Gloomhaven - first impressions.

Released two years ago, Gloomhaven made an instant impact on the boardgaming community and within a few months rose to the top of the boardgames chart on Board Game Geek.  It was rapidly placed on my Amazon wish list and eventually Linda bought it for me this May as a birthday gift.

It's awesome.

Huge heavy box shouting out "Open Me!"

This week has been my first opportunity to have a first attempt at playing.  Opening the box reveals a tightly packed space with a wealth of components.

One of three sticker sheets to modify map as game progresses

The next hour or so was spent unpacking the box, popping out the counters from the printed boards and sorting them into little bags.

Just a few of the bits in the box.

At this point, let me give a high level overview of the game itself.  It is designed to be played in a campaign mode, whereby one session continues on to the next.  You play alongside your fellow players to achieve a common objective - although you may have specific unique personal goals along the way.  Decisions made in one session will change how the game plays and options available in future sessions.  Each player selects a character type, which has it's own figure, deck of ability cards and other components.  As the game progresses over several sessions, you will be able to enhance your skills and abilities.

As the unpacking of the box continues, little sealed envelopes and boxes are revealed - clearly not designed to be opened now, but to be saved until some game condition is met in the future.  Gaming excitement and eager anticipation is mounting.

The rules are not simple and there's a lot to take in.  Fortunately, Mark and I had both watched an online "Intro to Gloomhaven" video as well as reading a "Getting started with Gloomhaven" guide.  Even with this leg up, it was still halfway through the evening before we were set up and ready to play.  Having selected our starting characters, dealt with a city encounter and then a road encounter, we were finally at a point to start play on the first scenario.

Paul, Cordelia, Mark and David are ready to go...

Three hours later, we probably had a better idea of the game mechanics and were starting to get into the swing of how the game worked.  However, we had not yet completed the first scenario.

Where we finished.

The rules suggest that a scenario should take about two hours, but we were way off that overly optimistic suggestion.  At about 1:00am we called it a night and resolved to finish at the next session, although my character may not make it to the end due to card mismanagement on my part.

So What Did I Think?

I really enjoyed the evening.  There's a lot of depth to this game and after going through the first couple of hours you start to get the hang of how things fit together.  But this is not a light game - for many people the complexity will be frustrating and they wont be able to move beyond that.  It would probably be a lot easier if a couple of players knew the game well and were able to guide the new players - but in this case, we were all total newbies.  Having said that, we have barely scratched the surface and I'm eagerly looking forward to Thursday.  There is clearly good reason for this game to have received so many accolades and I see no reason so far to disagree with its high rating by the Board Game Geek community.  Once Assuming we complete this initial scenario, I'm sure I'll do better in the next.  And finally, Linda - thanks for a fantastic prezzie 😁