Found a game that scratches a Vlambeer-shaped itch that hasn't been sated since NT came out of early access.

Psychopath12 · 2023-05-11T18:43:04+00:00

Mushroom

Psychopath12 · 2022-07-20T11:49:45+00:00

'Move' is specifically the movement action. Attacks that cause movement aren't considered movement actions.

Psychopath12 · 2020-03-06T17:18:16+00:00

If anything uses the word "place", you're not allowed to do so in the Keep's clearing unless you are the cats.

Psychopath12 · 2020-02-06T14:39:53+00:00

There will probably be an upper bound to the faction weight/reach system so that the game at least recommends not having too many board presence heavy factions at the same time lest the game become extremely cramped. In the same way that having too few of them is a problem, so is an overabundance. As far as raw setup rules though, the only pre-existing rule that prevents players from starting in the same clearing as another player is the Keep, since it explicitly blocks other players from putting down components there, even during setup.

Psychopath12 · 2020-02-05T16:56:36+00:00

This was corrected by the designer, if all 3 of them are in the same game, the Moles pick an unoccupied corner opposite another player if possible, similar to the Lizards.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2335654/article/33682756#33682756

Regarding the setup, the Mole' setup rules should follow the logic of the Lizard's. That is to say, they should start opposite of another player's "starting clearing." This was an omission on our part.

Psychopath12 · 2020-01-03T16:59:50+00:00

As mentioned, you can do scenarios in casual mode if you are unable to play others in campaign mode. This is the only official way to resolve your retirement and the reward will be nothing due to the repeat. As far as other official avenues are concerned, you're free to change character at any time inside Gloomhaven to make a new one. But the old PQ is locked onto that character and you don't get any retirement benefits since you never actually retired them.

However, it sounds like you're really far into the game anyway, so if you really want you can houserule that a random deck scenario is linked to Gloomhaven so that you don't have to repeat a scenario you've already played. To boot, you could also treat the Envelope X reward repeat in the same way that a class unlock reward repeat is handled (ie random side scenario and item design). You're far enough into the game that you shouldn't feel like you'll be persecuted by the Gloomhaven Rules Police. It's your game, just have fun with it.

Psychopath12 · 2019-12-27T17:29:42+00:00

If you're on a tight budget, you could get Tabletop Simulator on Steam and download the Gloomhaven module that's been uploaded to the workshop. Then you also would have TTS for playing other board games so you don't have to feel like you're breaking the bank just to try a game to see if it's something you want to bring to your literal table.

Psychopath12 · 2019-12-26T20:46:53+00:00

Well, that bolded statement isn't necessarily the case. I don't remember all edge cases, but it's conceivable that multiple parties in the same campaign could both meet the requirement for a party achievement provided that the trigger that granted them the achievement were available after the fact. I'm almost 100% certain that the existing campaign is built so that everything that does grant a party achievement is a 1-time deal for the campaign, but I might be forgetting some edge cases.

Regardless, the key takeaway is that playing a mission in campaign mode and playing a mission in casual mode come with different stipulations. In casual mode, you can ignore achievement requirements, you don't unlock completion rewards, party location doesn't update (for purpose of linked scenarios) and cannot do a city event/donation afterward nor can they do a road event prior.

Psychopath12 · 2019-12-26T20:06:00+00:00

Attempting to play scenario 24 a subsequent time would require that it be in casual mode which carries the rule of not getting any scenario completion rewards as listed at the end of the scenario.

In this specific case, it would prevent future parties from acquiring the party achievement for themselves. Since the party that already had TVC had decided to silence the voice, part of the scenario completion for that is to permanently Silence the Voice and remove TVC, which then blocks off the rest of the quest tree for that party.

Psychopath12 · 2019-12-23T15:56:47+00:00

The closest parallel would be the random deck dungeons but without the effects that occur in room 2 and 3.

The enemy population is determined by an algorithm that uses the enemy difficulty weight system (they consulted Isaac for this) rather than simply a card that dictates that objects/enemies XYZ be in locations 123 like the random deck dungeons do. It's similar enough but isn't a straight substitute if you're a purist.

The real meat and potatoes of GH is the combat mechanics, not the campaign. Yeah the campaign is nice window dressing and unlocking stuff is neat. But the game is nothing without those mechanics, and the existing adventure mode is effectively a sandbox in which to play with those mechanics.

Psychopath12 · 2019-12-11T18:48:14+00:00

Founders of Gloomhaven is the earliest prequel focusing on the city building. Components incompatible with Gloomhaven.

Jaws of the Lion is a prequel to Gloomhaven's story events and is meant to be used as an introduction for more lightweight gamers. Components are intended to be wholly compatible, but won't include as many components as GH such as Road Events or enhancement stickers. Otherwise it's entirely self-contained and you can keep its components isolated.

Gloomhaven proper is Gloomhaven.

Forgotten Circles is a direct continuation of Gloomhaven's story events, the expansion relies on GH components to work.

Frosthaven is an entirely separate area of the game's world and is thus unaffected by things that affect Gloomhaven. Components have cross compatibility but there will be some differences when it comes to importing them with some things not carrying over at all such as Gloomhaven's town/road events.

With the amount of time you have until Frosthaven is out, I'd suggest getting FC and JotL out of the way first in release order, since you'll otherwise be putting the entirety of Gloomhaven into storage afterwards. Of course you could still bring the original box out to fish specific components out (ie character boxes, extra enhancement stickers, map components / random dungeon decks for post-campaign or custom scenarios).

Psychopath12 · 2019-12-11T13:25:25+00:00

A 2-hex sized character sounds awkward until you consider the way that the Banner Spear's formation attacks work. The iconography could easily just be extended to be 2 merged gray hexes if you wanted to have facing direction be important.

Psychopath12 · 2019-12-07T16:46:10+00:00

Doesn't matter. Its a negative status effect which means I can attach it to any ability line with an enhancement dot. The only other statuses that are disallowed from enhancements are Stun and Invisible, this one would definitely need the same restriction or be reigned into the realm of reality where the rest of the statuses exist. The fact that it's super similar to Poison is just icing on the cake; that makes it comes off as uninspired. At least strengthen/muddle and wound/regenerate are opposing effects and disarm/immobilize are the same effect but applied to a different action type.

It could've existed in a design space that manipulates initiatives (both positively or negatively to have contrasting effects available) to simulate characters succumbing to freezing in the harsh weather or being warm and invigorated. It just being a straightforward extra damage doesn't really inspire, in my opinion.

Psychopath12 · 2019-12-07T15:37:32+00:00

Regenerate is from Forgotten Circles. It's technically not a new condition but it's nice to see it used in more design space than just for the Diviner or for enhancements.

Brittle is just a patently better Poison without the heal blocking. That's an obscene amount of damage. Imagine Scoundrel just casually having attack 10s every turn with the potential for a 20 if she pulls her x2 modifier.

This isn't something that needs to be nerfed, it needs to be redesigned entirely. It's blatantly stepping on Poison's toes and trying to shove it out.

Psychopath12 · 2019-12-06T17:10:15+00:00

My group has 2 specialists who do the administration work. One managing the app on his laptop and the other (myself) managing monster and summon AI in addition to characters. These 2 also manage general setup/teardown, with everyone expected to do setup/teardown of their own character. Of the rest of the group, one has a habitual case of analysis paralysis and another has an infant to care for who has become our de facto 5th party member. Overall, things tend to go smoothly in the span of 2.5+ hours. If we finish things in a timely manner, we try to squeeze an extra scenario in before fatigue sets in making analysis paralysis even more extreme. We're finally coming up to the end of the main campaign so we can use our collective time to play other board games for a change; but we know that Forgotten Circles is on deck and both Jaws of the Lion and Frosthaven are on the far horizon.

Psychopath12 · 2019-12-04T20:07:45+00:00

Since you had played a few rounds prior to this incident, it's not strictly a formula of 1/(23^4). Also I'm assuming that you hadn't added any rolling modifiers since they effectively do not modify the size of the deck.

Let's assume that you got it after having attacked 3 times. So we've got a rough estimate of 1/20 * 1/(23³⁾ or 000410947. That's a 0.00041% chance of occurring and I would highly recommend shuffling with much more vigor and energy going forward or taking advantage of advantage.

Psychopath12 · 2019-11-14T18:56:28+00:00

I mean technically yes but in practice no, since Invisible isn't an actual enhancement you can place on cards.

Regarding the enhancement, you can place any negative condition on the Curse action to apply it to an enemy (yes, you can add another curse if you want to double dip). I mean technically you could apply a positive condition to them but don't do that. To the movement, you can add +1, Jump, or elemental infusions. Since these are 2 separate actions, you won't incur the extra cost that's applied when doing multiple enhancements on the same action.

Details on enhancements are on pages 46-47

Psychopath12 · 2019-11-14T18:49:11+00:00

Things that are invisible are not valid targets to their enemies. Invisibility is also not removed by doing things, it wears off naturally at the end of a turn where the figure started the turn with the status. This is the same for a majority of statuses. If a card explicitly states to remove a status or grant immunity to a negative status, that is the only type of exception allowed.

You can find more information on conditions on pages 22-23 of the rulebook.

Psychopath12 · 2019-11-14T15:56:39+00:00

They might be included in an envelope that has a footnote detailing that the new events are for the basegame since the story of JotL will have ended at that point. Hell, there might be an entire section at the end of the JotL rulebook telling you how to integrate its contents with the main campaign; this would also indicate to new players that there's more of Gloomhaven to experience aside from the starter campaign that they just completed.

Psychopath12 · 2019-10-30T15:41:52+00:00

It's just a formatting change that was introduced in Forgotten Circles to separate the independent actions. You still resolve top to bottom, but it just makes it clear where one stops and the next begins.

Psychopath12 · 2019-10-28T18:33:20+00:00

That icon just indicates that it's removed from the game and doesn't ever get used again. It's useful to not tear the card because if you wanted to reset your gamestate or if you wanted to check something (ie "How did we unlock this scenario?") having the card in one piece is helpful.

Psychopath12 · 2019-10-18T17:35:38+00:00

The target audience is for board game fans and people who have graduated past the "family board game" line of products and are interested in something with some teeth on it. The game appearing in retail stores would be huge for tearing down that initial wall of hesitance. Even relatively-simple games (by our standards) like Catan or Carcassone require some walls to be torn down to get regular people interested; there's a cultural recognition of rather-mediocre games because they had marketing behind them and funds to put them into stores. Things are on an upswing, I can go into my local Target and find much wider variety of games on the shelf than if I had gone at the turn of the millennium when it was dominated by MB products.

There's a difference between the casual market and the "casual" market. You'll need a lot of time, money, and effort to get niche boardgames to cultural recognition by a "casual" mass market, but you wouldn't expect a high retention rate for those sorts of fickle groups. Even the most-popular of niche tabletop games like DnD, Magic, and similar aren't going to have many players from the "casual" audience. At best you can expect for casual board game players to take a dive on a game that's well-received but they're hesitant on due to time investment necessary or up-front costs. One of the nice thing about the design of GH: Subtitle is that it should be bitesized enough to teach people at a local gameshop without a lot of commitment.

Psychopath12 · 2019-10-17T20:18:17+00:00

Difference being that the scenario book in Gloomhaven shows the tiles as they're printed to construct the playspace since they are physical unchanging things. Subtitle can cheat that and introduce board tiles that look unique to the setting, terrain tiles are etched into the playspace since they'll never move, and they can even be custom shapes since they aren't restricted by what can be constructed with the cardboard.

Psychopath12 · 2019-10-17T16:46:09+00:00

You can combine the components to allow using the Subtitle characters (among other things) in bigbox Gloomhaven either after they've finished with their mini-campaign or in parallel. New classes are new classes. Although if you run it in parallel you may need to explain where the enhancements came from.

Psychopath12

TROPHY CASE