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Gloomhaven
60m - 120m
1 - 4 Players
Ages 12+
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Gloomhaven is 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.
This is a game with a persistent and changing world that is ideally played over many game sessions. After a scenario, players will make decisions on what to do, which will determine how the story continues, kind of like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. Playing through a scenario is a cooperative affair where players will fight against automated monsters using an innovative card system to determine the order of play and what a player does on their turn.
Each turn, a player chooses two cards to play out of their hand. The number on the top card determines their initiative for the round. Each card also has a top and bottom power, and when it is a player’s turn in the initiative order, they determine whether to use the top power of one card and the bottom power of the other, or vice-versa. Players must be careful, though, because over time they will permanently lose cards from their hands. If they take too long to clear a dungeon, they may end up exhausted and be forced to retreat.
| Ages | 12+ |
|---|---|
| Designer | Isaac Childres |
| Mechanics | Campaign / Battle Card Driven, Cooperative Play, Grid Movement, Hand Management, Legacy, Modular Board, Role Playing, Simultaneous Action Selection, Storytelling, Variable Player Powers |
| Play Time | 60m – 120m |
| Players | Solo, 2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players |
| Publisher | Gém Klub Kft., Albi, Asmodee, Cephalofair Games, Feuerland Spiele, Hobby World, Korea Boardgames co., Ltd. |
| Theme | Fighting, Miniatures, Adventure, Exploration, Fantasy |
Akrimas
This game is one of the best if not the best dungeon crawler I have ever played. Without spoiling too much - this is an outstanding game and everyone even remotely interested in the genre should try it.
ajpl
What an experience! The card-driven combat system is truly excellent and the story progression and character unlocking is extremely fun. I hate to say it, but this game may have eaten Mage Knight's lunch. Not looking forward to seeing how well that former favorite has aged in comparison. (dungeon crawler; 3x)
46 and 2
This game was a huge disappointment. I cannot understand the throngs of people who praise this game. Leaving aside the weird, NPC-type character races (your choices are quite limited up front) and the badly-organized box (its half-assed attempt to provide some sort of organizational structure for the myriad decks of cards is insulting), my problem with this game comes down to the opening scenario. To say it is brutally difficult is an understatement. It is downright impossible. Changing strategies, characters, skill/spell loadouts, all yielded fast, frustrating death, if not in the first room, soon upon entering the second room of three. Forget trying to meet the (randomly-generated and very, VERY odd character goals) for the scenario. You'll need to seriously ratchet down the difficulty, beyond what the game even allows, basically house-ruling a way to win the first scenario. IE, the only way to win that first scenario is to cheat. What a fun way to play a game. After running into loss after loss on the first scenario, I boxed this game up, sold it, shipped it, and never looked back. There is no reason for a game to punish players who have just started. It's bad game design. A well-designed game can teach as it goes, introducing players to the complexities of gameplay as it progresses. A dedicated gaming group will not tolerate a game that dishes out constant losses, no matter how good it might get later on. There will be the inevitable responses of "get gud," etc, but a game has to have a hook to draw gamers in. This has only disappointment and frustration at the outset. Gloomhaven is not a well-designed game, no matter what may come later on.