Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion | Shelfside Review

[Music] [Music] so [Music] it's [Music] [Applause] so if you've spent any amount of time looking at board game related content online chances are you've heard or seen of gloomhaven now as you may have noticed this game is an absolute unit it's definitely the chungest big box of games when it comes to playing board games by just looking at the sheer girth of gloomhaven you can kind of tell it's not the easiest thing to jump into as evidenced by the fact that you can quite literally jump into the box with these like just look at all this crap he's pulling out jesus it's like one of those clown cars where dudes just keep on coming out except with instead of people it's just a bunch of cardboard and plastic also hi what's up social distancing that's a thing hey did you know that we're living in the midst of a pandemic right now crazy right but what's this daddy isaac made gloomhaven jaws of the lion it's like gloomhaven but just way more streamlined like seriously look how big the difference is between the insides of these two games okay let's get everyone here up to speed in case you have no idea what gloomhaven is so basically it's a campaign game where you pick a character and constantly go on dungeon crawling adventures with them in order to level up get cool new items and progress to ongoing story at its core scenarios have a goal to complete a normal one being kill all enemies you set up the scenario and monsters then everyone plops their character's mini onto the board everyone has a hand of action cards specific to their character and how a round works is that all players pick two of these cards to place face down in front of them this is because on your turn you perform the top action of one card and the bottom of the other then everyone all flips their cards at the same time at which point you also flip a card from each monster's attack deck every action card is going to have an initiative number on it the smallest number goes first in the round and everything takes turns in ascending order until you finish the highest number's turn then bam next round repeat the process so now that we've established what gloomhaven is let's get on to actually reviewing jaws of lion and let's start out what we think is really dope about the game first and foremost oh my god diet gloom haven is so much easier to get set up and going it's got simpler cleaner components characters that are easy to jump into but still have a lot of depth and a shorter campaign that not only has a fully fleshed out tutorial but also has a perfect length so you're probably actually gonna finish it unlike the base game let's talk about how much of a huge deal the simpler components are even upon initially opening the box it's immediately apparent that it points you in the right direction with unboxing instructions that clearly tell you where and what everything is it's great and then and then there's actually a functioning insert where you can neatly store all the games components oh and did i mention they include all these plastic bags for all the loose pieces and these dividers for cards none of this was a normal gloomhaven the rulebooks also do a much better job of easing newcomers into the game with this handy dandy how to play guide it slowly unlocks mechanics as you go through the tutorial meaning that newcomers won't be flooded with things like battle goals elements and even leveling up until they really get a feel for the game on top of that there's an actual glossary organized in alphabetical order if you ever need to look anything up like glue maven had none of this it just had this huge 50-page dummy thick rulebook that just overwhelms you with the anatomy of all the components before even telling you how to play the game or what combat is and there's a game changer here you see the maps are now literally built right into the booklet and because of that scenarios have custom art now but you know let's let's actually show you why this is so cool [Music] this new booklet was so positively received that a kickstarter update for frosthaven daddy isaac was like frosthaven kickstarter update number 46. all right so now let's talk about jaws of the lion uh i normally wouldn't bring this up again since it's not it will also begin development on play surface scenario books for both frost saving and glue maven that can be purchased separately by those who believe okay you know what he's making them all right he's making the goddamn scenario book list for the other games okay and once they're out i'm never going back to tiles ever again take my money take my money you brilliant bastard and then to top it off diet gloomhaven has these initiative trackers for every single character and monster so you never lose track of whose turn it is during gameplay this is super duper useful for when someone takes too long during their turn so you forget who's supposed to go next basically the components of jaws of the lion have been carefully designed to make newcomer or veteran playthroughs as smooth as possible so the first five missions are the tutorial with each scenario introducing more and more rules until you're ready to take on the full game it's pretty genius not only does the steady flow of information ease players into the game but there's also these blue help boxes scattered across confusing things heck every class even gets these action cards with blue boxes to use in the tutorial like look at this what does this car mean oh i can do three damage to a bad guy up to three spaces away from me cool okay this tutorial structure keeps everything extremely simple while explaining all really well but what about the four different classes included in jaws of the line well we're happy to report that they're all very well made not only are they all super cool but they are also all simple to get into on top of that they also have a lot of nuance and depth behind them like most normal gloom having classes this means that for newcomers they're going to have an easy time getting into their gameplay but they still have a lot to learn and build upon as they keep playing for example i'm playing the red guard and he's got a lot of fairly straightforward abilities that are suited to a bruiser you frequently do pretty basic turns like moving up to guys and hitting them but your abilities frequently have slight benefits attached to them like shielding yourself to take less damage or pulling in enemies with your short ranged attacks however there's a lot of nuance built into this otherwise simple premise you'll probably end up noticing hey wait i have a lot of abilities that affect adjacent enemies huh maybe i can combo that with my pools or how about how many of his cards play around with elements in some way which is essentially a mechanic where some abilities create elements and then anyone else can just use those for extra benefits this adds a whole another layer of depth as you now have to carefully plan out how you sequence your turns on the flip side i'm playing hatchet who's way more of a range character with a lot of basic abilities that just involve moving and attacking someone within a range of three however his whole gimmick is that he has this card called the favorite which equips him with a special axe that he can attach to any of his ranged attacks to increase its damage but when he does this you move that special favorite axe to the enemy that was just attacked and so they drop it when they die mean that you gotta run over there and pick it back up before you can use it to buff another one of your ranged attacks so basically you're constantly asking yourself questions like should i throw my super special favor axe now or save it for later do i even attack that guy in the corner it's gonna be super annoying to go over there and pick my axe back up and then on top of the nuance that each class provides you also have to factor in teamwork on top of that using the red guard and hatchet example maybe when the red guard goes in to take some damage and pull some enemies to him this opens up an opportunity for hatchet to go in and safely retrieve his favorite acts a lot of these teamwork opportunities pop up all the time during gameplay and the combos and opportunities get so much more crazier and fun when all four of the classes are involved like i'm pretty sure it was intentional to have all the classes have some way to move around enemies and then also all benefit from some sort of positional gimmick the demolitionist actually really likes it when enemies are next to walls and obstacles because of explosion related abilities and the void warden can just straight up mind control enemies to move them around and then have them attack each other on top of that all the classes can reliably make elements with the exception of hatchet that the other classes can typically use also this is totally a subjective point and all but can i just say that all the jaws and line classes are cool as hell like our dude playing demolitionist put it best when he said that if any of these classes were included in gloomhaven's starting roster they'd be the best one hands down like red guard is basically just cooler flashier brute demolitionist is way more fun scoundrel because he's just constantly blowing stuff up hatchet is a literal cowboy how do you get cooler than that and voidwarden does a support role in a way more badass way than the tinkerer and mind controls way harder than the mind thief okay yeah so the characters they're all great but what about this campaign that we're gonna be spending so much time and effort into well in our opinions we think it's pretty darn good so we've already talked about how great the tutorial is but it's built right into the story as well you're actively playing through and progressing the scenario stories by going through the tutorials which definitely helps to keep players invested while they're learning the game and while we can't really talk about the story without spoiling anything we think it's good we're 14 scenarios deep and we definitely think it starts out way stronger than gloomhaven's campaign granted it does kind of fall off a little in our opinions later on because we're at a point where we're just kind of messing around it's kind of like in a tv show there's like a filler arc and we're just waiting for hey when's the next cool thing gonna happen yeah the story is pretty cool definitely keeps you invested enough to want to figure out what's going on so he can go kill the bad guys but what about the story's length well draws the line includes 25 scenarios which that's pretty sizable that should definitely take like 50 plus hours to complete not to mention all the time it's going to go into out-of-comment stuff like leveling up buying new items events what have you and also speaking of all these things there's a good variety of different enemies items and events as well obviously it's nowhere near as insane as the amount of stuff that's in gloomhaven but it's definitely more than enough for keeping you going through 25 scenarios so now we're going to talk more in depth about how jaws of the lion compares to actual gloomhaven so if you're not interested in that go ahead and skip to the cons first of all the items and jaws of the line are way more balanced than the ones in gloomhaven this isn't really going to matter if you're a newcomer because you won't be able to properly assess the power level of everything at first glance but we definitely appreciate having to think a little more about what items to buy instead of just immediately looking at the og stamina potion and going like when would i ever not buy this there's also a lot of gameplay mechanics that are entirely absent in jazza line like rolling modifiers and summons the campaign is also much more simplified since there's no world events there's no prosperity there's a reputation like basically all you're doing in between snows and jaws of line is just leveling up shopping and events everything that's kept in is still quintessential gloomhaven at its core and everything is cherry picked to ensure that the new player experience isn't muddled with a whole bunch of excess mechanics everything you need for your character is in one single envelope so you can just grab it open it up and start playing it's way less confusing to newcomers now that the attack modifier decks and reference cards are packaged with the rest of the character's stuff by the way we never mention attack modifiers anywhere in here yet but basically whenever anything in gloomhaven makes an attack they draw a card from their own attack modifier decks that modifies the final damage dealt i also want to add that the character boards are way cleaner looking than in gloomhaven which for some reason have this big round summary thing going on that in my opinion isn't necessary and kind of looks super ugly because god damn all i want to do is just look at my character's amazing artwork shout out to the artist of gloomhaven i like how jazz the line instead just puts a bit of round overview text on the reference cards instead and just lets the blown up artwork before its classes just all hang out anyways aside from some organizational changes and some trimming around the edges everything in jaws with line basically works the same way as gloomhaven and on that note there's also a section in the back of the rulebook that details what exactly you can bring over from jaws into actual gloomhaven hence it's the characters and battle goals last few tidbits we want to throw in here first we really appreciate how the monster attacks actually have names now super cool flavor adds a lot more to the combat than you think it would also super impressive how they're still really cool locked content and spoilers and draws the line considering that it's supposed to be you know intro to gloomhaven like they didn't have to do this at all and yet they still did which makes your progression feel really good for these classes since you can't just go and unlock more classes like a normal gloomhaven we won't spoil what the hell is going on with these locked boxes and do not open signs plastered everywhere but trust us when we say that oh my god these unlockables are super cool alright now for the cons stuff that we didn't think was so hot and we didn't really find that many actually so the stuff that we did find is pretty nitpicky first up unfortunately there's some people online that are reporting some misprints on their monster standees and there's a handful of typos that need to be fleshed out but are thankfully addressed by isaac if you do some quick googling next there's not enough plastic stands if you want to play with four players and thankfully we own gloomhaven so that's not a problem but yeah that can be pretty annoying and yeah that's pretty much all we can find if we're trying to be critically unbiased i mean there's like subjective stuff we can complain about like the void warden might not be the best class to include for a newcomer tailored experience since they're definitely the weirdest class that's going to cause some ruling confusion but then again the tutorial cards are really helpful and when playing through draws ourselves we had a friend who was a newcomer who was playing void warden and after the tutorial he felt pretty okay so maybe that's not so much of a problem there's more cons that exist but i feel like those pertain to gloomhaven more as a whole and seeing that this is just jaws of a lion it doesn't really feel appropriate to drop it here and we're gonna save those for a bigger more extensive gloomhaven review screw that i'm gonna mention a few right here right now firstly why the hell are monster standee numbers so goddamn small this is super annoying for anyone who isn't sitting like literally right next to the scenario set up why is there an inverse difficulty curve where at some point the game just gets easier later down the road which is kind of a big slap to the face to new players since not only are they learning the game but the game is also legitimately harder at earlier levels than when you're like level seven and you're just so decked out and busted items and abilities why there's so many goddamn scenarios what an objective is just kill everything why haven't the official rule books recommended glue maven helper yet for being the best companion app ever for tremendously speeding up combat like seriously it feels like room even was designed with a companion app in mind and the fact that so many different third-party apps exist out there to automate all your bookkeeping is really telling okay enough of that let's just move on to scoring so here at shelf side we do things a little bit differently as a reminder first we're going to give you the recommender score which is how we try to critically evaluate the game given the previous pros and cons then we're going to give you our personal scores which is how we personally feel about the game so for our recommender score we're going to give gloomhaven jazz to the lion a 9 out of 10. this is an excellent game that's an easy recommendation to well a lot of different people out there considering that this game shows up at target and not just your friendly local game stores jaws of the lion has done the unthinkable which is making gloomhaven accessible need i remind you that's an insane task considering just like just just look at this game like jesus playing through this game has almost as much commitment as taking care of a small child which oddly enough it's got the perfect size and wait to be one essentially jaws of the lion has fixed gloomhaven's problem of being so inaccessible and has really opened up the floodgates for the masses just run in and try out some gloomhaven like it's really hard not to recommend this game to anyone who even has a remote interest in gloomhaven the combat is still absolutely incredible but just in a bite-sized package that almost anyone can digest we've always said that gloomhaven is probably the best dungeon crawler out there but it's unfortunately buried beneath a whole bunch of logistical bs now with jaws of a lion gloomhaven is an easy recommendation and for those of you here who are already gloomy even fans why are you even here you know you're gonna buy this game it's just more gloomhaven like who doesn't want to play more gloomy even plus i got even better news for you for those of you who've started glue maven but have never finished draws the line is an experience that you're probably actually going to be able to fully play through not just because of its shorter run time but also because you're going to be able to easily grab your friends and plop them right into the game without it being overwhelming basically jaws of the lion hits all the right beats and is one of if not the best dungeon caller experience you can get right now the only reasons why we're not giving this a perfect 10 out of 10 is because one all the production problems like typos and misprints which are gonna get ironed out anyways in future printings and two because of cons that we still have for gloomhaven which jaws of the line still essentially is but otherwise think of this as the highest 9 out of 10 we can give to a game because it's so so close to being a 10 out of 10. but yeah go buy this game if seth low fair games keeps knocking it out of the park like this i wouldn't be surprised to see the gloomhaven ip hit the mainstream especially considering the massive massive success of the frost saving kickstarter campaign so for my personal score i'm going to rate jaws the lion a the 10 out of 10 i think this is hands down the best tabletop dungeon crawler experience i've ever played we ended up playing this game over discord where ashton has a camera set up streaming the board we got a google docs that basically functions like gloomy even helper to track our combat and everyone who isn't ashton has their hand of cards open as images on their screen it's real janky real messy yet it's still ridiculously fun like if we were playing in person i'd be losing my mind over everything about this game like i've yet to even see my hatchet mini in person like god that feels so weird anyways don't know how many times gonna keep saying this but to me gloomhaven was always an incredible game that's just buried underneath a whole bunch of logistical bullsh and then draws a line comes in plunger at the ready and goes we are cleaning this crap up and remember i'm not even the one setting the game up i'm watching ashton do it over discord and i'm just sealing with rage as i see him just turn a page before putting some monsters down because i'm like all this all those hours i've spent organizing glue maven tiles and setting it up just it was a waste but yeah when it comes to my personal enjoyment i love gloomhaven's gameplay so the more i can get to you know actually playing gloomhaven the better and guess what we've been playing a ton of jaws of the line like we're actually further along in it than we are in the glooming campaign funnily enough last bits of rapid fire stuff that i like these locked boxes are absolutely bonkers i wish i could talk about them but i just can't because spoilers i also really really like the enemies thematically way more than everything i've seen in goomba even so far like jesus christ the jaws of the lion bad guys are insane in the membrane whenever we see them i really want to just go in and mess their day up i want to put a stop their machinations i want to rip and i want to tear my personal score for jaws of line is going to be a 7 out of 10. there's so much good going on in this game and the progression is really fun like when you hit level five opening those boxes is like freaking christmas as a red guard player i'm super psyched about my level six card can't wait to try it out and this is a game i can play with anyone with the amazing tutorial designers take notes so why don't i rate this higher well this game like the other blank haven games have scenarios that tend to overstay their welcome and this could definitely be because we always play with four players but having one single room in a scenario take one and a half hours oh my god now as daniel pointed out i was the one who actually had the game on me during this pandemic for our video chat playthroughs and so the managing of all the decks of monsters and items combined with typing in our google doc and then moving around everyone's miniatures yeah that really started to wear on me now the combat is truly fantastic and does a good job of getting you excited for the next round but time wise when choosing from the permutations in your hands and all the status conditions and health of all the elite and non-elite monsters with tiny numbers one scenario can take three to four hours so my dungeon crawler comparisons are descent and hero quest ah don't fall apart this box is so old this is a relic oh my gosh yeah well these games definitely had uh well let's just say simpler combat and because they were simpler it allowed gameplay to have less downtime and better pacing for the story instead in gloomhaven i'm hearing narration every hour and a half and then going back to manage my complex hand and then i forget a little about the story plus these games had dice and dice trucking fun with battle axe as some good old orcs is that good stuff so yep that's your thoughts and analysis of gloomhaven jaws of the lion let me know what you guys think in the comment section below be sure to like and subscribe for more shelf side content as always shout out to our awesome patrons we have manuel b max g clifford h and brian c and wait wait wait we have a mad lad of cardboard yeah we have a mad lad of cardboard in our patreon program zl thank you z wow that is freaking awesome that are doing that

Channel: Shelfside

Views: 28,635

Rating: 4.9585848 out of 5

Keywords: shelfside, shelfside gloomhaven, board game, tabletop, shutupandsitdown, dice tower, boardgamegeek, no pun included, watchitplayed, every scoundrel ever, board game review, tabletop games, tabletop simulator, gloomhaven, rahdo runs through, inside the box, 3 minute board games, Jaws of the Lion review, gloomhaven jaws of the lion, gloomhaven review, gloomhaven board game, gloomhaven jaws of the lion review, jaws of the lion, jaws of the lion gloomhaven, jaws of the lion review, bgg

Id: 12Gwt6GSnUk

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 10 2020