May 01, 2017 Isaac Childres’ Gloomhaven Second Printing project is set to close on Kickstarter later today with nearly $3.7 million. The campaign was launched last month, originally seeking $100,000, which. The evening started off simply enough, with you having nothing better to do but join the rest of the cast-offs of society in the Sleeping Lion. Being a mercenary can sometimes be exciting, but mostly it is just boring. That’s what strong drink is for. The basic truth is that there is nothing else to do with your life. You’re powerful.
, the new cooperative, campaign-driven dungeon crawl board game from designer Isaac Childres, is big. Really big.
The game’s campaign—which is composed of a possible 95 different dungeons—will easily take you 100 hours to complete. Riffling through the game's box for the first time, I couldn’t stop laughing at the absurd bounty of it all. Eighteen oversized punchboards holding hundreds of tokens greet you as you start diving through the contents; beneath them are thousands of cards belonging to dozens of decks, seventeen miniatures (each held in their own little box), various wooden pieces, and an enticing array of sealed boxes, envelopes, and books.
But beyond the game’s huge box and mind-boggling amount of content, Gloomhaven is also a very big deal in board game land. The game’s 2015 Kickstarter pulled in a respectable $386,000 from almost 4,900 backers, but with the benefit of a couple years of steadily growing hype and effusive praise from early reviews, the game’s second printing, now on Kickstarter, has secured over $3.1 million from over 32,000 backers as of this writing. When it comes to overall buzz among hardcore board gamers, Gloomhaven is about as big as it gets.
Note: Because of Gloomhaven's length, I have not played the entire campaign. I can't definitively comment on late-game story or balance, but I don't foresee much changing from what I've already experienced.
A new hope
It’s not difficult to understand why dungeon crawlers are so massively popular in gaming. Perhaps only second to true tabletop RPGs, dungeon crawls are the ultimate in escapist fantasy. There’s something undeniably seductive about the idea of descending into dark catacombs, knocking down doors that should probably be left closed, and introducing a beholder to the business end of your axe. If you’re not into straight-up roleplay, a dungeon crawl board game lets you get an RPG fix without the “talking like an elf” overhead.
For the majority of games in the genre throughout the years—from old school classics like Warhammer Quest all the way up to modern genre mainstays like Descent or Imperial Assault—dungeon crawler gameplay has generally remained comfortably familiar. Your character has a spread of RPG-like stats, and you use movement points to hop around a grid and skirmish with monsters. When you attack those monsters, you throw some dice and see what happens.
But the board game world is so lousy with campaign-driven dungeon crawl board games that any new entry into the genre needs to justify its existence. More and more, game publishers seem to be trying to elbow their way into the crowded marketplace by shoving as many plastic miniatures into their designs as possible.
But Gloomhaven is different. Gloomhaven characters do not have ability scores, nor—blasphemy of blasphemies—is there a single die in the game. Instead, Gloomhaven has cards.. and they work really well.
Hand management
Characters start each scenario with a certain number of cards (usually around 10) dictated by their class. Everything you do in the game—moving, attacking, healing, looting, setting traps, spawning familiars--everything is determined by these cards and the order and configuration in which you play them.
Each card has a top action and a bottom action. You have to play two cards each turn, and you have to pick the top action of one card and the bottom action of the other. Generally, top actions let you attack, while bottom actions are keyed to movement abilities (and you can always use a top action as a generic “attack for two points of damage” and a bottom action as a generic “move two spaces”).
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Take the card to the right, for instance. If you play it for the top action, you can attack two adjacent enemies for three damage apiece. The bottom action, on the other hand, would let you move three hexes (and since you’re jumping, you can vault over obstacles and enemies).
But not all cards stick to the “attack/move” archetype. The top action on the brute’s 'Eye for an Eye' card lets you retaliate for two points of damage every time you’re hit by an enemy. Its bottom action lets you heal yourself or an adjacent ally. And those are cards from the game’s simplest class. Take a look at this starting card from the more complex “Mindthief” class:
The number in the middle of each card is your initiative. The lower the number, the earlier you’ll act in the round. (You pick one of your two played cards to be your “leading card” and use that card’s initiative).
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You can discuss tactics with your teammates, but you have to speak in general terms. Instead of saying, “I’m going to move on initiative 23 and hit that bandit for three damage,' you'll say something like, 'I'm going to act early in the round, and I'll try to finish off that bandit.' It sounds a little weird on paper, but it works surprisingly well at simulating the chaos of battle while still letting you work effectively with your party.
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Disable dmg verification high sierra. Also adding a wrinkle to combat are the game's combat cards, which act as modifiers to your attacks. Each player has his or her own deck of 20 of these cards, and every time you make an attack, you'll draw a card from the deck and apply its value. They range from -2 to +2, so their variance is pretty low, but they provide a bit more uncertainty to the proceedings.
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Max Block Shields for Sorceress My first love, first made character for new ladder seasons, and favorite character to play even after I build a few others, is my 'Tank Sorc'. It's a variation of a classic Max Block/ES/TK Sorc - but I use very specific gear that most might not use on this build, and I depart from most other theorycrafters by keeping my life and mana about equal so I never am endangered by Blood Curse. (My theory on that is: not only does Blood Curse wound the very heart of what a Sorc does, namely casting, but also with Mana Burn being bugged I like to have some Life and Block/PDR as a backup if ES falls, and in practice this method has worked out flawlessly for me). My main question involves shield choices, and this is relevant now more than usual because with the new ladder reset I will most likely have to consider other gear options to start off with, until enough wealth is gathered in the community that I can find/trade for the items I am comfortable with. I am a junkie for going thru old ES sorc posts, and also Max Block and Shield selection posts.. but one annoying thing I've noticed is how repetitive and narrow the shield choices seems to be. Sadly I am also pretty darn bad at Math So I was hoping someone could tell me why the Sorc shields discussion always seems to revolve around Whitstan's vs Upped Visc vs Stormshield? I mean, they open the door with Upping, but then they never talk about Moser's Upped, both with Diamonds in the 2os, and alternatively Elds in the 2os. Also Gerke's Sanctuary.. both of these shields in my opinion would be worth including in the tables, compared in various versions of socketed and Upped - especially since they are putting ridiculous options in the comparison table like shields with under 60% block. I know part of this exclusion is the classic belief that shields providing resist aren't worth looking at because an ES build shouldn't need resists. But my Tank Sorc always has capped resists along with absorb items.. I just don't see the point of a build that is suppose to be tough if you have such glaring weaknesses, and my Sorc doesn't even blink in full Hell Baal runs if her ES falls. So in light of the fact that I want to consider Resist stats as part of the opportunity cost when considering gear/charms/stat allocation, does anyone smarter than me have an opinion on which shield at it's best stage, will provide the best anchor to this build? In my heart I really like Gerke's, but even this last ladder season I hadn't gotten a chance to obtain one to experiment with. Since Moser's drops A LOT, for the start of next season I was considering Upping when I can get my hands on one, and testing the flexibility with the 2 open sockets. As a last resort I will of course grab a trusty Whitstan's, since it does save tons of points on Dex, and can be socketed with an Eld for even more Dex savings. Any opinions? You math gurus could probably point out whether an Upped Moser's with Elds would help enough on resists to allow more Life/Mana charms, or if it wouldn't provide enough blocking in comparison to a Eld'd Whitstan's to save enough Dex points to make it worth it for your Life/Mana pool. The only thing I know for sure is how bad the return is on Vitality, but it gets murky for me trying to weigh all the opportunity costs of the various stats