Overview, How to Play, and Pros

Gloomhaven is the definition of value in a box. Most dungeon crawlers aren’t going to have hundreds of hours worth of content unless you shell out serious cash for expansions, and even then Gloomhaven will probably still have more stuff.

Unfortunately, buying Gloomhaven is pretty all in, cause if you don’t like the gameplay, you’re never gonna make it through everything in the game. So how’s the gameplay?

Every session will have players picking a scenario to complete, and afterwards they’ll receive rewards such as gold and items that they’ll be able to equip and sell back in town before heading off to the next scenario. Of course, the meat of the game is all the combat you’ll do every scenario, which is centered around careful cardplay, positioning well, and managing turn order. And make no mistake, the Gloomhaven experience is mostly its combat.

On a turn, you simply place 2 of your character’s cards face down in front of you. Once all players have done this, they flip those cards face up. Monsters will also have their own deck of cards that flips, and once all these cards are shown, all figures take turns in the initiative order listed on their cards, starting with the lowest number and ending with the highest.

And when it’s your turn, you have multiple options because the 2 cards you play are split into top and bottom halves. You must pick the top half of one and the bottom half of the other to resolve in any order, but if all else fails, you can default any top into a basic attack and any bottom into a short move.

To top it all off, once cards resolve they are placed in your personal discard pile, but eventually you’ll run out of cards in your hand! Not to worry, because you can always perform a rest to get back every card—at the cost of losing one of them for the scenario. Yes, this does mean you can eventually run out of cards, which is just as bad as running out of health.

This gets crazy because different characters have different health, hand sizes, and card abilities! No two cards are ever going to be the same, and characters will play completely differently from each other as a result. Some have great control of their initiative turn order, others don’t. Maybe your class has excellent high movement options, and maybe it’s one that moves slow and steady. On top of all that, with so many different combat mechanics like status conditions and character specific rules, everyone is going to be contributing damage, abilities, healing, and shielding all in their own unique ways.

All that is just character nuances, but then each individual monster type has their own ability deck and stats. Plus every scenario is going to have their own special win conditions and rules to alter the arena. The combo possibility between which characters are played, what items they use, and which scenario was picked results in a ludicrous amount of unique situations that players will have to figure out how to overcome.

This isn’t even mentioning how bonkers the progression in Gloomhaven is. Your characters can retire so that your party unlocks new classes, and completing certain conditions can increase your reputation and prosperity, which further gives out of combat benefits and unlocks even more stuff! There’s an absolutely ridiculous amount of content to unlock, and all of it furthers combat in its own unique way, and the combo potential is just off the charts.

Cons, Nitpicks, and Solutions

The only issue here is that having this much stuff is a double edged sword, because while the gameplay is incredible, the limitations that come with being a physical board game means that setup, teardown, and organization becomes an absolute nightmare. Because of how much vertical space there is, the insert only does so much, and the game includes no plastic bags; in fact, there’s basically nothing at all here to help organization! The onus is on the players to figure something out, whether it be through 3rd party inserts, plano boxes, or plastic baggies of their own.

On top of all that, managing your characters, party, and combat is a bookkeeping chore because of how many cards and information have to be accounted for. Every combat round has multiple players and enemies flipping not just ability cards, but also attack modifier cards. Damage tokens and health dials have to be tracked as damage is constantly dealt at all times, and enemy behavior is a just on another level.

Thankfully, there’s plenty of help from the Gloomhaven community to address these issues, and a quick google search will result in dozens of fan made organization guides and companion software that can track combat and document information for all your characters. Without digital help, Gloomhaven takes forever to get anything done, but with companion apps, your playtime can be cut down SIGNIFICANTLY.

In fact Gloomhaven has a digital version on Steam, and completing scenarios there legitimately takes less than half the time it does in person. Just an fyi when comparing just how much bookkeeping physical Gloomhaven has.

And speaking of faster Gloomhaven, there’s also Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, which is $50 MSRP and actually has a good insert, as well as a scenario booklet with the map built right into it! No need to organize dozens of tiles and tokens to setup with every scenario, making Jaws the much more reasonable entry point to see if you’re into Gloomhaven.

Lastly, Gloomhaven has the classic dungeon crawler problem of the story being rather basic. There’s a baddy out to ruin everything, and you fight through their goons before reaching them in a boss fight. Not the biggest deal if you’re just here for the amazing combat though.

End of the Tip of the Iceberg

But honestly, this is all just paraphrasing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Gloomhaven, and going through everything would make this page 10 times bigger than the rest. If you’re interested in a comprehensive review of everything in the Gloomhaven box, check out our video review below!