STOP BURNING CARDS!! - Gloomhaven hand management guide

in this video we're going to talk about the math related to card burning in gloomhaven i know it might be a little bit of a boring topic but bear with me this is very useful information a very common mistake that new players use or trap that they fall into is burning cards too often or maybe not often enough not really understanding the value of a burn and how this actually has a massive knock-on effect to your future turns so today we're really gonna dig into this and hopefully you're gonna find it very useful and it might be able to turn those last few rooms that you're doing into a winnable situation when you just wish you had that extra round or you just wish you had that one more turn at the end well maybe we can find that extra turn for you of course if you do enjoy the video please do like and subscribe all that good stuff also come over to twitch.tv slash manage request every monday wednesday and sunday where i stream glue haven and come hang out apart from that let's get into the video first off let's look at the starting card counts for all of the starting mercenaries that you can play you've got the spell weaver with eight the scoundrel with nine brute 10 mind thief 10 cracker 11 and the tinkerer 12. now in the game of gloomhaven you have to play two cards per turn so taking into account each character has to play two cards per turn let's see how quickly each of these characters will be forced to take either a short or long rest action because they won't have enough cards to play the spell weaver will need to do this after four turns the scoundrel after four turns two because nine is an odd number doesn't divide into two brew after five turns my thief after five turns crackheart after five turns again because of the divisible by two and the tinkerer has the most with six as you can see the tinkerer has much more longevity than everybody else due to the extra cards that they have however what's more important here is actually to extrapolate this out to expand this out to see how many max total rounds each character could hypothetically last if always choosing to long rest and only burning cards due to that long rest action while of course still playing the required two cards per turn the spell weaver can last 39 rounds this is including using reviving ether to recover all seven of the other cards so the perfect reviving ether turn scoundrel is 27 rounds brute 33 rounds mind thee for 33 rounds crack heart 39 rounds and tinker has a whopping 46 total rounds of play as you can see this stamina advantage the tinkerer has really compounds over the rounds when you consider you're gonna have to lose a card each time you cycle through your hand with every rest and every burn ability you're bringing yourself closer to needing to rest and of course burn a card again what this also means is that the earlier that you burn these cards for their effect the smaller your hand size becomes the smaller your future hand size becomes so again the closer you will be to your next rest this can seriously speed up your character's clock in a big way and it might be tempting to see all of this information and just conclude that well the tinkerer must be the best character then right as they can go on for so much longer well what you actually achieve in these turns is of course very important and not all cards in gloomhaven are created equally what this really does though is it does open up some more burn opportunities for these characters who have larger hand sizes and potential tanking opportunities for maybe burning a card for damage so i'm going to use a gloomhaven stamina calculator from board game math i will link this down below to help illustrate my points but let's take a look for example at the scoundrel and the effect that burning a card in our first full cycle before we take any kind of rest let's say that we wanted to do a big backstab attack for example in the very first room as soon as we entered a dungeon so for our first three turns we're gonna play as usual no burn ability cards but on our fourth turn we're actually gonna burn a backstab to get in a really nice attack on an enemy maybe kill an enemy this reduces our total cards in our pool now from nine down to eight then we're gonna long rest we have to burn another card as required and then we're going to recover our cards so with that burn we now have a total of seven cards this now means we have three turns before we have to then rest again because we're gonna have that one card that we can't play because we must play two and that will be left in our hand if we then extrapolate this information out by burning just a single card in that first cycle in that first room our total rounds has now reduced to just a maximum of 22 rounds if we always choose to long rest that simple action of burning a card has reduced our longevity in the scenario by a whole five total rounds and if you want to be really super nerdy about it that's 18.5 percent if we also find ourselves having to say burn a card to not to die damage within the first seven rounds of the dungeon this now reduces our scoundrel down to just 18 rounds before exhaustion that's a big 33 reduction you can see how these things can start to compound on top of each other and this can spiral out of control making it very difficult for you to have enough cards to reach the end of the dungeon i also probably don't really need to explain that gloomhaven is rarely straightforward so you will of course be forced to short rest at times or maybe even burn more cards to taking damage or perhaps you want to burn a car to do an attack or to do a loot action this is all going to lower your total maximum of rounds by quite a dramatic amount the earlier that you do them you can also start to see how important stamina potions are to keep you going being able to get you a card maybe when you have an odd size number of cards in hand to give you that extra round it's not just getting back your best cards to be able to use again although many times it is it's also just giving you a little bit more longevity before you have to go for that rest again giving you that extra round so this won't be a big problem though right if the dungeon is only 18 rounds long it's not an issue so it does really beg the question how many rounds is an average dungeon in gloomhaven well that's the magic question really because of course some dungeons are going to be longer than others and the enemy ability rng can also play a big part in this what if occultist summons another living bones for you to defeat if that takes your team an extra two rounds to just get that enemy dead as well that's actually a real tax on your resources and perhaps you might not even have enough cards to be able to deal with that extra living bones that it's summoned one of the reasons why stuns are so important is that it prevents enemy abilities like summons that can put extra enemies on the board for you to have to kill or potentially really big devastating attacks that may cause you to have to burn a card or maybe even two cards to damage there is no real definitive answer for how long an average dungeon is but at the beginning of each scenario you should be checking how many times there are and what your objectives are not every scenario requires you to kill all enemies so be smart with managing your time you should be making a solid progress at pretty much every opportunity except for perhaps long resting and everybody long resting before you open a new door to face a brand new room in my experience four to six rounds per tile is not a bad benchmark to shoot for in a average sized tile let's say so let's be quite broad just for the sake of it and say an average scenario might be four tiles long so it may last you anywhere between 16 to 24 rounds now this number of course varies wildly with the scenario length of course the actual specific objectives you need to achieve and of course the difficulty because that will determine how much health the enemies have so you need to be careful using this as a hard figure but it should give you a very rough measuring stick when trying to figure out if you are at a good pace for how far you are in the dungeon and how much progress you have made and if perhaps you're running a little bit behind or perhaps you're ahead a little bit with your clock so the next question then is really when should you actually use your burn cards well in theory any time that actually burning a card would actually save you stamina and time in the long run big multi-target and aoe style abilities like unstable upheaval on the crack heart trample on the brute fire orbs on the spell weaver ink bomb on the tinkerer they can actually reduce many enemies health very very quickly so that shortens the number of rounds that you might need to play to clear that room and it also reduces the amount of damage you might take from them too so also removing that threat of maybe having to burn a card to damage instead of just uh health because the more damage that you take the more likely you're gonna help it's gonna go down and the more likely it might be that those enemies draw that times two against you and therefore you then need to burn a card so a dead enemy is a good enemy a single target attack could remove a really annoying enemy so if a cultist is summoning or something like that then it could actually be a very good use of a burn but could you also just team up and kill that enemy with two characters in that round or perhaps you could do it over the course of two rounds instead in our example earlier you can see that burning that backstab early reduced our total rounds by five so is killing that enemy right away in the first room worth five total turns well really most likely not in order for a burn to be worth it in my opinion typically it must shorten the potential rounds you have to play or it must give you some great incremental value for the majority of the scenario so for example a great summon that you can protect who will attack for many many rounds that damage starts to add up or potentially a persistent buff that can protect you for multiple rounds or maybe increase your damage output greatly which will also lead to less turns overall too burns that do nothing except extend the game such as large heels big no damage based stuns or some prevent damage effects they can be situationally useful but are mostly very bad value propositions because they do not reduce the number of rounds you need to play they might keep you in the game for a bit longer but they will only temporarily solve a problem you're still gonna have to deal with them the round after and you have to always remember that your stamina is basically a ticking time bomb if you follow this general strategy and this way of playing most of the starting characters can make it over round 20 even including burning some cards along the way when the value makes sense it's hard to put a specific number on how many burns each character can actually support because when you use the burns as we illustrated earlier is much more important than how many burns you use but i have added some good general advice here for the starters and their burns which we'll go through also don't forget you can just burn most of your non-attack cards at the end of a scenario for just xp once you've guaranteed the win so don't really worry about losing out on xp printed on things like summons big moves and loot cards or big heels because once you know you have won you can then just burn those cards get that xp at the end farm a little bit of xp at the scenario end then kill the last enemy comfortably or complete the objective comfortably then go on to your next scenario so you don't feel pressured into just because a card has xp and obviously you want to level up do not feel pressured in having to play some of these actions all the time because well you're going to get yourself into trouble and it's actually going to end up being bad for you so some general advice for the spell weaver spellweaver has reviving ether which does make things a little bit more spicy and interesting for this character but i would say burn on average one card per cycle of your cards you're going to aim to use reviving ether basically at the halfway point of a scenario which is probably going to be approximately round 12 from our previous scenarios obviously certain scenario types this will differ massively and certain objective type based scenarios this will also differ massively you're really just going to have to get a general sense of this character on when to use reviving ether get a good feel for how far are we in a scenario before you try to use it but if you burn on average just one card per cycle you're probably going to be using reviving ether around round 12 and that's probably going to to be good for you on the scoundrel only burn smoke bomb and only burn back stab and only burn those cards in the last room so because this character has such a small hand size they cannot support the burning of those two cards at any point before that and i would also say do not be tempted to burn the bottom of a single out which is the card that gives you a persistent buff every time you attack an enemy that is alone do not do this it is not a good idea definitely keep that card for the top the only two cards you should be burning are smoke bomb and backstab you probably want to use them in combination with each other and you probably want to use them or you should really be only using them in the last room or towards the end of the scenario so for the brute the only two cards i think you should really consider properly burning our warding strength and trample warding strength is gonna be your best level one tanking card or a card that you can use to tank you do not necessarily need to play warning strength in the first room i think you can get by without it initially so you can use the top of it for maybe an attack in the first room and then once you go into the second room that might be a good time for you to play warning strength so certainly not a car that needs to be burned very early on you might consider it it's not terrible to burn it early on but it is also a card you can probably hang on for a little bit and then maybe play it towards the end of room one beginning of room two to get that that value when you open a room trample however i really encourage people to use very aggressively you want to combine it with a pair of boots to give yourself additional movement so you can get some hopefully some additional targets with it you also want to combine it with warhammer to add a stun to the entire action as well and you can use that as a very very aggressive opening turn on the first turn of the game if the enemies are set up nicely for it or you could use it as a really good room opening card maybe for the second or third room in a scenario depending on what kind of enemies are in there and if there's good value for it so the my thief actually has no notable time to use any of her burn cards she really is all about using the bottom of perverse edge with that stun and then using the top of frigid apparition the following turn to consume the ice to stun again being able to combo two stuns off over different rounds it's very very powerful stopping enemies from doing anything damaging you summoning doing anything that could be very annoying she does have some notable burn cards which is empathetic assault and some of the summons i think empathetic assault is a great card to use towards the end of a scenario when you really just need to disarm an enemy at range and do some damage try and get some extra damage in there they maybe they've they're very difficult for you to get to can be a very good use of a car to stop them from attacking as well the summons i don't think the summons are actually particularly great but you can play a summon quite early and still get away with it it is not going to ruin your action economy it's not going to make it so that you're going to exhaust really really quickly if you do making a summon fairly early is not too bad i would very very very very strongly advise people from burning perverse edge top or frigid apparition bottom as i said earlier they really need to be combo together and that is the power level of this character in combination with the mind's weakness augment that's where the power level of this character lies she's very powerful with that if you burn those two cards not only are you burning a card with perverse edge but you are also then burning a potential stun in a future turn which could stop an enemy from attacking you and then forcing you to burn another car due to damage burning that stun is actually a very big mistake and i have seen a few players do it recently so bear that in mind that is not a card you ever want to burn for the top and frigid apparition you may consider burning it for the bottom if the situation makes sense and it's towards the end of a scenario for the crackheart unstable upheaval is a huge big damage aoe that i love especially in combination with forceful storm bottom which actually gives it plus two buff but also they have crater for positioning and for some potential damage i like actually using crater to try and position my stuff for the unstable upheaval backup ammunition is also a very popular burn which i think you can use going late into the second room if time permits i certainly wouldn't be forcing back up ammunition in at any point i would be waiting for a good opportune time maybe you have a little bit of down time between two rooms make sure you still have backup ammunition in your hand just in case that happens and then you can play backup ammunition move towards the door long rest and you're all set up ready to go i do encourage players to use unstable upheaval and crater fairly aggressively you also can burn the top of forceful storm for a big disarm aoe if the situation arises that character is pretty similar to the mind thief in the sense that you're going to have a lot of cards that actually you're just going to want to play again and again and again you're not always going to want to burn but you do have that unstable upheaval forceful storm and crater for three very very good impactful burns early on so tinkerer who's got the most cards well you've got net shooter ink bomb and flamethrower three really good aoe attacks whenever those two or three hex patterns kind of start to emerge and it really makes sense for you to do it because you think that you can finish some enemies off then then's a pretty good time to do it you do have to be a little bit careful about losing some of your movement so ink bomb has a great movement on the bottom and so does net shooter so if you do lose those early on in the scenario you might struggle a little bit with your movement but net shooter can also immobilize some enemies so stop them from being able to attack you which then what might mean that you might end up having to burn a car to damage if they were going to attack you right so next you just also got that use so just use these when it makes sense and the great thing about playing the tinkerer is that even if you were to burn one and instead of targeting the three things you only targeted two things that's not the end of the world because of those 12 cards that you started with potent postables is another quite nice little healing one that i don't mind playing mid to end of scenario definitely not one you want to play in the first room definitely not one you even want to maybe play second room it's going to be towards the end of a scenario you're gonna look to maybe play potent potables it can be very useful when used with the bottom of restorative mist actually increasing that to a move three without you having to give up a top action so perhaps you could also attack while doing some healing on some friendly allies so very good one of the best things about the tinker as well is your ability to help other players recover discarded and maybe even lost cards this is a way that you can trade off your very large hand size to another player's very small hand size so keep track of this and you should certainly be targeting certain players who have maybe smaller starting hand sizes to help them get their cards back over maybe your friends who have got lots and lots of cards that they can use and get back try and refrain from using the summons or the traps that this character has because really well they're a bit of a trap it's a bit too much setup for what it does it seems good it's quite hard to make it trigger and the fact that the proximity mine in particular doesn't even give you xp until it actually goes off so it's not even a very good reliable source of xp so stay away from that card that is a trap burn for sure in both senses of the word and summons as well the summons are a little bit underwhelming on this character as fun as they might be i would try and avoid using the summon actions until maybe right at the end of the scenario and you've already sort of locked up the win so i hope you found that information useful i don't think you always necessarily need to be playing gloomhaven with a calculator or with your head in a spreadsheet trying to figure out the best min max ways of playing it's just good to have some awareness of what your actions are really doing in the state of the game and how these have a knock-on effect so hopefully this just brings a little bit of awareness to it i certainly don't play by this all the time and think about this constantly when i play i just have this in the general sense of my mind and with experience and with the amount that i've played a lot of this just comes naturally now that i get a good sense of when is the right time to use a card and certainly if you play more you will also get to pick this up and you will start to really understand like the flow of the game and really that does come with experience and i don't think you should maybe take this really really super seriously but i do think that it could explain perhaps why some people have not been having a great success and seem to be losing many scenarios if you did enjoy the video please do toss it a like and subscribe or come over to twitch.tv manage requests where i stream regularly on mondays wednesdays and sunday also there's a link down below to the sheet that i use to get this stat so if you do want to dig into the maths yourself i will put a link down below i'll also put a link to my tools spreadsheet so if there's any extra information that you want about monsters and different things like that i have now actually added monster abilities to the sheet so if you want to see all the different monster abilities in the game and the different initiatives that they can go on and their stat sheets then that's all now in the tool sheet too okay well apart from that thank you all so much for watching i will catch you in the next one bye i think so [Laughter] isaac at this point can we get your approval to add an additional attack modifier deck for allies in the digital version

Channel: MandatoryQuest

Views: 86,107

Keywords: Gloomhaven, Gloom haven, Gloomhaven digital, Steam, PC, MAC, Co-op, Guide, Tutorial, How to, Strategy, Tips, Burning cards, Exhuastion, beginner guide, basics, Tinkerer, Brute, Spellweaver, Cragheart, Scoundrel, Mindthief

Id: _hlS8NVWIY0

Length: 24min 36sec (1476 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 28 2021