How good is - Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion - First Impressions

hello welcome to quackalope today we are going to give you a first impression slash first thoughts on our gloomhaven draws online campaign yeah we've actually started diving into a campaign of this now i did play and cover this when it first came out something like i guess over a year ago now oh wow that's so long uh no i mean it is with the amount of games we cover and i remember being very charmed by it and excited to cover it back then uh and we just started an actual official full campaign that we were recording and playing through and uh we thought we'd talk about it suffelo faire is cephalofare okay that's who it's bye we uh we thought we'd talk about it we've been featuring it and kind of hinting at it at our weekly vlog series which comes out on the same day as today so if you haven't checked that video out go over there and swing but this is just going to be our initial thoughts first impressions we're almost across chapter five introduction to our characters introduction to our characters we're almost across chapter five all the first five episodes which are the learning episodes are going to be exclusives over on the patreon and then at the end of chapter five when the campaign kind of officially starts we're gonna be bringing parts and pieces over here to the main youtube channel so that you can follow along even if you're not a patreon member there will always be some bonuses that will be going up on patreon like some of the side quests and stuff will be patreon exclusive i we just unlocked one i know you're super excited that's what i reminded i got reminded about we'll also probably be trying to paint our minis as well so let's talk about what gloomhaven is for people that don't know now granted it's the number one of game of all time and this is the little brother the intro into the big box yeah gloomhaven is going to be one of the very first and most successful legacy games where you're going to be adventuring going through a dungeon crawl system upgrading your characters doing some really cool card play uh and slowly adding stickers ripping cards just fighting monsters fighting monsters and kind of going down a narrative pathway or story uh what did you know about bloomhaven when we decided to play it because you're the one that picked this i gave you what what options did i give you gave me eight games i believe i think it was like from madara kingdom death uh what else was on there oath sworn which isn't hasn't arrived yet so that wouldn't be i've been on there seventh continent was there lots of loom haven't was listed a lot of campaign games ether fields tainted fields is the one i was also interested in doing so maybe we'll pick that up soon yeah but you chose gloomhaven why because of the powers and abilities really yeah um the powers and abilities the theme sounded really cool i remember getting when i got into the hobby i distinctly heard of this game that was number one on board game geek for the longest time it's been how how long has it been number one years it's been top rated for what was that i have a tickle just go grab your red bull take a drink there's nothing left oh no what a dilemma really so it's been ring number one for the longest time and it was always like kind of the untouchable like okay it's so proud of my reach it's really complex like board game he creates it in the three and four rating the the jaws of the lion is 3.5 i believe and is this one that high yeah interesting yeah i mean we are going through five episodes to learn how to play it yeah and that was one of the reasons why i picked it i wanted to pick something that was kind of a little heavier and see if i could wrap my mind around it the characters looked fun the intro i gave i really just i looked them all up on board game geek looked at their ratings and looked at the intros and kind of looked at the artwork and that was how i made my decision so what do you think so far like we're gonna do a full review at the end of this campaign i'm sure yeah but right now being brand new to gloomhaven what do you think of the systems the cards the the what we're doing in the game i like it i like how a game this complex actually gives you five training scenarios to introduce you to all the mechanics that's something that jaws of the lion specialized in as opposed to bloomhaven the big box brother who just gave you a rulebook full of text yeah so the rule book actually is really helpful i was the one who started reading it and then as we've been playing through the scenarios we've been reading more and more on camera and kind of delving into it i really am enjoying that teaching process sometimes heavy games just give you a really really heavy book and you're kind of like i don't know what to do with this i have to set it up kind of fiddle around with it this has just been walking us through in preparation for the official and the snare drums have still been fun yeah they have been fun they're not exactly a walk through the park you managed to try and die on most of them most of them most of them you're not very good at keeping yourself alive so i'm a glass cannon we'll get into that later so i've been enjoying it a lot i like the teaching process i love the artwork i love the different variety and monsters and things that we're going to be fighting things that we have thought they're all very thematically appropriate blue maven does some cool stuff where it's characters that feel familiar but you also have some unique elements and traits to them like who really knows what a quattro is and why they like blowing things up that reminds me of root honestly every time i see it reminds me of i'm a red guard um this reminded me of a little bit of a devil and it's red so you know i couldn't go too far when it comes to gloomhaven so far there's there's going to be a few core elements and i'm curious what you think of them so far there's going to be the card play which is a high low cycling through your hand of cards you're going to be making every every time it's your turn to go you're going to be playing two cards from your hand you're then going to activate two of four abilities available on those cards one of which is going to be a top level attack or powerful ability one of which is going to be a bottom level typically a movement or collect resource type of ability and that interplay is really where a lot of the complexity in the game comes from so far we've been scaled up we're now just now getting to our full abilities and decks and starting to gain levels which is giving us more powers as we as we grow we're also being able to construct our own decks we have some extras and we can kind of what do you what do you think of that card play so far because i have to say it's probably my favorite part of what the gloomhaven system is really so it's actually one of the parts that frustrate me the most because i want to do like two attacks at once or two moves at once i don't want to always do an attack and a move and that's kind of how my deck has been pretty much organized i haven't had as much moves as i would like so that is a little frustrating that is that frustration good though is that a good challenge it is it is ultimately it's good it makes me think it makes me try and work around the box get some gear upgrades and items so that that will allow me to kind of increase my abilities and stuff it's good it was just initially frustrating in the beginning because i was like i have these cards and i can't really do much right now obviously you can always use it for the basic ability but that feels so silly once you get like these really powerful cards you're like i'm using this for two movement but when you for me when i get to do something big i really really love what's happening now it might be that i'm enjoying my character more than you initially yeah i like your character a lot and then the initial bouts i gave you the i gave you the opportunity to steal them i know so i did look at the character description on the inside and this one has a lot to do with the monsters and controlling them and i really love monsters so i kind of want to see where this one grows you've done some really cool things when it comes to manipulating and moving other characters around the board yeah uh but right now i'm the one that's running around and blowing things up and then dying in the process so the other element of bloomhaven outside of the card play is going to be the dungeon crawl mechanics have you ever played a dungeon crawl before i know you've played things like zombicide which are gonna be dungeon crawl-esque or cthulhu death may die i was about to say who will death may die i think i played rankbusters one time uh there's another one that is blinking in my mind something like along the lines of cthulhu okay so you've played a fair share of dungeon crawls yeah is this one doing anything different so far like where does it rank in time in terms of dungeon crawl mechanics i don't believe there's much dice there's no dice so it's a lot more controlled not a single die you have decks instead of dice which adds the randomness randomness into it but those are just modifiers though and there are modifiers that can introduce a miss or a double but for the most part they're adding one or two in either direction yeah except mine i frequently draw the misses all the time i really need to start getting those out of my deck and the game's starting to give us control over that so it's not only there's no dice there's also controllable luck mitigation yeah so i like that aspect sometimes dice feels really health or skelter and it could be like well it's the luck of the dice yes it is the luck of the draw with the cards but i feel like it's almost a little bit more mitigatable yeah it feels a little different you can also add curses and blessings in throughout the game that can also modify that attack deck it gets a little bit less controllable and more uncomfortable when that happens uh no that's a really good point for me the dungeon crawl is pretty straightforward yeah it is move solve the puzzle hit the enemy one of the interesting things though is even right now in the early game it's a it's an actually frustrating challenge like we've had multiple occasions now where it's come down to the wire yeah on the same scenario which means mathematically whatever the puzzle is and wherever our skill level is pretty on par it's on par like we are i feel like we earned our victory and what i've heard from other players of gloomhaven is that oftentimes that's the case you feel like you've earned your victory another thing that they're introducing are personal objectives in addition to the objectives the first couple scenarios were kind of just like kill all the enemies this last scenario that we played actually had objective tokens that we had to interact with destroy in addition to all the enemies and that also made more monsters spew and populate throughout the game so it was like oh we have a really great control and then all of a sudden there's a lot more golems and people coming at us yeah so that's interesting as well yeah i i do know that majority of gloomhaven is going to be the same sequence of events though yeah show up objectives creatures fight kill destroy collect things uh and figure out that puzzle the mathematical puzzle yeah and then go back home there's not typically a lot of uh scenario based environmental puzzles but the monsters all have different abilities like some of them curse you some of them muddle you some they just do different things to you some of them poison you which is a new challenge yeah so it does change the configuration especially as they level up as well as we're gonna level up i'm assuming the monsters are gonna level up become stronger have more shields and that sort of thing so the other element for me is going to be the writing uh what do you think about the story so far are you interested are you are you engaged at all in it actually is surprisingly not it's not pulling me no i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna throw a surprise out there in your direction what not surprising gloomhaven hasn't been known for its story like it has some theme it has cool characters yeah i feel very attached to my little quattro down here as we but the story itself has never been the big selling point so i'm not surprised to hear you say that as we continue reading things along and as it gives the little introduction i'm like yeah yeah yeah what are we trying to do this time or like as we put new stickers on the map and unlock these spots that's fine it doesn't i mean i like putting perfection perfect stickers on the map but it doesn't feel very like thematic yes we got a side quest and yes it was on the other side of the board but kind of like in a different scenario i might have wanted to be able to reach the side quest it would have taken a longer time to get there because it's so far away it's literally on the opposite side of the board so the physical locations don't seem to make much sense yeah i have i have enjoyed elements of the writing i found some of it to be interesting but never captivating yeah i actually like the town event cards quite a bit i do like the town events that i listen to because they give you a choice how to interact with it and i like that choice uh both the ones we've listened to so far have been cool yeah uh and i i do like our characters i really do i feel like we are real things in a world that isn't quite fleshed out on that note do you want to introduce your character very soon all right very soon the last thing i want to hear is any strong complaint so far anything you're really just not liking about gloomhaven that might like that that could be little middling things or could be like are we gonna make it through 20 more episodes right now to just a little middling things it's a little finicky remembering when you got a certain effect played on you when you got a curse when you gotta ignore movement when you got a muddle or a poison and then remembering its effects remembering the monster shields it's a little technical at some points and that's kind of my main complaint right max you don't like missing things either whereas i'm just like i like getting things done correctly and accurately so that's kind of the main frustration i've had so far but other than that i'm enjoying it yeah i am too i could like right now i could commit to another 20 episodes yeah i'm having a fun time it's been fun to play i'm really enjoying being able to go through a campaign on the channel here uh and so that's been thrilled and it's great to have someone that's actually able to like sit down and dedicate and dive into a campaign with me yeah uh let's uh introduce our characters and then let people know where they can watch so the very first episode should be up in the next day or so over on patreon and then the next five or six or seven depending on how many times we fail getting through chapter five uh will be up there over the course of the next week or so and then starting here i believe in the next week maybe two will be episode six and sort of a recap and a beginning to our gloomhaven adventure then are we gonna do weekly or bi-weekly postings of the episodes it really can really take half a year it really depends on how much we're filming and how much we're putting out yeah uh i would love to do weekly episodes okay but it depends on the audience depends on the engagement depends on a bunch of things cool so i mean if we get five episodes in on the main channel and we're not people just aren't tuning back in yeah uh then there's a chance that we make it patreon exclusive if we have an audience there or we finish playing the game do a full review ourselves uh spend a weekend doing that and then dive into another campaign yeah it really really genuinely depends on them okay i'm playing it no matter what just i wanna if they want me to spend they wanna spend you know about a hundred hours editing through it you wanna read first you want me to go i'm a little completionist so i do wanna finish it as well um i will read first valrath redguard though their demon-like qualities makes them fear by many vowel wraths are for the most part well-mannered and gentle preferring to solve problems through diplomacy rather than violence they come from a dark and bloody heritage of genocide and warfare and as they have become more civilized have simply made concerted efforts to put their past behind them valareth pride themselves on being able to integrate themselves peacefully into human society often becoming wealthy merchants or influential politicians not every vowel rest can be peaceful however this there is a special cast in the valoreth capital of jinda tasked with protecting the city it is a prestigious position and one not easily lived up to outcast from jinda for unknown crimes the red guard found it too difficult to part from their identity as a protector keeping the distinctive red armor as well as their chain sickle and shield the only place to find work was as a mercenary in gloomhaven and maybe just maybe by standing on the front lines and keeping their allies from harm the red guard will find some way to redeem themselves not in the eyes of zinda culture which has permanently turned its back but at least to within their own esteem reading it now after we've played a few games it kind of makes a little bit more sense with my cards they're a lot more protective versus you just bouncing around the board doing me melee on salt a lot of my cards arranged which is another thing that i struck that was like another thing i forgot about but i struggle with i don't like staying far away i kind of like going forward but i'm learning how to do the ranged thing yeah we'll see and gloomhaven's interesting in the core box there is a progression where you can actually switch from one character to another depending on when you level up i don't know if that's a feature of this it may not be uh but you know just just curious there's definitely two there's definitely other characters you can play eventually or now so we'll see quattro demolitionist because of their diminutive size quattros feel they have a lot to prove from an early age they are encouraged to study as much as possible about many different subjects though there are experts quattros in any field they seem to have a particular affinity to engineering and machinery their long delicate fingers allow them to build all manner of intricate contraptions to make life easier and augment the inferior physical strength though they are not numerous quattros can be easily integrate themselves into any society due to their expertise in critical fields and their charming graceful demeanor only a fool would shun a cuatro's offer to help even when augmenting themselves with machines of their own creation to destroy anything that stands in their path quattros will still do it with charm and flare though they may be small demolitious don't hold them back in the least between their rocket boots multitude of bombs and giant piston fists they are a force to be reckoned with sometimes the only path forward is the one they create themselves in such cases it is best just to get out of their way paths create themselves you have the powers to destroy obstacles i know and it's it's a lot more dramatic yeah i actually appreciate reading these as we've nice like mid game nice so that's gonna be first impressions our initial thoughts on gloomhaven jaws of the lion uh let us know if you're excited for a campaign and excited for more campaigns coming here to the channel and suggest something you kind of want us to see play i know we threw out a bunch of names over there but if you have any preferences let us know yeah if there's enough demand in the community we'll make it happen we're working to get kdm up and running here soon because i know there's a big audience that have been hungry for that yeah just a beast of a game you need someone that's going to show up and be able to play it with you consistently and consecutively so thank you for watching thank you for being here whatever the case whatever you do remember to do the importance get out and play some games we'll see you next time thank you have a good one

Channel: Quackalope

Views: 7,734

Keywords: boardgames, games, tabletop, tabletopgames, player, play, gamer, quack, quackalope, kickstarter, ian, ttg, flgs, howtoplay, unboxing, gameplay, game, middara, jrpg, rpg, overview, boardgamegeek, bgg, manvsmeeple, meeplegamers, review, preview, Quackalope, right / wrong, instructional

Id: ZBqcO_qRgWg

Length: 18min 16sec (1096 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 17 2021