GLOOMHAVEN GAME REVIEW

When it comes to board games, ongoing narratives that carry from play to play are a rare sight, with most foregoing a plot line to focus on making the gameplay fun. However, one subgenre of board games embraced the idea of actions carrying between each play, the first of its kind being “Risk Legacy” in 2011 – the genre taking on its suffix, “legacy,” as its name.

Legacy games often have campaigns that will change the game permanently over its course, be it by writing on cards, opening envelopes with new game components as directed, or even permanently destroying components in rare cases. It is this subgenre in which the dungeon crawl board game “Gloomhaven” finds itself strongly woven.

Originally published in 2017, Gloomhaven is a dark, fantasy-themed tactical dungeon crawl game for one-to-four players that sees you and your friends taking on the role of mercenaries in the frontier city of Gloomhaven, in a narrative-driven campaign with branching paths and 95 scenarios to play through. The gameplay is effectively made up of two layers, those being your time spent preparing for your next adventure in the city of Gloomhaven, and the scenarios themselves. However, you’ll need to make the mercenaries you’ll be playing as.

SETTING THE TABLE

Each player makes a character by playing as one of the 17 classes, 11 of which are intended to be ‘unlocked’ by playing through the campaign, with each class having its own distinct playstyle. The playstyle of each class is made clear on the ability cards you’ll play to act in scenarios, with each class

having a set number of ability cards that can be taken into battle. For example, the Inox Brute is brawny, able to endure enemies’ attacks while striking back with powerful melee strikes.

These characters will develop over the course of play as they collect items and gain experience on their adventures, gaining new ability cards, perks, and increased health as they level up.

Character creation is also where one of the first legacy elements is introduced, that being personal quests. Whenever a new character is created, you will draw two cards from the personal quest deck and pick one of them. By completing the quest, you will be able to open the envelope corresponding to the symbol on the card and bring an increase in Gloomhaven’s prosperity.

Most of the envelopes opened this way are new classes that can be played, which is a good thing, since once a character’s personal quest is complete, they must retire. This means that character will no longer be playable without a house ruling. On the upside, when a player retires a character, any new characters they create will start with one additional perk for each character they’ve retired previously.

CORE OF THE GAME

Regardless, with your party of mercenaries assembled, it’s time to prepare for your first scenario. While in the city of Gloomhaven, you may purchase equipment, donate gold to the Church of the Great Oak to receive blessings going into your next battle, or draw a city event. City events can only be drawn once between each scenario attempt, having a small narrative on their front with two choices provided.

Depending on which choice your party selects, any number of things could happen, and some choices are affected by what classes you have in your party or the reputation that you’ve made for yourself on your adventures. You might gain a little gold from helping an elderly woman with her rat problem, you could join a bar fight, or you could fumble a heist you were offered to pull because no one in your party has a knack for stealth. Once you depart from Gloomhaven to play a scenario, you will have to draw a

road event if the scenario is outside of the city’s walls. While city events affect character and campaign progress, road events will typically have an impact on you going into a scenario.

Speaking of scenarios: They will make up the bulk of your play time, as each scenario can take between 50 minutes and two hours. The scenario map is constructed from several boards and game pieces as outlined by the scenario handbook that also includes the scenario-specific goals and special rules as well as narrative openings, interludes, and conclusions to be read throughout each given scenario.

Each round will start with each player selecting two cards from the hand and picking one card to represent their speed, with lower numbers acting earlier in the round yet also being the first to be targeted. Once each person has selected their cards, the top card of each monster’s action deck is flipped, detailing what actions they will take on their turns before each turn plays out. On each player’s turn, they may use the top or bottom action of one of their cards, followed by the opposite action on their other card.

The four most common actions are move, attack, heal, and loot. Move allows you to move the listed number of hexes; heal restores health; and loot picks up loot tokens and treasure chests from tiles within the range listed. Whenever an attack action occurs, a modifier card is drawn from the respective deck and applied to the attack value to determine the damage dealt. As the modifier deck is only shuffled when a symbol indicating that it must be reshuffled is drawn, you can try and plan around what modifiers are left in it, with monster action decks following suit. When an action is used, the corresponding card is placed into your discard pile.

However, some actions will have you ‘lose’ the card instead, meaning that the card is set aside until the end of the current scenario. There are two other major situations where cards are lost – those from rests that allow you to take your discard back into hand, and losing cards to prevent health loss from any source. Rests are broken up into short rests that are done instantly at the start of a round, with the lost

card being random, and long rests that take a full round to complete, but you heal yourself for hit points and get to choose which card is lost.

If a character is ever unable to play two cards, take a long rest, or runs out of health, they become exhausted and leave play. If all characters in a scenario become exhausted before the scenario is won, your party is defeated and must return to the city, keeping any experience and treasure they earned.

WORTHY CHALLENGE

All said, Gloomhaven is certainly not a game for everyone. Setting up and playing through scenarios can be time-consuming, and failing a scenario means more time required to make progress. The game is mechanically complex, as there are several aspects I have left out for the sake of brevity, such as status effects and elements. And with all the bookkeeping and number-crunching that this creates, the board game can be a headache to manage.

The recently released digital version of Gloomhaven can take some of the headache away by managing the mechanical side and game set-up, though certain problems between both versions persist. Some scenarios can be exceedingly difficult with four players yet complete cakewalks with two. Increases in the scenario level because of characters leveling up can create unexpected difficulty spikes because of jumps in certain monsters’ stats. On top of that, certain monsters can get trapped in obnoxious action loops that can make the current scenario extremely difficult or unfair. And while the digital version does include the unique Guildmaster mode that allows you to fully develop a character of each class, some aspects of the campaign were tweaked or removed because of limitations.

Still, people looking for a complex challenge who have a few friends and time to spare will enjoy the game. While getting the somewhat expensive physical version might be difficult because of the ongoing shipping crisis, the digital version can be found on the Steam and GOG game storefronts. Just expect that your plans could go south at a moment’s notice, since life in Gloomhaven is cruel and unforgiving, and your wits will be your best weapon against the beasts, bandits, and monsters that prowl the lands surrounding it.

Advocate Staff