UPDATED Frosthaven Banner Spear full review

hey editor mq here a couple of you might have noticed i actually have published this video already and i published it with some incorrect information and i thought it was really important that i clarified this there's actually been a change to the way that summons use granted movement essentially in frosthaven so in gloomhaven the rule was unless it specifically said on the card that you get to control a summon when granting them an action they would just do things to do with monster focus now this is something that has obviously changed and we i wasn't aware of the change entirely however a lot of you in the comments mentioned it to me and people in the discord so i really appreciate people pointing this out because i think that this rule is a big change and actually makes this character much more powerful than i initially envisioned i thought it was powerful already but now that you can basically control everything using your move ally abilities and move your summons around very very easily then now you should have no problem setting up a lot of these different formations or at least a lot less of an issue so i really thought it was important to kind of clarify that and i wanted to pre-load this video a little bit with this information because the back end information of this video in some places i will not mention this but actually i think i can't understand enough how powerful some of these abilities are so i wanted to set the record straight and come on and make sure the information is right because worst thing i want to do is to have a video up with some poor information for you guys and i really want you to have as much information as possible going into frost statement the cards this really really affects i'll put a list of the cards up here as well uh while we do this but level one combined effort uh level one regroup level two pinning charge level four boldening blow and level eight taunting how all of these cards have bottom abilities on them that allow you to grant allies movement and these are gonna be super super important for setting up your formations because now you can actually control that movement of those summons and make sure that they get to the places that you wanted to do which is a change that has definitely changed from original gloomhaven i feel like in general the move threes that you can get are going to be super super powerful so the ones actually move free are probably going to be the difference here between you being able to get them to the other side of an enemy you know sneak around the back for the pincer movement style formations those are going to be really key and i think although most of the time i do recommend the card anyway and i think that the top attacks are pretty good i think it is really really worth me saying here at the front of the video and clearing that up that this change of the rule is quite important but now essentially this character is pretty much insane i think and paired with the bone shaper it's gonna be a real power duo i think going forward into frost damon so this character plus the bone shaper is just gonna be nuts so yeah definitely a very powerful character and one that i think a lot of people are gonna like okay future mq out back to past mq you guys know the drill by now please consider liking the video and subscribing if you do enjoy the content i'm going to be doing a frost haven first impressions look and full look at the final cards and posts for all of the characters i already have gemini and death walker done so you can check them out on the channel down below and also i will be doing all of the other ones in the upcoming week so stay tuned for those i also stream regularly on twitch at twitch.tv manage request every monday wednesday and sunday so come hang out maybe play some gloomhaven digital with me live on sundays where we do community save sunday or just ask any questions have a good chat about the foster having classes there's lots to discuss at the moment it's a very exciting time to be a gloomhaven or frosthaven fan so yeah come and hang out and have some fun there okay i won't keep you any longer let's jump into the human banner spear so the banner spears starting character in of frosthaven is a fairly tanky front line type character whose unique mechanic is formations which require your allies to be basically in kind of aoes so it's using the same aoe mechanic for different attacks and abilities like we know of before from gloomhaven and we've seen in loads of characters however now we have this blue hex which depicts where an ally must be in order for us to perform these attacks or these abilities so you can still orientate it in different ways however this must always be the kind of correct orientation if you like so you can mirror it you can flip it however you must still have an ally in these blue hexes but apart from that it remains pretty much exactly the same so your position is the gray hex and the red hexes depicts the enemies that you can attack or you can attack any number of enemies that are in those red hexes so quite a simple mechanic here but it is interesting and it does build on a existing mechanic that players are probably already familiar with if you've come from gloomhaven another unique thing that the banner spear gets is banner summons so these are summons that she can put down that give buffs to your party from where they are these can also work for the purposes of being your allies and summons do count as allies in the game so this can help you set up your formations as well but also these are quite nice things to put in middles of rooms or behind the uh the front lines to be able to buff you and all of your allies up as you perform your actions and these although don't have any movement can be moved through other effects and the banner spear can also move these so those are the sort of the two unique mechanics if you like you're going to have these banner summons and you're going to have these formations that you're trying to do you also have a repeatable summon which is the reinforcement summon which is quite nice so this is one that can either do a little bit of tanking for you so you can just plonk it down and it could maybe eat an attack which would be quite nice also you can just use it to obviously set up your formations and because it's a non-burn summon it will go to your discard when it dies or if you choose to discard it and then it will go back into your hand for you to play again and this is another unique thing from frosthaven having replayable summons that wasn't a thing in uh basically having a normal gloomhaven so it's good to see here and the banner spear can definitely use these now in terms of a good party composition for her i think really she could work in in any real party the inclusion of the reinforcement summon and the banner summons mean that she should be able to create these formations when needed or without too much help needed from other characters but of course if you are playing with you know four players and you have summons as well maybe someone's playing the bone shaper you're gonna have lots more opportunity maybe to set up these formations in an easier way if you like although i don't think that she is unplayable uh with two players or with three players because she's definitely self-sufficient i do think that generally characters who buff other characters and also care about positioning of other characters are always going to be generally better in larger parties she starts with 10 cards and 10 health 10 cards is neither big nor small that's kind of right in the medium area there the 10 health is uh the most we see from a starting character kind of health from characters so far however that's not to say there might be unlockable characters in frost haven that have more but 10 health is high and that is good so this character would be considered to be a tanky character so you can see from the chart that melee support and defense are our top three attributes with defense being our best attribute it's unclear to me at the moment whether or not they are taking into account the fact that a summon could just take an attack and kind of mitigate some damage as part of the defense statistic this character though does have a lot of shield so i feel like this does pretty well represent what it is that they can do i do think they have more ranged abilities than perhaps this gives off initially and there is definitely some interesting ranged attacks that this character gets so that's worth bearing in mind but i feel like this is pretty representative and our elemental affinities is air which is nice because we can consume and use air on certain abilities and our complexity is too okay let's take a look at the cards first card we have is at all cost which is heal three target all allies very good but we do have a slight downside here which is that we're going to suffer one damage for each ally whose hit point value increased with the heal ability the reason this is worded like this is that technically all allies would be targeted and you can still heal allies even though they may be at full health so this is obviously to not really hurt you for not doing any physical healing right i think this is very good obviously this scales really well with the party that you're playing with if you're only playing two-player then i think that this is probably pretty underwhelming if it's just you and one other mercenary maybe a summon as well at the same time and summons generally have quite low health especially the replayable summons so actually healing them is not needed or not possible because they only have one health anyway or two health it's they're basically dead if you were to take four or five damage obviously that's quite bad with this character so i think that at all costs might be better in the later levels potentially rather than at level one because obviously if you were to heal up three or four uh allies who ordered lost health then that's four damage and you only start with 10 health so that's already you down to uh to half health pretty much and also you might have already taken damage from enemies as well so the bomb here is summon reinforcement which is one health and two move now this is basically the really big piece if you like for this character that i feel like most people are going to use or need to use in order to set up your formations especially considering that it is a bottom summon action uh this is 60 initiative which is not great but as we know most summons do have late initiatives this is kind of slightly in the middle there though so hopefully we can maybe pair this with an earlier attack but the idea here is that because it's on the bottom of a card we can summon this reinforcement in the hex next to us which immediately uh gives us that formation bonus and fulfills that ally requirement for us on an attack and then we can go and attack the two move i think is is okay the fact that we control the movements of this summon though is really what sets this out with the move two that means that we can actually ensure that it's going to go somewhere that we want or we can hide it or we can get it to go to an enemy to tank an attack for us when we don't want to take an attack that just really really gives you a lot of flexibility so as an early game summon that not only helps this character sort of get going i think it actually does a really good job of just tanking and just doing other useful things because the fact that you can control the movement is quite unique that's not something you would normally get obviously a complete role player for this character but actually has a lot of situational other use too so at all costs this is like the slam dunk card for me that i think every player is going to play with regardless of build pretty much unless of course you have some other way that you have allies that can fill that requirement for you but even then i think that this reinforcement is just so good for a non-burn summon being able to control that movement put them where you want them block enemies off that will cost a great start to this character a really really solid card one that we we're absolutely taking every time next we have rallying cry which is attack three with disarm on the top wow you know disarm really really strong and we see here our first formation or our first sort of aoe pattern that we need to try and fulfill and this is why that movement is so important on this uh summon however as you probably notice here this is one that we can't actually do a one turn setup for because we would have to summon this reinforcement in a hex adjacent to us and this actually is a pincer style movement so this requires us to be either side of an enemy this is us this is our ally and this is the enemy right so it's a little bit different it's um not one that we can set up immediately but this is a an amazingly powerful effect an attack three with disarm if we can reliably do this this is just mvp kind of control and i like the fact now that we're going to get this kind of effect but this this setup could be difficult and you're going to get rewarded very well for for this setup so riley and cry top amazing however trying to do this this could be tricky this is one of the more tricky ones i would imagine to do just because if for example there's lots of enemies in the room perhaps they set up in front of you and you know you don't have jump on your allies so your ally might get blocked behind enemies or behind traps things like that behind obstacles it's going to be more difficult to do this pincer style movement for sure 71 initiative is is bad for this kind of effect right we want to be able to go early to disarm an enemy so they don't do anything you don't really want to be disarming late in a round because you don't know what the enemy's going to do next round they could just do a shield and retaliate they could just do a heel action they could do a summon action right yeah you can stun late and that means that they won't take a turn later and that's generally just good that's generally speaking that's just good but disarm is definitely something where you want to play early see what the flips are and then try and go and get that enemy however with this pattern i don't think you're going to be able to just pick and choose hey we're going to go over there and disarm the most awkward and the most difficult this definitely nerfs this ability down to hey we have the opportunity to disarm something let's go and do it rather than it be i'm going to play my disarm and i'm going to walk up to the worst enemy in the room that round you know that has the worst card flip and just disarm it so i feel like this is quite a nice balancing of disarm because it's difficult to set up and it also means you can't just pick and choose the exact target every time that you want to disarm two we do have a summon on the bottom here which is summoned banner of strength which is four health no move no attack no range but all allies in range two add plus one attack to one of their attacks each turn this is a two xp summon and it goes out and it's a burn so it would be a loss once it dies now this is obviously super super strong and i think it balances the two halves of the card you've got a very very good top here but you kind of want to play whenever you can we've also got this really really nice buff potentially on this banner of strength at the bottom the fact that you can only add it once to each of your attacks is i guess kind of like a significant kind of uh nerf in in that sense like it's not uh completely broken if it was plus one to all of our attacks that would be crazy good for health means that it might be able to withstand an attack or two and this character is going to have the ability to move summons as well so we can move these summons around there's a chance that we can get the banner of strength to move with us into another room or maybe to bridge two rooms i don't think that banner of strength is a turn one style summon where you want to play it very early because i said the top of this is so strong however this is going to be a great way to maybe finish off some troublesome enemies in a room and you know fight bosses and elites and stuff like that and also it's just a really good alternative option to people for people who maybe can't get this formation going for whatever reason maybe the scenario just doesn't suit it maybe you're just struggling to do it and you've actually got a really good summon on the bottom here that's just going to help your team out anyway that you can plonk down so rallying cry a really great card uh definitely an auto include i think for most players so next up we have unbreakable walls this is attack three with push one and you can see that it's like it is literally a wall pattern for the aoe now this is the very very easy pattern for us to achieve we can obviously summon right next to us and then we can immediately uh do this however with all of these enemies here like this it might be a little bit tricky if we were to go late and this is 83 initiative i do think initiative is going to play a really big part in this character being successful or not so we're going to have to look at some options for that because we haven't had a good initiative yet and also if we wanted to summon that 60 initiative potentially into this and we may not be able to get this because perhaps this enemy has walked to here or perhaps this enemy is walked to here actually getting all three targets with this i think is quite difficult however it's probably pretty reasonable to try and get two so i like this and attack three with push one maybe push them into a trap push them away from you be able to separate yourselves from them a little bit i think is is nice you're always pretty happy to see push because it's just gonna give you some a little bit of versatility on what you can do so the bottom here is shield one and all of our ranged attacks have minus one range but this is two xp this is a permanent effect and this is a burn okay so historically in gloomhaven these have always been very good you can't enhance this one unlike another unlockable character in gloomhaven that you could actually enhance this to make this two but this has always been a very powerful effect very very powerful effect and in terms of our ranged attacks having minus one range i don't really foresee this character being a big ranged character at least it wasn't by going on the charts so it's not a huge drawback certainly not as much of a drawback as what we had on the unlockable gloomhaven class i would say this is uh very strong so you've got a good attack here on the top that i think maybe a bit tricky to set up and the initiative certainly doesn't help but you've got a very very good tanking ability on the bottom here and one that as soon as you see this you know that your role is going to be front line taking hits i think it's worthwhile for the burn unbreakable wall great this is obviously going to be something that if you plan on going tanking with this character this is an absolute auto include at the bottom of this for sure next we have javelin which is attack three at range three so here is a ranged attack and create air so if we were to use unbreakable wall this would only be range two which is a significant downside i would say the difference between range two and range three is pretty big for an average size room on a tile i would say you can pretty much position yourself nicely with range three but range two does make things a little bit awkward create air as well we don't know what's going to consume it yet but being able to create an element is always kind of good and this could just feed another character i'm thinking of the geminate which i've just reviewed this could feed someone like the geminate an element that they could use if this character doesn't use them too much 21 initiative that's our lowest initiative so far which we like to see i think that's gonna be super important and the bomb is move one and pull two at range three now that is is nice i think we're gonna want some pull with this character because we're going to want to try and set up these formations in good ways being able to control the movement and the positioning of enemies is going to be really important so this character is definitely going to benefit from push and pull for sure because this isn't a a tank this doesn't actually count for the purposes of this it's just an ability not an attack so you you don't lose the range here so that's important to say you're really happy at level one to just play an attack three range three that is basically the baseline of an attack at level one for a ranged attack in gloomhaven and the fact that it creates an element a cherry on top if you like and i think the bottom is a very usable card for setting up your formations and 21 initiative is great too so yeah javelin i think is going to be an auto include card for for everybody next up we have deflecting maneuver which is attack two consume air so there's that air consume to get plus one attack and advantage and then all attacks targeting you this round gain disadvantage that's on 15 initiative two wow that's pretty decent attack three with advantage at level one and you get a little additional benefit there with the disadvantage um on attacks for you i think that's really that's really quite good definitely playable with advantage at level one obviously and it's not going to be as good as advantage will be higher levels so when your attack modifier deck is normal this is maybe going to give you an additional point of damage you're happy to have it but it's not as broken as perhaps it could be at later levels where advantage and you have a very finely tuned deck it's going to be interesting though how advantage ends up sort of shaking up in frost haven because obviously we have lots of perks now that aren't specifically about the attack modifier deck we have perks that are just buffs and different bonuses to our characters in different ways which i think is really interesting but it does definitely devalue advantage as an ability because characters are not going to be going for just improving their attack modifier deck right out of the gate every time definitely strong and a good use of that element that we just generated so it leads very nicely into uh into that the bottom is shield too this shield only applies to ranged attacks interesting so this is quite unique shield two but only against ranged attacks this is like pretty good i think in certain scenarios this is going to be a lifesaver against archers and some like shamans and things like that uh living spirits this would have to be a burn if it was to maybe just give you shield two for the whole round or it would require like an element generation or something it would require some hoops to jump through i think or some significant downside if it was uh shield to everything so i kind of like it the top is a very good attack i think and gives you that disadvantage that enemies get against you too which was like a little bit of tanking as well actually quite late and this pairs really nicely with the disarm actually because you could disarm a melee enemy that's obviously right in front of you and is trying to get you and then you can follow up with with this to be able to shield up against those ranged enemies that you can't disarm that are behind you and you can do it all on 15 initiative yeah i like it i think the deflecting maneuver i think is a very solid card next we have tip of the spear which is attack three ps3 now that's interesting that's good and we have this kind of uh this nice pattern here where the the summon is behind us and we're in front or the the ally sorry is behind us and we're in front and it's the two hexes in front of us so it's kind of a little bit like some of the brute cards from level one it's that kind of same kind of uh pattern if you like that kind of spear or javelin style pattern and i think this is pretty good uh being able to ps3 means that this car is actually going to be really relevant for many levels to come it's going to be useful not just at level one but it's going to be useful as you start to level up and then more enemy skid shield but also it's going to be great against stuff like living spirits um if they exist in frost haven it's interesting to see that we've been getting a lot of psps definitely seems to be used more freely in frosthaven i've noticed versus it was in gloomhaven pierce was something that not many characters did get or it was more difficult to get so generally speaking it used to be kind of like pure damage or true damage was our best tool that we could use against enemies that had shield pierce was obviously great with like piercing bow and some like big attacks but it wasn't always the best and most reliable tool but it feels like pierce is being used a little bit more in frosthaven and that's been kind of confirmed by some of the playtesters that there are more shields in frosthaven so pierce is quite rightly going to be used more this is a very easy one to set up to with our summon right or someone behind us we could summon them directly behind us if we wanted to and just immediately do this obviously the initiative's not great for that but it's something that is possible so this is one of the easier ones to do one of the easier formations to make happen so i like it i think this is pretty nice an easy one to do and a really good attack so this is going to be really really useful a 67 initiative as we said is not great and it's a bit underwhelming and disappointing but we've got move four on the bottom move four is always going to be playable i think i say that every time i see a v4 move four always going to be playable in gleam and frost haven whatever haven you're playing mu4 is great so yeah you're taking this card probably just for the move four alone to be honest but this is actually a really solid top attack that's useful as well so yeah tip of the spear another good one next we have combined effort which is attack three and wound and another fairly easy pattern to do here combined effort it makes sense we're just next to each other with the enemy in between like this is a very simple one again we can just summon here and immediately attack and actually on 32 initiative that might be a little bit more doable this is certainly one that uh is very very easy to do very very simple so i like that this is going to be one that's going to be a go-to i think feeling that i get so far is this one is going to be your every single round you're going to be playing this and you're going to be able to achieve this because this is just an incredibly simple pattern to do with an ally especially if you've got the summons out or even if you're playing with somebody else in your party like one of the other fellow mercenaries who is a melee style character they're also just going to end up in positions like this so this is going to be super super simple so this is a a certified guaranteed one i think in my opinion and attack 3 and wound is a is a good effect wound is great so yeah nice one xp too those two initiative as we said is great that's nice to see it's not the earliest it could be but certainly early enough that we could maybe go after certain enemy types with this and they won't get a chance to act before we attack the bottom is move two grand two allies within range to move two so this is one of the ways that we can move either our banners or our reinforcement round a little bit more and the cool thing about this is that because it's on the bottom this could set up maybe one of our other formations right so you know we don't maybe we don't want to play this because we've already wounded and maybe we want to get the disarm going this could really help us get that disarm and really enable us to be able to do that and also can just help out your buddies sometimes too if you've got slower buddies and mercenaries in your party who struggle maybe to get between rooms then this is another way you could just help them out so combined effort this is a this is going to be i think the one of the most used cards for this character i think at early levels for sure the bottom is just solid movement for you and being able to position any allies where you need them or perhaps where they want to go and that will set up most of your formations it feels like and yeah the top is just a an attack you're always happy to do in a very very simple one to to do as well so combined effort yep really really solid card so set for the charge whenever an enemy moves or teleports from a hex not adjacent to you oop spoiler alert enemies can teleport this round that enemy suffers two damage so whenever an enemy moves or teleports from a hex not adjacent to you to a hex adjacent to you this round that enemy suffers two damage so this is quite this could be quite good especially if they are all disarmed so if an enemy is disarmed they will naturally move towards you because they will have like a melee focus as per monster focus rule so as long as that hasn't changed then potentially you're gonna have enemies just moving towards you and taking two damage this is kind of good and with a little bit of setup this could be quite nice bottom here is move four but wow look at that initiative sixth initiative there it is that's the one we were looking for sixth initiative or with a move four it's easy easy playable this will probably be played all the way up to level nine to be honest six initiative with move four i pretty much does everything that most characters especially melee characters need to do you need to get towards enemies or away from enemies early you know you even need to get close to them early or you need to get away from them early right and this does both of those things and the top i think is kind of situationally pretty cool and a nice little effect so yeah set for the charge is 100 a card you're going to play at level 1 and maybe even all the way up to level nine because six initiative move four is very very good pincer movement is attack five with a model and it is a little pincer is our formation here so enemy in uh actually directly in the middle here and us either side so it was slightly different to the disarm one the disarm when we were off off center here so i like this i think this is again one of the harder ones to set up which is probably why it's a bit bigger an attack that would explain why we do get the benefit for this but again if we can if we can use this and we can set this stuff up we should hopefully be um be able to do these so i like this the model is a is a nice effect you're not super over the moon about but muddle can be quite nice can save you some damage so you're definitely not um turning your nose up at a muddle harder pattern to set up but the reward is an attack five so yeah i quite like that the bottom is move one and loop one and i guess i can't skirt over that initiative 69 nice essentially the move one and the loop one is it's okay it's not great it doesn't mean that you could kill something and maybe move towards something loot something that's left over sometimes you're going to want to move one this is probably on the weaker side in terms of a loot because it's only move one you can enhance this which is interesting but i don't i don't ultimately feel like that would be a great value enhancement here this is just okay for a bottom you're going to need loot cards loot cards are a necessity in gloomhaven and in frosthaven in frost having they might even be more of a necessity for gaining supplies for your camp it's needed but the top here is really really strong so i've yet to see a bad card with this character it has to be said so next we have regroup which is heel two range two with regenerate now that's pretty nice being able to do a little heal and then add the regenerator so that character can keep healing on their turns that's really nice i would probably want to do this to myself though i feel like if we're the tank or if we're going to end up being the main tank then that's something that we would like to do but of course we could throw this on an ally who's maybe got themselves in trouble or needs to run away there's other options that we have for that or of course chuck it onto one of our banners if our banner has taken a hit that could be quite nice yeah regroup i think in terms of heels i probably value this a little bit higher i think than heel three range three it's going to be very interesting to see how much health you realistically can heal with that effect and that's going to be something we'll learn through playing but in theory if you are a character who stays towards the back and maybe comes up every now and again maybe ends up taking a little bit of damage maybe he gets hit with a target two attack or something like that every now and again maybe you should be able to heal up to full health with something like this so i think for those purposes and those reasons alone i think i would probably like this a bit better than say a heel three range three and also the fact that it could remove poison so if you've got poisons and then every turn it could just remove the poison for you as long as obviously you're not taking damage it's it's really quite interesting so yeah regroup top i think it's it's very solid 25 initiative as well is great means that maybe you could use the top here and put it on an ally before they take their turn the bomb is grant two allies within range three move free so this is another big big way for you to set up formations this one however you do have to start in the right spot so you would have to be in the right spot and then you can move your allies around to to suit what you need for your top attack so i like this i think this is really good 25 initiative as well which is great because it pairs well with some of these really um like really really late initiatives on these attacks right so this actually gives us some good opportunity to still be able to go kind of early in order to do this so i really like it i think this is strong again another good card this is going to be a difficult character to decide which cards to take because again so far all of them have a really good purpose i think and have a really good use for this character so our first x card is resolved courage which is attack three immobilized on all three hexes in front of us with an ally behind wow this could be really good ten initiative as well wow yeah we could make the summon for example behind us and then we could maybe immobilize everything obviously that's not really a great use of this because then these enemies will just attack you i think realistically what you want to do is you want to attack her and you want to move away right so then they're essentially those enemies hopefully won't be able to attack you if they're melee enemies this is good this is really solid it's going to be interesting to see how easy this is going to be to set up though and how useful it's going to be because of course getting that summon there might be a bit tricky because you end up having to use your bottom let's say we were to use the move to and then grant to allies range too that could be like quite nice but again we would have to start our turn in the right place to then do the attack and then we would move away and then maybe we could move the ally away yeah it's i guess that the difficulty with this one is that trying to get allies into the right place is gonna be gonna be tricky this character is definitely gonna need to communicate really clearly with the other mercenaries in your party you're gonna be constantly asking the other people in your party like where are you moving to this round can you end your turn there you know please could somebody end their turn here all of those kinds of things what kind of initiative are you guys going on the play of your initiative and your positioning is going to be so so important in playing this character well it's not going to be rocket science to play and it's not going to be the most difficult to get your head around to play if you fail at doing this for whatever reason enemy does something unexpected your allied is something unexpected then this could break down fairly quickly and could actually be a bit frustrating you definitely need to be good at doing this and able to do these kinds of things but the payoff is there which i like i like it when the payoff is there something that's slightly hard to do but once you do it you me you get that payoff and and this is a this immobilizes a great payoff for trying to get this now the bomb is at plus one attack to the next attack ability performed by you or an adjacent ally this round wow that's good and it's the attack ability as well so it would actually attack everything yeah this is great i think you probably want to do it to yourself and with some of your really good your really good formations i think that's where i'm at for this character another great card i don't really know how i'm gonna get this down to ten cards i'm really liking the options that's available to this character i really really am and you're gonna have certain formations maybe that you feel more comfortable so maybe you end up taking those but i really like the fact that you have some situational cards like for example you don't necessarily really need to take like this attack 3 ps3 is not always going to be great right sometimes you're going to be against enemies and they don't have any shields so it's just attack three but attacks me against two enemies is still pretty good and move four is still really good this characters can have a lot of difficult decisions when it comes to your uh your hand when you uh go on missions because you're gonna have so many good cards at level one to really think about and to to plan around next we have incendiary throw this is attack one at range three if the target suffers damage from this attack the target and all enemies adjacent to this target gain wound wow okay create fire as well that makes sense throwing a little molotov cocktail or something in there obviously the thing with this is that it's if the target suffers damage from this attack so when you're attacking one obviously if you're attacking to shield then this is not very good you're already at a disadvantage right you're already at a position where you need to draw positives if you're against a non-shielded enemy then great but you could still draw your minus one your minus two or your miss early levels which could be bad you either want to buff it or you want to have advantage to make sure that it actually does some damage because just throwing it i think literally it's kind of like you're just tossing and tossing this incendiary and just hoping i don't think is maybe the wisest way to play so actually this could be a really good candidate for that buff we've just seen right this buff i think could take this over because then what that does is that actually means that if you were to draw any of your minus ones then you still end up doing at least one point of damage which will do this against shielded um sorry non-shielded enemies it's going to be interesting because this card i think will be could potentially be mvp early game and potentially as you start to level up this card's gonna really fall off very very quickly as soon as enemies start getting shield it's just gonna be a nightmare unless you have some way of buffing it and some way of gaining advantage you do have though which is quite nice a nice um enhancement dot here see there's some potential to enhance this to something pretty broken triangle is the one where you can actually enhance negative effects so there's some good options here you know you might have to sink some resources into this but obviously if you could wound a lot of enemies in a single attack that's very very strong very very strong indeed so oh incendiary throw is a spicy one it's a tasty one for sure create fire now we haven't um we don't consume fire ourselves but obviously there is some really good synergy with the germinate character with this so that's worth worth mentioning 22 initiative is also good so that means that we can possibly do this attack when we want it the bottom is summon torch bearer which is five health to move one attack with wound and this is a burn summon how do i feel about this one i think this one is kind of just okay i don't think this is a great summon the wound is obviously pretty nice and it's going to be nice to have summons out as this character so whereas before i might evaluate summons more in the vacuum of is this summon good value i think if you just looked at the the raw stats of this summon i would say not really mainly because it's a melee which immediately gives a knock to it five health is better than than some but it's really only two to three attacks maybe maybe even less and the two move is pretty um bad but then you have to take this character in the con this summon in the context of the character and the character has a lot of ways to move allies around a lot of ways to position them so torchbearer might end up being actually a really usable summon for this character just because of that and the top of incendiary throw i think is it's got me interested and i know that if i could reliably do this i'd be extremely happy but can you reliably do it and i think that's um that's an interesting kind of question that this this card poses so i actually like this again like another good card so this character has a lot of options i'll say it again so our last x card and our last card available to us at level one is attack two range for create light now that's not a it's not a bad attack necessarily but it's not a great attack either you're kind of trading i guess the uh the three attack for the four range right the baseline as we said before is attack three range three at level one and create an element that's good so this is a little bit different it's a little bit different i i guess i would rather have the attack than the range most of the time however let's bear in mind that if we are playing the shield build then this would actually be range three so this would be attack two range three which then is obviously below the power level that we were expecting or hoping for but it does generate lights which is a an element that we don't care about again though an element that the geminate really cares about so perhaps this character could pair really nicely with the gemini actually starting to see some really good synergy with that character and this character especially considering that that character as well wants to move up and be a melee attack for half of their turns too so i feel like there's some really nice play between those two that could happen uh 18 initiative very good uh that's what we like to see summon banner of hope is the bottom four health with no move no attacker no range again because it's a banner and it says at the start of their turns grant allies within range three kill one self i would say you want to play this during the mid part of a scenario you want to play this when things start to go a little bit wrong but you've also kind of done your damage and stuff this one certainly cares a lot more about allies in order to get value out of this you really need to be healing a decent amount each round now there are unlockable characters in gloomhaven that have access to a very similar effect to this it is different but but similar and the range is quite big range three that means that if you were to put this down in the middle of a room chances are most allies will be within range of it on the kind of average size tile however you still have to be within range of it which means that some characters do maybe have really long range or for example once you move into the next room this guy's gonna get left behind so this is one that you want to move with you i think it's pretty strong though is it as good as the attack one uh i would say it's probably on sort of par with the attack one if the attack one wasn't just once i would think that it would be better obviously but the fact that this one is at the start of their turn to grant all allies within range three this could be a lot of healing if you've got a big party and kind of fulfills that support kind of heal role quite nicely also against enemies that just poison you or wound you every single round with their attacks this is super super good really really good really good as well against uh brittle now because brittle can be removed through heal so that's something so potentially again another another one that has a really good synergy with the gemini the bomb of this has great synergy with the gemini the gemini would love to have that effect at the beginning of each of their turns definitely so yeah driving inspiration another good card so there you go that's all of the cards at level one and i have to say that i would struggle to pick 10 out of that i think they're all very very good and you've got a lot of options to be able to choose the ones that you feel more comfortable with or the ones that you think work best with your party comp okay on to level two so level two we have pinning charge which is attack two range three we can consume air to add plus one range and immobilize to the attack which is pretty nice attack two range four with a mobilize add plus one attack for each ally adjacent to the target that's a bit of a weird one at plus one attack for each ally adjacent to the target hmm not sure how i feel about that one feels a little bit counterintuitive to us a little bit considering that we're probably the melee character who's in there hitting things or i think that that's generally what we want to try and do that's a little bit odd obviously the plus one for each ally means that it scales very well with larger party sizes so if you're playing only two player even with some summons i think this is probably less worth it if you're playing four player then with with summons then this could be an additional maybe two maybe even three i felt like the cutoff for that plus one is probably going to end up being two though for most average attacks so let's say you could attack something for three or four at range four with a mobilize is that good it is very good and 17 initiative two means that you can do it before the uh enemy gets a chance to move i feel like it's uh it's a bit weird it's kind of like a little bit at odds as to what i feel like this character is is doing i feel like we want to be in the enemy's face doing our formations as our top but you i can't doubt the fact that this is actually really solid control and there are many characters who would you know bite your hand off to take an effect like this and the consume air is nice because we do have some generators for that that's not too difficult to do the plus one range might be useful if you are playing the shield as well right that means that you retain the range three which is nice you might not get the additional plus one range to range four you might end up range three but that's still plenty of range for this type of effect yeah pinning charge is a little bit odds as to how i feel like i want to play with the formations and things but but i can't doubt the fact that that is a very very solid control ability on the top there and an attack to boot the bottom is grant three allies within range four move two so this is another way that you can move things around and within range four three allies that's a lot of movement that's a really good way to move summons around but as a card in general i think pinning charge is very good it's an incredibly solid control effect on the top and something that helps us do what our character wants to do on the bottom on 17 initiative too so you can't complain the other level two is meet grinder great name for a card attack four with wound oh and you've got a really really interesting pattern here this one is going to be very difficult to set up i think with two enemies in the middle there and an ally the other side so it's kind of like the pincer one but it's like the mega pincer if you like this character is definitely going to need jump actually you're going to need earlier you're going to jump because you're going to want to jump over enemies and then potentially have your someone on the safe side if you like uh of of the uh the enemies and you to be on the side that's facing maybe the rest of the room with all of the archers and what have you this is going to be a really difficult one to set up i think i don't think this is going to be easy by any means but huge rewards here for doing so and attack 4 with wound is very good very very good indeed you're gonna need some jump boots or some way of enhancing jump i think 62 initiative is not great and the bottom is move three with heel one uh range one with regenerate this is nice just a little bit of additional value to a move three it's pretty good 62 initiative though on this card is means it has to be paired with something most likely i'm still trying to get my head around exactly how we're going to achieve these and i feel like the best way of doing that is to have us facing the rest of the room and our ally kind of like on the safe side if you like with the rest of our team where maybe our ranged damage dealers are and our support characters are and uh will be the the front line defense here but are someone is still going to get attacked because of initiative so that's going to make these things more difficult right because suddenly it's going to be a case of initiative and your ally is always considered to be earlier than you for initiative so they're going to get attacked so there's going to be many times when allies are just going to die at awkward times and you're not going to be able to perform your attacks potentially so i feel like the the safest pick is probably pinning charge because this top attack is just really good 17 initiative is just useful as well and this obviously is great for setting up some of your some of your formation so pinning charge it may be a case that actually this is just necessary and this is strong but this is uh this is a great attack though so if you feel confident and you think that you can do this reliably then i think you absolutely go me grinder but if not this is a very safe and good pick in my opinion for just being able to do some damage and some control along with it like this is a solid strong ability in gloomhaven and will be in frosthaven 2 i expect so let them come it's attack 2 and poison that's very nice and it's this strange pattern here which is one in the front and two in the back and we've got heal to target the ally in the blue hex of the attack and self so we can maybe heal up to four now the heel two is obviously not very good with our reinforcement our reinforcement only has two health so if we were to heal it too it would it would already be dead so there's not really much use there but it could be nice for a fellow mercenary to use or potentially our torch bearer which was that the fire summon if we were going down the route of using that attack two and poison is really nice this kind of effect though is generally better on the bottom right we want to poison something then we want to attack it immediately i don't feel like this character has a great way to immediately make use out of poison or at least we haven't seen one yet we haven't seen an attack on the bottom so yeah but this is uh this is obviously a great effect and if we were to use the little buff that we can get we could buff this up to an attack three poison as well it's good potential for that so i don't mind it this hex pattern i'm not sure how prevalent it's going to end up being the setup is nice and easy though this also works quite nice with the reinforcement actually you can play the reinforcement right next to us and then we can straight away go into an attack so at 24 initiative that's really possible let them come i quite like it i'm not quite sure how prevalent this pattern though is is gonna be if you can hit two things here you're probably pretty happy though the bottom is summoned and banner of courage we have seven health so a little bit more health this time more than the five we're having our level one uh banners and all adjacent allies gain shield one now this one i think is probably the weakest of the of the banners that we've seen so far now this is purely because you have to be adjacent to gain the shield one which means that its position is incredibly important seven half does mean that it's gonna maybe last a fair while then the banner of courage works quite nicely though if you did end up taking uh pinning courage right because this is is really good for for moving those banners around for sure it's probably the weakest effect though because i think you would rather have the heal one the reason why you would rather have the heel one than the shield um is because that removes poison and removes wound it removes brittle which generally speaking those effects can just really they can just really annoy you over the course of a scenario being poisoned means that you can't perform a big heal yourself right because you'll only remove the poison effects like that can really upset your game so having just a little heel one a little heel one a little heel one at the beginning of each of your turns kind of like the regenerate stuff right is really really gonna be very useful that doesn't necessarily mean it's unplayable or isn't or it's bad i still feel like it's quite a nice effect but i think it's the weaker of the of the banners that we've seen and the top attack is just kind of okay it could be great but it's yeah it's okay a little bit underwhelming here i think level three for this card so the other card we have is head off the hammer which is attack seven huge huge damage right there seven damage with stun as well so yeah that's a very premium attack right there and the little pattern that we have is us then we have to someone behind us very easy set up for that one and the enemy in front of us very very simple one to set up burn though so this is a big burn here you go here's we didn't have any up to this point in time well here it is three xp though is a lot of experience points stun is very very good i feel like this is what we're gonna see in frost save and with stun cards now i feel like this is going to be the new normal or stuns this could end up being very good we may not get repeatable stuns or if we do get repeatable stuns they might be uh very hard to do or require lots of hoops and to jump through to be able to do that but again having a big burn top like this means that the bottom is going to need to be very useful for us because we don't want to use this on the first turn of the game we're looking for the bottom of this card to give us value while we wait for the opportunity to do that so the bottom is move three the 87 initiative by the way as well is really really bad for stuns and effects i mean we could stun at the end but it's just uh you really want the option to be able to go late or or early so it's better to kind of have an early in initiative on these stuns i think yeah don't don't like the initiative for the top uh move three consume air to add an additional plus two move so that could be a move five decent and model target all at range one uh that's kind of average i think the move five is obviously quite nice so you're going to take move five you're not not going to take move five but the model all at range one is a bit underwhelming it doesn't really do anything but i guess it's like almost like added i would probably take this if it was just move five without having to consume any elements i would probably take it but the fact that we have to consume air and we do generate air but we also have some really good ways of spending air so perhaps we don't want to spend it for this i don't think the model effect is you know takes it over the top either if there was earlier initiative i think maybe i would rank this a bit higher but the fact this whole this these two effects are on 87 i don't love perhaps uh let them come will be the pick in the end uh or potentially go back and and choose one of the cards at level two that you didn't take i think out of these two cards this is obviously very strong but i've just always sort of learned through experience that burn stuns one-offs are generally not super playable or if they are going to be playable in then they have always traditionally needed to have a really good bottom to kind of keep them going and then you just go bang and you use that stun right at the end of the scenario when it's coming down to the wire you might lose if the enemy takes a turn like you're thinking oh if the enemy heals this round then i'm i've just lost because i'm going to exhaust before i can kill them because i just don't have enough damage or um we're going to lose the scenario if that cultist summons the living bones this turn right and this just doesn't this with the 87 initiative doesn't really do that and this is maybe not strong enough to just keep to keep that going like to make this worthwhile like just having this effect open to us this does not carry this card for the entire scenario in my opinion yeah i might just be let them come i i quite like this this is a very easy pattern and i quite like it the 24 initiative is good i think if you can poison two things you're pretty happy yeah i'm probably going to end up going let them come i think but that's because also i'm i'm gonna focus a lot on trying to get these formations i really want to explore that element of the character try and see how reliably i can make formations as well so the more formations the merrier maybe we'll see but yeah let them come i think will probably end up being my pick but if this ends up being the new normal for stuns then possibly uh head of the hammer will be just a really safe and good pickup for you level four we have boldening blow which is attack four target one enemy in the red hexes and we get disarm interesting okay to target one enemy in the red hexes and they get disarmed and then we have target all allies in the blue hexes of the attack ability and they get blasts so we attack four and we do target all four of those enemies right but as an additional effect we can target one of those enemies in those red hexes and disarm them that's how i'm reading that whether or not that is a hundred percent true i think i might need to check that but the way that i see this is it's it's gonna be attack four which we do against all enemies in the red hexes but we can also do this which is that we can target one enemy and disarm one enemy within those four and that is really good really really good but this is a difficult this is the first one that we've seen that requires two allies though to set up so if you're going down the banner route then this could be a good way of of capitalizing on having multiple banners out at the same time or of course if you're playing four player and you've got more characters this could also be really really good i don't think it's necessarily difficult to have two allies behind you gives you a nice sort of variety of of enemy positions and disarm is obviously incredibly strong the bless as well which is quite nice because what the bless does is if you have your own summons then you're going to be basically putting the blessings in your own deck we'll take that this could be bless yourself twice if you if both of those allies were your summons right so that's cool but also that gives a nice incentive to your allies to actually help you out you know to say hey can you please come forward and occupy this hex and they're like oh no i don't want to get hit so well i'll bless you you know i can give you a bless so that's quite nice i like the fact that it gives a benefit to the allies in this situation this could be very strong again it's another disarm here and if you could attack four against four things that's really good not that you probably would ever get all four i think it's a much more reasonable thing to get two or three i mean still attacking four against two or three things is still really really good this is a very strong attack it's got some setup to it but boy is this a strong attack 72 initiative is not amazing pretty bad really again for disarm it's interesting that i've seen that they've paired disarm effects they put them on late initiatives now whether or not that's because they just expect you to pair them with a low initiative and they're sort of like forcing you to have to do that does mean that you can't kind of combo this with something else maybe in such an easy way you're gonna have to sometimes just give up a low initiative for like a move two or something like that it also means that it's harder to set up in different ways you've got move two on the bottom with grand two allies within range three move three i think the this move three clause is going to be super important to be able to positioning you definitely definitely well so far boldening blow for me is a slam dunk not only does it give us movement it grants two allies the three movement which i think is what we need but the top as well one hell of an attack on the top boldening blow what a card really really good card so the other level four's got a lot to live up to here air support attack for range 3 ps2 and generate wind so that's nothing exciting there at all that's really not very exciting but actually that is a very very solid attack attack 4 at range 3 with that ps2 which is important because that means that this is going to potentially scale much better than a normal attack it's not going to be that this attack 4 once you get to level 9 is going to fall off a cliff because you're facing loads of enemies with shield 3 and four or whatever and it doesn't do anything this will actually still mean that it will be relevant so i like it and it generates air which is an element that we know we can use and we have some really powerful ways we can use it maybe there's a slight sub theme of this character going on here where you can either focus on the it feels like you can focus either on the formations or maybe a little bit more on the kind of ranged generate air use air kind of side of things like there seems to be a bit of a sub theme going on right but potentially you want air for this um but i think like this is obviously the the stronger formation sort of card because you've got not only have you got a good formation attack on the top but you've also got a summon on the bomb which is going to help you make formations so it feels like there's some kind of like a slight different kind of um direction here with with two different builds one build maybe focusing a little bit more on the generation and use of elements and one that's focused a little bit more on doing uh damage and using the formations to do that damage and those effects i like the formations because i think that's the most unique thing this character's got going for it aside from some of the summons so that's what i'll be doing but yeah this is a this is a solid attack on 20 initiative as well really good initiative so can't say anything bad about air support it's just nothing flashy the bottom is summon trained falcon one health two attack three move and flying future mq here i actually feel like this summer now is actually ridiculously powerful now that i've re-clarified the rules so if you didn't see the star of the video please go back and watch it because i go over the change of the rules in frost even where you can actually control the movement when you gift or grant movement to allies now you get to to control that even if it doesn't specify controlled by you now that makes this bird incredibly useful because of the flying it can now actually fly over enemies get behind enemies and be in those pincer movements very very easy for you so actually now in hindsight looking back with that change of rule i actually feel like this summon is insanely good really really useful for setting up some of your formations especially your disarm formations and ones like your stun formations so i think the uh the bird is actually really good value really really useful balding blow is just a slam dunk of a card for me so i don't think the train falcon is maybe good enough but i can see that this has a very solid position and actually you know maybe this will end up being better than i think at level five we have hold the line which is shield two grant all adjacent allies shield two two so it shields yourself for two and then it grants all adjacent allies shields to and this is a aura indicated by this coming this is like an aura effect so you would put this card into your active area and it'll remain there until the end of turn and at the end of turn that's what this symbol means it would then go to your discard pile typically i don't like shield effects on the top of a card unless you are going like all in this character very much wants to be attacking and doing their damage doing their formations shielding two is not being active i like to be more active and try and attack things so i like when for example shield is tagged onto the bottom of moves and when shield is maybe tagged a little bit of shield is maybe attacked onto a small attack or something like that so shield 2 granola just an allies shield 2 is is very good and also means that it can protect your summons somewhat and can protect banners somewhat so this is usable this is definitely very usable it's not bad by any means five initiative really really good so to be honest you might end up picking up this card just for the five initiative it might be a move to initiative five and that could be okay but yeah i think the top is is is usable and definitely a tank a tanking card so if you're going more of a tank route and you want to be a bit more reliable as a tank then this is absolutely the kind of ability that you want and the granting all adjacent allies just as a nice protection just in case they go earlier than you or there's a target too or something like that or for example you have summons because your someone's always going to be focused before you the bomb is move three shield two and retaliate three but it is a burn it's basically another big burn here i guess this is fine it's kind of interesting because the the shield 2 is obviously something we that we could do anyway for free on the top here without having to burn a card but it's on the bottom which is where i like it it means that we could also attack which which i like this could be quite a good door opening style card move three potentially if you have some movement boots increase that movement then you go for the shield two and retaliate three is obviously a lot of retaliate especially if you already have some more shield as well like through your items or through that burn shield that we had level one that was available to us so this could add up to be quite a lot of damage against certain enemy types retaliates bad against ranged obviously unless you can muddle them and keep them next to you or immobilize them so there are some considerations there i think this is okay possibly a good door opener that's where i would kind of place this it's five initiative which is good and it's a good door opener move three move into a room shield two retaliate three then all of the enemies just start walking towards you and you know you're protected essentially so a good door opening card for sure the other level five we have is explosive epicenter which is attack three with push one grant the ally in the blue hex off the attack ability and self move one interesting that happens after the attack so first we do the attack which is attack three with push one here if we're in the middle this is weird this is one of those patterns where it's just like you can ignore half of these red hexes so attacking six things for three damage with push one is just not happening this is most likely going to end up being three maybe two maybe four but there's this is a bit of a reach and i'm not sure if i think the pattern's really gonna happen much either unless you run into the middle of the room on purpose i don't see you getting surrounded very easily especially you and your someone getting surrounded very easily and the fact that there needs to be an open hex next to you because if you move in and then the the enemies get to go before you and all of the enemies are gonna fill in these squares potentially if you're gonna summon and play on the same turn so if you're gonna use the bottom as a summon action and then use this at the top this isn't gonna work because these are like these enemies are gonna move into these hexes and it's just going to throw the whole thing off i don't like this one as much the fact that says grant the ally in the blue hex to the attack ability itself on move one it's like i guess you could move slightly away but um i don't know i don't think i like this one this one i think is more difficult and i don't think the payoff is great you have to put yourself in a lot of risk but not much reward with this one in my opinion 78 initiative as well not so keen on the bottom is once per turn on your turn while an enemy is within range three grant one adjacent ally and self move one whoa okay here we go this is two xp this is a burn this is a permanent effect a permanent ability that we get for the rest of the scenario once we play this once per turn on our turn while an enemy is within range three grant one adjacent ally and self move one yeah that's great to be honest just you getting the move one is great here regardless of giving it to an ally i think just being able to give it to yourself is really good and actually this just moves the banners in such an efficient manner right you could move and then you move the banner as well oh man yeah this is really good for the banners really really good okay so we got we got a mediocre top but the bottom of this card actually just fundamentally kind of unlocks your character in many ways this makes the banners super powerful because they're just gonna move one hex every single turn pretty much we would hope so anyway yeah explosive epicenter okay top underwhelming but bottom is slam dunk and amazing an amazing effect definitely something that that you want if you're going for the banners if you're really going hard on the banners for sure even if you're not though i think this is still a very good thing to just give to an ally because quite often players end up coming one or two moves short over the course of a scenario lots and lots of characters have powerful bottom effects that aren't moves right like for example we've also got a buff right we've got a buff that is a bottom action so if we needed to move then we can't really play that bottom buff this fundamentally kind of i'm not going to say breaks the game but it really frees you up a lot and presumably because it's a move one action we could use boots to add to that too if we wanted to i'm all over this i think that this is going to be incredibly strong now we only have 10 card hand so this just means that we go down to nine and if you're playing the banners you're going to go down even less this is probably why the characters 10 card hand is gonna be difficult for players to manage because with this and maybe one banner out or maybe two banners out that is a big big loss you've got to be very careful about exhausting with this character for sure but this is hugely powerful and impactful if you're going for the banners or if you're just going for uh reinforcements or maybe even like the hawk or something like that could be good or if you've got uh allies who have summons really good synergy with the bone shaper here too yeah awesome really really cool this is this is amazing so out of the two cards i am definitely taking explosive epicenter without question i feel like this is this is a great card for for a certain build i think but i mean how can you turn up something like this which fundamentally just kind of gives you a free action every single round i think this is hugely powerful giving you giving you just a free move action pretty much every single round as long as there's an enemy within range three and let's face it most of the times that's going to be the case so easy pick for me explosive epicenter at level six we have heal three range three with regenerate and we can enhance this with a plus one we have consume air to get plus one target which is nice so this could be up to a heel six potentially this is a nice support ability don't think that this character is really strong on that element of their game though i would say unless you're doing this to yourself between rooms which is kind of interesting in which case i don't know whether or not you want a consumer but this is definitely a card that could be used for that air build if you like that builder really cares about creating and consuming air reliably this is not a bad effect to consume air for by any means although i feel like this is kind of a little bit at odds of what the character's really about i feel like we want to be at the front and hopefully there's a more of a support character that's behind us helping to do this kind of stuff rather than us having to do it ourselves but yeah this is this is okay and if you're going for that air kind of uh consumption build i don't think this is bad and as i said i think regenerate is going to be a really big deal in frost dave and it's going to be very very useful so yeah don't mind it 75 initiative is generally pretty bad for heals you want to put them on early so then perhaps you they get the tick of regenerate that turn rather than having to wait until the next turn to get a tick of regenerate but sometimes you want to do late heels too so the bottom is move three pull two target two at range three that's actually really useful really really useful for the formation build you wanna be able to get those enemies into those prime spots and this really helps you do that and allows you to maybe pull them into a position and pincer them between you and your summon possibly things like that like i said before i think the push and pull are going to be more important on this character than we think just because of the ability to manipulate enemy positions this is very solid i don't really like the top for the build that i'm thinking of going with this character but i do like the bottom for this so 75 initiative is this maybe what kills the card for us though but we'll see what the other level 6 is so you have a level six is a barricade which is attack free with wound uh grant all allies in the blue hexes of the attack ability and self a shield one there you go that's like exactly what i said but i said i like the shield i like shield when it's on the top and it's a part of an attack and we have it right here this is a really uh interesting pattern though two allies to either side of us might be a bit difficult to to make happen but this again is going to be maybe targeting two or three things i think four is a reach but attack three and wound is very good i mean if you're playing just with your own summons the shield one is okay but it's not great right we know that the reinforcement is probably gonna die to a single attack especially at level six so there are some things you need to worry about there i wonder if you can enhance the movement you enhance the movement you can enhance the movement on the reinforcement so you enhance the health i wouldn't bother i would enhance the movement and this could actually make this much much better i think putting this to plus three could actually make your life a lot easier so there is that that is something that we can consider um just thinking about movement and positioning wise to try and make this happen if you can pull this off if if then this is obviously very good and i like the little shield one 16 initiative as well is great means that we're gonna go early enough to get the shield and also the enemy will probably take a tick of uh wound damage that round which is really what you want to so not only are we getting the shield one but we're doing the attack three and essentially an attack four because the uh the wound should hopefully go off and wound is obviously very good the bottom here though is summon banner of valor which is five health no move no attack no range as usual negates the first source of damage to an adjacent ally each round wow wow okay in terms of tanking this is bad this is much better than like wow is it better than shield two probably actually probably not depending on how many enemies you've got right if you're playing two player this and there's like less enemies then this could be insanely good you might only be facing like three enemies in a room and this basically just takes one enemy out yeah i like this i like it but i i like it much much more with with lower player counts than i do with with higher player counts also there are things like wound and stuff that can sneak up and just ruin this right so for example if you're wounded then that is damage so this would only negate one which is not great not really what you want you'd much rather have the heel banner right however if you if you've got brittle on you and the enemy comes over and hits you and hits the times two and you're about to die then obviously this is gonna look like you know one of the best banners you can get there is there's some swinginess to this banner for sure it's not as reliable as the other banners in which you know what you're getting this could be some scenarios it could be mvp some other scenarios this could just be do nothing so interesting 16 initiative is is great see for this card so on the 16 initiative as well you could potentially put the summon out nice and early to just negate some damage for that particular round so it could like immediately be useful i quite like the top of this this banner i think is situationally useful some parties are going to find it more useful than others this is going to be quite difficult to set up to be honest i may end up just going for this just because of the pull i don't know this is in this is a difficult one i feel like naturally barricade would be the obvious choice here it seems like it would be the obvious choice the the top attack is really good you've got 16 initiative two the banner on the bottom is useful in certain situations but i don't think you can uh undervalue that this is sneaky gonna be very good at setting up your formations and making sure that the enemies are gonna you know fall into those formations and you're gonna be able to do damage to them so i think level six is a difficult choice you've also still got some fairly reasonable choices if you were to go back as well so yeah level six is not going to be an easy one level seven we have a lead from afar which is attack two range four at plus two attack for each ally adjacent to the target this is pretty similar right to the other one that we had another ranged attack not sure i feel great about these ranged attacks it's definitely kind of like a more standoffish build with this character where you you create air you do a little bit more range damage you are a bit more support so you can heal so that's kind of like there's some interesting there's an interesting different build here and whether or not it's the strongest build or not i don't i don't think so i think it's quite reliable though but lead from afar could in theory be very good right you could this could if you had two allies this could actually be like an attack six at range four which for a non-burn you just you know you'll bite someone's hand off for that in regular gloomhaven attack six range four non-burn yes please i'll take it any day of the week but it just doesn't really fit into what we're doing considering that we're trying to be up in enemies faces i think with this formation style of play but you can't doubt that this would be a very very strong card if you have if you're playing with a bone shaper for example and they have lots of skeletons running around and grouping in onto enemies then it's very good for that or if you're playing with potentially the drifter and the drift is going to be your main tank maybe and this could be this could be okay 18 initiative though is quite bad in my opinion because you're going to need to probably pair this with an early card or you want to go slightly after your allies maybe but it's a bit awkward right because maybe all of those living bones are now dead you kind of want to let the living bones get summoned then then they run in and they do their attack and they're adjacent then you immediately jump in and attack before the enemies get a chance to attack so in order to maximize this plus two you're gonna have to consider your initiative very carefully i think the bomb is another summon it's summon longbowmen we have four health attack two move to range four with model [Music] this is a summon okay so this summon absolutely does not work very well with your formations at all really not very good at all because it's a range summon so it's never going to get into those adjacent positions that you want and if you were to bring them into those adjacent positions you're just jeopardizing them which isn't really what you want to do but without a shadow of a doubt the best summons in gloomhaven have always been the ranged summons and this one has range 4 muddle attached to it it's not the best thing in the world we've seen poison attached to these effects before which has been absolutely broken and amazing the muzzle is nowhere near as good as poison or wound or curse or disarm and stun of course but it's not bad and the fact that it's only attack two does mean though that it's gonna probably struggle against shielded enemies if there's gonna be a lot of shielded enemies in frost haven then perhaps this is gonna be weaker than what our experience tells us however our experience tells us that these kinds of summons are usually very very good so i'm going to i'm going to use my experience here and say that i think that the longbowmen is going to be very good value someone that's going to follow you throughout the entire scenario and is always going to be chipping in doing damage every single round for pretty much the entire scenario because they're very very easy to keep range summons safe the other level 7 is tri thrust which is an attack 7 stun but we have this very kind of interesting pattern to try and set up here so here's a non-burn stun and i guess this is the price of a non-burn stun now level seven and some significant setup here hmm possible with the banners though very possible with the banners try thrust i mean this is obviously very good attack seven with stun 27 initiative too this is a dream card right here can we set this up or not i'm not sure going to be very scenario dependent i also like the fact that this is also just kind of like an automatic nerf to this effect because usually with a stun you would just run up and stun oh that enemy is summoning so go stun that enemy or that enemy is doing the most annoying thing this round so you go deal with that one but you can't really do that with these you need to already know which one you're going to stun and you already need to kind of set that up in a way in order to do it so you're not just going to be able to react to the enemy ability flips and say that's the enemy that we should go and stun because it's doing the worst thing obviously incredibly strong how easy is this pattern going to be to do i think it's a hard one but the payoff is huge huge if you can do this the bottom is move three with attack one target three interesting that's nice just being able to target some things attack on the bottom always nice to see and we can consume air to target the target three enemies within two hexes instead okay so we can actually extend that range a little bit still a melee attack though still would be considered a melee attack because it is not a a ranged attack it just basically extends it to two hexes that's interesting i think that's pretty decent just being able to do a little bit of damage i mean it depends on what your flips are of course it depends on how good your modifier deck is at level seven we will go through perks at the end of this i do think that perks like i said before you're gonna have less perks that are designed around making your uh your deck more efficient you're gonna have more perks around the mechanics of the campaign the mechanics of the character or the special thing that the character does you're gonna have that it's gonna be more prevalent so i feel like attack ones do diminish in value because of that but you're never going to say no to this and this is a i think this is a decent use of of the air element if you've still got it kicking around and you're still using it and the the air build is obviously something that is here and trying to keep that into your rotation is going to be really important but we haven't had like a move and create air yet which i think would have been would have been more useful so between these two cards to be honest i might consider going back and taking something else if i didn't feel like try thrust was possible try thrust is obviously incredibly good and incredibly strong if you can reliably do it and i think like that's the big question mark can you reliably do it i haven't played the game enough to be able to say at this point in time you know that the banner spear will always be able to do this i need to play the banner spear in order to do so and that at this point is something that at level seven you will probably have a sense for and uh yeah if this kind of payoff though feels good to you then absolutely you take this tri thrust is probably the pick because it also has a decent movement and initiative as well that can be uh can be useful at level eight we have taunting howe which is pulled to a target all at range of four and shield three this is a burn though to 2xp and you get it for the the rest of the round i thematically love the idea of this though being able to get all enemies really close to you and saying hey you know it is a proper taunt it is a it's just like the world of warcraft kind of taunts and rpg game kind of taunts right get all those enemies to focus you pull them towards you so that you're the focus and you shield three at the same time so then the enemies can't really do too much to you you could pair this with that really really big burn shield on the bomb as well with the retaliate right if you wanted to go all in burn two cards and have like shield five and retaliate three kind of interesting could be something fun to do for a round but it's a lot of investment that's two burn cards i think which is kind of rough i don't really love this i think in this particular situation because of the fact we only have 10 cards and i think we have better burns than this so i'd probably be staying away from taunting howl i think but situationally might be useful and if the bottom is good then perhaps you know during the course of the scenario we can use it eleven initiatives so if the bottom is good then this is a very usable card so move three grind two allies within range three move three so it's an improvement on an ability that we already have this could be very playable like i said before though the problem with the monster focus and how the ai is gonna work might make things difficult but i feel like this effect is pretty pretty damn playable so yeah perhaps just the bottom and the initiative is going to save this card and make it um make it playable and a selection for us the other level 8 is sweeping aid which is attack 4 ps2 and immobilize and this is a this is a weird one right this has got our summon actually in front of us so our summon is doing the tanking that's weird i don't feel like that's something that we would typically do however i like the fact that this has got to mobilize so like maybe or someone will die because they unfortunately take damage but then they're all immobilized so they can't move towards you so you're someone kind of ends up sacrificing themselves for you i guess and attack 4 ps2 against three things very good very very strong indeed this is okay i quite like this i like the theme of it i like the idea i like that it's another different pattern i think in general you're gonna want to mix your patterns up it's nice that every single pattern has been a bit different in some way as well uh the 73 initiative is obviously pretty bad though for that top attack i would say the bottom is heel two range two move three then heal to range two again so this is potentially four health with a move that's a very um good situational kind of heel effect i quite like it great for removing poison or brittle or wound from allies or yourself good for a support build but also just pretty good for a tank build to be honest this is a tricky one possibly taking taunting hal just for the bottom here or potentially going back and maybe taking a different card i think there's a few opportunities maybe to do that out of the two i feel like the theme of this one is awesome but i don't know how many of these formation cards we're ultimately going to want so perhaps we end up taking this as just some more set up some safe setup on 11 initiative as well that could just be really really useful for you and this although i don't really like this top effect maybe maybe it'll end up saving you somewhere down the line and perhaps actually in a survive so many uh rounds type scenarios perhaps this could actually um save you so level 9 we have take no prisoners and look at that huge aoe absolutely massive but don't let it fool you that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be able to get all of those things i think you'll be pretty happy if you could hit three or four things from that huge aoe the allies will be set up behind you which is i think that's pretty doable that's one of the easier ones to set up for sure having them sort of behind you it's easier than having them further away or behind the the enemies for sure attack three and poison i think that's very strong attack three and poison three or four things most of the things in a room potentially that's really good i'm i'm all about this i think take no prisoners is this is probably our strongest formation we've had yet really is aside from maybe the stun but obviously we can only stun one thing but walking into a room and then potentially being able to poison a lot of things now it's difficult for us to just walk into a room and do that obviously because our allies positioning is so important for this character it's going to be hard to pass up something like this 85 initiative kind of sucks it really does but it does mean that at least the enemies would have clumped around you if you're at the front i guess at this point in time so you've got that going for you the bottom is summon banner of doom okay nine health all enemies within range four suffer one damage at the start of their turns wow now that is something special that really is something special i really like that that's like wound but it's like turbo wound and it's a wound that they can't get rid of as long as the banner of doom is around it's a striking fear into the enemies and they're taking damage at the start of their turns because they're just so scared they're so scared i really like the bomb of this this is cool now this is what a level 9 effect i think should look like this is really really really interesting something that you could drop down in the middle of most rooms as long as you can protect it boy that damage will add up what a cool effect very very powerful very very thematic very suitable as a level 9 ability yeah the top and bottom of this are slam dunks i would love to play the top and then maybe short rest or stamina potion and get the bomb and just slam the banner down because once you've poisoned everything in the room i don't think there's much cause to necessarily spam the top of this card okay well the other card's gonna have to do some work because this is uh this is a really really cool level nine so haleb spears is attack five range four add one target for each adjacent banner summon okay so this is like the banner that's interesting because i didn't really consider at first that the ranged the ranged and support build was really gonna use the banners but i guess you use the banners more to support your allies than you do to support yourself it's good that the banners can be used in a two two ways like that you've kind of got the the formation build that the banners can be used in in order to help you gain those formations but you've also got this kind of slightly more support build where you use the banners and you use your ranged attacks and your heels to actually support somebody else's the main tank and that's pretty cool as well i think so attack five range four add plus one target for each adjacent banishment so that's so if you could maybe get two additional targets out of this that's 15 damage on range four you're gonna be able to attack loads of stuff with that that's very strong i like that that's definitely um the strength of the level nine attack however how many summons can we really have out or in specifically banner summons as well how many banner summons can we really have out we only have 10 cards in our hand this is going to very much tax us it's really annoying that the uh the banner of doom is on the other card here really uh i would love to have both of these level nines uh teleport each adjacent banner summon to a hex adjacent to one of the targets so that's kind of the risky thing right it's good in a way because maybe you're moving the banners towards towards the door potentially or towards the next room but it's bad because you then put them in risk but this could also be useful in a way because you could maybe get it adjacent to an ally and then that could help that ally out maybe i also like the fact that this is a top attack so you can actually play a banner and then immediately use the top of this to get the plus one target so that's good so the positioning of this is very important the fact that this is the top and the banners are all bottom effects play the banner then you immediately play this then you teleport that banner to your ally on the front line who's in a situation that needs it right either the heel one or i probably go for the plus attack one maybe this is really useful really cool effect actually i like it i think this is um this is very suitable for a level nine really cool it's like the final card in a build it feels like it's the final card in a build you get that payoff for really going for all of those banners and for really uh going down that route i like it yeah really cool the bottom is um move four and recover up to two of your lost cards with banner summon abilities immediately play the recovered cards and perform their banner summon abilities wow okay this is cool all right wow two really cool level nines so i actually i think that this character's support build might be pretty decent especially considering that the formations can sometimes are going to be like really annoying to do and the support kind of like just make banners and attack things at range and throw heals for your allies and stuff just provide incremental value with your banners and with those attacks with his heels that's could be really strong build for this character actually i really like this that's awesome this character's definitely got some really cool stuff going on and i love the fact that you've got two very distinct kind of builds and you've got these banners that kind of like bridge the two in the middle there some of them could be useful um for helping you with your formations and some of them are purely like maybe better for going all in and going more of a support build i mean that you could move four recover two banners immediately play them adjacent to you and maybe help an ally out immediately the 44 initiative does make that a little bit trickier but wow okay so the two level nine cards are great i mean i think i'm i'm probably going down this route because i'm going for i'm gonna try to do formations i think that's really my thing i think that i would like to try out personally but actually this character's got some really good uh cards in the other build really good cards so this is gonna be a very interesting one and i think that there's definitely two routes you can go i'm gonna be taking this because i think this is dramatically awesome and this is a really good attack but i'd be tempted to play this character again and maybe go for the other build because so far i am from what i've seen from frosthaven this character has got is the best one for two distinct builds that really um have their own identity potentially so this is uh really really interesting so those are the cards so let's go and have a look at the perks so the first perk we've got is replace one minus one card with one rolling shield one card which is i think decent it's nice to get some rolling shields to be able to keep your tank up especially if you're going formations so i like this perk i think this is quite nice removing a bad thing and adding a rolling good thing and with the changes to advantage we don't care about rolling anymore but this character doesn't seem to really care about strengthen either so unless you're getting it from other means then i feel like this is uh this is very solid replace one plus zero card with one plus zero add plus one for each ally adjacent to the target card that's pretty nice too right especially if you're going for formation so that's another key one i think for the formation one however there are some where you're actually attacking things behind other enemies right not every single formation is adjacent to you and your ally in some way so you could obviously draw these in uh awkward spots where actually they don't do anything they're just normal plus zeros but but i think you know in general you're gonna have some good opportunities for that add one plus one disarm card very very strong you're not removing cards though i think that's one thing that they've they're trying to balance a little bit more but adding two disarms that might be um might be a very strong perk to go for add one plus two and push one card i i like that less than the disarms for sure add two rolling plus one cards okay i think i'm still on the disarms here though i add two rolling heel one self-cards probably still on the disarms so i like the first three i like the top one i like the the middle one and i like that i like the replace one i like the replace one and i like the sound one so these top three to me i think are are where i'm at so far ignore negative item effects and remove one minus one card this is going to be the standard bog standard perk that pretty much every banner spears gonna get unless you're going for that heavy support build because you're going to want to wear armor and that's going to have negative effects unfortunately so whether or not you get this is your first perk or if you get your second or third it's going to very much depend on what items are available to you and how much gold you've got and what you intend to buy first at the end of each of your long rests one ally within range three may perform move two with you controlling the move abilities of any summers now whoa there we go now that is big that is huge now you do have to do a long rest which makes it a little bit more awkward for setting up obviously your formations but that is really big and that's really big for all builds because if you're going for the support build with the banners or if you're going for the formations build with the reinforcement summon and potentially with maybe one or two banners yourself you might consider playing then this is hugely hugely impactful allows you to long rest and move summons even closer to the door before you kind of open the door so you clear a room you long rest near the door then you let all of those summons use you as a focus with the new rules and they move towards you that's really really good that might be the first uh perk i pick here when you open a door with a ah plus three okay this is the perk that i take this is the back that i take now obviously there's gonna be some there's gonna be some instances when plus three move um isn't gonna be good enough there's also be instances where there's no doors in a scenario there's very few doors in a scenario but this does make you very very efficient opening doors and you have shield so you have ways to maybe open doors very effectively depending on your party cop maybe this won't be great because i feel like the the long rest moving an ally this this actually appeals to both builds i think this might only appeal to the more formation well not even necessarily the formation actually because the formation build you need to have your allies with you and that's not really going to happen with this your allies are going to be left behind so i don't know perhaps not but this seems like very good for the tank build obviously very very good which one i get first depends i think on my composition if i am soul tank then maybe this is this is what we get if i am not then i think this but this this is gonna work with so many builds it says one ally within range three as well right so you could just give that to one of your fellow mercenaries who's a little bit slow and that they'll be very grateful i would imagine and the final one is once each scenario during your turn against shield two for the remainder of the round and that's a double perk so you have to invest two perk points into that before you unlock it that's what this new symbol means now that's pretty solid too i mean not great for this support build i don't think that's not necessarily really what you want to be doing but man for like the formations and stuff that's really good you just go early and be like this is the turn i'm using it so what this actually does is it gives you a small little card that you have and you just have that in front of you and you just remember to kind of cash it in if you like when you want to do it so obviously you need to do this on a round where you're already playing an early initiative so you're going to be playing an early initiative already and obviously the enemy has flipped cards and you've worked out okay i'm going to be the focus this round right i want to be the focus this round i'm going to play this and i'm going to do it i think what i'll probably end up doing here is i'll probably end up taking this first then i will probably end up sinking maybe both perks here and then maybe here and to be honest you're gonna need this as well so that's one two three four that's five perks right there that most banner spears are probably gonna want with maybe these two at the bottom being slightly more situational and maybe this one being slightly more situation but i think the average banner spear that's going for formation is probably going to end up wanting pretty much all of these and that's five perk points before you've even decided to move on to uh improving your deck that's um that's really big so that's perks i think the perks are really interesting for this character actually and i'm looking forward to trying to work out which one to go first because there's definitely a lot of choice here okay guys well there we have it there's my thoughts on the banner spear this is one that actually i think has evolved a little bit not so much compared to some of the others from when we initially saw my first impressions before was that this character was going to be quite strong and was probably going to be the one that a lot of players who like to play with more powerful characters might sort of seek out and play due to some of the abilities that they had but i do really like the fact that they have two kind of distinct different kind of builds you could maybe go and some diversity there then this is gonna be quite rewarding characters for people to play the formations reward good planning and good teamwork and being able to use your abilities well as well as just having the banners there to support your friends and also being able to shield and tank a little bit as well i think that's going to be appealing to a lot of players so i think the banner spear is going to probably go down as one of the more favorite characters but it does need that setup and if you miss those formations boy that's going to feel bad so you do have to think about that a little bit that if you miss doing those formations or just kind of falls apart it's going to be maybe like playing the triangles class a little bit in gloomhaven where just the pieces didn't really kind of fit sometimes because enemies moved around or different things happened or transpired and you just couldn't quite do what you wanted to do and that might make the banner spin a little bit more frustrating sometimes because you're not completely in control of your own destiny at all times but i think that this character can be quite rewarding and i really like what they've done here and i think this is going to be a really uh a really good character for foster and especially as a starter character if you got this far thank you so much please consider tossing the video a like and subscribing if you're not already to stay up to date with all of the frost haven stuff that i've been doing on the channel i will be constantly doing frost haven gloomhaven digital normal gloomhaven and also some draws the lion content coming soon so hit the notification bell if you'd like to keep up to date with that but i do really really appreciate the support and of course you can always swing by the twitch stream at twitch.tv slash manage request every monday wednesday and sunday where i'm hanging out playing gloomhaven digital so you can always come and ask me any questions you'd like about frosthaven gloomhaven or anything else you might have there okay so all that's left for me to say then is thank you all so much for watching i will catch you in the next one bye well i think so yeah [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: 23,727

Keywords: Frosthaven, Frost haven, Gloomhaven, Gloom haven, Kickstarter, Starting character, Starting Class, Guide, Tutorial, Should you play, Digital, Steam, PC, Co-op, cooperative, campaign, legacy, board game, boardgame, tabletop game, bannerspear, banner spear, human, tank, shield, retaliate

Id: 2lOTHa32o5g

Length: 102min 1sec (6121 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 24 2021