Gloomhaven Ultimate Brute Guide

we've got the brute the brood is not the best class in the game but in this ultimate guide i'm going to show you exactly how to use the brute and how you can make him much more effective and it's actually quite easy to be ineffective with the brute because of the brutes initiative so we're going to talk about some strategies on how to manage that whether you should go damage dealer or tank and what cards you should be taking depending on which path you take and let's give you an example here so a card like sweeping blow because of the brute's poor initiative it's really easy for sweeping blow to blow up in your face because one enemy dies another moves away and then you're left doing an attack two on one enemy so in this guide we're gonna talk about exactly how you fix that problem even though the brute has some of the worst initiative in the game he's not actually the slowest he's just got so much middling initiative that it makes your life a nightmare sometimes you're going to go before all the enemies sometimes you're going to go after all the enemies sometimes there's going to be one or two enemies that go before you and then the rest go after you despite that fact the brute has some amazing card combos that can do really good burst damage so go ahead like this video subscribe to my channel turn on notifications so that when i put out new content you're notified let's dive into this brute guide so i can show you how the brute works best so i've talked a lot about the brutes bad initiative and i'm going to talk some more about it because it's the greatest hurdle to being effective with the brute so to be effective usually you need your plans to go the way you've planned it and with the fruit that's really tough so accept the fact that you have terrible initiative don't always try and go first accept the fact that you have bad initiative and make plans that aren't always specifically based on what your initiative is so because your initiative puts you in a bad spot all the time it's sometimes better to just go late instead of trying to go early and gamble when you're going with an initiative of 20 or 25 or 35 you never know what's going to happen i mean some enemies are going to be slower and you're going to have a little bit of a better idea but generally you're going to have a hard time figuring out if you're actually going to be going first so if you go late then you can see where all the monsters are positioned and you can go in and use something like sweeping blow and like the example i gave in the beginning of the video if you use sweeping blow wrong you can just pile up ineffective turns and there's other cards you know other aoe cards that the brute has where you can become completely ineffective because your plans are you know going to hell you're the enemies aren't where you expect them your ally comes in and kills one of the enemies so you're only doing a couple damage and this compiles this compounds and means you're going to be very ineffective in scenarios so lots of the time go late um and then save you know your very fastest cards which there aren't many of and they're still not super fast i believe the fastest is 10 with provoking roar so save you know those couple of cards you have for going fast when you really need to go fast and the rest of the time go ahead and go late it's okay or you know do turns that don't depend on you know exact timing it's a brute you should be able to tank right and you can although the brood is definitely not the best tank in the game and early on in the brute's life when you're at low levels tanking ability is not really there so let's talk about two of the early tanking cards we've got juggernaut and we've got warding string so if you take juggernaut and you use the bottom you've gotta play warding string first so when you're taking damage you can decide in which order things happen so let's say you have a prosperity level one item height armor you can decide to use a charge of that to take one damage off and so combining that with warding strength allows you to absorb those little hits with that and not use juggernaut for that because if you go out and you get hit for one damage and you've got nothing else with you you don't have the height armor you don't have wording strength up you're gonna be pissed when you have to use a charge of juggernaut for one damage one other point i'd like to make about tanking is that i think you need to decide early on whether you're gonna go tank build or whether you're gonna go more for like a mobile damage dealer burst damage deal kind of build because you're gonna make some very different choices for shielding relying on going first is gonna get you in some trouble so if you are shielding up make sure you use your fastest cards if not just expect that sometimes the enemies are going to go before you so you know be careful around that and use things like juggernaut wording strength and defensive tactics because those are going to be up all the time and those are really your bread and butter cards when you're running a tank build if you're relying on going first and getting shield up on that turn quite a few times you're going to be disappointed okay let's talk about starting cards so i'm not going to go through every single card but i'd like to go through a couple cool combos and just talk about a few cards that are noteworthy so the first is going to be a combo of leaping cleave bottom and provoking raw top i like to come out with this go ahead go fast you can jump you're maneuverable you make wind and that's going to be for the next turn and then you get in there and you quickly attack and you disarm an enemy it's a nice strong first play then next turn you're going to use the top of skewer and the bottom of wall of doom and you can have an attack five on two different enemies with pierce one especially early on this is going to be a very strong reusable attack so try it out let me know what you think the next is trample trample is one of those cards that it's great if you have shielded enemies and it's pretty mediocre if you don't so take a look even in the new books where the scenarios are only loaded up one room at a time like you know starting with forgotten circles that sort of stuff so even if you're only loading up one room at a time you can see which enemies are in there and determine whether to take trample or not based upon whether there's going to be shielded enemies so yes you are allowed to look at the enemies before you decide which level one cards to bring in with you so make sure you're always doing that it's going to help you to strategically bring the right cards for the you know for certain enemy types the next is provoking roar and it's one of my favorite starting cards going fast is good going fast with with this arm is great and it's going to be your fastest initiative card make sure you're pretty much always taking that and then overwhelming assault i don't want to say this but i'm going to it should be called underwhelming assault it is absolutely terrible six for a loss is not that good move three push two can be useful but the initiative really sucks i would say it's one of the worst cards you've got so usually i'm going to leave that one behind if you think there's a lot of traps around or something you may be able to take it just to push enemies into the traps up next i'm going to be talking about each pick at each level so going through which carts to take depending on whether you're a damage dealer depending on whether you're a tank level by level but first if you could go ahead please like the video subscribe to my channel and turn on notifications so that when i create new content you're notified and also i've created another video i think you're really gonna like where i go ahead and i rank all 22 of the gloomhaven classes including forgotten circles and including jaws of the lion so go ahead check that out and see how your favorite classes stack up against the rest of the classes in the gloomhaven universe at level 2 we've got juggernaut and we've got fatal advance juggernaut top is good utility moving and attacking is really nice and you're gonna find it pretty useful the bottom is also good if you're going for a tank build but make sure you're pairing it with warding string make sure you've got some armor so that you're not using juggernaut charges on low damage attacks you want to make sure and save those for those big hits and so you need some other ways to mitigate damage when it's coming in small amounts fatal advance is a good card as well uh killing an adjacent normal enemy is decently powerful and the bottom move four is gonna be nice for the brute at level two it depends on what play style you're going with and this goes back to what i was talking about before and that is you know decide whether you're going damage dealer attack kind of brute or you're going tank brute at level three we've got hook and chain and brute force hook and chain is a decent top attack it would be better if it was a push instead of a pull it's much easier to push enemies into traps than to pull them but i guess you couldn't really call it hook and chain if you did that and then the bottom move for an attack in a straight line this sounds good but in theory it's actually much harder than you think so you actually get a lot less use out of it than you initially would think brute force is just a straight upgrade to sweeping blow it does muddle the enemies make sure though you're going fast so that you know you're not getting hit by non-muddled enemies and then the move to shield one is great um the initiative is brutal on this card 51 is and basically a nightmare so make sure that when you're doing that move to shield one you're pairing it with something fast something like a provoking roar or something else that has good initiative so at level three i'm going with brute force most of the time at level four we've got unstoppable charge and we've got devastating hack unstoppable charge is a nice powerful attack 5 repeatable for an experience it's going to be great in mostly every situation and the bottom is an awesome move with a stun all adjacent enemies it's very powerful it's going to be one of those cards you pull out that's going to help you win scenarios devastating hack is pretty powerful but think of it this way you get to use it one time you do three more damage than unstoppable charge long term unstoppable charge is vastly going to outperform devastating hack and for devastating hack you're gonna not use the loot one at the bottom that much you know brute needs to position a lot because of that poor initiative and because you're using you know some stuff like sweeping blow where you want to be able to hit as many enemies as possible you're not going to get a ton of chances to use the loot one so take unstoppable charge every single time at level five we've got skirmishing maneuver and we've got whirlwind and this one's gonna be tough and i'm gonna talk about why so first we've got skirmishing maneuver it's got a ton of utility for positioning but it's two attacks at two damage each and so that's a little bit weak the bottom is good but it's not as good as you think because the brood actually wants to position quite a bit and lots of times when you're going to burst damage you're going to want to go melee and melee not ranged in melee because if you go arranged bottom and melee top you're very often going to be adjacent and you're probably going to be at disadvantage if you are gonna burst damage with it do a double range you know bottom of skirmishing maneuver and top of spare daggers whirlwind is another good card though too so at four players you can very often pull off a 12 to 16 damage attack with this and that's definitely going to be worth a loss and then the bottom move forward it gives us another good move at 28 initiative and it allows us to push three push 3 becomes very powerful because a higher push makes it a lot easier to push enemies into trap so on this one at two players i'm probably going skirmishing maneuver but at a four player count game i'm probably gonna go whirlwind because of those increased enemy counts and you can get some serious burst damage going you know 12 to 16 damage if you can hit three to four enemies is gonna be really good at level six we've got quietus and we've got a movable phallics quietus top is decent but it's kind of annoying because you can kill a stunned enemy but a stunned enemy is something that's already been you know taken care of to a certain extent so lots of times you want to be focusing on something else so it's okay but it's kind of annoying the move three add plus one attack uh to all of your attacks this round is pretty good that's that's nice and strong and then we've got a movable phalanx the top is great utility attack for shield one and at 17 initiative for the brute it's quite good and then the bottom though is the really interesting part of this card and it's going to make for some insane combos that i'm going to talk about here at levels 8 and 9 which is actually going to take your brute game up substantially and it's going to allow for some really cool burst damage at level 6 i'm almost always taking immovable phallics first but quietus is also a very good card at level seven we've got defensive tactics and we've got crippling offensive defensive tactics top is quite good for controlling melee enemies and the bottom is essential for any tank build so if you're a tank build this is your best card bar none it's persistent you get out there you play turn one you're gonna have shield one up all the time combine that with a warding strength you're gonna have shield two up for the next six attacks at least and then you can use other stuff like juggernaut to take the really big hits use some armor you're actually going to be a relatively effective tank although still not the best in the game and then we've got crippling offensive the top is it's okay for level seven if it was level three i'd probably be a lot more thrilled but six damage is a little bit below the curve and i know you add in a wound it's up to seven and you stun so it can be useful at times but for a loss it's a little bit underwhelming the three xp is nice though and then the move three mobilize push one is actually relatively decent as well because you can push an enemy away and especially a melee enemy you're gonna be able to neutralize them by pushing them and freezing them there so that they're not gonna be able to attack you so at level seven i'm going with defensive tactics almost all the time even if you're going for a damage build having that shield when retaliate up is really nice or you can use that top to really take care of enemies at level eight we've got selfish retribution and we've got frenzied onslaught selfish retribution top is awful if you are using this you're probably very selfish it's one of those cards that i mean it just shouldn't a move one loot two is not very good use it at the end of the scenario if you've somehow managed to keep it that long and the scenario is well in hand and you just want to get you know greedy and hoover up some loot that's cool the move 3 retaliate 2 bottom is actually fairly decent and at 12 initiative it's you know it's pretty good but we've got frenzied onslaught and the top of frenzied onslaught is really really good move to attack to move to attack two and here's why it's good so pair it with a movable phalanx you've got a you've got attack two attack two attack two attack two then you use balance measure bottom and you can burst for a minimum of 16 damage and it's almost always going to be more than that so you've got a reusable combo here of frenzied onslaught top and balance measure bottom once you've got the bottom of a movable phalanx out and you can use your moves as attacks and so very powerful burst damage there i use it a lot and so go ahead try it out let me know what you think so i am going to take frenzied onslaught most of the time here because i like to use a movable phalanx if not you can take selfish retribution if you've gone full tank and you think you're better sitting there and getting up a good retaliate and being shielded at level nine we've got face your end and we've got king of the hill face your end top is pretty lame i rarely would ever use it but the bottom is decent although it's kind of annoying because you want to kill someone who's adjacent but you have to use a top move so you can pair it with one of the top moves and it's and it's decently powerful but for level nine it's definitely below the curve king of the hill though is pretty good so especially if you've got a four player game you've got high enemy counts you can easily hit three or four enemies with this maybe up to five if you're a wizard at positioning and you're really good at the game but let's say you hit three enemies that's going to be 18 18 attack you can skip the push but if you do skip the push you've got to skip all of the push so what you do is you do this you hit at least three enemies let's say you do 18 damage then you use the bottom of a balanced measure and you've got a movable phalanx out and this is another huge burst combo you come in you hit three enemies for six each plus your attack modifier cards then you pull out balance measure and you whack something for 18 to 24 damage and so you can easily do 40 plus damage with this combo i'm pretty much always going with king of the hill and also the heel five on the bottom is you know just grave you probably won't use it a ton but it's still decent for the brute okay let's talk about enhancements but if you've made it this far go ahead and like the video please so my first enhancement is for 30 gold you're going to be able to enhance grab and go bottom move and then pair it with boots and the top of balance measure for a repeatable 7 attack top at level one without losing a card and you know you get your boots back every time you rest so make sure you use long rest get those back you're going to be able to use this combo fairly often especially early on it's really going to help you a lot and 30 gold is not expensive the next enhancement is going to be plus one damage to skewer or cleave i prefer skewer because it's a little bit easier to hit with and it does a little bit more damage i don't use it on sweeping blow as often because you know the level three card brute force is an actual upgrade to sweeping blow so use it on skewer or leaping cleave it's gonna you know give you an extra you know six to eight damage at least per scenario and it's gonna you know take your root game up another level for perks when on the brute i like to take ignore item effects first because then you don't have to put all those negatives in your modifier deck so even if you're a damaged dealer it's going to help you quite a bit because it's going to you know keep that average damage up and then stay away from pierce you can never plan on pierce so don't put those rolling piercers in you you're never planning on it and so lots of times you're just going gonna pull it when you're attacking a non-shielded enemy or when you've already got enough damage to kill a shielded enemy because generally when you're you know doing these turns you have an idea of what you're gonna do and pierce is just this random wild card that sounds good but very often doesn't help you a lot and then get rid of all your negatives and add in your pluses so fairly straightforward here for the perks okay let's talk about prosperity one items in just a couple suggestions here get height armor but make sure you take the ignore item effects first from the perks and then take boots of striding adding plus two move is going to allow you some more move of course and some utility for positioning but it's also going to give you more damage like i said before when you pair it with grab and go and then you upgrade grab and go you've got a 7 attack with balanced measure and so that's going to be really good especially early on and then warhammer use warhammer with something like sweeping blow you're going to be able to stun three enemies as long as you can get three enemies in your attack hexes so go ahead use warhammer as well it's going to be great for the brute and then potions use them in this order scam because i want to reuse combos i want to reuse balanced measure i want to reuse frenzied onslaught all those things brute has a lot of good reusable xp cards too so i like to go stamina first then healing because you're taking some damage and then power potion so that you can add to your aoe attacks later on okay we've come to the end of the video if you can please go ahead and hit that like button it really helps me out a lot subscribe to my channel turn on those notifications so that when i put out new content you're notified and thanks so much for watching the video

Channel: Neural Net Games

Views: 9,161

Keywords: board games, table top games, brute, brute ultimate guide, gloomhaven

Id: QdaW64Sqjv4

Length: 21min 21sec (1281 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 02 2021