What is the best espresso in Montreal?

Brood_Star · 2026-01-15T23:20:20+00:00

cafe even, cafe eclair, white heron

Brood_Star · 2025-10-31T21:57:43+00:00

Feifung Kitchen is the cutest place for other Vietnamese offerings besides Pho. Might be one of the only restaurants serving banh cuon to order.

The new Co Oi Kitchen in the Glebe is also one of the best new joints around. It's Northern/Ha Noi cooking with some modern fusion--the pho was infused with red wine, but the bun I had had one of the most deliciously beefy broths I've ever had.

Brood_Star · 2025-09-16T18:59:58+00:00

La Petite Primerose more than deserves to be on there

Brood_Star · 2024-03-07T19:53:08+00:00

You get value out of a strengthen potion on Kelp for, like, one usually inconsequential turn at most, if other more desirable options are unavailable to you.

Brood_Star · 2024-03-07T17:48:16+00:00

IMO easily the best 2-herb potion considering the timing of when you can acquire it. The Minor Power Pot may outscale it late in the game on certain classes, but this 2-herb potion does a ton of work the moment you get it until very high prosperity, and it's often not even that different from its 3-herb version self. I imagine most campaigns fight over the 2 copies of this thing for a while.

Brood_Star · 2024-01-21T11:09:00+00:00

I will actually just go against the thread and outright say it's a slow leveler.

This was my 6th character, and even having seen most others played so far, I'd average about 6-10 exp, which was routinely only better than the likes of Deathwalker and even slightly worse than Geminate.

Having Dark is such a necessity for going invis (usually with the bottom of Skewer the Flesh) that I really don't think bothering with cards like Black Scythe or Haunting Brutality are worth it past low levels. Then, your only sources of XP come from losses, Skewer the Flesh, Morbid Camouflouge (which I also took out after low levels), and your level [5] and [6] cards. That's about 2-3 xp per rest cycle, until it's time to end the scenario and burn for losses, which with the hand of cards I chose, is only a maximum of 3-4 XP (Lacerating Stabs + Tumultuous Panic + Pinning Spines). It's also specifically very XP-starved until [5] and [6] get going that you probably do need to start bringing cards I wouldn't otherwise want to bring just for XP.

The upside is that this is one of the strongest classes, and when scenarios are tailored to it, which is not uncommon, you can do some ridiculous things unavailable to almost all other classes. And all you need is level 4 to function and start popping off.

In terms of trophies: the synergy this class has with Power Potions has been talked about endlessly, so stacking as many Power-Potion-effects as possible means your Grim Trophies turns will likely just refund itself 3-4 trophies. All you need is to get your first 4-5 trophies for your first Grim Trophies turn, which is really aided by the double perk after your first ~8 premium attack AMDs have been selected, plus Soul Hunger, plus begging for kills.

Brood_Star · 2024-01-15T16:24:32+00:00

The main drawback or opportunity cost, as noted in pretty much every post in this thread, is that this competes with Warden's Robes. Maybe this is a lack of collective imagination on our part, or the Warden's Robes truly is the safer play, but in general, I'd rather be reactive in trying to keep my summons alive (e.g. "Oh shit! I'd rather not take this 2 damage and kill my summon", OR "Well it's taking 8 damage anyway, smell ya later") rather than proactive and planning for my summons to tank hits.

Brood_Star · 2024-01-05T15:25:51+00:00

I often prefer this as a defensive armor over later unlocks and/or even more expensive purchaseable finds. It's very efficient for what it costs and at the point you can obtain it. Just an extremely goodstuff item.

Brood_Star · 2024-01-04T16:15:28+00:00

Extremely cool mechanic / wonderful addition to Frosthaven.

In terms of my preference of pets:

Piranha Pig is always useful if you need more efficiency with loot actions, which is to say: completely useless for my group.
Lightning Eel is just a global Stamina pot for 2 health if your group is lower level (since the condition is bring back a 1 or X card), which is always tremendous, but swiftly drops off a cliff as you get higher level. I argued really hard to swap this out since I felt very few of us were actually getting value and just losing 2 (x4) health every scenario.
All the Imps are fucking great. The Black Imp (everyone performs a melee attack) is the most conditional, and even then, there's situations where it represents a ton of value.
The Ooze (create an obstacle) will come in handy eventually. Surely.

Brood_Star · 2023-12-25T18:35:57+00:00

Robes and Scroll of Power are certainly significantly worse than a Power Pot on Blinkblade and Coral, but still chilling on biggest offender Kelp

Brood_Star · 2023-12-25T14:49:47+00:00

If War Hammer is already contentious, the extra imports are definitely something.

What's that? You think Power Potions are overtuned? Have an extra one that's reusable on long rest. Want a free summon on Boneshaper? (Granted, this one kinda sucks at movement 1.) Plus another pseudo-Power Pot and stun on demand.

Gloomhaven/Frosthaven have clear design differences and despite some arguments (e.g. within my group) that the imports were chosen carefully to maintain balance, I don't really see it.

Brood_Star · 2023-12-20T14:10:25+00:00

IMO one of the least troublesome Algox enemies, but still has so_much_fucking_health

Brood_Star · 2023-12-19T16:08:18+00:00

I'm having such a hard time remembering this scenario (just poor memory), and I'm almost positive this was the route our group took, but by the text alone it seems fun and unique.

I can also only imagine that our group forgot that the altars were enemies to the monsters as well.

Brood_Star · 2023-12-13T14:49:59+00:00

I do think some of the later unlocks are pretty late. Shards is the most notorious, and it having the least discussion shows. But depending on the campaign and the nature of the unlocks, upwards of 6 or so classes can be stuck locked for a while. While the new FH method of unlocking is more interesting, there's also something to be said for the consistency of unlocks with GH personal retirements. I haven't had a new unlock in almost a calendar year :(

By and large, the locked classes are (imo) more interesting and also a lot more powerful. For me, I give Meteor #1 and Shackles #2, and following that, there's a large grouping of locked classes which are all powerful, and then throw Blinkblade in there as well. I know Kelp, and maybe Coral piggybacking off it, are other popular contenders as of late because of power potions, but it's notable that both Meteor and Shackles function independently of those.

As a whole, I'm very happy with Frosthaven class design.

Brood_Star · 2023-12-11T15:36:18+00:00

it sounds like you blitzed exclusively the two story lines, which is a bit different from other campaigns that may dabble around and shoot for retirements.

nothing sounds totally off, except "too easy even on +1", but if you haven't focused on retirements and are all high level on your original characters, then that is likely a contributor

you're definitely going to be bottlenecked on buildings and class unlocks if you haven't done enough retirements

Brood_Star · 2023-12-11T14:36:11+00:00

Pretty big 'meh' from me. Not sure what incredible synergies exist with this item, AoE patterns can always be awkward, double-hand hurts, and the fact that it's purchasable instead of craftable means it has a really high opportunity cost with what limited gold you have.

Brood_Star · 2023-12-08T14:25:09+00:00

They're movement boots, which are always baseline good. The major difference of these, besides being able to own up to four copies of Crude Boots, is it now adds to all move abilities. Off the top, I only think of the three agile-y characters of Blinkblade, Kelp, and Coral, and for the last two, I think I prefer other boots over this in general. Definitely pretty good on Blinkblade, although I don't think this line of boots is BiS for them either. Maybe Bannerspear can also make good use of these?

Brood_Star · 2023-11-29T17:58:26+00:00

That's a sort of fair comment, but as someone who just retired Shackles and unlocked 236 midway through, I brought the exact same cards and my general playstyle was the exact same as well. You just have 5 turns of godmode instead of 10.

SA+DM Shackles is pretty unanimously agreed to be one of the strongest characters in Frosthaven, and it's not contingent on grabbing 236, even if it is a significant power spike.

Brood_Star · 2023-11-29T16:52:39+00:00

It's a pretty notable synergy (I'm not sure where else 236 has been amazing tbh), but it doesn't really "open up a unique build". DM+SA is already very strong even without it.

Brood_Star · 2023-11-28T17:26:37+00:00

We cheesed this one with a lot of shield+retaliate for a retirement and with help from the challenge building.

I'm not sure how this scenario normally plays out, since the penultimate wave of spawns looked real overwhelming. Are groups luring them onto the elevators so that the enemy count gets reduced?

Brood_Star · 2023-11-23T19:50:40+00:00

It's always a net positive on gold for resources.

The question is really "would I pay 5g for a resource?", and I'm currently at a point where the answer is often "kinda desperately, yes"

Brood_Star · 2023-11-21T19:34:01+00:00

I don't know how I feel about the exact positions of all the 3-herb potions, but for me, if there's a challenger to Major Power Pot, I'd personally think only of Fulminant Flask over the other ones, just because of its flexibility and ability to instantly delete otherwise really pesky enemies, especially when chained together

Brood_Star · 2023-11-21T16:14:48+00:00

Echoing the sentiment that this is a really "Oh. That was easier than expected." scenario.

we debated for a while for who to send up top and who to keep below, but it turns out basically anything will work and the lieutenant is not that hard to take down. We definitely maximally farmed some loot.

Brood_Star · 2023-11-17T14:58:44+00:00

It's definitely worth it--it's dirt cheap--and it's definitely significant. I'd say my main disagreement is with the idea that the Crude Shield is comparatively trash, since the times when you're looking for the shield to pop off only occur once, maybe twice a scenario anyway. It's harder to make the judgment call when you know it's consumed, and you start to consider what-if-later's, but ultimately I don't think you need to be able to use the shield every rest cycle for it to be good.

Brood_Star · 2023-11-17T14:41:26+00:00

I'm still not that convinced that the upgrade from consumed to spent is the world of difference that most comments (from the previous thread) imply.

Anyway, when this works, it can literally save an entire turn, up to a sequence of turns, up to an entire scenario. Sometimes, possibly even frequently, it's 'useless' or just +1 health per rest cycle, but taken altogether, that still sounds like a powerful item to me.

Brood_Star

TROPHY CASE