is really nice now you've got a ten card modifier deck literally half the size you started with just with four perks so yes it increases the chance of getting all your plus cards and your your crit but it also starts to increase the chance of your null coming up so that's where you kind of want to stop and start focusing on then boosting the deck so after your first four perks for your number five and six i'm going to recommend you take the add one plus two card once you take both of those that's going to bump your modifier deck back up to 12 cards so those plus twos are really going to be helping a lot by have adding those in beyond that the rest of the ones i took were all the ones that replaced something with something better so either replacing like you know a plus one with a plus two that also gives you an element or you're placing a zero with a plus two that gives a status effect or whatever i would prioritize the ones that give you fire over the ones that give you earth and also the ones that give muddle or poison are really good too the quicker you can get those minus ones out of there the better by the time i hit level 7 and i had 12 perks in my 12 card modifier deck other than the null every single card was positive even the next worst one is like just add poison to an attack and i think there were like five cards with a plus two you just get so strong by the end but again this is where the strength and comes into play for not having those nulls come out amazing modifier deck very fun class to play alright now we are on to the hatchet so the hatchet is also a fairly fragile class obviously stays more at range than the demolitionist but same amount of health all the way up to level nine ten card hands instead of nine so a little bit more longevity there but again mostly ranged attacks mostly single target very little things that hit multiple enemies or aoe type stuff where you can hit clumps the other thing is there's a little more flexibility i'd say there's more situational cards it's a bit less clear what's the what are the best cards to take each scenario but i'm going to go over all that in this section here okay so the first and most important level one card here is called the favorite and this is basically the main mechanic that sets the hatchet apart so we'll look at the bottom card for bottom ability first wound three targeted jason enemy move three jump with a 17 initiative especially this is awesome having a move three jump right from level one that's reusable is super useful but look at the top so once you activate this it's gonna go above your card your your player sheet it's gonna stay active for the rest of the scenario you basically gain one of those little tokens and um you can add plus three attack to any of your ranged attacks by moving the token from this card to the target after the attack ability is resolved um so basically what that means is you're picking an enemy that is going to be your favorite and you're basically launching an additional plus three attack on it after you hit it with a ranged attack that token will stay with that enemy as that enemy moves around and it'll remain as your kind of favorite and then once that enemy dies it drops the token in that hex and then to get that token back on the card to redeploy it later you'll need to loot the token so you'll either use a loot ability or end your turn there get the token back on your card and then later in the scenario remember the card stays out and then you can pick a different target to put as your favorite get that bonus attack and keep using it so you're going to see there's a theme all throughout where i'm going to be referring to the favorite over and over so don't forget about this card one of your best and most important cards so the first card at level one that plays off your favorite token is a retrieval as you can see move one loot one nothing really special you're not going to do a lot of looting with the hatchet because you're going to be at range leave that for your demolitionist so unless you're using that to pick up your favorite token probably not going to come in handy all that often and the top two again if you're not grabbing your favorite token it's just an attack 2 which you can use the basic attack on any card so retrieval's alright for level one card but as you level up you won't find much use for it next up is follow through another one that plays off the favorite token so look at the top attack two range four attack or add plus two attack and gain an xp if your target has your favorite token so once something is already has your favorite token you can do an extra good attack on it but again it's a bit situational bottom move to push to target a json enemy and then you can consume wind to move to again we're going to see the most common element for the hatchet is wind it's not quite as useful i would say as fire was for the demolitionist and this is a fairly situational card brought it sometimes but even when i did it wasn't always easy to take advantage of that top with the favorite tokens so decent but nothing special okay now we're gonna get to some of the better cards at level one starting with disorienting barrage this might be your most important level one card or definitely one of them i mentioned before that this class focuses mostly on single target powerful attacks like hitting bosses and stuff but disorienting barrage is an attack one range three target three and muddle so i'll say right now this is one of the best cards for uh your first turn of a scenario if you can reach um you know two or three enemies at range three especially if you can go early on with another card which i'm going to show you in a moment this will allow you to hit a bunch of guys and muddle them before they take their turns and attack so they're going to be at a disadvantage 51 initiatives obviously not very good and then the bottom has a situational loss where you can move all adjacent enemies suffer one move one all adjacent enemies suffer two again this suffer thing it avoids shield so you can potentially be doing three um unpreventable damage to shielded enemies with the bottom super powerful card next up we've got center mass this one's kind of just a standard workhorse card 24 initiative attack 3 range 3 on top is pretty standard we're going to see a lot of the attack 3 range 3 with this class and on the bottom you've got a move three which there's a few of these move three cards and this one gives an optional push two uh to an adjacent enemy so it's just a very reliable card you know what you're getting it's not hard to make it work well for you next up we've got power pitch another move three just like the one we just looked at but this one's got worse initiative but it comes with wind the only thing is that if you're not using that top ability for that loss attack that attack 6 then carrying around a 60 initiative card just as a move 3 for wind might not be enough especially if you're not using it for the wind then carrying a card around all scenario just for the move three isn't worth it but the attack six loss up top might be good in like let's say a boss scenario where if you know you're going to need the wind for something then this could be a decent card so bring it whenever you feel like it fits in next up we've got second wind another move three but this one's actually got a good initiative nice and early with 18 and on the bottom it says add plus two move and gain an xp if you killed an enemy this round so if you attack someone else first and then you move you can potentially move five and gain an xp so right away i think this one's kind of an upgrade on the last two move three card abilities that we saw and on the top you've got a loss that's a heel six self as i mentioned these classes don't have a lot of healing i ended up i brought this one sometimes but i found i didn't always use the heel because if you're doing a good enough job doing the proper tanking with your demolitionist up front if your hatch is not taking a lot of damage you might not need the heel um but again because it also comes with a move three that can be a move five i would say it's a better option than the power pitch card but again it's it's kind of situational uh maybe bring it if you think there's a particularly damage heavy scenario where you're gonna need the heal next up is close cuts everything we've looked at so far i believe for this class so far is ranged attacks and here you've got two different melee ones on the top we've got a double hex melee attack for three the gainesville xp and on the bottom we have an attack two move too really good initiative too 225 this is just another one of those kind of workhorse cards i would kind of put this in the category as center mass where you kind of know what you're getting you're not going to spend a lot of time doing melee attacks but if you can set this up where you let's say use a late initiative card last turn and ended your turn next to someone you can start off the next round by you know using the bottom to attack and then move out of the way um or hit two enemies at once with the top so really not a bad card but it just takes a little bit more planning than some of your other easy easy ones next up we've got stopping power so these are some of the kind of more situational cards now i would say that we're getting into uh stopping power attack three range two you can extend the range and push with the top it's fine but if you don't have the wind then attack three range two i mean we've already seen a couple cars that have attack three range three so if you don't have the wind it's kind of worse um the bottom has a move three jump and this immobilized thing that gives you the the loss it can be good but i found every time i took this card i didn't have the wind to make the top work and then by the time i was late in the scenario i didn't need the bottom so i'm sure you can make it work but i didn't find much using it myself next up is double throw this is tricky i'm normally very skeptical about any card that has two loss abilities because if you're not going to use it early then you're basically just carrying around this card all scenario that you're just going to use the basic move to or attack to until you may or may not even use the loss so i brought this one a couple times i think a couple times i did make pretty good use of it the bottom is i think where you might see some good use the double the value of your next attack this round so early in the game if your attacks are like two or three you're not gonna save this all scenario to double an attack and do two or three more damage and lose a card you have tons of cards that can attack for two or three but later on when you're powerful and you have items that boost your attacks or for example you go into a boss fight imagine you've got a base attack you know five six seven if you're doubling that up that is huge and that can actually pick off the most dangerous enemy in a scenario again especially a boss the top is a little more situational you probably won't use it but um again i would say for boss fights definitely consider this otherwise probably not worth bringing now we get onto the x cards from level one and honestly these are way better than the demolitionists x cards i would say care package is a card that when i first saw it didn't think i'd see much use and if you're playing in a three or four player party or you have a void warden in your party you probably won't see this as much but i found this was actually one of the most useful cards to have with the hatchet because you've got a heel on the top and the bottom and unlike your other heel card you can heal your allies with this so with the bottom you can move three and then heal one right next to something or at the top you can actually land an attack too and then heal an adjacent allies so ideally if you can make use of the top it's it's perfect but even if again don't look at the heel one the heel two think about how much your demolitionist is going to be in the middle of battle and they're gonna need you to get rid of their um you know status effects their poison their wound that kind of stuff and this is huge for that so care package i took honestly in almost every scenario and i did not regret it i got so much use out of this card fancy hat okay this card is a little odd um it's got a move on top which you don't see very often in any class really but we'll come back that 12 initiative would become your earliest initiative the bottom add plus one attack to all your attacks this round if you remember the card i mentioned before disorienting barrage the one that has the uh attack one range three target three the one that spreads the muddle fancy hat is the best card to pair with that especially as a scenario opener if you've got range on two or three enemies at the start your best first turn is fancy hat with disorienting barrage because you get to go 12 initiative before probably everyone else and then you actually get to do attack two on all three of those and muddle them excellent combo fancy hat is just a great card and the top again it's weird move three shield two for the rest of the round but it's a loss you have ways that you can move sometimes four five six later in the game with hatchet to pair that with something where you can potentially move seven eight nine in total in one turn you might have scenarios where you just have to go grab something in a room go get a chest and run or do something so the movement really helps and the other thing is because you're relying so heavily on your demolitionist to do your tanking every once in a while the demolition is going to be in a tight spot and they're going to need you to do some tanking and having the ability to move three and then pop the shield too is so valuable i can't tell you how many times i used this card all throughout for boosting attacks and then later on i thought my demolition was going to die and i was able to get the hatchet in there use that top and sometimes it completely saved me so don't underestimate the top of this card final one is extra lift i won't spend a lot of time on this because really i barely used it um it's pretty much the bottom obviously helps you get a bunch more movement throughout the scenario which i just don't find you really were desperate for movement as much with the hatchet you're often just kind of hanging out in the background you've got lots of range to kind of just fire away at things so i found the bottom wasn't really useful or necessary and then the top again if you don't have wind it's an attack two range three and you have so many attack threes so very situational if you're going a heavy wind build might be useful but otherwise i'd say leave it behind so while you're still at level one in my opinion you should probably be taking the following six cards to pretty much every scenario i would say uh the favorite disorienting barrage center mass close cuts care package and fancy hat aside from those six you've got a few other situational ones i mentioned the two with the move threes on the bottom that have the losses on the top their second win for the healing or power pitch for the attack so i would say consider those ones um you know retrieval if you want to really focus on getting your favorite token back i would really only consider the other ones like double throw if you're going to a boss fight or follow through if you're again trying to play more around that favorite token or you're going with wind to get that extra move on the bottom but yeah those last few you can kind of fill in the gaps beyond those those six highly recommended ones so now we're going to get into the section of level two to nine cards so remember there are spoilers ahead if you'd like to avoid them just use the timestamps below to skip ahead otherwise let's jump into level two now okay so a level two we've got a couple decent choices nothing incredible um i went with repeat shot it's got the top attack three range three which we've seen is fairly standard for the class but add plus two attack and gain an xp if the target has your favorite token so it's just again gives you that extra boost if you can capitalize on that 31 initiatives okay nothing crazy special but that bottom attack 5 range 3 loss it's again good to have an attack option on the bottom especially when you go into boss fights or when you're dealing with a really pesky enemy and you know that your one attack on the top of another card is not going to be enough to have this kind of as a reliable attack three throughout a scenario over and over and then suddenly you can just you have that kind of ace up your sleeve to get that big attack on the bottom can be really useful um the other option ricochet definitely has more potential for like the interesting plays um you know if i was playing in a bigger group i probably would have taken it because attack two range three then you get another attack to target a different enemy within range two of the target of the previous attack ability so again if there's a bunch more enemies out there it's going to be easier to trigger that but in smaller groups it's not going to come into play as much and then obviously the bottom is a loss ability and involves being adjacent to enemies which if you've watched up to this point you'll know i don't think you should be up close to your enemies as the hatchet almost everything you do is ranged you don't want disadvantage you're pretty fragile so yeah i definitely with a repeat shot at level two so level three is an awesome card uh i definitely went with sharpened blades here up to this point um up to level two we've only seen the most movement you can get as a standard move is move three uh there's other ways to get up to a move five this one starts the standard move four if you consume wind it goes plus two so you can move six having just a baseline four is already awesome and then the top ability here on your next five i mean it's a loss once you you know set it up it stays there and for your next five attacks you had plus one attack and wound this is just awesome because it kind of just powers you up you've got other ways that you can wound things but not all of your attacks do because you've got this crazy good range with the hatchet you can really pick off which enemies you want to wound early in a scenario so that they keep taking that wound damage and the other thing is if you already have this activated before your disorienting barrage the one that spreads and hits three targets now it's going to wound them all in addition to muddling and it's going to deal extra damage so yeah really really good card the other option fearsome efficiency it's obviously an interesting card but it's again we come back to the whole situational nature of it the bottom shirts and attack one range three add plus two attack and gain one if you killed an enemy this round so again your first move would have had to have killed something before you then do this if you didn't it's just an attack one which isn't much and then the top is a loss which again is not gonna read the whole thing but attack six range four and you can see that it's just another situational ability you have to take into account where things are on the map kind of thing whether or not it kills it so for me sharpen blades was was the choice here okay level four brings a really really great card probably the best one you've unlocked at a new level up to this point the top is just attack three range four which is already better than the range three of all those standard ones and if you've got the wind you can add an attack a range and gain an xp very solid just reusable reliable card and then on the bottom you've got this loss ability that you don't want to activate this too early but late in the scenario this can be pretty deadly then so it's a loss once you put it up there the next five times an enemy ends a movement ability within range five perform an attack to range five action targeting that enemy so you get some xp along the way and you can basically be attacking enemies when it's not even your turn this is so useful when you're playing with two characters and you want to especially when you're kind of falling behind you feel like you're running out of time in the scenario you've already lost certain cards and you you feel the walls closing in or these sometimes those scenarios where they're spawning all these little pesky uh enemies that just keep appearing and multiplying something like this if you go first and then they each move and you're attacking them all imagine also having the wound ability on that other card queued up where you're also wounding them all when they move just a great ability um the the alternative here ripped from the flesh is cool but the top and the bot like there isn't any movement or attack which are the standard things that you need in this game i kind of went over before i won't get into again why you probably don't need loots with the hatchet but you can also do maybe a bit of damage in wound situational the bottom yeah you've got a heal three at range two but again if you didn't kill an enemy in at the end of this round or this round you don't get anything else from it other than that and you don't want a card just sitting in your hand that's going to be most often just a basic move tour attack too until you can maybe use a better ability especially because overwatch is just such a good card so take overwatch and don't look back okay level five i've got to warn you again just like with the demolitionists there is a major spoiler for this class at level five so if you want to avoid that skip ahead if you're still here then i will tell you that level five is where you get the new favorite which is basically just a strict upgrade on your the favorite card from level one so the initiatives two earlier i think i think it was 17 this one's 15. you get an attack two immobilized with a move 4 that produces wind so the bottom is you know you don't get the jump that the other one had but you get more movement and maybe more reliable good attack there the top is strictly an enhancement though you might remember the other token or the other card for the favorite was that when you move that token you can add a plus three attack this one gives you still the plus three attack but it also adds a wound and a push onto that so this basically is just a more souped-up version of the favorite but this one says specifically this card cannot be active while the favorite is active so i'll be honest as soon as i hit level five i basically put my the favorite card from level one back in the box didn't use it again because you really don't need both and this one's definitely an upgrade and you get a nice little bonus another mini from the box which is a nice little axe that you get to use as a replacement to your token level 6 gives you some interesting choices because both of these cards come with a move 3 on the bottom but look at the initiative on quick turnaround 11 would become your best um it comes with a move three if your favorite token is in or adjacent to your hex you may perform loot one so kind of a situational thing but look at the top attack four range three push two that right there is guaranteed which is already way better than any of your attack 3 range 3s plus you can consume the wind for the extra range plus 2 push and the xp so this one is just always reliably already very good and then has the potential to just be even better bombardment we go back to again one of these more situational ones yeah it's gotta move three on the bottom as well all jason enemy suffer a damage but again you shouldn't be really getting up close to that many enemies with the hatchet um the push is to be situational the top can be really really powerful but it's again it's just another one of those loss abilities and when you're weighing that against quick turnaround for me just having a card that has that early initiative and that guaranteed attack for at range is just something you can't pass up so i took quick turnaround okay level seven uh keep in mind i hit level seven right before i went to the final boss so my choice here was influenced by the fact that i knew i was going right into the final boss scenario afterwards which is why i took excessive force so you get the move 3 on the bottom you can consume a win to add an attack to range 2 which to move and get any attack on the bottom afterwards is already pretty crazy but to have it be a ranged attack afterwards is very very cool and on the top on your next five attacks targeting an enemy that has your favorite token add plus to attack so again if you're fighting the final boss or really any boss or high hit point enemy just throw this down right before you go up to them throw that favorite token on them and then every attack you do is gonna hit them extra hard so this was awesome for the final boss uh brutalize was the other option here which can also be very good against a boss because it's an attack four and you are adding a plus two attack if the target has your favorite token but again it's melee why are you gonna get up in the enemy's face and go melee with the hatchet when you've got all these amazing range attacks and you've already got a demolitionist to get up there for you right and then the bottom i mean an attack five range force stun is crazy but for a one-time loss it just doesn't outweigh what excessive force is going to do for you especially against a boss so i would recommend excessive force here so keep in mind i only actually hit level 8 as soon as i beat the final scenario so i've not actually played with any of these cards but if i had hit level 8 sooner i probably would have gone with shrapnel i mean shrapnel is the more offensive card and camaraderie is the defensive one right so shrapnel is the attack two range three target two wound you can add another target if you've got the wind and at the bottom you have ways to [Music] basically do additional damage to adjacent enemies where you've killed something so it's very offensive um but to get the most effect out of it you have to kind of set it up a bit camaraderie you don't attack at all with it you just i mean i guess the bottom has the plus two attack if you're next to uh if you're next attack this turn you're adjacent to an ally but again you only have one ally how often are you gonna be standing right next to the demolitionist probably not that often so it usually is going to be just a move three the top is a heal three self heal three target on jason ally so i would say if you get to the point in your campaign where you hit level eight just decide do you feel like you need a bit more of that offense if so go with shrapnel if you find you're really desperate for heals then take camaraderie all right level nine is a really fun level for this class just because they're very different cards um you might remember that in the original gloomhaven there were these insta-kill cards it was just like kill an adjacent enemy or kill an elite enemy or whatever they got rid of those this is almost the closest thing you'll get to it though it's a loss ability one adjacent normal or elite enemy suffers 12 damage so it's not attack 12 you don't have to draw your modifier deck and risk getting a null shields don't come into play just deal 12 damage to something no questions asked pretty much and then you also create a dark element and you get 2xp so it's fitting for the title of the card executioner's axe very cool card to just pick an enemy and kill it essentially unless it's a boss might not kill it the bottom is so situational though if you killed an enemy this round return your favorite token to its card and gain one it's a very cool way to get your favorite token back from far away right you've got these range three range four attacks if you can get it back instead of actually having to go up and loot the token it can be useful um but look at heartseeker attack four range four stun and you can consume a wind to wound just long term you'd get so much more value and use out of this you can stamina potion take it back keep using it throughout the scenario whereas the executioner's axe is just going to be the one time kind of kill something you're done with it um plus heart seeker comes with the heal and blessing on the bottom so i'd probably go with heart seeker if i'd hit level 9 but executioner's ass could be fun too it just really depends what you're hoping to do so that's it for all the cards uh if you're looking for some advice on what to go into that final boss scenario with um just for reference i took excessive force quick turnaround the new favorite overwatch sharpened blades repeat shot and then for level one cards i had or x cards i had care package disorienting barrage fancy hat and of course double throw for that bottom attack boost on doubling your attack so good luck if you get to the final boss and i hope these cards work out for you now let's talk about items so when you get your first 30 starting gold there's gonna be some options you can go for some defensive you can get some of those small items i went with the throwing hammer it's 30 gold so that's all of it it's a single hand item but during your ranged attack adds stun to a single attack um i can't stress enough early on when you have barely any you know health and items and you don't deal a whole lot of damage sometimes even just stunning one of like three enemies in a room can can really buy you some time can be super useful um i thought it was a bit of a gamble at first but i was really happy with the throwing hammer i think it's a great choice for a first item so that's what i'll highly recommend now we're gonna get into my sort of final item build where there's of course tons of spoilers so if you don't want to see any of these skip ahead to the next section which is the perks otherwise let's get right into items based on each category so first off i went with for the head item eagle eye goggles talked about this for the demolitionist as well um this is just super useful for the hatchet you have a bigger modifier deck and sometimes it takes a bit to draw through and get to those better cards so having the advantage really does help and the other thing is because you have stuff like disorienting barrage that's hitting multiple targets uh in one turn having the advantage for all of those is really really good so i mean the other thing is i just couldn't really think of or find a head item that seemed better and especially when you later in the game have these turns where you're you're doing the supercharged attack like an attack six that's doubled or something you cannot afford to put a pull and null like against a boss and just lose all that damage so you you really need the eagle eye goggles or something to strengthen yourself for a chest item when i was able to afford it and i unlocked it later in the game i would think your best option is probably going to be the robes of evocation which is during your attack consume any element to add plus one attack to the entire attack action so you can use this um essentially to boost your disorienting barrage even one more attack for all three enemies that it's hitting great card uh a great item before i got this i had picked up an item in a scenario called the flee bit and shawl which is 10 gold says you're considered to have an initiative of 99 for the purpose of enemy focusing this can be really useful too because you can get into a spot where you're equal distance away from an enemy as the demolitionist but they're going to default to attacking the demolitionist so it lets you get closer without putting yourself in more danger but it's a weird situational one that i found hard to capitalize often enough plus it just doesn't do a whole lot it's only 10 gold if you're looking for a defensive item just pick up the chain armor like we have for the demolitionist excellent defensive item but otherwise if you can afford it take the robes of evocation now onto feet items i would say just take the winged shoes again jump is so useful in this game there's so many traps there's difficult terrain to cross and in a bigger party this might not be as important for the hatchet but because your demolitionist is so reliant on you to stay close and be able to heal to bail them out of situations the winged shoes are pretty important for for getting into proper positioning so i i definitely recommend those for your feed item now for hand items you've got a few options so obviously we started or i suggested starting with a throwing hammer you can technically play that one out for the whole campaign i ended up switching it out at one point at one point you get to the solo scenario for the hatchet or if you come across the city event that leads you there you will get the barbed axe if you complete that scenario which is during your attack add wound to the entire attack action so this is another one that's perfect for you know pop this item right before your disorienting barrage to add wound to that three target spray with with the muddle um anything else you have like if you really just need to wound a single target very useful kind of pricey but again if you got it in that one scenario it would have been free a volatile bomb is the other option i took during your single target attack single hurt ranged attack turn attack into the following which basically makes it a three hex aoe thing this is awesome because again you have this ability with the hatchet to have these supercharged attacks that hit one target and then if you just pop the volatile bomb with it it splits it and hits three so i went with barbed axe and volatile bomb at the end but if you feel like you need the stun you can maybe just hold on to the throwing hammer and pick one of the other ones to go with it and now we finally get on to the small items one of your most important ones is going to be the power potion because it just again gives you plus one attack for the whole action which again goes perfectly with that disorienting barrage um stamina potion is just always good for any character i don't need to get into that the ring of haste is interesting at the end of your turn play one card from your hand and immediately perform the bottom action of that card so obviously most often on the bottom you're going to see movement abilities so if you need to get around somewhere this can let you get in somewhere do an attack and then maybe back off so you're out of range but the other thing is you've seen that this class the hatchet can also have some really good attacks on the bottom like an attack 5 loss i think so imagine you do your turn you take your attacks and then you play this and play another attack so good for picking off a really strong enemy or especially in boss fights definitely pick up the ring of haste if you can afford it and finally the oak charm which we saw for the demolitionist which is one where you can just bless anyone at range five usually use it on yourself rather than the demolitionist you'll make better use of it as the hatchet the only other item i'd consider items i'd consider to small items are a mana potion which as we went over before probably won't be too useful but if you find you're lacking the wind you need for some of your abilities uh not a bad choice the other one i came across that i unlocked in a scenario was the fateful compass which allows you to force an enemy within range 3 to perform a move to action with you controlling the action this is awesome and at early levels i kept this more than half of my campaign because you can just walk an enemy into a trap or walk them over to next to an obstacle that you're going to destroy with the demolitionist or you know just bring something into range like this is so useful for just manipulating the battleground how you want and putting an enemy where you need them to be but again might not have room for it at higher levels and you have more important cards so that's it for items so the perks for the hatchet are definitely not as powerful or as interesting as the modifier deck you're gonna be able to get with the demolitionist so i won't spend as much time on this but the main thing is you're going to start again with those two remove two minus one cards just to get those out of the way beyond that you're not doing as much thinning your deck out removing cards as you do with the demolitions this is mostly about replacing and upgrading your cards so i'm not going gonna go over all these but most of them involve either removing a plus a zero or a you know a plus one card and upgrading it to something better the next three or four after the remove minus ones i kind of tended to lean on the towards the ones that gave you the additional status effects like the ones that turn a zero into a plus one poison or a plus one wound or turn a plus zero card into a plus zero with a stun because with your especially that disorienting barrage that they keep going back to adding you know stunning one of those three or adding a wound like these things the status effects really add up and the demolitionist doesn't have a ton of that so these are great for the hatchet uh once you've done some of those replacing then you can kind of just throw in the ones that give you um you know elements uh or or the like add plus two with wind card again adding more plus two is always great and wind is an element you make use of so yeah you can kind of once you get past the initial ones you can kind of go wherever you want with the replacing so we are almost at the end of the guide i just want to leave you with a few tips for playing these two classes together so i found especially because you're doing this solo you're gonna maybe be a bit overwhelmed by looking at you know your cards for the one class you figure out what you're gonna do and then you pick up the cards for the other class and you look and you think oh maybe these aren't as good maybe i should and you're going back and forth and switching i would say it's best to lead with the demolitionist and follow with the hatchet the demolitionists positioning is way more important because you need them to do the majority of the tanking and most of their attacks are melee so you need to make sure you're up close you know if you miscalculate and your hatchet goes where they think they want to go and then your demolitionist can't get into play not only is the hatchet going to maybe end up tanking damage you don't want but then your demolitionists might not even be able to get their attacks off so always always always focus on the demolitionist your hatchet has enough range that you can kind of maneuver and usually hit something somewhere so focus on getting the demolitionist in and then play around that with your hatchet hatchet's way more flexible the other thing is i mentioned before i cannot stress enough how useful it is to do your looting with the demolitionist i bought probably half the items that my hatchet had in this campaign were bought through the demolitionist because the demolitionist was the one getting all the gold and then i would just buy items the other thing is you can even pass items back and forth there was items sometimes i would give to another from one to the other just for a scenario or two and swap it back you can try stuff out take advantage of that experiment there's a lot of fun stuff to discover um the other thing is this is all about timing some of the cards i highlighted like that explosive blitz i believe it's called for demolitionist where you run into the room and stun everything within range three or when to use these really powerful loss abilities there is so much of this that is timing and especially when you're playing these two classes there's a bit more risk involved because you don't have as much healing and damage prevention so a lot of the time you're going into these scenarios thinking sure i'm at three health and there's one room left and the other you know character is at two health and is poisoned but am i gonna spend two or three turns like resting and healing or am i gonna just see if i can go in there and kill three or four more guys to end this thing and there's all these kind of moments where you're right on the edge and you have to take this gamble and that's part of what's going to make this so fun playing these two classes for you i think is you're going to scrape by the edge of your teeth sometimes in these scenarios but that's what makes these so fun to play and that is it for the guide so get out there with your demolitionist and blow stuff up get your hatchet there throw some axes at enemies from range have some fun don't stress too much if you get a little rule wrong here or there there's a lot to keep track of in this game you're gonna be playing it solo just power through and get through you're gonna have a blast with this um as always thank you so much for watching if you like this video please consider giving it a like subscribe tell a friend about it and to be honest if you didn't like the video that's fine too no hard feelings don't like or subscribe but tell us why you didn't like it so i can make it better next time we're always open to feedback and we'd love to hear from you have you played yet are you looking to play with these two classes i hope this helps you out but that's it for me for today so thanks for watching and now go kill some monsters

Channel: All You Can Board

Views: 5,604

Keywords: jaws of the lion, gloomhaven, jaws of the lion guide, jaws of the lion solo guide, hatchet guide, hatchet solo guide, demolitionist guide, demolitionist solo guide, gloomhaven solo, gloomhaven solo guide, jaws of the lion solo, gloomhaven jaws of the lion, jaws of the lion how to play, jaws of the lion review, review, board games

Id: N0EDzve0vbw

Length: 73min 31sec (4411 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/AYCB-Carlo]

Hey! My name's Carlo, I run a board game YouTube channel with my cousin.

I recently played through Jaws of the Lion solo and decided to put together an in-depth guide for the Demolitionist and Hatchet. The guide looks at both classes individually but also how they work together in a campaign like this.

I've done a couple written guides before and class overviews but this is my first video guide. I thought the guide could hopefully help some people who are either new or maybe playing solo for the first time. Anyway, I'd love to hear your feedback, good or bad. Agree/disagree with any choices I made? Is the guide too long? Anything I missed that you'd like to see covered next time?

Thank you so much!

[u/slambie]

I've completed JOTL with 4 characters and really thought the Red Guard's performance was the reason for (or against) our success.

I didn't hear an argument against the RG and VW that was beyond "play style".... Maybe the better argument is how the game plays differently with 2 players versus 4. I could agree that more monsters on the map improves the value of RG. More allies on the map improves the value of VW.

Demo and Hatchet scale down to 2 player games better:

Demolitionist will always have the same "obstacles" on the map and walls in rooms (opportunities).

Hatchet does most of single target damage (with often +1 target) - doesn't scale up to large groups which is more often in 4 player groups.