Learn to Play Gloomhaven in 25 minutes (Scenario and Campaign)

hey folks my name is Shay Parker and this is RTFM the show right teach you how to play a game because reading is overrated and before I start teaching you how to play gloom Haven I want to show you something now when I first got twilight imperium third edition I thought I was gonna be a heaviest board game I would ever own I mean the box is absurdly long and it is pretty heavy now fourth edition is a little bit heavier but they're in the same ballpark but then along comes little maven to show me just how wrong I was however despite being heavier than both of these behemoths combined glue maven is actually not as hard to learn as Ti it is complicated and there are plenty of times when some mechanics are gonna collide with others so I'm not going to go through every possible iteration of the rules that would be insane where I will do is I'm gonna get you started get comfortable and show you where to look when you have questions so what is glue Maybin what are we doing here what is this thing called life well to enter the first question glue Haven is a cooperative dungeon crawler with a vast story that twists and turns based on the choices that you make in the game you and your friends were playing as mercenaries who take on missions for profit prosperity and to improve your party's reputation now these combat missions will comprise the majority of the game but they'll fit into a larger campaign that revolves around the city of gloom Haven you'll encounter events improve your characters and affect an ever-changing landscape you'll also have to learn how to manage a veritable forest of cardboard my solution is lots of bags but don't let all of these components scare you off this game has been one of the most rewarding tabletop experiences I've ever had so without any further ado let's learn how to play glue so before we get into the nitty-gritty let's broccoli go over what happens in this game assuming you're playing the campaign version it all centers on this map you start your days on the streets of Glen Haven and get hired to do a job which will be introduced in the first pages of the scenario book this book will give you a bit of story tell you how to set up your scenarios how to beat them and what you'll get when you do usually this will make new scenarios available to you after which you can choose which ones you want to go to or avoid whenever you gain access to a new scenario you'll place a sticker on the map corresponding to that location try not to screw it up like I'm about to do of course in order to do the job you got to be someone so let's pick characters there's six starting classes to choose from brut scoundrel tinkerer mining fief crag heart and spell Weaver you can open the boxes if you want and pick the class that you like but for your first game maybe just go with the name that sounds the most interesting to you of course I can't really continue without spoiling things a little bit so I'm gonna assume that we have two players and I'll choose the brute and a tinkerer unload all the materials and take a look at your new character there's a little backstory on one side and then on the other side it will give you a few important details there's also some cars and tokens but don't worry about them just yet especially these you'll also grab one of these HP x p dials so roll the X B to 0 and match the hit points ID with a number on your character board we're at level 1 so the brute starts with 10 hit points and lastly take a deck of 20 attack modifier cards and make sure the number on the corner matches for all of them you also get a few items to start with which are listed on the first page of the scenario book or you can start with 30 gold and buy the items you want but I'll talk about how to do that a little bit later and the last thing to do before heading on your first mission is to set up the event decks and there are two decks of random event cards that you draw from throughout the game city events are drawn while you're in gloom Haven these are optional and are more likely to have a positive outcome Road events are a little less friendly and are drawn whenever you leave the city so long as this scenario you're headed to isn't linked to wherever you came from which will be written on the scenario page take the first 30 cards from each deck and shuffle them separately as the game goes on you'll either add or remove cards from these decks but one to 30 is what you start with on our way to the first mission we draw a road event and read it out loud at the bottom of the card will be two choices so once the group has decided which option you take flip the card over and read the results after getting rewarded punished or ignored for our actions either shuffle the card back into the event deck or discard it forever you can just put the card away if you like or you can physically destroy the card while playing whatever funeral dirge you deem appropriate my group plays my heart will go on by Celine Dion but it's really up to you anyway now that's all taken care of let's set up our battleground so you've been hired to clean out the black Barrow once you get there you'll look at the scenario book for some narrative and any special scenario rules if there are any then you want to set up the board the specific tiles that make up the map are listed here so head over to cardboard mountain to find the map pieces you'll need and arrange them as shown next you need enemies which is listed on the bottom of the scenario page for this you'll grab three things the enemy units there's stat sheets along with a sleeve to put them in and their action decks some enemies like the living bones have unique action decks while others like the guards and archers are generic since we're level 1 let's make all the enemies level 1 to level 1 also of course if you want to make things easier or harder you can just adjust the enemies level up or down just make sure they all match next to the enemies you'll find any other tiles that you'll need in this case we need two spiky looking traps two tables and a treasure chest won't that be nice if you look at the map you'll also see that there are doors between each room and a number tile on the second door when a number is placed on the door like this that's a reminder to check the scenario book as soon as the door is opened either for a new element a scenario or just for some more flavor text ok we're almost ready to start our mission the last thing we need to do is populate the first room now even though it's shown in the book you won't place what's in the next rooms until you actually open the doors look in the scenario book we see a lot of bandit guards but what we need to look at is this color wheel here this corresponds to how many people are playing so if you have two players look at the top left bar 3 is top right and 4 is the bottom a black bar means you don't place the enemy a white bar is a normal enemy and a yellow bar is an elite enemy since we have two players we'll only place two normal guards and one elite then we can place our figures on any of these white spaces since the brute is big and beefy and the tinkerer is less so let's place our heroes like this before we start the scenario we'll also have the opportunity to customize which power cards and which items we bring into the fight and even at level one you have a few extra options for building your hand of cards but let's go with the basic level 1 cards for now you can start the scenario with exactly the number of cards listed on the top right of your character or you'll also be given two cards called battle goals secretly look at these and keep one these are personal and optional objectives that will give you a bonus if you complete it and mission now the main goal of the scenario is kill all enemies nice simple morally clear but sometimes scenarios will have different goals now this will know so let's get a fight you okay so we're in the dungeon we're ready to fight but how do we do that well it all starts with the cards in your hand these represent your actions during the game each round every player will pick two cards from their hand and reveal them simultaneously you can talk about what you want to do beforehand but try to be vague about it and that's not a joke the game recommends you don't use any numbers or specifics when discussing strategy instead say things like I'm gonna go over here and attack this guy a little bit anyway each card has a number and center and you'll pick one of these cards to determine your initiative for that round we want to go fast so we choose provoking roar to be our leading card which means our initiative is 10 tinkerers is 16 so we'll be going before they do when you take your turn you choose the top action from one card and the bottom action from the other these actions range from attacks and moves to various special abilities that the card will describe but if for some reason you don't want to use the action listed on the card you can trade in a top action for a melee attack with strength 2 or a bottom action for a move to you'll also draw a card from the enemy action deck to see where they fit in there are only bandit guards here so we just draw from the guard deck since their number is higher than ours we get to go first we decide to do the bottom action from the first card and get right in front of the elite enemy even though we have a move forward we only need to move two spaces so that extra move is lost then we use the top action from the second card to attack whenever you attack you draw a card from your attack modifier deck and add or subtract the number you draw from the total in this case we got a +1 which means we deal three damage however if we look at the bandit guard stat sheet we'll see that on the elite side it says that they have a shield 1 which means that whenever they take damage from an attack its reduced by 1 so they only take to drop a couple of damage tokens in the space matching their number to keep track of that our attack card also says that we disarmed the target so place a disarm token on the guard as well there are a bunch of different conditions and effects they'll talk about more in a little bit but this one means that the next time they scarred would attack it doesn't anyway once we're done with our turn we discard the cards we played the tinker is more of a long-distance fighter so they'll want to use this strength free ranged attack however since the range is 3 they're a little too far away to hit anyone in order to get close enough the tank returns at the bottom action from energizing tonic card into a basic move and moves behind the brute whenever you make a range attack you always need to be within the range listed and you need to have a line of sight in order to have a line of sight you need to be able to draw a straight line from any point on your hex to any point on your opponent's hex without touching a wall or a closed door also if your adjacent to your target while making a ranged attack you'll have disadvantage which I'll talk about later so the tinkerer makes their attack against one of the normal guards let's go for this one on the left when they draw our attack card instead of getting a plus or minus they draw a critical hit which means they deal double damage so six instead of three in every deck there's one critical hit and one critical missed card the critical missed causes your attack to deal no damage but any status effects like that disarmed are still applied looking at the bandits stat sheet we see that they only have six hit points which means that the enemy dies and leaves a coin in this place just like a Scott Pilgrim villain now it's the bandits turn when there are multiple enemies of the same type they'll move in numerical order with the elites always going before normal enemies monsters have simple instructions written on their action card that you'll follow but first you need to determine monster focus whenever an enemy takes its turn it will need to focus its attention on something usually that'll be one of you finding the enemy focus works like this monsters are lazy so they'll attack whatever they can reach while using the least amount of movement possible in this case the elite would focus on the brute and he wouldn't have to move it all but he's also disarmed so we move on to the normal guard because this guy will take two spaces of movement to get next to both the brute and the tinkerer the tiebreaker is who they're physically closer to which is the brute if that were the same the tiebreaker would be whoever had a lower initiative which was also the brute basically the brute can get smacked around a bit it's fine it's kind of his job a few more things about monster focus if the monster can attack at range they'll only move as far as they need to hit their focus again lazy if they have a multiple target attack they'll try to hit their focus and as many other targets as they can if they're moving but not attacking they'll still focus on an enemy and move as if they had a melee attack and then perform any other action they have listed if there are traps or hazardous terrain in the way they'll avoid them if possible even if it means they can't reach the target that turn however if the only after their focus is through the danger they'll walk over it even if it kills them and if there's no viable path to a target they won't move at all there are some subtleties and edge cases with monster focus but it all boils down to them doing their strongest attack with the least amount of movement so back to the fight the guard walks up and attacks us for this you'll pull from the monster attack deck he draws a +2 and since his attack value was 2 that means me take 4 damage take the tracker and slide the red dial down from 10 to 6 it was a pretty big hit but we can take it after everyone has taken a turn the round ends and we need to set up for the next one this involves a couple of things we haven't talked about yet though so I'm gonna get back to it once we have what I will say is that if you've drawn a card showing this symbol and we need to shuffle it and any others of the same type back into their deck since the tinkerer got that crit we need to shuffle their attack deck ok let's move forward a couple of turns we finally taken out the guards but we took a lot of damage and we spent a lot of our cards - so before moving into the next room we decide to take a long rest this happens your initiative during the round between 99 so you effectively go last and when your turn does come up you don't take any actions instead you pick up your discard pile choose one card to lose for the rest of the scenario and put the others back in your hand you'll also get to heal yourself by 2 and refresh your spent items more on that later the tinkerer hasn't taken damage and has more cards than you so they don't rest instead they play these two cards first they use the energizing tonic to heal you 5 points this power is special for two reasons first it grants to experienced the tinkerer which is what this symbol means take your tracker and slide the blue dial up 2 points now you'll recall we didn't do this when we killed the guard earlier that's because you don't get XP from killing monsters you only get it if something in the game like this card tells you you do the second point of interest on this card is the Lost Symbol after playing this card instead of being discarded it goes into the lost pile now these coins that were scattered on the ground are good to have especially because at first level each coin is worth 2 gold so if you want them you're gonna have to loot them you do that either by ending your turn on one after what you just pick it up or by playing a lute card which the tinkerer did now the number on the card refers to the range of the action so the tinkerer picks up each coin within two spaces which happens to be all of them and then at the end of the round after you've taken your long arrest action the tinkerer decides to take a short rest this gives you back your discard pile too and it doesn't require a full round of inaction however you don't get that he'll - you don't get to refresh your items and you'll have to randomly choose the card that you lose now if you really don't want to lose that card you can choose to take a damage and randomly lose a different card but you can only do this once per rest okay so your team is rested and ready to go you have to open the door but that's as easy as moving into the door space since you're pretty sure they're gonna be monsters on the other side of it you play some good movement and attack cards and since there's no one else in the room the round starts any storm right in when you open a door immediately check the scenario book and place the enemies and terrain tiles where they need to go then draw action cards for each of the enemies in the room as soon as you're done with your turn the enemies will be put into the initiative order meaning that anything with a faster initiative will go right after you but for now let's bring the pain you don't have enough movement to get to anybody but luckily you have an item that will help you out items are very useful in this game and have a few different rules to them first stuff is how they're used items might grant a one-time use after which they're consumed and can't be used again during the scenario others are spent after they're used and we refreshed after a long rest and some items just have passive bonuses that don't need activation items also have different types like helmet or armor and you can only equip so many of each type you can own more items than this but you'll only be able to bring this many into a scenario with you and you can't own more than one of the same item these boots of striding will increase your move by two when you activate them which gets you right next to the enemy now the move ability that we used also showed two things jump which I'll come back to and this wind symbol occasionally cards enemies or other game effects will create elements when this happens we look to the elements table at the end of a turn in which you generate elements slide the corresponding tile to the strong column once it's there anyone can use that element if they have an ability that lets them do so the skewer card for the brute will use wind to make that attack stronger if it gets used push the elements to the inert column if it doesn't get used by the end of the round the tile moves to the waning column waning elements are just as good as strong elements as far as using them goes but if they go another turn without being utilized and they go back to being a nerd with a no good anyone elements are great for making combos but they require a bit of planning so keep that in mind next we attack the guard and we critically miss that's okay though because even if you deal no damage if the card has other abilities they still trigger what's important here is that this attack pushes the enemy up to two spaces away which means that this unfortunate soul triggers both of these traps and now is probably a good time to talk about terrain tiles on page 14 of the manual you'll see a list of all the different terrain types we've already talked about doors corridors won't come up much and they basically just turn walls into normal ground traps will spring as soon as any unit steps on them and there are a few different types but they'll all go away as soon as they're sprung the scenario book will tell you what they do in each particular mission in our first mission these are strictly damage traps so they'll deal with damage equal to the encounters level plus two in this case each trap deals three damage because we're at level one which kills the guard yay if you forget the damage formula there's also a reference guide on the back of the rulebook that'll remind you hazardous terrain does the same damage as a trap but it doesn't go away after you step on it difficult terrain takes one extra point of movement to move into it and obstacles can't be moved into at all even by pushing or pulling there is a caveat though if you're jumping or can fly you can ignore traps obstacles hazardous and difficult terrain at least until you land the last space on a jump move is considered normal movement so you can't land on an obstacle the actual tiles won't have these colored borders but the scenario page will so you'll have to keep it in mind while playing oh there's also treasure you loot it like coins and if you get it match the number on the scenario page to the back of the book get whatever it says and cross it out you can't ever get that treasure ever ever ever again ever we get a random side scenario so draw one from the side quest deck and place the corresponding sticker on the map alright back to the game let's say that the enemies got some strong hits in against us enough that it would drop us to zero hit points if we reach zero or we don't have enough cards left to play to or even rest then we'd become exhausted which means we remove our figure from the board and can't participate in the rest of the scenario that's no fun though so let's not do that whenever you take damage you can choose to either leaves one card from your hand or two cards from your discard pile and negate all damage done from that one source it's not a great thing to do but it can save you in a pinch I've mentioned conditions and effects of you time so let's go over those really quick and we've seen pushing which is pretty self-explanatory pulling works the same way but in Reverse piercing attacks and the gate shields so if you have appears to versus shield three drops shield down to one for that attack ad target lets you add a target to your attack as long as it's within range and since we're talking multi attack some cards will also look like this these are area attacks and will target all enemies within the affected spaces for melee attacks your character is represented as a grey hex so you'd be able to hit these three adjacent spaces for ranged attacks if at least one hex is within range you'll hit each space that you have line-of-sight to because they can't see one of the spaces that space wouldn't be hit whenever you attack multiple enemies you draw a different attack card for each target okay conditions we've already talked about disarmed which stops you from attacking in the same vein there's immobilized which stops you from being able to move and stun which stops you from being able to take any actions if you're stunned at the beginning of a round you can long rest if you want otherwise you'll have to play two cards and they just won't do anything next we have strengthen and muddle these give you advantage or disadvantage on your attacks respectively which means that when you draw attack cards you'll draw two and use the better or worse one and lastly there's invisible which stops enemies from being able to focus on you or target you for attacks and they'll treat you like an obstacle while moving now each of the conditions I've just mentioned lasts until the end of your next turn but there are also to the don't and these are poison and wound when you're poisoned any attack against you is at a plus one when you're wounded you take one damage at the beginning of each of your turns you get rid of these by getting healed and when that happens you don't regain hit points you just lose the conditions now you might think that based on the effects wound should be called poison and poison should be called wound but to that I have to say up next we have blessings and curses these add a blessing or a curse card to your attack deck which act as a critical hit or miss but when they're drawn they won't trigger a reshuffle instead just remove them from your discard pile and lastly we have retaliate a unit with retaliate will deal an amount of damage to any enemy who hurts it with an attack so long as the attacker is within range and importantly like traps retaliate ignores shields some abilities like retaliate powers will have ongoing effects and show one of these symbols the first means that the effect will continue until the end of the round the second will apply for the rest of the game and if they have a grid like this it'll take one of your character tokens and place it on the first space each time the ability is triggered move the token forward and potentially gain an experience once you've move it off the grid you lose the card other cards will summon allies which will start helping you on your next turn someone's always act right before you do and follow monster AI taking a move plus zero attack plus zero action every turn with their stats listed on the card that summons them okay so that's it for players a bit player abilities conditions and all that now if you fail the goal of mission or if each of your party members becomes exhausted well the scenario is lost immediately you'll still get hard for much gold you picked up and XP you earned but nothing else however if you've completed the goal of the scenario finish the round and then read the conclusion you'll also an extra XP based on the level of the encounter so check the cheat sheet on the back of the rulebook for how much and you'll get any other rewards that the scenario gives you like new scenarios achievements gold and like to get a new scenario add to the map like we did with the first one if you get a global achievement and add a sticker to the top of the map if you get a party achievement you write it down on this party sheet that I'll talk about in just a few moments because here's the thing Gumi game is about more than just fighting now what I've talked about is like 85% of the game of glue Haven but a lot of what makes it so special is in the campaign and especially the way it handles the characters that you play and when you start a new character you'll take this envelope matching their icon inside will be your character specific player board ability cards attack modifiers and character pad let's look at the character pad first I think name your character something clever you'll use this pad to mark your experience gold items and perks whenever you earn enough XP to level up go back to Glu Haven and then you'll do a couple of things first you'll get a new power at second level you can choose one of the level 2 cards at third you can choose one of the threes or the two that you didn't pick before and so on you'll also earn a perk which you'll choose from the list on the right these mostly add or remove cards from your attack deck but may also grant you passive abilities the Brutes allows them to wear armor without having to add negative cards to his deck and do you remember those battle goals we mentioned earlier well if you complete the scenario and the goal that you selected well you'll get one or two check marks which you'll put here if you get three that earns you a perk now what makes your character especially unique is their personal quests now I'll sometimes joke that your characters have hopes and dreams but in Glu even they really do when you start a character you draw two personal quest cars choose one and keep it secret you'll keep track of your progress as you play the game and when you achieve your goals a couple of things will happen first off read your quest to the other players then you earn a reward which is usually a new character and you increase the city's prosperity by one more on that soon most importantly your character retires that's right you're done with this character all your items in gold go back to the shop and you start playing someone new now it might be hard to let go of your dear sweet beef boy but it's an integral part of the game you'll also earn new city and Road events both for retiring a character and unlocking a new one checking the back of your character boards you'll see which events you unlock from both decks oh also when you're unlocking a new character be careful with these seals because well the pain is real now as you play the game the city of gloom Haven will grow as well certain rewards and events will increase the town's prosperity and if you increased enough the city will level up so to speak this brings two benefits first is that new items will be unlocked in the shop you start with only items one through fourteen available and second is that when you begin a new character you can immediately level them up to whatever the prosperity level is you'll also get some gold to buy items with and earn a perk for each character you've retired over the course of the campaign all these things combined will help get a new character up and running lastly let's talk about what you can do in Glu Haven I've mentioned buying items but there's one more thing to note even with your characters retiring left and right they're still considered part of the same party and that party earns reputation too the choices that you make when you reach certain levels of reputation you know either pay less or more for each item you buy in the shop you can also sell items for half their value round it down but you can't give an item to another player another thing you can do in towns is go to the sanctuary of the great oak pay attend Gold cover charge and you'll get to start your next scenario with two blessings in your attack deck go to the sanctuary ten times in a campaign and you'll get to open an envelope with some cool stuff inside as you can see there are also some other unlockables that you can try to earn I'm cutting a few in my game and they are quite nice lastly you won't have access to this at the beginning of the game but early on you'll earn the power of enhancement which lets you pay an exorbitant amount of money to permanently improve your power cards by adding stickers to them there's a huge chart on page 47 that shows how this all works so I won't go into it in detail but the gist of it is that if there's a dot on a card you can put a sticker there if there's already a sticker on the card if it's a higher level or if it has multiple targets it's more expensive but these stickers stay on the cards even after to retire the character so if you play that class again they retain the enhancement and that's how you play glue Haven mostly there are ends up being a lot of my new show that comes up when certain rules collide with other rules and it would be ridiculous to try and address each of these in a video but if you check in the description box I've included a link to the official FAQ which is exhaustive so if you have a question about something that isn't just a core concept of the game that's a great place to look otherwise if there's anything you're having trouble with or if there's anything I got wrong or left out please let me know in the comments I'll update a corrections list in the description box if and when those come up now and listen there was a big surge of votes after I found this I'm pretty sure the next game I teach will be spirit island which is a game that I've been pushing on people ever since it came out so I am very excited for that in the meantime if you like this video and want to see more videos like it please consider donating to my patreon unless you vote on what game I teach next and gets you access to the exclusive strategy video it's gonna be released next week of course even if you don't do that you'll still be able to see the other two extra gloom Haven videos I'll release in the week if the in the weeks to follow there's going to be about House Rules and party composition I'm pretty sure so make sure to subscribe and watch out for those and you know what that feels like enough self-promotion so I'll see you next time bye [Music]

Channel: RTFM

Views: 688,878

Rating: 4.9447684 out of 5

Keywords: board, game, rules, explanation, learn, to, play, Shea, Parker, RTFM, gaming, rtfm, rftmshow, show, gloomhaven, cephalofair, cephalophair, cefalophair, tutorial

Id: Uw7LI2esvp0

Length: 27min 57sec (1677 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 30 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/RedFacedRacecar]

Great video! One minor mistake, healing a wound condition off WILL restore hit points. Only poison negates the hp gain. You are correct that a single heal will remove both conditions, though.

​

If a target gets healed while under this condition:

• Poison - Negate hp gain, remove condition
• Wound - Remove condition
• Poison AND Wound - Negate hp gain, remove both conditions

[u/RTFMshow]

Sorry for the shameless self-promotion, but I feel like this community would appreciate this video the most. Hope you all like it!

[u/itsnoturday]

Id love to see more videos from rtfm discussing tactics or perhaps reviewing Gloomhaven

[u/fifguy85]

Absolutely fabulous! Great job and good accessible style. I like it. Subscribed!

[u/Chiatroll]

Well done.

I watched your other videos.

I like your videos discount Ryan Reynolds. (still a bargain)