Gloomhaven door kicking tactics Part 1

In the world of GloomHaven, one of the biggest dangers to the health of your party is lurking behind those mysterious doors. Learning effective techniques to "kick doors" will help you avoid death.

I'll be using Scenario 1 as example [Scenario 1 spoilers if you haven't played yet]. This is a more tactically complex topic and may take multiple posts to cover.

Retreating Killzone.

The gist of this is simple. One person "Kicks" the door at a low initiative, and then steps back. The rest of the team readies up late initiative cards to kill any enemies that move into the door space or what is now known as the kill zone.

To better illustrate this tactic:

Imagine you're the Tinkerer positioned near the door. You are nominated the designated door kicker. To make this work you need a low initiative and a move card that can move you far enough in case you need to get out of danger. In this example the Tinkerer can use Stun shot for the leading low initiative and the bottom of Ink Bomb for the Move 4.

Now you tell your teammates to go late. 

 

Brute plays Balanced Measure as the leading card and Spellweaver uses the bottom of Impaling Eruption as the leading initiative, both of these cards go pretty late in the round. 

You open the door to find more bandits (surprise)! You reveal the bandit guard intent to be the following card

Not wanting to turn into Quatryl Sashimi, you step back out of attack range after opening the door. The Elite guard moves first, takes the door space and the other two guards stop behind him.

The Spellweaver and Brute (Initiative 70 and 77) now take their turns after the guards getting free hits. Easy pickings this round, not a single one of your team took any damage.

Flash and Clear.

There are no flashbang's in this game, but Cragheart's got the closest thing. The idea is to have your team load up on damage mitigation abilities prior to opening the door. This lets you push through without slowing down and avoid walking into a world of pain. 

Cragheart & Mindthief want to open the door (Imagine this is 4 players but the other two are busy looting). Cragheart doesn't have any high movement cards and both players are keen to push forward quickly (Imagine they have specific battle goals) so the retreating killzone isn't desirable.

Kicking doors is one of the most dangerous parts of Gloomhaven, and you should always expect hostiles on the other side. Cragheart lines up a dirt Tornado using the Rumbling Advance Initiative to go relatively early. 

 The Mindthief lines up a Fearsome blade to follow the Cragheart in.

The Goal of this strategy is to reduce as much incoming damage as possible.

Muddle is a good way to keep the damage numbers down and Fearsome blade being a push 3 can push a melee enemy out of range which might save you alot of pain.

1. Crag moves up, muddles the guards.
2. MindThief moves up and shoves one of the guards into a trap. You shove the guard with the lowest movement (the Elite Guard) as it's the most likely one to end up being out of range strike back.

This leaves your team with 2 normal guards at disadvantage to strike back at you. If you're lucky the archers might still be out of range.

A little planning and coordination can help avoid a lot of pain. Hope this helps next time you raid a bandit nest!

Stay tuned for Part 2.

May the birds you shoot from your road events end up as tasty meals.