GloomTactics | Gloomhaven strategy and tactics

Lets talk about managing your Gloomhaven campaign. In between fighting monsters, there's a whole lot of decisions you need to make between scenarios. City events, Road events? What items to buy? Do you bother contributing to the Sanctuary of the Oak? Spoiler warning Stop reading now if you have not opened Envelope B (Contribute 100+ gold to the Sanctuary of the Oak). Some minor spoilers if you haven't hit prosperity 2.

The key to winning scenarios on higher difficulties in Gloomhaven is effective crowd control. Crowd Control is loosely defined as limiting the number of enemies that are actively attacking you. In Gloomhaven you are always outnumbered and some of your enemies are straight up tougher and deadlier than you. Good crowd control is how you even the odds.  Hey Tinkerer... Got any more of them Net Shooters? With some well placed stuns, immobilizes and some good positioning you can restrict how many enemies can attack you. This will help you take less damage, and ultimately push you closer to winning your scenario.

Not sure if you want to play a tank, a healer, a crowd controller or a damage dealer? Well why not play them all?! The Cragheart does it all.  This Cragheart guide will show you how to do some amazing things with obstacle placement and destruction. Nothing like slowing down your enemies by throwing some rocks in their way.  Plus the Savvas Cragheart has a cool backstory. Exiled and had his chest cavity shattered by his people for being inadequate, he goes around slamming rocks at monsters. Damn, talk about a rocky upbringing!   Cragheart problem solving:  Make rock, throw rock, destroy rock.

Minor spoilers ahead!!  While the existence of Gloomhaven enhancements is not a spoiler, how and when you get access to them is.  The goal of the this guide is to provide some guidance and options on selecting your enhancements. If you haven't got access to enhancements yet, I recommend you go back to your game until you eventually unlock it.  Enhancements are also very expensive! Enhancements allow for personal choice and allow for plenty of room to experiment with different playstyles. This guide is to give some general advice on choosing your enhancements and what cards to improve. It's sticker time!

Everyone needs to rest from time to time, and that includes your Gloomhaven mercenary band too. Short resting lets you keep your momentum and keep fighting but at the cost of losing cards unpredictably. Long resting extends your exhaustion timer by 1 round, provides a small heal, lets you strategically choose cards to lose and refreshes your items. Long resting is obviously preferable if you can afford to spend the turn doing so. But is the loss of momentum worth it? And with such dangerous enemies around you, how can you afford to long rest? Scoundrel needs a nap When can you rest? You can only rest once you have at least 2 cards in your discard pile. Pg 17 of the rulebook: The rest action can only be taken if a player has two or more cards in his or her discard pile, and a rest action always results in losing one of the discarded cards. This means you can't simply rest, then immediately rest again to try exhaust yourself (for battle goals or personal quests). You need to play som

So you've chosen the Human Scoundrel? This Scoundrel guide will cover her skill choices and techniques. Maybe you like playing humans, maybe you like stabbing enemies for big numbers or maybe you like the color green. Regardless the Scoundrel is fun class to play.  Sneaky sneaky stab stab Let's go over what makes the scoundrel a killing machine and what limitations she has.

Gloomhaven is harsh. Being able to work as a team will often make the difference between survival and failure. Good team work means good communication. This post we'll cover ways to improve your team coordination so you can make it to the end of the scenario in one piece. instagram.com/jackogoeswacko4smackos  for more painted minis

We're going to cover something different this time. How to setup your game faster.  Gloomhaven has a monstrous amount of components. The setup can be long and tedious, but we can make that easier by investing a bit of time in improving the storage.  There's dedicated organizers you can buy that will make your life easier, such as this . However, you can get by with much cheaper and more accessible items.  A Spellweaver, her Chubby Unicorn summon and a Brute face off against some bandits.

The introductory Orchid Spellweaver guide.  There's a special allure about playing a crystal skinned lady swinging fire and ice. Should you pick up a Spellweaver? Let see.

Inox Brute   So starting a new character and thinking of picking up the Inox Brute? Awesome.  What is the Brute?   Anyone's who's played Gloomhaven will soon learn the traditional fantasy roles of healer, tank, damage dealer doesn't translate directly into Gloomhaven.  The Brute is as aptly named. He's tough, he hits hard but he's not really suited to being a dedicated damage sponge. He has good tools to disarm or kill his opponents so they can't hit back. So should you play a Brute? Lets take a look his strengths and weaknesses.  My painted brute

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.

Minor Scenario 2 spoilers towards the end of this post. Even before the nitty gritty tactics, there's some planning & strategy you can do at Scenario Setup to help you win. When setting up a new scenario, the first step is to look in the scenario book to set up the map tiles and prepare all the monster types you will be fighting. Then read the introduction text and apply any negative scenario effects from the “Special Rules” section. Next, two battle goals should be dealt to each player, one of which will be discarded. Players can then decide which items they would like to equip from the collection of items they own (adding in -1 cards to their attack modifier decks when applicable). Next, players should decide which ability cards they would like to put in their hand, choosing from the pool of those available to them. A player must select a number of cards equal to his or her character’s hand size...  ...After players select their hand, any effects of a preceding road eve

[Minor Prosperity 2 spoilers ahead. Stop reading now if you want to avoid] . . . Gloomhaven does magic in a very original and unique way. The cost of Magic in most games are mechanically represented by a separate resource, like a Mana value. Once you run out of Mana you can't use your magic powers anymore.

Welcome to initiative management 101 or better known as " How to not die as Scoundrel ". Isaac's design of this game is real neat.  Because of the way enemies focus players by proximity, melee characters naturally suffer the most pain. To deal with this, each melee class either has a large HP pool (ie brute), or is has cards with impressive initiative numbers (scoundrel, mind theif). Cool a psychic rat ! Wait it starts with how much HP? 6?! One trap new players fall into is they optimize their move by how much damage they can do or how many enemies they can hit without considering initiative values. This leads to some melee classes taking damage they cannot afford to take. For example Scoundrel says "Woah that archer is totally on her own, I should move fast next round and get my bonus damage on it!". When this is done carelessly, soft melee characters end up taking alot more damage than they should be.

For my first post I'm going to talk about evaluating cards! If you've drafted Magic: the Gathering or Hearthstone Arena, you'll understand some of these concepts. Fancy & Powerful One common mistake new players make is they evaluate cards by what looks cool & powerful rather than what looks consistent and useful. Take the Tinkerer for example The flamethrower is real fancy isn't it? A 3 target AOE (area of effect) for a potential of 9 ATK and 3 wound markers! Generates fire and 2 exp to boot! It also has a worthless bottom (mid initiative shield with no movement means you wont get the shield before enemies attack half the time).