Gloomhaven

Welcome to Replayable, where we go into depth on our favorite tabletop games that keep us coming back again and again. I'm the start player Todd, and today I'm joined by David and Greg. For our 12th episode, we'll be delving into the monster-ridden game Gloomhaven. It was designed by Isaac Childress and was released in 2017 by Cephalo Faire Games with artwork by Alexander Elichev, Josh T. McDowell, and Avaro Nabeau. How are you guys doing today?

Ready to crack open that door and see what's inside? I am ready for adventure. I'm ready. We got our campaign together. Let's go. Right? It's a game of Euro-inspired tactical combat in a persistent world of shifting motives. Players will take on the role of a wandering adventurer with their own special set of skills and their own reasons for traveling to this dark corner of the world. Players must work together out of necessity to clear out menacing dungeons and forgotten ruins.

In the process, they will enhance their abilities with experience and loot, discover new locations to explore and plunder, and expand an ever-branching story fueled by the decisions they make. The first thing I want to talk about is the hype. Even before it was released, the hype for this game was on a scale that we hadn't seen since maybe KALIS. I remember when all the memes were being made about KALIS.

What do you remember learning about this game and how it started taking over the entire mind share of Board Game Geek? Yeah. There was a lot of hype when this came out. I'd actually compare it more to Space Hulk on the level of the desire for the new big dungeon crawler that was going to innovate everything and bring in some euro mechanics to it. So my recollection of the hype is not necessarily the mechanisms in the game or really any of the content of the game.

It was just this big game is the next big thing. And I backed it pretty much sight unseen. I didn't dive into the game at all. I didn't know what I was going to get. I just threw my money out the window and I'll find out in six months or whatever what shows up and what is all of this hype. And I kind of wanted to keep that mystery before I got in.

So I don't know what the content of the hype was necessarily just that this is the next awesome thing we need to get or specifically if people were getting into the details of the game with that initial hype. Got it. So what is it that made this game take off so strongly? What do you think sets it apart aside from the sheer size of it? I mean, because that's obviously a noticeable aspect. You know, there was all the hype that surrounded the game.

Like I said, I bought it pretty much sight unseen. And then once I started going through the rules and playing the game and starting to see that, you know, there's actually something under the hood here. Like this actually is a fun replayable game that it isn't just table presence. It isn't just mob hype that it isn't just, you know, for a while I felt like it was buoyed by it was unattainable. So that's what made it like Neener, Neener, Neener, I've got a copy and you don't.

It's a 10. I've got one of the best. And now once it became more readily available and it still stayed in the top, you know, whatever number of games. And as more and more people got copies as it was constantly in the most played lists and it still ranks high, I think it's just it has the goods. It turns out it's not just this overproduced hunk of, you know, steel or whatever we've got weighing down your board game shelf.

It's actually a very fun, immersive experience that we're going to talk more about here. But it's you know, it has the goods. Yeah, that's a great point. You know, the scarcity of it originally, if you didn't get in on that first Kickstarter campaign, then there was a lot of FOMO going around. It's like, oh my gosh, everyone's saying this game is amazing. How do I get it to the table? How do I find a copy?

And I think the second printing, that's when I jumped in on it, too, by the way, there was a lot of demand for it. So it was almost I don't know if it was intentionally planned. Maybe not. I mean, it was Kickstarter. So you get as many backers as you can. But after that, there really was a well either intentional or accidentally executed marketing campaign because I know I definitely wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Yeah, I honestly didn't buy into the hype at first.

I didn't buy into the idea that this was going to be a lifestyle game or I was never into dungeon crawlers, really. I mean, vaguely interested them because I like the theme. But you know, a lot of them require a lot of time. They're like boxed miniature games. They require a lot of understanding of rules, a lot of understanding of the tactical combat of that particular system. It's a lot of investment of time to really get into it and get the most out of it. Plus, this thing was expensive.

It seemed overproduced and I totally didn't buy into the hype. I vaguely was interested in it because I knew my kids might like something like this, but I just didn't want to invest in something that seems so big. But then I played it at Dave's office and my son actually had an opportunity to play at Dave's office and he was sold. I'm sure we'll talk more about that. It really is something a little different than anything I've played before. Right. Pivoting off of that something different.

So let's talk about the quality of the world that was created by Isaac Childress here. So it's Tolkien-esque, I think, in that, you know, and maybe that's just generic fantasy. There are only so many baddies you can come up with. You're going to run into some wraiths. You're going to run into some ghouls and skeletons and whatnot, you know, even all the way up to dragons. But then I feel like there was a considerable amount of effort trying to create some uniqueness to it.

So do you want to talk about how Gloomhaven stands apart from more traditional fantasy Tolkien-esque environments? Yeah, I mean, they did a good job of avoiding a lot of the common tropes. You know, there are no elves and dwarves and orcs in this, but they went in a slightly different direction of making a new race to fill a lot of those common niches. There's the race that is, you know, the technological race that's kind of like maybe where gnomes would normally fit in traditional.

And there's some of the more brutish races. So they made their own backstory for it and they avoided some of the common tropes to some degree. But a lot of the DNA is still there, even if it's got a different face on it. Right.

I definitely agree with that is that instead of having a barbarian of a certain kind of race or a gnome tinkerer or something like that, they just kind of put it all together in one character and really streamlined some of that stuff that would make up your character sheet and say a D&D campaign or something like that. Right. I'll be totally honest that I have played the game and not really. I haven't really dived into the backstory at all or the overall story.

I'm just kind of running scenario scenario. It's like if it were a video game, I'm just I'm jumping the cut scenes. You know, I'm just like, forget the dialogue. Let's take me to the next boss fight. Because as a fantasy world, it is a fairly fleshed out fantasy world. It feels like a version of Waterdeep or something like that. It could fit somewhere in the Forgotten Realms. It's a little sludgy. You know, I mean, they called it Gloomhaven. It's a little, you know, that dark sludge.

You're in dungeons more than you are like out on the plains or in the mountains or anything like that. So it's a very specific sort of sludgy vibe. But overall, the story and the larger fantasy world, I'm just I'm jumping those cut scenes and just let's start the next fight. Nice. When you look at the world around it, though, this is like the concept of legacy taken to an eleven in my mind. It's not just adding stickers to the board or tearing up cards.

You're able to through the process of retiring characters, you're upgrading the town, which brings on new capabilities within the town or you're enabling global effects that are going to actually change the game. Those are mechanisms, sure, that are being added and you can just distill it to the next tactical fight.

But I think it really added to the atmosphere they provided that the environment was also changing around you and not just the stickers and abilities that you were developing on your character. And I thought that was an interesting way of going about this type of approach. Yeah, I don't know. The original Gloomhaven kind of doesn't feel very strong in the legacy aspect to me. I mean, it is I think it qualifies as a legacy game.

But a lot of the things that you talk about, like retiring characters and they're more your personal development within the game. And while there are a few forks within the adventure path, the scenarios, it is a very piecemeal game where you're going to play this scenario and there's nothing stopping you from playing a scenario that technically was off of the track. The rules of the game don't change based on your decisions.

The only thing that is truly legacy is that if you enhance a character class, every time anybody creates a character with that class in the future, if you enhance those cards, that class will always be enhanced for any player that plays it. Right. But it's more just character growth. To me, I feel like it didn't quite deliver on the promise of being a true legacy game. There's just not that many elements that are world affecting and dramatic at the end of it.

And that's a couple hundred hours in. Yeah, I think that's a great point, Greg, because it's definitely campaign based and you are putting stickers on your cards. You know, and there is the map board, you can do stickers or you can even buy the static color forms version of it where you're not actually putting stickers on the board. But when you play scenario 18, you know, no matter how you got there or when you got there, it's scenario 18 sets up and plays the same way.

You might be bringing a different character to it. Oh, that's interesting. Exactly. But that scenario, it's always going to be the same. Whereas in a, you know, in a pandemic legacy or other legacy games, when you get to a certain scenario, the board has physically changed depending on what came earlier and how you performed earlier. So you're affecting how it goes. But in this game, like Greg was saying, scenario to scenario, those are pretty much the same.

You're just kind of bringing different tools to it. All right. Let's talk about not just legacy, but the character development piece is interesting. I kind of think of Gloomhaven as being RPG light, right? Because there are those character development things. You are making those decisions about where you go. But the reason why I say it's light is it does a lot of the stuff that normally you would have to provide your own creativity for.

Like when you're generating a traditional RPG character, you're providing the backstory, you're determining the motivations, you're doing all that stuff. And Gloomhaven gives that to you mostly in the form of the class you pick and the life goal card that you draw that is supposed to shape how you're going to behave moving forward. And then they have the achievements and things that you're going to be tuning along the way.

So I feel like it kind of touches upon it and maybe gets you past some of those initial character creation concepts, but also takes away some of the richness. What are your thoughts about where Gloomhaven fits within, say, a person's experience along the RPG spectrum? I don't see the RPG elements, although it's listed RPG is one of the mechanisms. Role-playing is one of the mechanisms listed under BGG. But to me, it's apples and orangutans. It's two totally different things.

Well, not totally different because you can play Dungeons and Dragons. You can play that only as a tactical combat game, which is how I played as a teenager. We weren't role-playing. We weren't going through the larger story. We're just like, where's the next battle? I'm going to do this cool thing and roll the dice. That's all we did. Right. But especially. Wait, wait, wait. You didn't have time for that. You went to the tavern and made advances on wenches to fulfill your adolescent...

No. You're cruising for an editing. That's all I'm going to say. My friends would have made fun of me. I'm not saying I didn't want to, but I would have been made fun of. So no. But you see what I'm saying? I don't see role-playing in this at all. Now as we're playing, I might even affect a voice of my character, even joke around in a certain way that my character is doing this. But I don't see those same things that I'm looking for in an RPG game. I don't see here.

But then again, I already said I'm jumping the cut scenes and I am just playing this as a tactical combat game. So you're playing it like a teenager. Yes, like a teenager plays D&D. It's really easy to play this like a video game RPG where you just kind of skip past the cut scenes, like he's saying. I do think there's room for it. I know other groups get into that. It's not something that I feel when I play this game.

Sometimes we try to use those life goals and whatnot as a justification for making some of the decisions in the game, just because it keeps it from being too meta. I don't want to be analyzing an event card and deciding what. So that's where I do use it a little bit to kind of roleplay. What would this character do? But for the most part, it's barely there. That said, I have a group of friends that they play their own Gloomhaven.

They're on hiatus now, but they were playing it for a couple of years every other Thursday. And for them, that was more important to them than trying to get through the main quest line or anything like that. It was more important to them to really play out their character goals and to just follow whatever their characters would want to do. So they've very much played it more like an RPG as far as following the motivations of the characters.

So I think it really depends on the player as much as anything. In this case, you get out of it what you want to get out of it. I would agree with that. Absolutely. Well, I feel like we're kind of ganging up against you, Todd. Do you want to make more of a point? Because I do have another point to make, but I don't want to just keep going. And then and then and then. And here's why it's still not like I'm not trying to say it replaces RPG in any respect. That's why I said it's RPG light.

I think what I like about it is for people that are curious about RPG but don't want to commit to what they might perceive as RPG culture and putting together a diehard group or costumes or whatever, it's like, no, no. You can you can get started with, you know, Jaws of the Lion and start dipping your toe into this really rich world. And I don't mean Louie, but I just mean RPGs in general.

But I think it might get a lot of people started that otherwise wouldn't have as easy an entree to what RPGs have to offer. My takeaway is, wait, I didn't realize cosplay was an option for our Monday or Monday night game nights. We could do that for any game that we're playing. We actually it's funny, we have actually talked about that with wearing top hats and monocles for some of the game Railroad Bears.

Right. Yeah, I've got my pipe that I keep here for when somebody makes a preposterous accusation against me. Right. Well, to make a point in Todd's favor, there are those irrational decisions that you make as a player, and that is part of the RPG elements, as there might be a time where the whole point of this scenario is to go kill that bad guy. So now it's your turn, Todd. Why are you not going to kill that bad guy?

Why are you going to pick up loot or why are you, you know, whatever you're doing, because your character is making decisions based on their personal goals, based on that card that you got at the beginning of the scenario. Exactly. Yeah. That's a point in your favor. So, you know, the RP portion of RPG is not for everyone.

And I actually think that's a little intimidating that if you weren't a theater kid or you're not really close with your friends where you can be goofy and play that RP part, then I can see a game like Gloomhaven scratching that itch and kind of fitting into where I'm this character and I'm making decisions for this character in this party. So I'm just trying to support you, Todd. I'm seeing it a little. Actually, I think you also make a great point there. It is a distinction.

And for somebody who has, say, watched Critical Role online and really is looking forward to that player interaction and that improv experience, this doesn't provide any of that. So this isn't RPG light for that kind of player. So I really think it is about what you expect to get out of it. At its core, it's a tactical combat simulation. If you're not looking for that in a game, you know, then this is not going to be the RPG light of any kind that you want to play.

Well, and we probably beat it to the ground already, but I do want to make one last point on it. Sure, let's just keep doing it. Let's just do this the whole time.

The thing about RPGs that attracts me is that when we play, the three of us sit down and play whatever RPG we play, that experience becomes our own that no other group is going to replicate because it's so player dependent, especially with things like the rule of cool, which is one of my favorite parts about RPG is when I asked the DM, you know, can this happen and it's not supposed to happen, but the DM says, actually, that's a pretty cool idea. Let's do that.

And then now we're off making a shared creative experience and gloom Haven's not going to be that shared creative storytelling experience. It's a choose your own adventure at best. Well, and I think they actually use those exact words when they describe their branching storyline, which let's talk about that one for a second.

So one of the things claims it has this branching storyline and it does, but I will say one of the items that I was a little disturbed about and this has to do more with time investment. Maybe this is a result of where I am in my life. But when you play a scenario, if you complete it, you get to choose what you do next. If you don't complete it, you have to do it again. And in my mind, that's like, that's not really a branching storyline.

I mean, there should be a positive side and a negative side to that result. And if I didn't pass it, then it's not go back and redo it and pretend it never happened. It's where do I go in the story from there? So what are your thoughts about the claim to having a branching storyline, but it's only after positive results? Yeah, that would be interesting. The game just isn't designed that way.

I think you are absolutely right that the result of a scenario doesn't result in a of your success or failure doesn't result in a branching storyline from whether you succeeded. And that to the point is another thing that is different between this and a traditional RPG. I think, though, it ends up being a strength of the game. And I'll get into that in a second. But the branches in this game are more focused on which scenario do you choose to do.

If you try to go fight off the I don't want to give any spoilers here. But if you do scenario A, that takes the whole storyline in that direction. If you do scenario B, it takes it in a different direction. And in either case, it locks off the other branch because you've made the decision as a group. This is what we're doing. And this is this is how we're fighting or we're continuing this campaign is we're going to support this faction or we're going to fight these people.

So it puts the decision at a higher level than the tactical combat game, which I think that's a design decision. I think you could easily design a game that had outcomes based on what your results are. And there are certainly things within the game that I'm trying to remember. Now, this is where I'm trying to remember whether it was a gloom haven or frost haven.

But I think even in frost haven, there are some a few scenarios that if you you know, you depending on how well you beat the scenario affects the reward and outcome of it a little bit. Got it back to having to replay a scenario.

I actually think that's a strength of the game, because one of the things that I've found really fun about the game is that when you fail a scenario, you get to then as a team, take a step back and look at what went wrong and then take some of these innovative elements of this game and rebuild your character a little bit.

You get to rebuild your deck, pull out those cards that weren't helping you throw in some more movement, whatever it is to fine tune your character to have a new strategy to beat this scenario. So to me, those are some of the most fun scenarios is the ones that you don't beat the first time, but you have to go back two or maybe even three times where you're having to. Well, that's a drag when it's a two hour. Yes, exactly. Yeah, two hour sludge fest.

And then you lose because you know, you run out of cards at the last minute. Like, let's reset it and do it again. Or next week when we get together, we got to play that scenario again. That is a drag. But what you're talking about, Greg, that's a thing that I think is also seen as a feature in like, say, Lord of the Rings, the card game, where there are certain scenarios that are known to be very difficult.

And part of the fun is building a deck or building my character so I can address this specific scenario. And so when you step back, retool, OK, that didn't work. So when you look at it as this is a puzzle that we're going to solve together and we might have to take a couple of goes at it. If you embrace that, I can see that as being a feature. But like we said before, those times when you just two hours of just grinding and then it just you fail and you get nothing. It can be disheartening.

Yeah. Well, and I mean, we'll get to it, you know, later on in the prompts. But our playing time, at least that I've recorded, has not even been less than two hours. So it's each scenario is a significant investment. And to have to do it again is a drag and to do it a third time is torture in my mind. Yeah. But then again, I hear you. What I'm trying to get out of it is something different. And we'll talk about that in a bit.

One of the things, though, I do like about the game and Greg, you are touching upon it with the way you build the deck. But then also the way that it mitigates risk or presents risk. So we're not chucking dice like we're all used to in RPGs. Right. It's the idea that you have your attack modifier deck and that is something that can be tuned and shaped along the way. So what are your thoughts about the attack modifier deck? Was it a novel element that you enjoyed? Could it be improved upon?

How do you think that specific element fits within the overall aesthetic of Gloomhaven? I love the attack modifier deck. I mean, I don't think it's that novel in the sense that, you know, there have been games before this that you had, you know, especially war games that you had an attack modifier that, you know, rather than rolling dice just to balance out the outcomes from over the course of the game. But they do a couple innovative things.

One is that you get to customize this deck as your character levels and grows. As you as a player retire characters, you also get more ability to modify that. Right. And customize that deck. And it not only improves it, but it also you can change the flavor of how that class that character plays based on how you modify the deck. And we can talk about the perk system now if you want.

But sure, they there's a system of perks that every time you level up and every time you complete three checks from battle goals, you get a new perk. And the main benefit from that is adjustments to your attack modifier deck. And, you know, first you can get rid of negative cards, you can get rid of even the zeros in a lot of cases, but each class has a unique set of perks that allows you to customize it in its own special way that really brings out the flavor of those characters and.

Or your style as a player, right? Yeah, absolutely. And this is one of the reasons why I feel like the game really shines once you've retired a couple characters and you've level, you know, you're playing at mid levels. That's when this game really comes into its own and feels like it's like nothing I've played before. And because it is so tailored to what you want to be playing with that character.

So beyond that, the attack modifier deck, also the way it resets is a little interesting because there's two, you know, there's the critical hit and the critical failure in there. Right. When you hit those, you don't get that relief of, oh, well, I hit my critical failure. At least I won't don't have to worry about that anymore. No, it gets shuffled back in your whole deck, reshuffles and reset. And I have hit that critical failure on the top.

I've talked deck that card before, you know, back to back. Yeah. You know, so it's a neat thing because they added that that you always have the potential to do a critical hit or fail completely on every attack. So it's it's kind of neat and it's a one in 20 chance. But that sounds a lot like other systems I know. Well, but that chance increases, though, as you go, you know, and you can, you know, as you're playing cards that don't make you reshuffle that deck. Now it's a one in 19.

Now it's a one in 18. It keeps increasing until you hit one of them and have to reshuffle. But that's what I mean. It's like I hadn't encountered that style before. And I just really love the idea of, OK, I've gotten through, you know, especially early on, I've gone through some of my natives. I know my critical successes in there and the critical failure. But I tend to focus on the positive things just as a person. And so it's like, OK, this next one, this could be my critical success. Right.

And then you turn it over and it is it's not hopefully it's not the critical failure and reshuffle everything. But there's an anticipation of what's left in the deck that I really like when playing Gloom Haven.

Yeah. And now we're getting into why I'm here, because when we talked about the theme of the game, the doorstop box, the modular board, the minis, the little boxes, you know, the what do they call them where the kids open the prize boxes or blind box opening, you know, that real of it of like, what am I going to get when I open the next box? That feel of it. You know, a lot of the games do that. But like we said, there was all this hype.

But when I actually got the game to the table and something like this attack modifier deck and actually the actual deck of cards of play, which we'll talk about that as well, that's where the rubber starts to hit the road. And that's why I'm here, because the gameplay actually holds up to all that hype and that modifier deck. I mean, my strategy is to get rid of the fails. Right. Like I just want. But there is the option where you just put in the big hits.

I might fail sometimes, but I'm going to get more opportunities to have a two X or, you know, a big hit. And you get that choice on how you want to do it. And that's what I meant by developing that deck as your style of player, because I might go for the riskier deck that still has negatives in it. But I'm going to hit for a ton if I draw the right card, whereas you might be more risk adverse and you're going to pull out the negatives. So you'll always be contributing something.

You just may not be as much or your cards that are going to put elements on the board that your character might use. Like it's going to put some fire or ice on the board or something like that, that your character can use with its other cards. So you start to synergize your attack modifier deck with your gameplay deck or whatever that's called your character ability cards or with your teammates.

Yes. Let's talk about that, because that's actually something I find really interesting is that element infusion board and that you can set the table for there to be powers of different flavors available to be used by someone with a skill that uses them. So take a moment and talk about that balance and maybe tie it back into the character decks, because you were just talking about how you build those.

Well, what I like about that is that I feel like that's more of an advanced level of play because the first few scenarios, I would put some element onto the board and then it diminishes very quickly. And like I didn't get to use it, nobody else got to use it. And then you have to start thinking a little bit deeper on how am I going to coordinate that? Do you have the elements on the board when I need them or when my other people in my campaign need them?

So that is, I think, a little bit of a next level gameplay in which made it a little more intriguing on how can I manage that as I'm just trying to bash monsters. Right. Greg, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, each of these classes, I mean, there are 17 classes in the game and they all play very differently. And with me and my sons, we managed to unlock every single one and play it at least once. And they are all unique. And some of them rely very heavily on these elements.

Others don't care about them at all. And it tends to be something that, yeah, you have to coordinate as a team. Are we going to try to be, are you going to have to be self-sufficient because nobody else cares about elements or puts them out? Or are we going to go to a couple of classes that can complement each other where one is putting out elements that the other needs and helping power up those abilities on their cards?

Yeah, it's something that I think is pretty special about this game that each class has their own unique deck of ability cards. And they really are completely different in how they play strategically and even the tactics that you need to use on the board and how they coordinate with other players. Some of them are very independent. Others are very dependent on the positioning of other players.

And it's just, yeah, every time a new character enters the game, it's like a new puzzle to solve and how are we going to coordinate the efforts of these characters together and how are we going to defeat this scenario with these abilities? It's a lot of fun. Yeah. We didn't talk about my favorite part, how your player fatigues by your deck getting smaller. Okay. Just the cards in general, especially since we just did San Juan recently and we talked about multi-use cards.

To me, that's the heart of Gloomhaven. The way you play that deck, the way you play your cards, you can only use the top or the bottom and you use one of each. You could change so many elements of this game and I still like it. But if you took that out, then it's just another dungeon crawler. You are absolutely right, Dave. That is probably one of the key differentiators of this game is that each class has its own deck. They have different hand sizes.

So some, you have only eight cards for your whole scenario and others you have 12. And you get to play through them multiple times, but each time you play through them, you lose a card. And some of the cards you lose just by playing them. So yeah, it's a lot of fun. And I love that. I love that mechanism. Dungeons and Dragons, D&D doesn't even have that fatigue. You could have just a huge battle where you just roll again, roll again, roll again. And my guy just never got tired.

Maybe my hit points got a little lower, but the cleric healed me. We're still going. But this one- Murder Incorporated just run through killing everything in the dungeon. But the way this puts fatigue into a big battle is really fantastic. It's really intuitive. Yeah. And you lose the ability to do things because you lose cards. That ability that you were knocking out every turn or every few turns before, now you can't even do it anymore because you're too tired. You're too, you know, whatever.

Now you have to use lesser abilities more often, you know, or you have to a long rest to make sure you don't lose that ability. But then you're out of action for a turn. Or for me, one of my priorities every time is to get as many experience points as I can because I'm trying to level that character. But the experience point, you know, side of the card is also usually paired with one of your best abilities.

So it's like, do I want to sacrifice the ability to gain the XP or do I think I'm going to be able to take advantage of it a second time of that card? Or it's on a throwaway card that, you know, well, if I use this, then I'm going to have less endurance. Exactly. Or the top part of the card, the bottom part of the card, you know, the bottom part is often, what is the bottom often moving and the top is often attacking?

Yeah. Every card can be used as the top can be used as just a single melee attack for two damage and the bottom can be used as a two move. So that's the base. So most attacks are on top and most moves are on bottom. Yep. But sometimes you get that card that has an attack on the bottom or a move on the top so you can double attack in a turn or double move in a turn.

Yeah. Yeah. That whole system is what really I mean, I would play a game that's just that and you take everything else out and do like a game like Race for the Galaxy or San Juan that just uses cards that way. I would play that. Yeah. I mean, it's one of the things that intrigues me about the Gloomhaven RPG is that they carry this tactical combat system into the RPG. So yeah, maybe that makes a fun RPG too. I don't know. I'm curious to see how combat works. You'll have to let us know how it is.

So when we're going into these scenarios and you drop in, you've got your starting room, you're usually going to have a few baddies in there. Let's talk about the monster AI here and how you determine how the monsters are going to respond and potentially move. I thought that it was, it's definitely followable, but there's also a lot of considerations you have to make. This is not Ferunculus in Fearsome Floors, right? It's like, it's not see somebody move there.

You've got to take into account the traps and things. So part of the puzzle solving for me is exploiting what the AI is going to do. And then there's a lot of components that go into that. So what are your thoughts about the effectiveness of the monster AI here? There's some good flow charts out there to help you run the AI.

But I actually think it's an important element of the game that it has a relatively intelligent AI that is going to try to do the best with its abilities with following explicit rules. You mentioned in the show notes that there is an ambiguity, that there are times that this could go to hex A or hex B. They're both, it can attack from either one and the players get to decide which. Other than that, it's really explicit about what the monsters are going to do.

It's good in that it allows you to plan for it and exploit their behavior, but it can get a bit fiddly at times. And it's definitely one of those things, kind of a barriers to entry on this game that it's makes it a little bit difficult to run and slows the game down when you're still getting used to it. Right?

Yeah, I think, you know, it actually makes me think about a little bit of complaining I was doing about the branching storylines and things like that and how to look at a game like this and say, why didn't they make this game an open world sandbox that like changes at my every whim? That's not even possible. What I'm saying that like, I wish that it could be that those branching storylines and everything came out great. And that's exactly like this here.

It is a little annoying sometimes the puzzle of manipulating the bad guys is that I know what they're going to do. Really the only question, well, the biggest question is in what order we're going to move in. So is that guy still going to be there when you want to go that sort of thing? So that's the only question. So but I think with with that, they really did a great job on making it a little bit unpredictable, but also predictable enough to where it becomes a puzzle we have to solve.

So that part of it, I don't like as much. I mean, I guess that's tactical combat. I mean, that's what you're here for is solving that puzzle each time. But I think they did such a great job on a little bit of fog of war. There's a there's enough chaos in there to where I'm just going to do my best. And maybe I go late in the turn. And I'm just swinging at the air at that point. Right.

Yeah. No, I think you make a great point that the randomness that they add to it, you know, they have their own attack modifier deck that never changes. It's the same base 20 cards that every character starts with. But the other aspect of randomness is what is the initiative and action that the monster is going to take each turn.

And that is a lot of fun to deal with, because, you know, sometimes you're planning for them to go late and they pull their one card that's an early initiative and it messes up your whole turn and you know, now you have to scramble and figure out what you're going to do or or how you're going to react to the fact that nothing's where you plan for it to be. I think it keeps the game interesting and it keeps it from being overplanable.

One of my sons loves to like plan out everything to the nth degree. And it's like he's come a long way in accepting that this randomness keeps you from being able to do that because you want the monsters to follow the rules so that you can kill them quickly.

But a lot of times they're going to do something different this turn because every single monster has a couple of cards that are kind of off of their standard attacks, you know, that are, you know, where they go out of initiative order from their normal and they do something, you know, whether it's that they heal themselves or they suddenly a slow moving monster rushes across the room. It's like you can't always count on them doing what you want.

And so it means it's not always worth trying to like plan out what you think they're going to do, but just kind of come up with your best options so you have flexibility every turn. Right. Anyway. I would just like to point that after you get through the entire flow chart, they may come down to the point where there are two equally viable actions the monsters could take and the rules just state the players must decide which option the monster will take.

So this is just more out of personal curiosity. Do you like to play that safe? Like we created ambiguity so we get to do what's most in our favor or do you prefer more of a doom style like Arkham Horror, the card game where whenever there's in doubt, you do what's worst for the players. What are your personal thoughts on resolving the ambiguity? Well, I think in this case, it's open to you to make those decisions in your favor. In Arkham Horror, they specifically have the grim rule. Right.

That's it. When in doubt, do the thing that's worse for you. Yeah. Arkham Horror is the kind of game that it's supposed to be beating you up. It's supposed to be frustrating. That's in the design. That's in the DNA. But in this case, I mean, you get to choose which character this moves towards. I'm like, great. I've got a bunch of hit points. Let's make it move towards me since we're equal. And I think that's not taking advantage of it. I think that that's the design.

I think that's what you're allowed to do in that scenario. Yeah. And playing through Gloomhaven, that's how we played it most of the time is we played in the player's favor. Always choosing what fit our strategy. We choose what would work for us best. I think more recently, Isaac Tiller has come out and said for moving forward, he wants that rule, I think, for Frosthaven and I'm assuming it's going to be in second edition as well, that it should be that the monster does what's best for it.

But even there, he leaves some ambiguity as well. Is that best from their perspective or best from the player's perspective? Because those aren't necessarily the same thing. I mean, what does the monster know all of our abilities and know what we want it to do? No, of course not. So even then, it's a little bit ambiguous. And I think you just have to play what is most fun for you. All right.

So, Gloomhaven, you mentioned that this game really starts blossoming when you get a couple hundred hours in, which that statement alone is amazing within the context of board games, because you think of how many times you play a game these days before you've moved on to the next interesting title. And it's far less than 100. And even if you were looking at two hour scenario times, that'd be a couple hundred hours. So I've often heard Gloomhaven called a lifestyle game.

This is one that you could keep playing over and over again. And for that reason, it often supplies the answer to if you were trapped on a desert island or stranded on a desert island, which game would you want to have with you? So I'm going to open this up to you guys. It's not about whether or not you want Gloomhaven there. We'll say that one's already on the island. Maybe you've built a house out of it. What other game would you want to have on the island?

And let's assume that you have the perfect number of players and survival needs are met so you don't have to worry about eating each other. What other games would you like to have on the desert island with you? Well, this one's a little too obvious. I mean, it's just a routine ground ball for me. It's Arkham Horror, the living card game. I mean, there are so many iterations of scenarios and campaigns.

And I mean, I could play that game for the next hundred years and still not exhaust all of the, you know, this time I'm going to take one character through all, you know, eight campaigns or whatever it is. I mean, it's so mutable. So for me, that's an easy one because that's just my favorite game to do all of those iterations for. Okay, great. Did you have an answer for what to be stranded on an island with? Well, you know me, I love novelty. I love new games all the time.

So this is a really hard question for me. Gloomhaven is the only game that I've ever invested this much time in a single game and kept coming back. I can't think of any other game that no matter how much I love it, that I would consistently come back to it and always be craving another game. So for me, I... Well, it's in addition to Gloomhaven. You have Gloomhaven plus one. No, I understand. I understand that.

But so for me, I probably just say, you know, a solo, something that can be played solo so I don't have to force anybody else to be on the island with me. Maybe another game, Arkham Horror is a great example, but maybe like, oh my gosh, I've forgotten his name, Seventh Continent. That might be a fun to have there where it's a lot of gameplay, a lot of depth and a lot of variation that you can put into each scenario. All right. That's a good choice. We'll be talking about that one again later.

What do you got? I had down Twilight Imperium 4th. I'm in. Oh, you're going to drag six people to this desert island with you, huh? You know what? I said desert island, all survival needs are met and perfect number of players. So basically, I'm offering a tropical resort vacation and we're going to have Twilight Imperium set up. Yeah, I'm in. So I question the use of the term lifestyle game here.

So I didn't look up in my Oxford English Dictionary exactly what that is, but my thinking on a lifestyle game is a game that has that game outside of the game. Gloomhaven has tons of hours of game, but I don't think that qualifies as a lifestyle because any game can have a hundred hours worth of play if you don't get sick of it.

But for me, something like a miniatures games, which this one is obviously where you're painting the miniatures, where you're doing organizing solutions, where you're deck building like Arkham Horror LCG to me feels like a lifestyle game because I spend more time playing with the game, but not playing the game than I actually do playing the game. I see. You know, my wife's a quilter and she talks about how she spent so much time doing things about quilting than actually quilting.

And I just compare that to that's what we call a lifestyle game that this is your baby. And then only the hobby within the hobby, the hobby within the hobby. Yeah. Only 20% of the time. Am I actually sitting down playing Arkham Horror? Well, by the way, everything you said does not disqualify Gloomhaven from that classification. So if you want to say, I mean, because they just had a Kickstarter where they released gazillions of miniatures.

So you could be doing all of that painting instead of using the standees and all that other stuff. And there are organizers and there are helper apps and that's true. It's definitely a lifestyle game. Now you could say that Twilight Imperium doesn't qualify. But even then I might argue because there are other resources available and you can paint up those ships and da da da da da. So even by your definition, I think we came up with games that qualify. Okay. So let's move on to the prompts.

First off, waiter complexity on BGG scale one to five. How do you rank Gloomhaven, Greg? Oh man, I had a hard time with this. Not because I think overall it's a four for me. It actually pushes almost to a five, but there's elements within the game that are really straightforward. There's scenarios and at times, you know, you play through a scenario and it's almost boring because it was too easy and it was too straightforward.

And other times, like I said, you play two or have to play it two or three times to figure out how do we beat this. And so overall though, between the cooperative element, the strategy involved, and just the fact that every single character is unique, I give it a solid four. And that's not even to get into the fiddliness of it and how complex it is just to manage the game. Right. Well, since you said fiddly, because that's exactly what I wrote down for my note to remind me here.

That's what bumps it up to a five for me is that if I go two months between scenarios and then sit down to play, it's going to take me an hour to set it up. Because I'm like, wait, how do we do this again? Hold on. I got to get, we all get one of these cards and it's just all that little fiddliness, I think really bumps it up for me that there's a lot of, you know, RAM memory you got to hold on to while you're playing. Yeah. But you know what?

If you've played a lot of like tactical combat games or dungeon crawlers or even a heavy combat RPG like D&D, you're used to systems like that. You're used to that kind of keeping track of all the different roles. And so it might not be a big lift for you to jump into a system like Gloomhaven. But yeah, it's definitely not a lightweight. Yeah. Right. What about you Todd?

If you were to pick up the rule book and play, especially a mid to late game scenario from scratch, it would easily be a four. I could even see it bumped up. But I want to give it some credit here because one of the things I really love about the game is how the scenarios and character development ease you in to the complexities of the game. You start out and it's literally just let's go rat bashing. Those early monsters aren't inflicting disabilities.

You don't have to worry about elemental infusion or anything like that. And so it really brings the complexity on gradually as opposed to throwing it all at you at once. And so I would even knock it down to a three because it brings everything on in a very approachable way. And I think it does that really well, better than other games often do for their learning rules versus the expert rules. But there are only those two levels. This really was a learning curve that was managed and thoughtful.

When what you're talking about is what Jaws of the Lion does so well, which is really we did it even better, it's an onboarding for it. Where in this scenario, you only have to worry about this. OK, now we're going to add this little thing and now we're going to add this little thing. And by the time you get to the end, you've got the whole game under your belt. So yeah, it does a great job onboarding you into that.

I still think it's a higher complexity, but because you have to do that work to get there is what I think keeps it at a higher complexity. That's fair. So how about strategy then? Do we want to talk about how much opportunity there is for strategy in Gloomhaven? From scale one to five, Dave, I do think there's a ton of strategy because it's how are you going to play your character? You know, when we first started playing, I saved all of my good cards for the end that never came because we died.

You know, I had a great hand of cards, but because I didn't did so poorly at the beginning of the scenario, that end never came. So how do I play this character? When do I burn my powerful cards that get removed from the game when I use them? When do I take a rest? Long rest, short rest? I feel like there's a ton of strategy in there. Tactical, obviously, but strategically, how is this specific character going to address this specific scenario?

I think it takes a little bit of front loading before we start that scenario. And that to me is the definition of strategy. All right. How about you, Greg? Yeah, I think this one, I have to say it varies a lot based on the scenario. Like you said, Todd, you know, they start you off easy and they have some easier ones peppered throughout the campaign. Part of that is there's not a fixed order in which you complete things.

So you might come back to something that you could have done as you're in your first 10 scenarios in the campaign, but you're doing it now at level six or seven because you decide to go back and complete something that you'd left behind. So it varies a lot. And some of them are super complex and require a lot of planning ahead and maybe even multiple attempts. So overall, I'd give it probably a three or four.

I'll say four just to stick to a number, but definitely there are scenarios that it's five. I mean, one of the great challenges this game is that it gets so, you know, some of them, you can't just play your character the way you've played it every other time. You have to play it differently because this scenario, maybe you've played for endurance normally and this time you have to burn fast and kill things quickly or maybe it's the other way around.

You've you normally burn out and you let the other characters finish things off. But this time everybody has to survive to the end. Right. So yeah, that's a good point, Greg. In fact, I was prepared to defend an answer of two here because this is just so incredibly tactical.

But I do like the point you made about how the individual scenarios may demand that you play against type and you have to come up with a different plan and you got to you have to think of that plan before you start the scenario. Yep. I think it's an interesting and build a deck to match it. Well, yeah, right. And I would say that there's not a lot of strategy opportunity across a campaign because I'm just I'm developing a character and then sure, I move on to the next class.

But within the life of that one character, there's not a whole lot of strategy. There's some. So I would have said it's a two. But if I think about comparing it to other games, the scenario is the game. Right. If we're going to play memoir 44, the scenario is the game. And I would talk about strategy there being how I prepared to play out that game and what objectives I was trying to achieve. And so, yeah, I think you're right.

I think strategy does get bumped up to a three or four within the context of how do we prepare for a scenario? I'll say three. Well, and also consider your battle goal cards is that upfront, maybe I need to open all the doors or maybe I need to whatever my goal might be. So that's going to you know, am I going to Leroy Jenkins into this? Everybody's like, I'm taking a rest. I'm like, I'm opening the door too bad.

That's one of my favorite ones is the one that you have to keep monsters on the word. Yes. Right. So but that plays into the strategy too is and that it's a co-op game. But we're also a little bit sometimes working against each other that like I'm trying to collect all the loot or whatever my personal, you know, battle goal is. That one is the most evil one. And so that strategy, strategy plays in that way.

Yeah. So overall, like if you look at the campaign, I still think it's up there like a three because you have to be, I mean, you don't have to do it this way, but you can be worrying about party balance. You can be worrying about working towards retirement goals. How to equip characters is a decision you make between scenarios. And that's an interesting decision.

And then again, building when you're leveling up, how are you going to continue to develop your character when you level up your character and get new cards? All right. Fair enough. So then luck, how much do you think luck plays a factor? Game scale one to five. I'll lead us off here. I'm going to stay with a three. I love the idea of tuning your attack modifier deck. And I think that helps mitigate luck. It doesn't remove it entirely, but the monsters have theirs too.

And same thing with initiative. In fact, I know that we've come up with ways of describing initiative like, oh, I'm going to go early. I'm going to go really early. We're trying to skirt the fact that I can't tell you what my initiative value is. I just drank a Red Bull. I think at this point, my sons and I, we could probably come up with all the numbers between one and a hundred by using words that are not numbers. It's kind of like playing the mind a little bit, right? Yeah, exactly.

I'm just going to reach out and touch your hand and shake my head. No, you're not going down. Start using baseball signals. Yeah. But for that reason, I think that luck is still predominant, even though there are some really thoughtful and intentional mechanisms that have been added to the game to try to level it out. It's still going to crop its head. It may not be as overt as Chuck and Dice, but I think luck is still a three out of five on this. I'm thinking maybe a four.

I mean, there's been so many times where I'm like, oh, I'm dead for sure. Like, oh, you killed him. Oh, he didn't move or he's not attacking this turn or whatever. I feel like luck seems to go in my favor more than not, but there's been so many times where I've just been saved by the card draw. It feels like a four to me. I mean, all that planning and then when what's the famous quote? No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. That's exactly right.

And that's how the scenarios feel that sure, I did my best, but I think luck really plays into it. I might push this up to a four. All right. Yeah. I put this right at the middle at three as well, Todd. But for me, I don't think luck determines the outcome of the game that often. For me, like if it's just how often it determines the outcome of the game, I'd put it down at a two because the strategy and how well you cope with the randomness of the game is the game.

And that's the outcomes are more often in favor of playing well. That said, as far as how much randomness and luck contributes to the excitement and the challenge of the game, it's up there. It's a five. You know, because it is constantly every turn you're anticipating that next card draw of are the monsters going to do something that's going to screw me over or are they going to get a critical hit on me at the wrong time?

And you know, games can be won and lost on that, but it's the best kind of luck. It's the kind that creates stories, the kind that keeps you excited about every card draw. And you know, I mean, it's the one of the elements of the game that is why I'm playing it at all. I remember we had a game. My son had come to try out gloom Haven with us on a on one of our Monday night games and we were losing the scenario. We had done OK, but we were going to lose this scenario. Three of us were down.

The only person left alive was Paul playing the scoundrel. And the boss had like an insane amount of health still left, but he played an attack card that had a huge attack value, like an eight attack value, and then drew his critical hit and had some other modifier. And it just was such an exciting moment and you know, it's what put this game on my son's Christmas list and made him excited to play it.

And you know, and ultimately is why I've ended up playing this game for hundreds of hours probably. Right. And so, yeah, anyway, I really like the way you put that, Greg, though, like we hate luck except for when it creates good story. That when it creates narrative in the game, we love it, but mostly we don't like luck. Exactly. You know, I don't like luck contributing to the outcomes.

But in this case, this is one of those games where it tells the story and sometimes it's a want, want, sorry, you're not going to come. It's not going to come out. And sometimes you have an area that the whole way through everything goes wrong. But that's again, part of the story of the game, you know, and it's fun. Yeah. One of the best outcomes from a game is when you have an exciting story or memory that you've shared. Right.

And it always says about a rickety, hey, remember that time I grew a carrot? No, but I remember that time that Dave did. And, you know, sure. All right. So how about the theme? How much do you think the theme has been integrated? Same scale, one to five. Oh, do we need to talk about this? You know what? It's one of the standard prompts. Is there anything to say? Is there, are we extending the scale beyond five for this one? Exactly. We are not. I don't think there's anything to say.

This one goes to 11. We're pegging the scale at five across the board. Is that what I'm hearing? Yes. Agreed. Yeah. I didn't even put any discussion on this one. I just wrote five. All right. I just wrote PFFT. So moving on. Favorite player count. At what count do you think this game is best played? I think it's like a martini, right? Two's not enough and four is too many.

So I mean, it's great at four, you get the full board and everything, but you're going over two hours and two feels like it's not quite as much. I feel like three just threads it perfectly. I'm going to jump in and agree with you on all those points. Yeah. I think hit the nail on the head there. Four would be great if it could be played shorter.

I mean, the game is fun at any player count, but three is my preference because of time to play and yet it still doesn't get humdrum like two player does. Yeah. So then least favorite player count. Keep in mind the game can still be good. I'm not saying it's bad at whatever your answer is going to be and it supports from one to four. I can't put a least favorite. I mean, for me, it doesn't have a bad player count. It's fun at all.

My preference is three, but it's fun at two, three and four and even at one, although I have to say I don't think one is officially supported by Gloomhaven, the base game. You have to have the solo scenarios, but Jaws of the Lion officially supports one where you play two characters, which you would have to do in Gloomhaven as well. So that would be my least favorite count, but it doesn't follow your rules of official player count. I agree. I agree on all points. We're making up time then.

I will also agree. I mean, it's such a table presence. I want to share it with somebody. Right. So, yeah. The collaboration is where the fun is. Yes. So, I want to do my least favorite. Even though it can still be, and the solo scenarios are fun. I've played a few and it was great to break out Gloomhaven and play with the bits. I would rather share that experience. Very much. All right. Actual playing time.

I still have this question in here, even though it's starting to become more empirical than opinion. What are your thoughts on the playing time? Is it just right? Let's find a way to make this opinion. What are your thoughts and maybe even say ideal scenario and then playing time? Well, because it's scenario based, I mean, there are some, Greg mentioned it earlier, there's somewhere, well, that just went too easy. We went through all this trouble to set it up and 30 minutes we finished.

Better just play another scenario. So not a big deal. And then there's times where it's just a long slug, you know, long slogging grind. And that part of that is being four players, you know, that we played a bunch of this at four players and that just really drags it out. I was saying thinking 120 minutes, but you're saying we have empirical data, we're consistently over that. Yeah. In our group, we play four players. So that's it.

So yeah, I mean, I think out of box, I think it would be difficult to keep this game under two hours. Maybe for some of the smaller scenarios, definitely you'd have to play at lower player count to do it. The only way that I've found to really keep that play time down is we go back to that fiddliness and ways of managing that.

I mean, geez, there's so much to keep track of in this game and especially when you're first playing it, or if you haven't played it in a long time, I mean, you're keeping track of health totals, XP, money, what else? Conditions, initiative, monster abilities. You have to coordinate with other players. You have objectives that you might be trying to deal with. You have to remember all those things about... Anyway, you get the idea. There's a lot to deal with in this game.

And so it can take a lot of time to think that through and to move all the bits around. I find that if you use an app to help you with a lot of that, it cuts down on play time a lot and makes it a lot more accessible. I mean, my son and I were able to... For a while, we were playing a lot of two player games and we were able to play two, three missions in like four hours regularly. Wow. Yeah. And that allowed us...

So we would plan to play two or three missions and then typically would take around four hours and sometimes we'd only play two, sometimes we'd play three, but that was two player and that was using the app and that was when we were playing a lot. So there wasn't a lot of remembering rules or anything like that. I can't imagine doing it that well with four player. I think you'd probably even with apps be playing in the 120 minute range in most cases above 120 minutes. Right.

So 20 minutes, two hours. Our playing time was clocking in between two and a half to three hours for our four player games. And when you were earlier saying your strategy is going to have to vary between scenarios because some scenarios you're going to have to move fast. My attitude was every scenario is a race. And it wasn't a race against the monster. It was a race against the clock. Right? I just want to get this scenario time down.

So I would say that one, because three players would be a faster game and then we'll get to talking about accessories, but I agree with what you're saying, Greg, that the helper apps that help with that bookkeeping and speeds things up. Anything you can do to drop the playing time is a benefit to this game. All right. So expansions. I'm going to include accessories in here. For me, a box organizer is an absolute must for this game. It's not even a question.

What are your thoughts about expansions and accessories for Gloomhaven? Why don't we get the actual expansion, Forgotten Circles, out of the way real quick here just to... Because we forgot it. Well, because I have played that a little bit. OK. And we did not play through the whole campaign in Forgotten Circles because we had already received Frosthaven by then, so we wanted to move on.

But we did make a point of bringing it out, trying out the character that comes with it and playing through the scenarios. And I'll say it's definitely ramp up in challenge. One of the things I liked about it is that it is made up of all of those challenging scenarios. Don't expect to beat them on the first try. I'll say that. You might be able to beat them occasionally on the first try, but they are... Each one of the ones we played was difficult in an interesting way.

And add to that the fact that one of the people has to play the character that comes with it and that presents its own unique challenges because while it's a useful class, the scenarios are designed around this class being one of the characters. So it often seems to be an optimal strategy for that class to play in those scenarios. But it's really interesting. It's a lot of fun.

If you've been having a lot of fun with Gloomhaven, Forgotten Circles is just more of the challenge and challenging scenarios that you might have enjoyed along the way. So I think it's a great expansion. All right. I have not played that expansion. In fact, I do have a question for you, Greg. So that expansion, do you play it at the end of the regular campaign or do you start fresh with new characters and then the character that comes with it? You can do it either way.

You could pick it up halfway through your campaign. There is kind of an official entry point where it suggests that you complete the town chronicle or whatever it's called. It recommends that you finish that and then the story picks up right from the end of it. But you could absolutely play it at any time. It scales just like any other scenario in Gloomhaven. And the storyline it tells doesn't depend on everything having been completed.

It is tied into the main storyline of Gloomhaven, but it's not essential that you completed the main storyline of Gloomhaven. Got it. All right. Which edition of the game is the best? And this is really more of a placeholder because they recently did a Kickstarter for second edition where they have announced some changes. So really what we have available to us today as time of this recording would be first edition and potentially Jaws of the Lion. What are your thoughts about between those two?

Which would you recommend? If you're new to this kind of game, if you haven't played a lot of tactical combat games, absolutely start with Jaws of the Lion. It is a great intro to the system, to the Gloomhaven combat system. And it's a lot less investment both in money, but also in table space and all that. For getting it to the table is a lot easier. You don't have map tiles. Everything's laid out in the books. And it really makes it easy.

It loses some of the long-term benefits of retirement goals and unlocking cool stuff. But you still get a little bit of unlocking and you get to level your characters and you get to equip them. So it still gets the flavor of it. But if you already are familiar with these kinds of games, jump right in. Go to Gloomhaven. It's a lot of fun. Or go straight to Frosthaven even. Yeah, I would agree with that. I don't think that much is lost with Jaws of the Lion.

But if you've already played Gloomhaven, maybe Jaws of the Lion might feel a little bit stripped down. But if you haven't played either, like I played Jaws of the Lion with my 10-year-old son. It was perfect onboarding to get him into the system, to get him understanding how it works, to get me kind of managing the system. That was nice.

But for like the four of us in our campaign that we started years ago, that one jumping into Gloomhaven was fine because we've all played a lot of games and it wasn't that overwhelming to jump in right away. Fair enough. So most recognizable comparison. So what's the highest ranking game that makes you think of Gloomhaven? Dave? Yeah. I'm not stepping on anyone's toes here because I'm coming a little bit out of left field. But I think I can make a case for it. I'm going to say Space Alert.

And it's because of that programming actions. And it's that feel of the game when we are playing our cards for initiative. And when I'm putting my cards down, I don't know if you're going before me. And it's like I mentioned earlier in this, I might get to my turn and I'm just swinging it thin air because the monster's gone, the monster's moved, I've been moved. Some things have happened.

So it's that programming, that section where we're all looking through our cards and putting our cards down to place. It captures a little bit of that Space Alert, a game that I miss dearly. Yeah. Yeah. I hadn't thought of Space Alert, but I definitely thought about that programmed aspect. Robo Rally was one that I considered for that reason. So what did you have, Greg? So what I think is the most interesting thing in this game is the hand management.

The fact that you have a set of hands, you have to play through these cards and at some point you reset your hand. So I was looking for a game that maybe captured that feel a little bit. I decided to choose Concordia. Because the base mechanism of that game is similar. I mean, obviously it's a very different game, feels nothing like. But because one of the innovations of Bloomhaven, it was touted as classical tactical combat simulation meets Euro.

And I think this is the essence of it right here is that hand management comes from Euro games. Concordia came out in I think 2013 and you have a set of cards. You have to play them out one by one each turn. And at some point you play a card to reset your hand. You can also build and add new cards to your hand throughout the game.

But that idea of you have to decide, you know, tactically what you're going to do each turn, trying to predict what other players are going to do and playing out your hand one at a time before you reset. And resetting has its consequences. And anyway, it reminds me of the hand management of Bloomhaven. Got it.

And the one I written down was based on a description of Bloomhaven that said, players will make decisions on what to do that will determine how the story goes, kind of like a choose your own adventure book. And that idea of a choose your own adventure book really resonated with me. And the game that I think of really being excellent at it is the one Greg mentioned as being one that he'd like to have on the island. And that's the seventh continent.

And there it literally is a choose your own adventure card game that the storyline is branching and the map is being built as you play and has a really cool mechanism for saving your progress through the game by storing the cards in a particular order. You know, if you have to pick it up. Well, if you're going to choose your own adventure, you could just go with choose your own adventure the game House of Danger. I could. I haven't played that one, though. I wouldn't.

And it certainly does it certainly doesn't compete for Bloomhaven as far as size, whereas seventh continent and its expansion box are both pretty big combined. You know, what Greg mentioned makes me wonder this concept of rest in the game of resetting is an element that we've been seeing in games since then. And I wonder if that kind of comes from Gloomhaven. We've got it in on 1800. We've got it in Space Station Phoenix.

You know, this point where I'm going to do a festival or I'm going to take a rest so I can reset my board and get my resources back. I think there are a number of euros that do that, though. I mean, I think back to like Manhattan Project had that. OK, I know there are some others. Nipon has that. I think of it as a Niagara like you had your stack of tiles and you had to go through the entire stack before it was reset. But do you get to I almost put Niagara before I thought of Concordia.

Do you get to choose when you do that or is it just when you get to the end of the stack? I don't remember. It's been so long. Yeah, that one you have to wait till you get to the end of the stack. Yeah, once everybody has only one tile left, everybody resets. So that's what I mean. That decision point of when can I just take a turn off to kind of come back stronger next turn? Yeah, you're right. Possibly. I don't know, but we're starting to see it a little bit more. Festival.

Yes. Yes. All right. So less recognizable comparison. What did you have down for your less recognizable comparison that reminded you of Gloomhaven? Well, I might just be saying this because we've had what? Twelve episodes and I don't know if I've talked about this enough, but I'm going to go with my beloved Wallenstein in Wallenstein that I'm planning my actions because I only want to talk about Wallenstein more, even if it has nothing to do with this. Everything reminds you of Wallenstein.

The universal Wallenstein theory. Yeah, that's right. I'm mapping out my actions. There are double use cards literally top and bottom that I might be using the bottom of the card for my bid on turn order. But that fog of war of you don't know where I'm going in what order I'm going. So just a little bit of that as far as that programming. That's a good example of the card use. Yeah, I didn't think of that one. That fits what I was looking for when I chose Concordia to win.

Also a dwindling or evolving deck. You know, in Wallenstein, as you lose territory, you also lose your deck gets smaller and then it gets harder, you know, which is similar to that fatigue in Gloomhaven. So I'm stretching it a little bit, but I just want to play Wallenstein. That's OK. No, not at all. I love it. So great. I still suck with card based game. I went with a tactical combat simulation card based game, old, old game that has some modern reprint whiz war. Oh, OK.

I don't know if either of you have ever played that, but it's something I remember from, you know, back in the 80s playing it. You're playing on little tiles. You have a random map that you build with little square tiles and you're running around fighting other wizards with, you know, a hand of cards. And it had that same level of trying to get clever with how am I going to play out these cards to do what I want to do?

And, you know, in that case, it's to try to surprise the other players and hoping that that next card you drew was going to be exactly what you needed to win the game. Yes, that's a good one. And I hadn't thought about it. I think they just announced a reprint of that is coming out and it'll be like the ninth to like eighth edition or something. Yeah, right.

Yeah. Similar to Dave, I've got an old favorite game that I think this is the one chance I'm going to be able to bring it up, so I'm going for it regardless. And it was World of Warcraft, the board game. This used to be the game for having a zillion components in it. And it's an old Fantasy Flight Games coffin box game. It really needed its Shadow of War expansion for the complete experience. The table presence was massive and amazing.

And those characters, they quested, they competed and they grew in order to defeat the baddie you had selected for that game. So I love this game and I have fond memories of it. When I thought about what Gloomhaven made me think about and what I would also like to play in that genre, I came up with World of Warcraft, the board game. Very good. Nice. So house rules, how would you improve the game? I think there are some ways that you can improve the experience.

They're not necessarily house rules. So thoughts here? The only thing I put down as an official like house rule kind of thing is the going back to that ambiguity. I would say even though it doesn't say it in the rules, don't make bad decisions for the monsters. Don't put them in a position that is clearly worse for them, especially if they're an intelligent creature. Make them make smart decisions. Doesn't mean it has to always be the worst thing for you, but you know.

I sense a benevolent dungeon master here that's laboring on behalf of the monsters. I appreciate it being their advocate. I think it makes the game more interesting. Advocating for the monster. Have a care for the monsters. Right. Nobody thinks about the monsters. We mentioned it a little bit for house rules. I would just say adding tech, adding those apps that we talked about. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. There's a lot out there. Which is in storage.

It's certainly a trade off though, because you know, that combat deck, I mean, we play tabletop games because some part of it is because I like that tactile experience. And so I don't enjoy like an iPad version of AgriKalot or something like that. I'll play it, but it's I would rather sit down and play Ticket to Riot or AgriKalot or whatever I happen to have on my iPad as well.

And so there's something that I enjoy better about flipping that combat card than I do about touching the screen and the next combat card shows up and an auto shuffles and it's nice. It speeds the game along, but I think something is lost. That's fair. Yeah, I would never. I mean, we play using X Haven Assistant and I would not play without it. I would not play without it. So we do use it for the monster deck, for the monster combat modifier deck.

It's not about that so much as it is keeping track of all those fiddly bits, you know, all the different monster health track in the game. You have to pile them all onto this little five by five square. Right. The sleeve or whatever. Right. Exactly. And it gets messy and it's really easy to make a mistake. And you have to do condition anyway. It simplifies all that. It's so much faster.

Anybody can do it from their phone and it also everybody can put in their initiative and it keeps track of initiative order. It speeds up the game just so much. I wouldn't play it without a combat tracker of some sort. I mean, there are other things out there. There are campaign trackers where you can actually keep track of everything and do all the events and all that. I'm not a particular fan of those.

I know that group that I mentioned earlier, they play with the campaign tracker so that they can look at things when they're not together. They can do like equipment purchases and stuff like that. OK. Off table. You know, I see that there's some benefit to something like that, especially if you were playing in like an online game or something. But mainly, I think the big thing is that combat tracker.

I agree. If Gloom of Haven is being played at game night, then what do you want to play afterwards? What's the best double feature game that goes along with it? I'm going with the Ress Arcana. OK. It has I wouldn't say that similar, but the way you're dealing with the deck and your deck is diminishing and things like that. So close enough to where you're in that mode, but you're also still in fantasy mode. And it's kind of a tighter, quicker game that I think it makes a nice companion.

All right, Greg? I'm going to play the role of Paul here and say Gloom Haven. But this one, it's more about practical reasons. I mean, this is a hefty game. There's a lot to unpack literally, physically out of the box every time you play. I mean, so much so that I think you need a storage solution to make it easier to unpack and put away. But because it takes so long to pull out and to put away, it's worth it to me to try to play two or three scenarios before you put it back in the box.

If you had any guts, you would say Frost Haven. I want to follow up Gloom Haven with Frost Haven. Play them in one arm load. Yeah, go for it. That's a continuation of the campaign. You know, you can't actually I think you could play them concurrently, but yeah. So if one Paul is good, two Pauls is better. I also had that same note jotted down that the role of Paul would be played by me, but apparently it's by me and Greg.

So yeah, if I've gone to the trouble to get Gloom Haven to the table, then I want to play as many scenarios as we can squeeze in. Absolutely. Yeah. If you like fill in the blank, then you're going to like Gloom Haven. So what is your answer for what would be the traits and mechanisms, the attributes that would recommend this to someone else? Well, I'm keeping it simple. I'm just saying immersive tactical combat. And it is very immersive. It's even though we're taking two plus hours to play.

I'm in that timeless state of complete focus on the game and kind of lost in the scenario. It does a very good job of drawing you in. And if you like that, forget about the world and really let your imagination run. Then this is that kind of game. Yeah, you know, I'll say that the role of Dave is being played by Todd today because I had that same thing too. I had tactical movement and combat puzzles because that's this game, right?

The way that you can use the cards, the terrain, the elements, teaming up with your friends, manipulating the monstera. All that stuff is great. If you like that tactical puzzle, then you're going to like Gloom Haven. I'm going first on the next question because you guys are stealing my answers. All right. I put down epic adventure and tactical challenges with cooperative gameplay. It's just a great cooperative game that is like Dave said, it's immersive and it's challenging.

So every game is a puzzle and it's a lot of fun to work with your friends to beat the game. Absolutely. Well, I bet you we all have the same answer on the next one. So you can go ahead and do it from under us. I'm guessing. All right. Well, if you don't like filling the blank, then you won't like this game. So Greg, you get to go first. Fiddliness is what I put.

So if you don't like dealing with lots of bits and keeping track of lots of stats and conditions and all that, you're not going to like this game. So did you pull the rug out from under you, Dave? No, that's not what I was expecting. I say if you don't like wasting two plus hours on a losing battle that you have to redo that completely, you know, you've made no progress in your 80. I mean what there's 80 scenarios. I mean to play this whole game, you're talking over a hundred hours.

So if you want to waste three hours and go nowhere in that campaign, make no progress, then you're not going to like this game if you don't like that experience. And I don't like that experience and we did that a couple of times. And I think that really put a speed bump in our playing of this game. It did. It did. Yeah. I mean, that's that's actually a really good answer, but it's not what I had either. But I totally agree with it.

What I had down is an RPG with a lot of the player provided creativity stripped away. So if you like crafting a backstory, if you like branching storylines and creating your own narratives, like Dave, you said the unique narrative that no other group is going to experience. If those are things that you like about your gaming, then you're not going to like Loomhaven because you're not on rails, but you are on a branching map that's defined. So did this game replace a previous one for you?

And Greg, because we didn't because you didn't have a chance to steal our answers on the last one. I'll let you go again here. For me and my sons, this replaced Mage Knight. We didn't play Mage Knight a lot, but it was like when we wanted that cooperative experience, kind of immersive adventure fantasy themed game, Mage Knight was the game we wanted to play. I don't think we've played Mage Knight once since, well maybe once since Loomhaven hit the table. Yeah, that's a good one.

I thought about that one as a recognizable comparison. Dave what do you have? Well, I will say, unfortunately, Arkham Horror, the board game, that that has a similar kind of cooperative us against the monsters feel. Third edition replaced the superior second edition. So already the better second edition got replaced by a little bit inferior third edition.

And then that third edition now I never play it because I would play Jaws of the Lion with my son or, you know, Loomhaven with you guys if we get back to that. So unfortunately, because I really love Arkham Horror, but I'm going to play Loomhaven probably over Arkham Horror, the board game, not the card game. Yeah. No, I'm glad you said that though, because I felt like third edition like killed Arkham Horror, the board game just killed it entirely.

Yeah. Yeah. I was like, OK, well, yeah, we're not going to play that one. Yeah. I think that's another show, guys. Yeah, it is. It is. All right. So for what did Loomhaven replace for me? You know, there was a long line of fantasy flight game scenario based dungeon crawlers. It started with Doom, the board game. And then there was descent journeys in the dark, which was another coffin box size game. And then Imperial Assault, I think, is the latest incarnation of that.

All of those games got replaced by Loomhaven in my estimation, which is unfortunate because I love Imperial Assault. The theme is fantastic, but I would rather play Loomhaven. Has this game since been replaced? And if so, by what? So there's an obvious answer here. Would you like to take it, Greg? Yes, Loomhaven. That would be it. I haven't even played that one yet, so it's not my answer here, but you want to talk about that? It does everything Loomhaven does.

I think they do a good job of elevating the complexity. Certainly, I think if you haven't played Loomhaven, there's a lot there. There's no reason not to start with Loomhaven. The characters in Frosthaven are generally more complex. The scenarios are more challenging, and it also adds a whole extra element of between scenarios there's more gameplay. And more world development. I would say this one is truly a legacy game. All right. Dave, what did you have? Just other X Havens.

So, well, for me, it's literally been Jaws of the Lion. And that's because my group changes as much that we as a group, we have so many other games that we want to play. We don't get back to Loomhaven often enough. So we've kind of stalled out a little bit there deep into our campaign. But with my son, he and I are going through Jaws of the Lion. And I definitely get that to the table more than I do Loomhaven, and we'll probably move right into Frosthaven.

I think campaign games are tough, especially long campaign games, getting the same group together over and over again. So if it's just my son and I, the two of us, we will probably kind of rip through it a little bit quicker than a group of four. Yep. So I'm going to zag on this one a little bit, because I thought of a game that you are putting your deck together and then it's teamwork based and you're setting each other up for great combos.

So the game that replaced Loomhaven for me was Marvel Champions, the card game. I really enjoy the way that the combination of the superheroes you bring to the table there and the way they can interact with each other and combo together is amazing. But it's reminiscent of Loomhaven and how I really like the elemental infusion board and setting each other up and doing the healings and the buffs. Right now, I'd rather play Marvel Champions and part of that's just easier setup tear down.

Yeah, I like that. So Marvel Champions does have campaigns. They're not as cumbersome. A campaign might be five games so we can get this group together for five games. We don't have to do it for 80 games or 50 more likely.

Exactly. Well, and what I forgot to mention, I'm hopeful for the upcoming Earthborne Rangers as maybe a replacement for this, which is along those lines from one of the designers of Arkham Horror, the card game, Descent, Fallout, like those guys got together and made this open world sort of game that I'm hopeful will scratch that gloom haven edge. Yep. All right. Soundtrack. What music would you like to listen to while playing gloom haven? Dave, why don't you go first for a change?

Well, I think this one's a pretty simple one. It's just kind of generic fantasy Spotify playlist that's going to have Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, that sort of stuff, maybe more Lord of the Rings with the kind of battle drums and stuff like that going on. So this one, I don't need to get too esoteric with just Spotify. You can actually put gloom haven into Spotify and you're going to get a playlist, which is fairly decent. You are. Great what you have.

I chose the Rings of Power Season 1 soundtrack, the Lord of the Rings, Rings of Power from Amazon, like Bear McCreary. It's got a great ominous tone to it. Like Dave said, it's a lot of battle tracks and that just fit really well with gloom haven. This guy, Bear McCreary, he's done a lot of really great soundtracks. He does the Foundation, Witcher, Blood Origin. Even did the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack back in the day and God of War for PlayStation. He did that soundtrack.

So it's all about ominous feelings and battle. Nice. I like that one a lot. I look forward to listening to some of it. I went with a website on this one. So I found a website out there called mellowdice.org and it's a site that has curated playlists for board games. You search for the game by title and you're going to get a playlist that was generated apparently by hand because they have some stuff to back it up as far as geek lists.

So it's not just algorithm and the playlist is generated from YouTube. So I sampled some of the songs for the gloom haven playlist and included music from Heroes of Might and Magic, Diablo, Fable, Baldur's Gate, all of which are like right in alignment with what I would be wanting or thinking about when playing gloom haven.

But it may end up being the death of this question for me because they have a lot of games that they support with pre-built playlists or in Dave Case, you know, the Spotify playlists. What's been illuminating about this question is how many resources there are out there to help you with this. So rating on BGG scale one to 10, no decimals. How would you rate gloom haven, Greg? For me, it's a nine.

It was a 10 until Frost Haven came out, which makes me wonder if Frost Haven is part of the reason that gloom haven dropped in its rankings. But yeah, I mean, it's as a game system, I give it a solid 10. Gloom Haven in particular, I give a nine just because I've played through enough of the content that I'd rather be playing Frost Haven. Yeah. Dave, how about you? You know, objectively, it's, you know, in the nine to 10 range. But for me and my gaming needs, I rate it as a seven.

It's a game that I really like. I really enjoy playing, but it's very cumbersome, cumbersome to keep a group together for that long, cumbersome as far as it takes an entire night to play. So as much as I love it, there's a lot of other games that I would get to the table before it. And so I mean, seven, seven means it's a great game. So I'm not going to apologize for giving it a seven. That's a fantastic game. And for me, it's an eight.

And you brought it up, Dave. What you said, the reason you might not like the game is the reason why I'm rating it an eight. And it's the idea that I could sync two to three hours in a night playing a scenario, not complete it successfully, and now I have to go back and do two or three hours again. That was a big turnoff for me. And I will say in Gloom Haven's defense, one of the things you can do is you can dial down the difficulty of the scenario.

So if you want to make it easier, you won't get as much loot. You want to get as much experience. But if really what you want to do is get through the scenarios and advance the story, which is what's important to me, you can dial down the difficulty. But it's an eight in my book and it's still a great game. I think it is probably the best, you know, especially fantasy, but tactical combat game.

And I still look forward to playing it, which means the last question, is it replayable and how soon would you want to revisit the game? I'll let you go again, Dave. Yeah, by its nature, it's replayable. Either play it 20 plus times or don't waste your money on it. If you know, it's not a game to play once or twice. It's a game to play over the next year or two to spend a lot of time on. So yeah, it's replayable.

And I think because of its fiddliness, you should replay it frequently, at least once a month, every other week or something like that. Or you're going to spend too much time on, you know, what do I do? How does this work again? And kind of referencing through that because there is a little bit of fiddliness going on. Yep. How about you, Greg? Obviously, you know. The fact that it felt like a replayable game the first couple of times I played.

But once you start leveling up and retiring characters and getting into the depth of building decks where you now, instead of just having three extra cards to build your deck from, you have eight extra cards or nine extra cards to fine tune your deck. It just gets so interesting and every scenario becomes a new challenge. And it's a lot of fun. Absolutely replayable. And I think, too, based on this, obviously, Greg has more hours into this game than Tata I have.

And we played it a lot, but Greg has put a lot of hours. And I think what that really shows based on Greg's input today is that this game really rewards the time that you put into it. Absolutely. When you get into those higher player numbers, when you've played 30, 40, 50 games of this, it really starts paying off and really rewards that time that you put into it. Yeah, it never feels played out. It feels like it's a fresh experience and new challenges. Not every scenario is perfect.

And there certainly does. But overall, there's enough new good stuff that, yeah, it's worth it. I agree. It's definitely replayable. And I could play it every other week, assuming the difficulty level is right. And I can make progress through the campaign because it turns out that being able to advance the story is important to me, even in an RPG-like game. All right, you guys. With that, we have returned to town and some much-deserved tankers of ale.

For our next episode, it'll be party time here on Replayable, or at least party game time that is. So thank you both for being available today. I really enjoyed our discussion. It's been a pleasure. Yeah, loved it. Thank you for listening to Replayable. Support for our podcast comes from listeners like you. You can support us at patreon.com slash replayable. Thank you for your support. You can find us online at replayable.fm. On Twitter as replayablefm. And on Instagram as replayablefm.

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