Jaws of the Lion campaign report Scenario 1, 2, 3

It's difficult to get your usual group together for some Gloomhaven adventuring during the middle of a pandemic. So the two of us started a Jaws of the Lion campaign at home. Despite being experienced Gloomhaven players we decided we would play through the tutorial portion of the game as a warm up and to get a feel for the game. 

TayTay and Vengaboy - the two Jaws and alleged musical sensations.
More painted minis on Instagram.

We didn't put much thought into party composition, and grabbed the characters we liked best. My partner picked up the Voidwarden and I grabbed the Demolitionist, naming our characters TayTay and Vengaboy respectively.

Jaws of the Lion spoilers ahead, stop reading now if you don't want Scenario 1-3 spoilers. 

Pre-campaign setup | Gloomhaven ports

Before starting our Jaws of the Lion campaign, we filled the provided tray as so. It's not quite the same as what the game intended but we find it more useful this way as it can be shared between the main Gloomhaven and Jaws of the Lion campaigns. 

We also mixed the battle goals together and removed the duplicates. The increased variety of battle goals are great for spicing up the game. While not used in Scenario 1-3, this is something I wanted for later in the campaign.  

Scenario 1

The game starts us off with a 6 card hand marked with A, and those cards are somewhat limited in their effects. It's a great idea to start players off with a simplified set of cards, but this may feel a little dumbed down for an experienced board gamer.  Either way the Scenario starts up pretty straightforward, I deployed the Demolitionist - Vengaboy, up front to get fighting earlier.

The Vermling Raiders don't really do much and they are positioned in such a way that we can single them out and dispatch them one at a time. A few things immediately noticeable compared to Gloomhaven: 

• Maps are more condensed and notably smaller. 
• Movement values for these starting characters are comparably lower than the Gloomhaven core starter characters, which may make getting across larger maps a little more challenging. Likewise porting a fast GH character (such as Scoundrel) into JOTL will make covering ground in the smaller maps trivial. The reverse is true, when porting JOTL characters into GH you will need help to keep up with your party's movement. 
• The JOTL scenario book makes setup extremely fast compared to Gloomhaven core. If Gloomhaven or Frosthaven had similar scenario books, it would reduce one of the biggest barriers to getting more games in.

Most of the starting rules brought over from Gloomhaven are immediately familiar, some with minor changes such as distance not part of the monster focus tiebreaker. There is one brand new rule from Jaws, which is that when obstacles are destroyed - a destruction tile is placed where it's hexes were. 

Scenario 1 was straightforward. Move forward and clean out the Vermlings one at a time. I blew up a few obstacles.  Multiple attacks and crushing obstacles on the move makes the Demolitionist feel like playing a more agile Cragheart, without the Earthbending.  

Scenario 2

Scenario 2 adds loot into the game, which is excellent because that's half the reason for playing Gloomhaven. You gotta hook players in early after all. 

Traps, doors and treasures are also introduced. The game also replaces some of the ability cards labeled A with newer ones labeled B.  The scenario also introduces push / pull and position manipulation cards, which ties nicely to the fact the scenario is loaded with traps. 

Scenario 2 changes up the monsters by adding monster ability cards. No longer do the raiders predictably move towards you and act on initiative 50, now you're never quite sure what they are up to.  While the unpredictable raiders result in taking more hits than expected, the scenario is just as straightforward as Scenario 1, but with the added satisfaction of being able to shove Vermlings into traps. 

After completion we are promptly introduced to the item shop. Most of the item rules are the same as Gloomhaven with the exception that you can trade items between players between scenarios. 

Vengaboy the Demo gets some Eagle Eye goggles with their newfound wealth while TayTay the Voidwarden sticks to buying a single potion as she isn't sure what to spend her money on yet. 

Scenario 3

We're starting to get past the halfway point in the Jaws of the Lion tutorial with Scenario 3, and it seems like the rest of the games mechanics are being introduced here.  Long resting, experience points, difficult terrain and all other status effects are brought up. We also get introduced to and fight a new set of enemies, Zealots and their pet Vipers.

At this point I noticed I had moved across the wrong side of the difficult terrain and misjudged how slowly the Demo moves. This left poor TayTay having to open up the door and taking a bit of a beating. 

Luckily she turned out fine as the enemies flipped -1 modifiers and TayTay dragged the Viper into the trap behind the door using the her void magic and we dispatched the enemies handily. We complete this scenario without issue and am glad to start earning experience points and our first perk. I remove two of my -1 cards. I go a bit deeper into perks and modifiers in a previous article here. 

We flip an event and a grumpy character seems to have dropped all their books on the ground. We can choose to help them or grab a book during the confusion. We decide to be nice and help them pick up the books and are rewarded with a novel 5 gold for the trouble. 

After Scenario 3, we switch out the tutorial cards for the normal ones marked with Level 1 and X. Right as I take a look, it clicks. I should be matching one-two punch with a Poison dagger | (or Wind up) for incredible effect. 

I'll continue to report on the rest of our Jaws campaign.