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It's time to talk about *playing* Gloomhaven
So it's cooperative dudes on a grid, with a legacy thing going on, but without dice and an AI. It's essentially Euro-style Decent. I found it grindy and tedious. My friends who only play Euros found it quite interesting, exciting and new, because they have never played a dungeon crawl or a dudes on a grid game before. My friends who play mostly Ameritrash and RPGs, didn't care for it, and were rather disappointed by it.
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I understand the euro puzzle comment but I really fucking hate both those styles of games so I don't think that is totally accurate. It is a tactical combat game without dice. I've never played a dungeon crawler of any type before Gloomhaven, but the idea of rolling dice constantly every fight is not appealing to me. I want more control over the outcome of the fight then just dice and modifiers. The leveling up choice between which new card to add to your deck and which one to remove from your deck is great. My party had a total wipe maybe half a dozen times throughout the entire campaign. I didn't mind restarting the scenario. Restarting twice though...not cool.
Yes it does help quite a bit if you can leave the game setup in a spare room. Often I would finish the scenario, setup the next one and try to cover what was behind the closed doors with the rulebook, and then play the scenario when I got home from work the next day.
Then I sold the game and was happy I didn't own it and have the responsibility of running it for friends that randomly want to try a scenario.
Those fucking slimes can go to hell.
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Shellhead wrote: It sounds like Gloomhaven is basically the Pathfinder deckbuilder game plus a tactical map. Were there cool extra boards as stretch goals? The boards that I have seen pictures of looked very basic.
Yeah kind of. I kept feeling like the card play felt familiar. I might have been remembering Pathfinder. Except, you pre-program which cards you are going to play for a round of battle, like robo-rally. You arent supposed to talk with your fellow players about what cards you are going to play. So by the time it gets to you, everything might have moved around so much, that the cards you picked are now totally weak sauce. A couple of the dudes I played with were hard leaning Ameritrashers/RPG players. We really hated the no talking part, because what we enjoy most about these kinds of games is the group problem-solving. That social aspect is totally missing from the game.
It's also interesting that of the people I know that do like the game, most have/are playing it solo or as a couple. I could see how it would be a very different experience playing solo, and way less chaotic with only two players. The dude that was running our game (but not playing) was super enthused about it. When we four decided to quit after clearing the first room, he was really surprised by how much we hated it, because he felt it was such a great game. But then he admitted that he had only ever played it solo.
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-AI decks for enemy (similar to Gears of War)
-Each class is wildly different, not like Descent or HeroQuest, more like Cthulhu Wars factions
-The way it gives a defined arc to your character and has you experience the story through generational play with retired characters
-The legacy aspect gives permanence which cements choice and pushes to keep playing
-The central systems in the dungeon crawl feature some nice tension in hand management as well as pushing your luck
-There is a great deal of synergy between classes and card play, it rewards sophisticated maneuvers and clever planning
-It's diceless but it's high drama with auto misses, 2X damage, and things in between.
What I don't like about Gloomhaven
-It can be grindy
-The story is good, but not fantastic or especially gripping
-Dungeons can go a little long at times
-Dungeons can feel a bit repetitive as you're mostly doing the same thing of killing everyone
-Failure is necessary but it's dull as you just replay the dungeon
-I wish you could solo it with a single character
-The system breaks down a bit in some of the very huge scenarios where you're running with multiple AI allies and a ton of enemies. This is only seen in a couple of scenarios so it's not a big deal.
-It can get messy from a legacy standpoint over time as well. You have stickers everywhere and you need to reference which scenarios you've completed and which you haven't. Again, not a big deal but a little bit of a pain.
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ubarose wrote:
Shellhead wrote: It sounds like Gloomhaven is basically the Pathfinder deckbuilder game plus a tactical map. Were there cool extra boards as stretch goals? The boards that I have seen pictures of looked very basic.
Yeah kind of. I kept feeling like the card play felt familiar. I might have been remembering Pathfinder. Except, you pre-program which cards you are going to play for a round of battle, like robo-rally. You arent supposed to talk with your fellow players about what cards you are going to play. So by the time it gets to you, everything might have moved around so much, that the cards you picked are now totally weak sauce. A couple of the dudes I played with were hard leaning Ameritrashers/RPG players. We really hated the no talking part, because what we enjoy most about these kinds of games is the group problem-solving. That social aspect is totally missing from the game.
It's also interesting that of the people I know that do like the game, most have/are playing it solo or as a couple. I could see how it would be a very different experience playing solo, and way less chaotic with only two players. The dude that was running our game (but not playing) was super enthused about it. When we four decided to quit after clearing the first room, he was really surprised by how much we hated it, because he felt it was such a great game. But then he admitted that he had only ever played it solo.
So, a deckbuiler like Pathfinder with action selection and resolution like Death Angel, only with two actions per round per character? I disliked Pathfinder but Death Angel is great. I think Death Angel did a nice job of keeping the co-op play intact but challenging with the occasional event that only one player could resolve, without any input from the rest of the table. As I learned from a specific scenario in Silver Tower, forcing even one player to remain silent in a co-op really cuts into the fun. Making the whole table silent during every combat seems like downright fun murdering, and makes the game a lot harder than solo play.
I like the idea of the AI decks, but hate that all the enemies play the same except the slimes. That could be tolerable in a normal length game, but sounds unbearable for a big campaign game, especially when people mention the grind factor. Maybe the huge box of content was premature, and the designers might have come up with more variety in opposition later.
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- Sagrilarus
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Is anybody using deckbuilding as part of an AI opponent's response? It seems to me that in a game like this it would be a natural fit. (Again, I haven't played, just surmising how the game is played by what I've read recently.)
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Shellhead wrote:
ubarose wrote:
Shellhead wrote: It sounds like Gloomhaven is basically the Pathfinder deckbuilder game plus a tactical map. Were there cool extra boards as stretch goals? The boards that I have seen pictures of looked very basic.
Yeah kind of. I kept feeling like the card play felt familiar. I might have been remembering Pathfinder. Except, you pre-program which cards you are going to play for a round of battle, like robo-rally. You arent supposed to talk with your fellow players about what cards you are going to play. So by the time it gets to you, everything might have moved around so much, that the cards you picked are now totally weak sauce. A couple of the dudes I played with were hard leaning Ameritrashers/RPG players. We really hated the no talking part, because what we enjoy most about these kinds of games is the group problem-solving. That social aspect is totally missing from the game.
It's also interesting that of the people I know that do like the game, most have/are playing it solo or as a couple. I could see how it would be a very different experience playing solo, and way less chaotic with only two players. The dude that was running our game (but not playing) was super enthused about it. When we four decided to quit after clearing the first room, he was really surprised by how much we hated it, because he felt it was such a great game. But then he admitted that he had only ever played it solo.
So, a deckbuiler like Pathfinder with action selection and resolution like Death Angel, only with two actions per round per character? I disliked Pathfinder but Death Angel is great. I think Death Angel did a nice job of keeping the co-op play intact but challenging with the occasional event that only one player could resolve, without any input from the rest of the table. As I learned from a specific scenario in Silver Tower, forcing even one player to remain silent in a co-op really cuts into the fun. Making the whole table silent during every combat seems like downright fun murdering, and makes the game a lot harder than solo play.
I like the idea of the AI decks, but hate that all the enemies play the same except the slimes. That could be tolerable in a normal length game, but sounds unbearable for a big campaign game, especially when people mention the grind factor. Maybe the huge box of content was premature, and the designers might have come up with more variety in opposition later.
I don't quite follow what you are describing. I don't know how much you know about the game, so excuse me if the following is really boring.
You have a hand of cards. Each card has a top action and bottom action. The actions are essentially move or attack. There is some character specificness to these - range, move and attack combos, cast spells, heal, support actions, etc. The top action is typically really good - like punch a dude for a lot of damage, or move a lot spaces. And a bottom is a basic action - like slap a dude for a tiny amount of damage, or move one space.
At the beginning of the round you secretly pick two cards and play them face down. Then in turn order, each party member and monster takes their turn. On your turn you have to play a top action from one card and a bottom action from another. Then you discard those cards. If you go early in the round, you can probably do what you planned on doing. If you go late in the round, which if there are 4 party members and several monsters on the board, could be very late in the round (and remember, you don't know what your party members are planning on doing) you could end up doing not much at all because the positions of every thing have changes. So it has kind of that robo-rally thing happening - but way less funny.
Choosing cards, somewhat blindly; deciding what to do on your turn if you can't do what you planned; interweaving monster turns with the hero turns; dealing with the AI of those monster turns; pulling chits out of a bag...then once you finally clear a room doing it all over again...it just felt slow and grindy and repetitive to me. But I also don't like Descent either, because it feels repetitive. Although Descent does move along a lot faster.
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You're not forbidden from talking about what actions you're going to take.
You just can't explicitly say which card you're playing and cannot discuss specific Initiative numbers. You can say that you're going to punch the dude 2 hexes away, probably late in the Initiative order, and lay down a Fire element on the battlefield. If you do collectively choose to game the Initiative numbers and discuss your hand of cards as open information, you have to increase the difficulty (my recommendation to most people here: don't do this or you will increase the factors that most find unappealing: AP, quarterbacking, Euro-strategize for two hours to take down a room of cannon fodder).
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Shellhead wrote: Co-op play works better with dice, imo, because the best-laid plans are never a sure thing. Co-op with euro mechanics needs to put artificial constraints on the players to prevent long committee decisions resulting in efficient problem-solving.
The deck of cards dictating your result for resolution is functionally similar to dice. The big reason this is included is because you deckbuild the resolution decks over time (as well as place temporary cards in them such as curses and blessings).
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charlest wrote:
Shellhead wrote: Co-op play works better with dice, imo, because the best-laid plans are never a sure thing. Co-op with euro mechanics needs to put artificial constraints on the players to prevent long committee decisions resulting in efficient problem-solving.
The deck of cards dictating your result for resolution is functionally similar to dice. The big reason this is included is because you deckbuild the resolution decks over time (as well as place temporary cards in them such as curses and blessings).
It's like having a mutable die with more granular control (for the designer/developer) over success percentages & add-on effects based on status effects, special abilities, etc. It's actually one of the more clever aspects of the design, in my opinion.
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- Erik Twice
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One issue I've found, specially with the Spellweaver is that being vague is often as good as explicitely saying the number. That is, if I say "I'm going very fast", everyone knows I'm going to play my 07 initiative Lighting Bolt because it's either that, or my 20s (fast, but not very fast). If I say "slow" everyone knows I'm playing in the 60-80 range and can't be counted on.Frohike wrote: You just can't explicitly say which card you're playing and cannot discuss specific Initiative numbers. You can say that you're going to punch the dude 2 hexes away, probably late in the Initiative order, and lay down a Fire element on the battlefield. If you do collectively choose to game the Initiative numbers and discuss your hand of cards as open information, you have to increase the difficulty (my recommendation to most people here: don't do this or you will increase the factors that most find unappealing: AP, quarterbacking, Euro-strategize for two hours to take down a room of cannon fodder).
It's not critical, though. I think the rule is just there so the game doesn't bog down in unnecessary optimization.
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