Now lets expand the strategy to your allies. Dont underestimate the value of those jump cards. On the other hand, I feel like if you're not getting the strategy down while playing with 2 mercs, you're going to be totally sunk controlling 3 or 4 mercs. The Scepter and the Voice. .bg-photo {background-image:url(\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-u3nxB5mMkGU\/Xyzaudwl1-I\/AAAAAAAAras\/KP_fHVsx300gCPnQEMtp5ewr_UajwN6QgCK4BGAYYCw\/s100\/bg.jpg);} ga('create', 'UA-174252691-1', 'auto', 'blogger'); Your character will be based on how you play these situations. You only want to do this when its absolutely necessary to keep you alive. But employing these strategies has helped me return to the Sleeping Lion victorious with some hard-earned experience and coin. And I still encounter a loss at times. Many people focus on the silence of selecting your initiative. This feels like a weak stamina for the character. But the glitch remains when it comes to her poor health. Another party with basically no weakness. It is obvious she is low on stamina and The goal of the this guide is to provide some guidance and options on selecting your enhancements. Your summons would be an essential weapon for you. You can! A long rest already gives you the advantage of initiative 99, which means your allies will likely draw enemy attacks before you. Explore. Character perks often say things like remove two -1 cards, remove two +0 cards, or replace one -1 card with one +1 card. I always select these perks before selecting any that simply say add +X card or perks that add rolling modifier cards into the deck. Another party with basically no weakness and just a bit behind the above due to slightly less synergy. which isnt ideal. Gloomhaven sees your group playing through numerous deadly scenarios where your choices and decisions alter the story and its conclusion. body#layout .page, The Tinkerer can move around It's easy to mess that up with just 2 mercs, much less when you're trying to coordinate more. vertical-align: top; Meeple Mountain believes that board gaming is the gateway to building better relationships. Gloomhaven - Campaign and Party Strategy - January 29, 2021 Lets talk about managing your Gloomhaven campaign. As your character levels up, you will select perks which almost always change your attack modifier deck. If your party has a dedicated tank (like the Brute), its fine to often keep them in front to absorb some damage. Many ranged enemies have stationary attacks or low movement. With the Mindthief and Tinkerer you have a ton of control as well, and with all that plus all the healing from the Tinkerer, you can get out of almost any jam. She is one of the fastest loosters thanks to loot cards among Sometimes when the scope presents itself, it They prefer to fire at you while you sustain damage at distance. But as long as one player completes the objective, the party collectively wins. Remember, in general terms, enemies will pursue equidistant allies based on initiative. She is like a glass cannon with low health and can easily be exhausted. To be frank, I don't think you even have to finish Gloomhaven to enjoy it. This is to keep yourself from the damage a melee causes. Now that you have the basic insights from this Gloomhaven guide, gather your friends and get started! casting spells using the elements. As a supporter, 4 of your starting cards allow you to stun, wound, poison et cetera and help your team deal out the damage more effectively. Sure there can be reasons to summon early, such as if you desperately need a meat shield in a key position. Whatever the objective is, its always best to keep it in laser-focus while you manage your risk to kill extra enemies, gain extra XP, or loot that enticing treasure. body#layout .navigation { Your party will have different strengths and weaknesses depending on the classes you have. Hopefully, this guide to Gloomhaven starting classes has been helpful. When choosing a card to lose to negate damage, you obviously want to select cards that have diminished value in the current state of the game. You stun, stall, disarm and reduce the damage taken. You could try Your power to spell casts from far away also helps. In fact He provides less damage than the Scoundrel but more flexibility and control, so it's a pretty even trade-off. As players become familiar with their characters they may find that key favorite cards start to shape how they build their character. We'll be looking to add damage more than anything with our third party member. This tanker will smash enemies even when in a close combat. This party is pretty safe but just not very strong. Knowing how to utilize your Lost and Discard abilities will help you stay in the game. The ranking is based on a more personal evaluation of how these classes work while delivering damage, how you score experience points, how good is the class at looting, their health score, movement, stamina et cetera the class has. Scoundrel is a rogue character best suited for single target attacks. Long resting extends your exhaustion timer by 1 round, provides a small heal, lets you strategically choose cards to lose and refreshes your items. Initiative is not merely about turn order. Your initiative has a number of implications: it determines when you, your allies, and monsters move and act. Where you stand on the map can often be just as important as what type of attack you are planning. Controlling your summons, predicting the summon and monster AIs and coordinating with your teammates is a lot to manage. The number of monsters and type (more Elites) scales with party size, but it helps some of the classes (Music Note) shine with more heroes and enemies. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Sportsmannote.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. Many scenarios have the simple objective Kill all enemies, and its very easy to fall into a rhythm of this becoming your standard approach. A great buy if you are looking to pick up higher complexity 2-4 player games. When it comes to damage, the Brute + Mindthief + Cragheart. A number of enemies will summon duplicates or other minions. The format here will be a bit different this time. Combined with the link to the stamina calculator it gives a tremendous amount of insight. ga('blogger.send', 'pageview'); Gloomhaven and Frosthaven is the best tactical dungeon crawling game out there. However, at level 1 a Tinkerer has 3 areas of effect ability that helps to boost your damage. Brute + Cragheart + Scoundrel. Valve Corporation. As you know, Gloomhaven is basically finely balanced chaos. That's because it's far more than just a campaign game with extra stickers and envelopes. Scoundrel - Would you like some damage with your damage? Your email address will not be published. Certain scenarios may require you to rethink what abilities you are bringing to the table. m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) Long resting is obviously preferable if you can afford to spend the turn doing so. As you play through your cards you slowly start losing stamina until you need to rest and lose a card permanently. Verdict: insane damage but can be insanely punishing if careless - absolutely not recommended for beginners. But just because your party of X, Y, and Z was able to get through some number of scenarios doesn't mean it can't be better and/or worse than other party compositions. I often like to glance at what the enemies are doing before anyone moves. There are few things worse in Gloomhaven than lining up a big swing with a Lost card ability and drawing the infamous null. body#layout .hamburger-menu { Also, Craghearts hand of 11 gives it good stamina. Have everyone share what abilities they were thinking of using. Brute + Spellweaver + Scoundrel. Lastly, this is also a good strategy to employ when new characters join the party. Some are quick to sideline this as just a different version of dice, which leads them to disregard the value it brings into battle for a few key reasons. Read more. But Ive learned a thing or two along the way. Read more, The 2022-2023 Guide To Board Game Conventions, Looking to attend a board game convention? body#layout .hidden, Verdict: fine but not great, would be strictly better to replace Brute with Cragheart. Your party can use positioning to clog enemy advancement. of 8 cards. Another party with basically no weakness. SW and CH were already so good in 2p and they only get better together in 3p. Mindthief - The Mindthief works for this party in much the same way as the Scoundrel, providing a lot of melee damage with the space provided by the Brute and Tinkerer. The scenario will ramp in difficulty as each party member exhausts. The only thing really going for this combo is that both characters are intrinsically very powerful (as opposed to someone like Scoundrel or Tinkerer who both require allies to be effective) and have nice, large health pools, which never hurts. This can cause enough damage and weaken the enemy. Now you have a 1 in 4 chance of pulling the Null. Gloomhaven pulls no punches as it sets loose the deadly minions and monsters upon your team of mercenaries, forcing players to learn the overt and subtle nuances of the game design in order to succeed. Though this character is primarily all about dealing out loads of damage, you can include lots of variation and specialize it. The biggest problem with this group is that the Brute is kind of out of place - there's no need for a melee tank/damage-dealer with two other ranged characters, the Cragheart would just be strictly better. It also is high on stamina with a card hand size of 12 gives. My party in the moment is Spellweaver / Cragheart. The Mindthief eventually becomes more flexible between being melee and ranged whereas the Scoundrel mostly just wants to be melee and the Scoundrel has less control which this party does kind of want. display: inline-block; Hope it helps! --> Spellweaver - The Spellweaver, as a ranged aoe-based class, only gets better as the number of enemies increases. Players sometimes forget that all level 1 cards and X cards are always available no matter your character level. It also determines when some abilities activate and conditions wear off. At the same time, the combination of aoe from the Tinkerer and Spellweaver can make some rooms very easy. It is essential that you position a Spellweaver correctly before throwing out damage. Mindthief - Other than the above, which is exceptional and exceptionally good, Brute-Cragheart-based combos just won't be the best. You can only rest once you have at least 2 cards in your discard pile. She can collect loots from quite a bit of distance. Maybe one of you needs to switch up your plans to allow the other to have a bigger play (we will hit on this more later). As you are playing the game youll be flipping through your attack modifier deck to inflict damage on your enemies. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. So on your next turn select a very late initiative and most of the monsters will activate while you are still invisible! Positioning yourself on the walls of doorways can limit how many times you are targeted by ranged attacks. A Spellweaver levels up when you This rogue is more like a ninja with her ability to be invisible, spread poison and deal out high damage at the right moment. Because that's what this party brings - the melee blitz of Scoundrel + Brute with the Spellweaver's aoe and occasional healing to back it up. Feel proud if you are playing the Tinkerer. The Cragheart provides less damage than even the Spellweaver and instead more utility (tankiness, healing, control with obstacles). The simple Brute is really powerful when it comes to tanking. This makes it difficult to get close and personal with enemies. Remember that basic move 2 and attack 2 feature on all of your cards. At level 1, for a Brute, there are 9 out of 15 cards that allow movement. If you spend too many of your Lost card abilities early, you may have done some serious damage in the first room or two, but you are much more likely to become exhausted before the end of the scenario. Spellweaver - a really good party composition, the Spellweaver brings more control, just enough healing, and a lot of aoe damage to complement the single-target of the Mindthief and Brute. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); I would like to say it is also underrated to know your playstyle. Overall I would recommend the Scoundrel combo slightly higher but this one is also quite good. If you have a fast low initiative character, consider taking a mana potion to help out your magic users. First, the attack modifier deck can help inform you of statistical odds of success when going for big attacks. I would say, for groups with 4 players, tanking abilities arent really worthwhile. The Cragheart would rather the Brute be a ranged ally. Add one +2 ice x2; Add one +2 fire x2; Replace -1 with +1 x2; Add two +1 cards x2; Remove four +0 The Craghearts healing abilities allow them to heal after a melee attack or use it for allies when they face the brunt of his damage. I'll start with one of the six, list how good the possible 5 choices for a party member are, and then from there the 4 remaining choices for the last party member. Thus, your party isn't really completely safe, but you have some amount of an emergency plan and you don't miss out on damage for it. } 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. While the existence of Gloomhaven enhancements is not a spoiler, how and when you get access to them is. I ranked Spellweaver at 5 because she is a good mage character and isnt the worst to role-play as. However, upon increased damage and use of the area of effect cards, along with blood lust can get you exhausted. When playing a two-player game, take your time to think well before you make a class choice. float: right; deal with the cards like a pro. However, the damage caused is only average and a craghearts abilities may also cause damage to allies sometimes. Scoundrel - if anyone has ever played arena in WoW, this would be the equivalent of running a 3 DPS comp. Privacy Policy. They are actually as good as the Brutes when we talk about health. 3 person party -eclipse. A Mindthief will have to keep moving if they Copyright 2023, Gloomhaven Starting Classes Symbols and Overviews. Brute + Spellweaver + Cragheart. It has a lot of scopes when it comes to the builds and various playstyles. Verdict: great and easy to use. Using a late initiative when far from enemies can often allow them to move within range so that you can strike when its your turn. Brute + Scoundrel + Tinkerer. Even the one high potential attack card is lost once used. Cookie Notice Talking about experience points, Or maybe you wont move much at all and know you can be aggressive with big attacks and burning cards to negate damage. Everyone needs to rest from time to time, and that includes your Gloomhaven mercenary band too. Your character uses all kinds of contraptions, potions, healing abilities to boost your allies and weaken the enemies. This problem completely disappears in 3 or 4 member compositions. Or perhaps you enjoy playing solo. Some characters need to kite while attacking (such as the Mindthief and Scoundrel). Now this allows a spellweaver to Mindthief - Another really good party composition, this time playing off of the Brute rather than the Spellweaver. Stop reading now if you have not opened Envelope B (Contribute 100+ gold to the Sanctuary of the Oak). You will mostly be operating in invisibility to strengthen the damage you caused by attacking in stealth. But to play a Spellweaver, you have to know the elements and how to make them work in your favor. Sometimes when you can't get a group together playing solo can be just as fun. Before your turn rolls around, put all the other steps into practice. To begin with, there are 6 Gloomhaven starting classes: Before we get into a detailed discussion about Gloomhaven character classes, itd be better to go through the general Gloomhaven class guide and get an idea. A healer with lots of stamina the Tinkerer is one of the champion characters. When you are down to your last two cards before you must rest, you may not want to play abilities that have you pulling a Leeroy Jenkins into an enemy mob.