Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion - How To Play - Part 1

hi and welcome to watch it played my name is Rodney Smith and in this video we're going to learn the Lynda four player game Glu maven jaws of the lion designed by Isaac Childress and published by cephalo fair games who helped sponsor this video after several towns folk went missing from the city of gloom Haven it was only a matter of time before you were needed you are after all the jaws of the lion one of the area's best known gang of mercenaries but what begins as a simple task to find a missing blacksmith will soon turn into a sprawling dangerous adventure set in the same world as the massively popular gloom Haven this game stands entirely on its own and takes place before the events of the original game everything you need is all right here I'm going to take you through everything you need to know now to make the game easier to learn it's been designed with five introductory scenarios and each introduces the game's rules a bit at a time so you don't have to know everything all at once to get started for this reason I'll be making five tutorial videos one for each of those scenarios so when you're done with your first game check the description of this video to find links to the others now before we begin learning rules we need to organize the Box a little bit so let's take a quick look at the instructions for that this included sheet will tell you everything you need to do so read through it carefully as you punch out and organize the components like I've done here just be careful though because some of the items are not meant to be opened yet but again all of that is explained here after you've organized the game once you won't have to do that again and assuming you're all ready it's time to start learning how to play the game so let's go back to the table and dive in there are two scenario books included in the game but return this one labelled as supplemental to the box for now and begin reading the story on the front of this one it will give you the background story of the adventure that you're about to begin at the bottom you'll find a reward and you normally earn these when playing but all you had to do to get this one was read a bit of story now ever award says new location then it will have a value and a code pay attention to those because you now find that numbered sticker on this sheet and then put it on to the matching area of this map board as indicated by the code that was shown in the reward in this case b1 here's B and here's one so this is the spot for the sticker these will tell you which scenarios you can now attempt at the beginning of the game that means you'll just have this one as an option but more will be added to the map as you play the stickers are permanent so if you'd rather not make changes to your game that can't be undone then just track the available scenarios some other way perhaps using a paper and pen now I mentioned earlier that you'll be playing as the jaws of the lion a group of mercenaries paid to find a missing blacksmith and there are four different characters that you can choose from the game itself is played over several scenarios and the character that you pick will be yours throughout all of them now if you're playing the game by yourself then pick two characters to control as if you were playing as two people if you have two three or four players each person picks just one character to use leaving any unchosen characters in the box most components for a character are found in these boxes that show their unique icon and the small box will contain that characters unique figure among them you'll find the demolitionist which is good at close combat and blowing things up well the Red Guard likes to manipulate enemies and protect friends hatchet here prefers ranged damage and looting the area for treasure while the void warden likes to support the team and offer healing after picking your character take its figure bag with initiative token and also remove the contents from its larger box the pad of paper is tokens and packs of cards that say halt can be returned to your box you won't need those until later scenarios from the big deck find a reference card which you'll place nearby along with the six cards labeled with an A here at the top these make up your hand of abilities the rest of the larger cards you can put back in that characters box you've been thoroughly shuffle this small deck of cards into a facedown pile besides you now collect one of these dials and then check the red number under the white value one on your character Matt this is your current level so one and then this is your character's total health eight in this case for Hatchett you then rotate the red side of the dial to show that health value now but the blue side will ignore in this scenario each player should now have their character set up in front of themselves and be holding their six ability cards and for this adventure I'll be using hatchet and the demolitionist but now it's time to set up the scenario itself and you'll remember our map told us that we can play the first one named roadside ambush so let's see how we get that ready first open this book to the first scenario and each of these will have a map guide somewhere that tells you which pages to play on in this case it says pages 2 & 3 which is what we have here the book itself makes up the map that you play on it will show an area divided into spaces which are known as hexes spaces with these symbols are known as starting hexes and each player puts their figure into an empty one the scenario will also show a key or guide to the other pieces that you'll need to set up on the board during the game this is the symbol for the verbling Raiders so find their bag and empty it except for the currants those will not be needed for this scenario so you can just put them back in the box also find the large verbling radar stat card and an envelope with six sections on it and then put the stat card inside with this number one showing here in the top corner then find these 20 months to attack modifier cards they'll have this back but also an M here in their corner they also come packaged with some other blessing and curse cards which look like this but these aren't used until a later scenario so they should be returned to the box the remaining 20 cards shuffle and then place facedown nearby the map for the scenario shows verbling icons for where they begin on the board during the setup but pay attention to the three bars shown below them if you have two characters in play like you would in a 1 or 2 player game then pay attention to the topmost bar for three characters note the middle bar and for a four character game look at the bottom based on the color you see you will then either leave the space empty or put a monster there a black bar means that the space remains empty white means that you put a normal monster there which will have a white base and yellow means it's an elite monster which will have a yellow base and you're reminded of all of this in the tip box that you'll find near this space you'll find some of these tips on the different scenario pages to help you remember some of these rules as you're learning them either way we're setting up for a two character game so we look at the top bar and it's black and that means that this space will remain empty this one is a white bar on top so you take a white base and a random verbling standee and you put them together onto this space well here we would put a random standee into a yellow base each standee has a number on it but that's why we take a random one when adding them to the board because we want the values at each position to be random as well and we'll see why that matters a little bit later with the monsters in place also set this token tray within reach of the players as well now put the monster and character initiative tokens in an area that everyone can see as these will be important later then read the introduction text here which will give you a bit of story to explain the challenge ahead also pay attention to any special rules here which will apply to just this scenario and we'll come back to these a little bit later the goal of the scenario will also be listed here at the top and this explains what we have to do to win in this case defeat all the enemies the other sections labeled conclusion and rewards should only be read when you have successfully completed the scenario and that's the setup in blue maven jaws of the lion players will work together to achieve a shared goal in this case to defeat all the burling's the first scenario is not difficult to win instead it will help you learn and practice the core rules of the game the game is played over a series of rounds in each round is broken into four steps starting with card selection here each player privately examines their 6 ability cards and picks two that they want to use actions for that round you can talk out loud in general terms about the actions you're hoping to take but you can't mention specific number values on the cards or their names we'll go over how the cards work a little later but notice in the center they have a number this is their initiative value and of the two cards that you pick to play choose one to be your initiative value for that round it will determine when you get to perform your actions later lower numbers let you go earlier higher ones go later but put the card with the initiative that you intend to use on top of the other one like this and then turn both cards face down and put them in front of you on the table again all of this is done in secret and when all players have selected their two cards it's time to move to the next step the ordering of initiative here players flip over their chosen cards simultaneously and the ones on top determine the initiative values in this case hatchet has 18 and the demolitionist has 37 but don't forget we also have monsters and they have initiative as well if we check the special rules of the scenario we're told that their initiative will always be 50 so now we arrange these tokens and initiative order hatchet demolitionist and then the Burling Raiders if you ever have an initiative tie between a character and a monster the character always goes first and if two characters tie the tiebreaker is the value on their other card and in the very rare case that there's still a tie the tied players decide the order between them either way with the final order decided you now look at the initiative tokens from top to bottom and each player and monster acts in that order fully taking their turn when their time comes now we determined that hatchet would go first let's see exactly how a character turn works using that player as an example I should first mention that once the cards have been flipped face-up then players can freely discuss them with each other to help plan out their actions for the turn and when you are planning your turn you should look at the two cards that you picked you'll notice that each has a top and a bottom half you'll now pick the top half from one and the bottom half from the other to resolve so I could do this and this or this and this and it doesn't matter which of these cards you chose for their initiative value the important thing is that you can never resolve both top halves or both bottom halves the full half of a card is known as an action and it will contain abilities if you see a dotted line like we have here then that means it separates different abilities that the action will give you so in this case I have two different abilities and we'll go over all of these in a moment but just know any ability or even the entire action can be skipped when performing the half that you've chosen so with that in mind let's go over some of the different abilities that you'll find on the cards and to be able to show you everything I might change the cards that I've selected just you can see enough examples to understand everything anytime you see this symbol it lets your character move up to the number of spaces shown by the value beside it so using this action I could then move five or fewer spaces but you must always end on an empty space characters can also always move through figures on their own team and monsters can always move through monsters again as long as figures always end on an empty space that said a character can't move through a monster and a monster can't move through a character you'll also find some hexes that show a green border around them these are obstacles and nothing can move through them you'll also find double lined borders like this and these are walls and nothing can move through them either if an action shows this symbol then it allows you to attack a target for damage equal to the values shown with it so a three in this case but unless you're told otherwise you cannot attack a friendly figure this means a character can't attack another character and a monster couldn't attack another monster there are two main types of attacks ranged and melee a range attack will always have a range value with it like we see here and a melee attack won't a melee attack can only target an enemy in a space adjacent to you while a ranged attack can target any enemy within the value of its range so this could target an up to three spaces away from my character so that means I could pick this monster as my target but in addition to being within range you must also have line of sight you have line of sight to a target if you can draw at least one straight line from any part of the hex that you're in to any part of your targets hex obstacles and other figures never block sight only walls do so even with this obstacle and these figures here my sight isn't blocked at all to my target here in this situation now there's a little bit of wall between me and my target but even here I can still draw at least one line somewhere from my hex in a straight line to some other portion of my targets hex and that means I have line of sight this map is so wide open it's actually quite difficult to find examples where figures don't have line of sight to each other but I think I have a case here there isn't a single line I can draw anywhere from my hex to my targets hex without touching a wall the example you see here is a line drawn from the furthest end of my hex to my target's hex and still I'm touching walls just on the corner so line of sight here is blocked sometimes your attack will have the keyword targeted with it and a number this means that when you make that attack you can target that many different enemies for example here I could target up to two different enemies up to three spaces away each for two damage each just keep in mind you can't target the same enemy twice with this single attack however all four of these monsters are within line of sight and range so we could target any two of them using this attack either way once you have a valid target or targets for your attack then you flip over an attack modifier card for each one from your deck now let me just go back to a simpler example where we just have a melee attack of three which would then be targeting this monster here and I'll lay out a few examples from this deck and explain how they work if you see number values like this then you either add or subtract it from the damage value of your action for example an attack like this has a base damage of three and if I drew this card it would be increased to five if you see a two times symbol then you double the base value of the attack now this would cause six damage however if you flip over this attack modify our card it means that the attack does no damage meaning you ignore the base damage value of the action as well don't forget if your action targets more than one enemy flip a new card for each one just declare which target you're resolving first flip its card then flip another for the next one and so on each player has their own attack modifier deck well all of the monsters in the game no matter which ones you're playing all share the same one but as you go through the campaign you'll be able to upgrade these changing the card values inside of the decks but for now each deck is the same they all have six zeros five plus ones and five minus ones a single plus two and a single minus two as well as one times two and a cancel value some effects different attack advantage or disadvantage for example if Hatcher performs a ranged attack but the target is in an adjacent space it's still considered a ranged attack but it becomes disadvantaged it's hard to throw an axe as someone directly in front of you not that I have personal experience with that just just take my word for it when an attack has disadvantage you draw to attack modifier cards for the target and then you must pick the worst one to resolve now even attack has advantage you still draw two cards but you pick the best one an attack can't have multiple instances of advantage or disadvantage but it could have one of each in which case they just cancel each other out and you draw just one card as normal either way once you have the final attack value which is the base number on the attack plus the attack modifier card you drew you apply that total as damage against your target taking an equal value in damage tokens from the supply if it's a monster taking damage then check the number on its standee and put those damage tokens into that matching valued section of the envelope here this is how you'll keep track of how much damage each separate enemy has taken we'll talk more about the monsters a little later but these here tell you the health movement and attack values that they have the values on this side are four monsters with a white base and the ones over here are four monsters with a yellow base this monster for example has a health value of five and if a monster ever has damage on its section equal to or higher than its health it is killed and removed from the map you also return any tokens it had on its section of the envelope back to the tray now if it's a monster doing damage to a character you show that by subtracting the total amount from the characters health dial here if a character ever reaches zero on their dial they are immediately exhausted there are pieces removed from the map and they will no longer take turns during the scenario but they are not considered dead they will fully refresh at the end of the scenario but if all of the characters become exhausted then the scenario is lost and we'll talk more about what happens when a scenario is lost a little bit later even action instructs you to cause targets to suffer damage you do not need line of sight to the target and you do not draw a modifier card just assign the damage as written on the target in this case it says all adjacent enemies suffer one damage so each one of these figures would take a damage sometimes an ability causes a target to suffer a condition which are these diamond-shaped symbols that we see here they can appear on their own or be part of the effect of an attack and even if an attack does no damage the condition will still be applied for example if I did this attack and then drew this modifier I would still apply the muddle condition to my target conditions are represented by these tokens in the tray and if targeting a monster they go into their section of their stat card if a monster applies a condition to a character you place it into this area of your mat there are a variety of different conditions but only four will appear during the scenario and each are explained on your reference card but we'll go through these quickly now if a target has been muddled then it will have disadvantage on all of its attacks if a figure is immobilized then it cannot perform any move abilities well a stunned figure can't perform any abilities at all meaning they won't move attack or do anything but not all conditions are negative if a figure has strengthened then all of its attacks gain advantage a figure can only have at most one of each condition and they last until the end of its next turn and then they go back to the supply so if I had a condition but hadn't gone yet this round and after I do the condition will be removed if I get a condition but I already acted earlier this round then it will get removed at the end of my turn in the next round and the same goes for monsters who suffer conditions moving on this is the heel ability and its value is how much damage you remove from that character itself or another character within any range that it lists and anytime you see an effect with the word self it means the figure can only pick itself as the target of the ability when healing a character rotate its dial but you can never gain more health in its normal maximum which you'll remember is the value shown under the number 1 here on its mat if a monster heals you remove that many damage tokens from its section the demolitionist has abilities that can destroy obstacles within a certain range for example here it says destroy one obstacle within a range of three if an obstacle is made up of multiple hexes then as long as the demolitionist has ranged to at least one of them the entire thing is destroyed to show this you put one of these destruction tokens on each hex and from now on this means that figures can move on to or through them the void warden has abilities like this that can give actions to other figures sometimes allies and sometimes enemies and these will explain here what kind of actions they grant but if another figure is given the option to attack then it will always draw cards from its own attack modifier deck unless instructed otherwise just keep in mind a figure that has been given an action is not taking their full turn they are just getting to perform an action as part of the void warden's turn and with that you now know everything necessary to play and resolve actions and when you finish either the time or bottom half of a Kurds action you put it into your discard pile which is here to the left of your character mat players will resolve turns until it comes to the monsters turn in the initiative order and when monsters go all of the standees of that type will act we only have one kind in this scenario the verbling Raiders so every one of those monsters will take a turn in order from lowest to highest based on the numbers printed on their pieces the catch is that elite monsters the ones with yellow bases will always act before the normal ones in their group so in this case this monster here will go first and then this one which is number two this one which is number three and then finally this one which is number four and a single monster always fully takes its turn before the next one goes now when a monster activates it picks a single character to focus on which is the one that it can attack using the least amount of movement then it will move towards that target in this scenario monsters only attack once they get adjacent to a character so they will focus on the character that would take the fewest number of hexes to get adjacent to on its turn a monster only moves as many spaces as the value beside its move symbol so for this white based firmly Raider just one space but when determining which character will get its focus it doesn't matter if the monster can reach its target instead pretend that the monster has infinite movement and based on that check for the target which would require the shortest path to get to it keeping in mind that it does not need line-of-sight to its target for example if this monster was going then the closest character is here so it becomes the focus now remember when determining focus a monster doesn't just pay attention to which character is closest but instead checks how many spaces it would have to move to get within attack range of it for example in the case of this monster hatch it appears to be closer only one two spaces away but for this Vermin Raider to attack they would need to be adjacent to their target and that would mean moving to at least this spot here which is one two three four spaces away or moving through these verbal ins which again would be one two three four spaces with that in mind it means this demolitionist is actually closer at one two three spaces away so it would become the focus of this monster if the demolitionist had instead been in this space well now the two characters are equally distant from this monster and when that's the situation the character who is earliest in the iniciative order would get the focus so hatchet in this case now if a monster already has a character in its attack range when it activates like this one does then that character becomes its focus going back to our original example though with this monster activating we know the demolitionist is its focus and once it has focus it will move a number of spaces towards its target equal to its move value which we saw is one in this case though it has an option it could move either here or here and both would bring it closer to its target when there are two or more equally valid paths a monster can take the players decide where it goes now again it doesn't matter if the monster doesn't get with an attack range of its target during the turn the important thing is that it will move in order to try to get within range however if moving doesn't cause the monster to get closer to its target then it won't move now if this monster a total movement of two it could go one two like this and be adjacent to the target however it only has a movement of one so that means it could only go here but this brings it no closer to the demolitionist than it already was so it will just stay put if when checking for focus it would be completely impossible to attack the closest target even if the monster could move infinite spaces then it will pick a different focus for example this demolitionist is closer but there are no free spaces adjacent to it so the monster would instead focus on this character and move towards it instead let's pretend though that it had been impossible to get to any valid hex to attack any character in a case like that the monster will just not move at all not even to try to get a little closer with monster movement understood after it moves if it is now adjacent to its focus or if it already been adjacent to a character it will attack using its base damage value which is shown here and then you add to that occurred flipped over from the monster attack modifier deck that final total is then subtracted from the targets health and once a monster has been activated the next monster from that set with a higher number takes its turn and so on once all of the monsters within a set have gone any characters or other monster sets with a higher initiative value now take their turn in our case we don't have any other monster types and the ones that we do have were the last to activate and so once every figure has activated it's time to resolve the end of the round first check the discard piles of each attack modifier deck and if any have a card with this reshuffle symbol then that means you take the entire discard pile and reshuffle it into the main deck again then a new round begins with players picking two new cards for the ones remaining in their hand setting the new initiative order and then having all of the players and monsters take their turn rounds will continue like this until the end of the third round where all of your ability cards will be in your discard pile to get them back you'll now have to perform what is known as a short rest you can do this at the end of any round as long as you have at least two cards in your discard pile you don't have to wait until your hand is completely empty that said if you only have one card left in your hand or no cards at all then you must take a short rest to do this collect and shuffle all the kurds in your discard pile and then randomly place one of them face up into your lost pile which goes on this side of your character map the rest of the cards will go back into your hand now if you don't want to lose the card that you randomly picked you can instead choose to lose one health from your dial and then select a different random card to lose from those you're holding taking the previous one that you lost back into your hand but you can only do this at most once per short rest cards in your lost pile will not be used again for the rest of the scenario meaning you'll have fewer options to pick from as time goes on and after enough rounds in short rests go by characters will run of cards to play because they'll all be in their lost pile and if you're unable to play two cards at the start of around because you don't have at least two in your hand then your character is exhausted and removed from play just like when your health dial hits zero this means you'll want to ensure you aren't taking too long to achieve the goals of your scenario and with that you now know everything you need to know to finish playing the first scenario any symbols or components that you might see in the box that we haven't talked about well don't worry we'll learn about those in a later video the game will continue until it ends in victory as soon as the players have killed all the permalinks now you shouldn't fail this first scenario but if somehow you do check page 16 of the rulebook or watch the next video in this series to learn what happens when you lose however once you do complete a scenario it's time to collect your rewards first read the conclusion text here and then we see a new location in the rewards section and this means that we would place this new sticker on the city board map in this case the one for scenario 2 you then mark off the box for scenario 1 which you've just completed to indicate that you cannot replay this one again now players refresh their characters by taking back into their hand all of their ability cards from their discard and lost piles you also remove any conditions that you might have and you reset your dial to your maximum health value each player now takes one character sheet from this pad in their box which they'll use to track information during the campaign this means we're about to make things even more permanent so make sure you're happy with your chosen character and if not pick a different one and collect all of its materials and take its sheet instead now give your character a name putting it here and then circle the one next to level this is a reminder that your character is at level 1 the rest of the sheet we'll learn about in future scenarios and videos it's also time to upgrade your abilities among the ability cards that you left in the box find the two that are labeled with a letter B here at the top and then find the abilities in your hand late with an a that have the same names you'll notice these are called close cuts and center-mass which match the names of the ones labeled with a B these you'll add to the ability cards in your hand but you remove the two old cards for the rest of the campaign these new currents will have some new icons and terms but we'll learn about them more in the next video at this point you can save your game if you wish by putting the attack modifier Dec ability cards and the initiative token for your character in its own ziplock bag and then putting that in your character sheet into the big box for storage then when it's time to play again it will be easy to pick up where you left off but otherwise that's everything you need to know to play the first scenario of glue maven jaws of the lion remember you'll find the rules and features for scenario two in the next video which is linked in the description below when you're ready to get started but if you have any questions at all about anything you saw here feel free to put them in the comments below and I'll gladly answer them as soon as I get a chance you'll also find forest for discussion pictures other videos and lots more over on the game's page at BoardGameGeek and I'll put a link to that in the description below and if you found this video helpful please consider giving it a like subscribing and clicking that little Bell icon so you get notification anytime we post a new video but until next time thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Watch It Played

Views: 385,743

Keywords: Tutorial, How To Play, Part 1, Tabletop, Instructional, Learn To Play, Miniatures, Learn How To Play, Board Games, Rules, Jaws of the Lion, Gloomhaven, Game Rules, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, Card Games, Instructions, Board Game, Play Throughs, Learn, Isaac Childres, Celophair Games, Tutorials, Watch It Played

Id: sCpQqrCiTDs

Length: 32min 52sec (1972 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 21 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/behrytov]

I like the book way more than the tiles. Seems to allow a lot more variety in landscape and also a lot more color with different terrain and items.

[u/BoardyGameson]

I should not. But I must.

[u/Art3mis86]

Really can't wait for this game for a few reasons.

1. This game will be exclusively for my wife and I, no waiting for other party members like we have to with GH.

2. Less set up/tear down.

3. Less admin and maintenence.

4. Being a huge bloodborne fan that hatchet class looks so good.

[u/wangston1]

Just got this as a Father's day gift. There was one copy left at my local Target. My group adores gloomhaven and we have two scenarios left on the original. We are hungry for me, less set up with a scenario book sounds amazing. Also those classes look really cool!

I'm also going to invite a co worker to join the gloomhaven group, he loves strategy card games and I played gwent with him. So I think this would be a good intro into gloomhaven and board games in general. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

[u/Kylo_Renly]

This is a fantastic avenue to take the game. Anything to get more people playing Gloomhaven is a good thing, though it’s likely not targeted towards hardcore players, which is totally okay. I look forward to trying this out with my wife to see if she’s interested, then I can graduate her to the full game down the line.

[u/NACHOS_4_ALL]

Man...this is making me really want to put it on my shelf of shame...

[u/ChimpdenEarwicker]

The original gloomhave looks great but ultimately I would be buying it for the fantasy of actually have the time and space to play it regularly not the experience of actually doing so.

This however seems wonderfully designed for someone like me!

[u/UnfilteredGamer]

I didn't actually think I'd like the book better than the tiles but after playing I definitely do. Maybe it's just because I'm a dungeon crawl noob!

[u/SneakAttackJack]

Preordered mine through my FLGS. I was tempted to pick it up from Target today, but figured it would just sit on the shelf for a bit and would rather support my friends' business. I'm really excited for this as someone who doesn't have the space for the original.