Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion - Ultimate Voidwarden Guide

the void warden jaws the lion's most difficult class to play and i think a lot of players especially when they're new struggle with all of the positioning requirements and you know the fact that you poison your own allies and do a bunch of non-standard things that are going to require a lot of forethought so in this guide i'm going to go through every single level 1 and x cards and then i'm going to go through cards levels 2-9 and we're going to talk about what pics make sense based upon you know what you're doing and then i think there's actually an alternate build that doesn't involve a master influence and so also going to talk about that we'll go through items we'll go through perks i'm gonna show you exactly what you need to do to dominate with the void warden because the void warden is actually a very powerful class and she's fun too okay let's get started [Music] so the void warden has a hand size of 11. but if you're planning on granting monsters attacks on a consistent basis you're gonna need to play master influence we'll talk about master influence later but functionally this takes us down to a 10 card hand most of the time and you should probably be playing master influence as soon as possible but that's okay we still have a reasonable amount of longevity it's still gonna allow us to play you know fairly aggressively and use our losses when it makes the most sense also if you're playing two players and you're playing with the hatchet be really careful if you're trying to grant a lot of attacks to them because some of the attacks you're granting are melee and so you've got to make sure you're really well coordinated and then my last point before we get to the level one and x cards is that curses are much more effective when played in the first half of the scenario so that you ensure monsters actually hit them so when you add a curse to the monster deck you're going to shuffle it up it could be the last card and so if you're playing curses in the second half of the scenario their effectiveness is actually reduced because the chances of them coming up before the end of the scenario are reduced so just make sure you keep that in mind okay let's get to level one turn out the lights top is a good solid attack and it's really easy for us to empower dark so you know adding plus one attack and cursing on this card it's gonna be pretty common and fairly easy so attack three at rangely with a curse pretty strong the initiative almost as bad as it can get and the initiative for this class there's going to be a lot of that i'll try not to dwell on it too much but it's a little bit of a pet peeve it makes it you know pretty tough to do some things with this class especially for newer players anyways the bottom is a nice strong you know bottom i like damaging bottoms because you can play them with you know attacks are much more common on the top so it's nice to have bottoms that can do some damage because you can really burst with a top attack or a top grant attack action for the void warden and this one you know play it on a shielded enemy so that that shielded enemy suffers damage and it also empowers ice which you know is pretty tough for us at early levels because we're mostly going to be playing master influence top and we're going to be playing it early so having a little bit of ice generation is nice as well grasp of doom the top has a lot of symbols and it's okay i mean it's not as powerful as i would like even at level one uh take for example we just talked about turn on the light's bottom if you've got master influence out and you consume an element you can easily hit for five or six damage and then have a monster suffer five or six damage that's going to be 10 to 12 damage for a loss this loss is generally gonna be worth let's call it four or five damage plus a curse and stun poison's probably worth one damage maybe it's worth two and wound maybe it's worth two so sometimes it's going to be worth it but sometimes it's not and i just prefer more direct damage on a loss or you know more targets so top is a little bit underwhelming to me initiative at 36. okay the bottom move three though is pretty decent for us again dark is pretty easy for us to empower and so you know we're gonna have it around a reasonable amount so this is a you know a move five a decent amount of time so very good for us to get into the right spots suggestion top is just not powerful enough for me because unless you can like actually move a monster into a damage trap or something because one you've got to empower ice to get this done and especially at early levels not super easy to have ice around um and then not really strong enough the move can be nice to you know position monsters around but still it's a little too situational however the initiative at 23 is is pretty good for us especially at level one and then the bottom the move three and the ability to curse at range three this is really really good you always need to move and anytime you've got a really good ability that's easy to pull off attached to a move it's great it's actually a great card using it for the bottom 99 of the time sap warmth this one's going to be really fun make sure you stick around i'm going to start with the bottom because we're going to get really in depth into the top so first the bottom move to heal 3 and that's target self and all allies within range 2 and then empower ice this can be pretty powerful in a bigger party it's not amazing but the range 2 is mitigated somewhat by being able to move and kind of you know position yourself as well like if this didn't have move it would be awful and then the top poison at range three in power dark and then you've got three charges where anyone who attacks a poison monster any of your allies they actually get to heal one and this can be useful for removing wound and poison but it's delayed and it's gonna impact our longevity so let's go to the spreadsheet okay so i've created a spreadsheet because cards like this that are persistent but not a loss they can still cost you turns in longevity and i'll try to be brief and explain why also i do have a stamina guide that explains losses and when should you should play them and how they affect your longevity that sort of stuff i'll put a link up top here go check it out um it'll explain even in more depth but for this example we're talking about cards that are persistent but aren't losses so what happens is when you play this on an odd amount of cards you're actually going from odd to odd so in this example we go from nine cards in hand to seven cards in hand and so instead of getting four turns in our first rest cycle and then four turns in our second rest cycle we actually go from four to three and then when we pick this card up later on we actually go two turns in a row where we're going to have six cards in hand and so we're losing a turn because we're going from odd to odd and being inefficient and we're actually you know keeping a card in our hand each time instead of being efficient and playing all of our cards each rest cycle so if we come over here to the even example you can see that if we go and we play sap warmth and then we rest and lose a card we go from ten to eight and then we pick it up we actually go at eight and so it doesn't change our number of turns uh versus the baseline so the takeaway on this is if you play a card like say up warmth that's going to be persistent you've got to pick it up again at in the same rest cycle or you lose one or more turns depending on when you actually pick it up but if you play it when you have even cards in your hand then you actually have until the end of the next rest cycle for you to either use it or pick it up and so hopefully that helps you know play cards like this and it's one of the reasons why this card isn't you know really that great one it's delayed two it's got you know kind of all these timing requirements and it can cost you longevity i hope that spreadsheet example really helped you to understand you know how these persistent non-lost cards can affect longevity and when you can play them to maximum effect if it did make sure go ahead hit that like button and subscribe to my channel and turn on notifications it's the little bell so that when i publish new content you're notified resigned frenzy top is not bad it can be reasonably useful if you've got a ton of enemies but really to make this worth it you need four plus enemies to really you know enjoy playing the loss for that and if there's shielded enemies around it's not going to be very good for you initiative at 26 though is pretty good and the bottom is really good you know we need that move and then there's some flexibility here to empower dark and you know nerf the move a little bit and add an attack i don't think you're going to use it for that a ton but still the option is there and we do produce a lot of dark so i mean just nice to have that option we're playing it for the bottom most of the time freeze the soul pop is a decently strong attack however ice is a bit of a problem because we're usually playing master influence top and so we don't have you know repeatable ice generation early on um and you're not going to be in melee range a lot but still if you are it's a pretty good attack initiative is again just abysmal the bottom though is really really good um this stun at range three is going to be really useful for some crowd control and you're probably going to use it a lot the curse is a little bit annoying but don't let you know you not having dark stop you because you're making monsters attack using your modifier deck you know a decent amount and they're going to be attacking with advantage because master influence and so they're actually going to be able to burn through some of those curses for you that being said we usually do have a decent amount of dark round and so it is worth it to use the dark for this card to you know not curse yourself lure of the void top is a very good range three disarm and then you can move a monster as well this is really really nice and you know we've got a lot of dark i keep saying it but if you can move a monster through you can very easily disarm them and then you know move them into a trap or you know move them into an advantageous position for your allies stuff like that very very good and don't forget if you've done this before the monster turn and it's a ranged monster now that it's disarmed it's gonna focus as if it was a melee monster so if it's got move it's gonna come right back to you and then next turn you can mop it up very very good and then the initiative is this really going to be a running joke for this entire video okay i'm not gonna talk a lot about initiative after this i've decided at this point and then the bottom for a top this would be not great at level one i mean it would be okay because if you empower dark at seven damage but your ally has to suffer some damage um to get it off and so you know not amazing but because it's a bottom it's really good for us to use a top attack and this bottom or a top attack granting action i've got to say that a lot in this video too and so the bottom because it's on the bottom it's actually much better than if it was on the top i actually like this card quite a bit at level one you know you can output a lot of damage in a turn with it signs of the void top is not bad we can you know grant an ally one shield and move them two and this is gonna be useful uh if your allies not in the right positioning you want to use a bottom action to grant them attack you can move them with the top into the right spot and then grant an attack so fairly decent there initiative is stupendous for this class i just said i was not going to talk about initiative but i mean i have to talk about the lowest initiative at level one right 15 is is the best at level one for this class um and then the bottom it's not unusable but the range two means it is so easy to waste charges because this is gonna happen whether somebody is within range or not and so it's so easy to waste a couple charges of this and sometimes even three charges you could waste i mean it's just awkward to play i recommend for the most part in a standard build uh that you not play the bottom but the top is worth it and i mean we almost pretty much have to take it just for the initiative when we have to go quickly close to the abyss top is a pretty decent heel and it's nice that if you heal poison it gives you a bless so you get blessed instead of healing because the poison is removed pretty good card but i actually used black boon a lot more one because black boon is good at any player count cards that target multiple allies are of course you know better at higher player counts and so black boon is more useful at more player counts and it empowers dark which is really really good for us so i used a black boon to heal definitely more than this the initiative is not that good the bottom is okay in certain situations it can be very useful for moving monsters around sometimes you'll get them into a trap but you know positioning them so that your friends can do you know very effective aoes is probably the main benefit gift of the void top is quite good we're gonna be able to poison a monster and we're empowering dark and then we're granting an attack to one of our allies who's adjacent and it's you know a nice ranged attack so that helps and it's quite good because you're gonna poison them so add one damage for that and then you're most likely going to have master influence so if you can you know consume an element this is going to be essentially attack 5 with advantage repeatable no your ally does suffer too but you've got a reasonable amount of healing to deal with that so it's not the end of the world at level one it can be a little bit of a problem but as you get up a little bit and hit points this is a very good repeatable attack and you know five attack plus advantage is pretty darn good and you're creating an element um initiative 89 ah i said i wasn't going to talk about initiative why did i say that 89 is pretty good for going late though we actually like this initiative the bottom heel two range three i mean just a standard heel can definitely be useful in certain situations black boon top is a nice strong heel it's a good heel with good range the poison's a bit annoying um although there's later cards that kind of interact with that i can't spoil anything here uh it doesn't power dark dark is so useful for us that's it really pushes this card over the top from being okay to being pretty good initiative bottom move two and then one ally within range three may perform move to as well this is actually really really useful you're going to have a hard time deciding on this card whether you want to use the top or the bottom because moving your allies around to get them in the right position to maximize the tax that you're granting them or even just to help them out is going to be super useful very very good card overall wicked scratch top is decent but sometimes it can be a little hard to pull off because one you're granting a melee attack two you have to be within range too and that's exactly what i was just talking about with black boon this card's gonna help you get within range and move your ally so that you know they're adjacent stuff like that very very useful these cards were kind of meant to be together black boon and wicked scratch again we empower dark with this so really good initiative 68 whatever uh the loot one strengthen range three this is not bad once in a while you're really gonna love this card there's not gonna be anything for you to do and you're just gonna be able to hoover up some loot but most of the time you're not gonna be in melee range and so you know it's not gonna be super useful cold embrace maybe looks a little better than it is the top and we'll talk about the alternate build later but if you are cursing a lot the top i mean if you can consume dark cursing four in one turn is gonna be pretty good like it it is um that being said this card is really tough to pull off because early on ice generation is relatively difficult right most of it is tied to our lost card so you've got to have very specific timing to have ice or you've got to have an item or something that can produce it once you can kind of produce ice reasonably consistently this card becomes much better but in the beginning you've got a loss which you do want to use in the first half so not as bad as a normal loss that you would want to save to the end however it's still a loss uh and then the bottom is pretty situational and sometimes you're just going to be like i don't have any ice i can't move and i can't get adjacent to anyone without moving and so and i don't want to play the top just yet and so you're just gonna basic two move with it so overall can be good in the right circumstances but it's pretty finicky master influence and i've talked about it so much already not even sure what else to say however it is a core card for most builds um you know whenever you're granting attacks having advantage is really going to be nice and then when you can consume an element you can add plus one and having advantage is nice because if you do end up cursing yourself or monsters curse you uh having the monsters use your modifier deck to attack can actually flush out some of those curses on advantage without adversely affecting your damage output okay i guess i did have something else to say the bottom of this card pretty decent um blessing is you know at later levels a bless is actually very strong i mean if you're blessing a demo and they're attacking for five six every round because they've got a buffed up perk deck that bottom blast is worth five to six damage and then you're also gonna poison a monster i mean you could conceivably call this bottom uh worth six to eight damage at later levels so it empowers ice and it's repeatable so it's actually pretty good but i think most of the time we're not using it at level two we've got give and take and we've got crushing cold give and take top is pretty good actually because we've got a lot of bottom actions that you know grant allies attack so we can you know bless them and strengthen them and grant them attacks normally a blessing strengthened on the top is not as good because the majority of your attacks are on the top and it's taking the place of an attack you know reducing your overall damage output but for us pretty good and it empowers dark and the initiative is quite good and the bottom you can put out quite a few curses with this if you combo uh with some boots add some boots in there get up to like six seven move and then you play the top of cold embrace can you imagine you could put out eight curses pretty easy in one turn so if you're into cursing pretty good for that uh crushing cold the top is decent it's about equivalent to our level one loss you know power so i mean it's not a great upgrade for the top initiative is nice and slow which helps us go slow when we need to the bottom though is what i really like about this card move three with a muddle at range three and empower ice is just so good for utility i love it when you just have a bonus ability that's easy to pull off on a move you just muddle someone you produce ice which helps us for a bunch of different cards and so i usually took crushing cold uh for that reason but if you're into cursing you can't go wrong with give and take as well at level three we have taunting fate and we have commanding presence taunting fate heal is pretty good if you use it later in the scenario there's less chance the monsters will hit the bless and so it becomes even better the later you use it initiative at 13 is really really good and then the bottom if you empower ice you can add plus to attack to all of your attack granting actions this combos really well and it's why i took crushing cold at level two because you know take it with a card like resigned frenzy you know you're basically doubling the power of resign frenzy and making it much much more viable and it's gonna help a lot with damage output um you taking the extra damage is not that big a deal most times you're pretty squishy so you're gonna try and stay in the back but this is one of those cards where if you're not paying attention because you're so squishy you can get caught and you can get hurt really bad so just make sure you know what's gonna happen when you play this card and then commanding presence the top is not bad it's it's okay because it has range three um but it's still probably not gonna be worth it like signs of the void only has range two and that makes it harder to pull off but even with the extra range i still don't think it's worth it and then the move fork herself and then you can grant an ally a move this can be very very useful but you know i pretty much went with taunting fate every single time because of that initiative because it can power up the attacks i'm always trying to grant and because it's got that great late game heal at level four we have the last journey and we have savage instinct the last journey top is just one of those cards one of those actions that's never going to be bad attack 4 range 3 curse and power dark all going to be good it's never going to be bad you're going to use it and enjoy it initiative is whatever the bottom move 4 force one adjacent enemy to perform move 3 and then they gain immobilize this is a great late game move for a tough elite a melee elite mostly so you can just shove them out of the way maybe get them into a trap maybe immobilize can be quite useful um but i mean most of the time you're gonna be playing this for the top and you're not gonna want to use that bottom until pretty late in the scenario unless circumstances are dire and then we've got savage instinct force one enemy within range three to perform attack three tarding all other enemies adjacent to it and then it suffers damage and this is another reason why i like taunting fate add taunting fate to this and empower ice you've got attack five you hit three monsters that's attack 15 plus you know advantage on one of them from master influence and potentially another plus one and then the monster suffers three you can easily get into 20 plus damage with this if you've got this plus daunting fate initiative is just you know and then the bottom heel three range three strengthen poison you know ice being useful to bless uh is also very good i like the last journey just for ease of use but you can't go wrong with either of these cards so i'm gonna recommend the last journey but if you take savage instinct because you want to buff it with taunting fate i mean that's great as well all right we're at level five spoilers coming up you have one second to get out of dodge okay at level five we have stanfast our ward um it's not bad sometimes it can do some pretty decent work in my opinion and there will be no more spoilers here it's one of the pr it's probably the worst it's probably the worst um level five card um the bottom though is really good and it is you know 90 initiative which helps us go late um the bottom is um quite good though really like if you know your enemy is six away and you've got an ally that's 308 really this could be potentially an attack free range six very good flexible utility there just to add you know damage when you don't need to move so it's a pretty good card overall you could go back and take your other level 4 card though like really you could level 6 we've got withering conviction and surge of power withering conviction top is pretty powerful it does cause your allies to suffer some damage but by this level two damage isn't you know super bad so i mean it's pretty good 12 damage plus buffs from master influence maybe you got taunting fade in there this can work out to be a lot um the bottom curse self you can ignore the curse if you've got dark kicking around which we do a lot and then you can curse two targets pretty good it's repeatable this is going to be fairly good search of power is just a wacky card it's one of those cards ah okay so the top if you are playing two players and the other players are redguard this top can be amazing your red guard can play super aggressive and then bang you throw a 20 point 25 point heal on him and he's back up to full so very useful in that situation um and then the bottom anytime you or any ally loses poison you gain strengthen this can work it's so convoluted though that i don't generally recommend it but if your ally has the ability to heal on their turn without playing a card so i'm talking basically an item here that ally can get two complete turns of strength from this which you know if you've got a couple healing items you know they can be strengthened a lot play this with a demolitionist and things can get pretty crazy a demolitionist with its own strengthening abilities you know they can go through almost the whole scenario with strengthen because you know of what you're giving them plus what they can do themselves that being said it's a double loss card and that's why this card is just wow it's just a wow card um i think i take withering conviction but it depends on my mood like if you're a person who really likes to theorycraft and get into builds that require synergies and stuff like that this is a search of power is a really good card i've gone on too long that's it at level seven we have hateful blast and we have spirit hunger hateful blast pop is just very good solid card i took way too much time on level six so i'm going to abbreviate this one it's pretty straightforward it's good 29 is also fairly good the bottom i don't love it for this level it's reasonably powerful but i don't feel like it's you know much more powerful than our earlier level you know bottom grand multi-target attack action cards this video is making me sweat there's too many complex words word sentences you know what i'm saying spirit hunger pretty decent i mean a big reasonably big attack with a heel can be very useful in some situations and then the bottom though it's kind of like the top of hateful blast where it's just always gonna be pretty darn good um i'm taking hateful blast most of the time though level eight we've got lull into oblivion and we've gotten powered link lull into oblivion top is pretty good the downside isn't that big of a downside so there's two ways you're gonna play this card one you're gonna go early and you're gonna use it when there's a decent amount of monsters you're gonna stun two and curse them you're gonna leave them alone make sure they don't have wound if they're going after you otherwise it's going to remove the stun you're going to leave them alone and you're going to focus on the rest of the monsters try and kill them and then go back to the monsters you've stunned great that's a really standard strategy in gloomhaven and generally that's very effective to you know crowd control some and focus on the rest the other way is you can actually play this late you pair it with a late card and then uh you know at the end of the round the card gets placed in the discard and they're still going to be stunned for their next turn so then there's no risk you can attack whenever you want the next turn you don't have to worry about losing the stun it also empowers dark and it's got fantastic initiative and then the bottom you can move yourself and everybody up to three up to four if you uh consume dark very useful in certain situations but i mean i think you're playing this for the top most of the time empowered link top is just not going to be worth it most of the time like it just isn't granting extra targets on heal is rarely going to be worth it and then the move to uh blast target all adjacent allies and empower ice this is actually going to be pretty good but i'm taking lol into oblivion at level 9 we have possessed by fate and we have eye of the void possessed by fate top there's a lot going on there it's a bit awkward to use because of the range yeah we're gonna need some help with this one we'll talk about that in my item recommendations um the bottom really good for burst damage you know single target burst damage i like that it's on the bottom if this is on the top i'd probably not be happy about it being a level nine card but i think because it's on the bottom it's actually pretty good uh eye of the void top level nine it's below the curve in my opinion just based upon other level nine cards it's not like way below it's decent and if you use you know taunt fate or taunting fate um you can output some pretty serious damage initiative is pretty decent the bottom though is quite good um all allies enemies within range three suffer one damage so you get a little bit of damage output and you know or also your allies sorry allies and then strengthen all of the allies this is going to be pretty good i mean strengthening multiple allies you strengthen three allies that's worth quite a bit of damage and it reduces you know misses and stuff like that and so that's going to be very good i like eye of the void better just because of the bottom it you know really helps out the total team damage output and make sure as the void warden you are constantly reminding your friends how much good you're doing for them because here's what's gonna happen you're gonna grant them attack and in their head they're gonna be like i did eight damage with an attack make sure you're getting some credit because you're strengthening you're blessing you're healing you're granting them attacks you're moving them around you're doing a lot for them so i just want to briefly talk about an alternate build that doesn't use master influence and what this build is is it's a control support build and you need to have three other players with you pretty much other than that it's not going to be worth it because in lower player counts you got to do some of your own damage like it just that's how it works you got to reduce the enemy uh counts quickly so that you know you're not getting in trouble however at four players you can focus on you know using cards like cold embrace signs of the void suggestion uh turn out the lights etc and so you're gonna curse a ton like you need to have basically max curses in that's really gonna help a lot and then you're gonna focus on blessing and strengthening and healing and doing all sorts of stuff like that and that you know not playing master influence gives you a lot not a lot more longevity it gives you more longevity and so you can do some other loss cards um i don't recommend this because i actually think the other way is more powerful i mean i think granting attacks and putting out damage is probably more powerful but this is just an alternate build it is totally viable and it's viable in my opinion all the way through and so if you feel like playing a little differently you can definitely do it all right let's quickly talk perks first get rid of the minus ones they ruin lives then get rid of the minus two same sort of deal then replace the plus zero with a plus one ice because ice is a little bit hard to come by and it's pretty useful um then add in your one plus one curse rest dealer's choice do whatever you feel like based upon how you're playing the class okay item recommendations and i am going to recommend a little bit higher tier item here so if you skipped ahead and you didn't watch card levels five to nine you may want to skip this part too anyways we always want a minor stand potion one of the best items in the game even if it's only one card and then we want some boots that are going to help us move around because we've got you know things that like multi-target attacks that only have two range stuff like that we want to be able to get in position so we want to be nice and mobile and then and this is the item spoiler it's a few tiers higher you don't get it when you're first starting out a hawk helm is so useful for us to turn some of our two range stuff into three range and it just increases the usability of those cards by so much i can't recommend it enough number one head recommendation for me is gonna be the hawk helm in the description of the video i've got a link to my recommended products page if you could go ahead and check that out it really helps me out a lot even if you just click on the links i get paid a small commission potentially and anything you can do to support the channel is greatly appreciated and thank you so much for watching the video

Channel: Neural Net Games

Views: 4,403

Rating: 4.9344263 out of 5

Keywords: board games, table top games, jaws of the lion, voidwarden, gloomhaven: jaws of the lion, gloomhaven jaws of the lion, gloomhaven, most popular board games, gloomhaven jaws of the lion review, jaws of the lion review, jaws of the lion gloomhaven, best jaws of the lion class, gloomhaven jaws of the lion board game, gloomhaven jaws of the lion classes, jaws of the lion watch it played, jaws of the lion hard, jaws of the lion best class, gloomhaven jaws of the lion playthrough

Id: cE2xFx-OG9A

Length: 36min 15sec (2175 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 11 2021