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Jimbozig posted:As an aside, taking the "always have an enemy on the map" battle goal is really rough even with open info - it's gotta be equivalent to adding a +1 to the difficulty, at least. Taking that goal with hidden info must be basically suicidal. (I'd still do it because it's fun and makes everyone else groan, which is my IRL battle goal.) The battle goal that gets the most groans in my group is "Only take long rests" because the same person always seems to get it and they long rest at the most inconvenient times.
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Jul 17, 2018 16:48
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I'd also recommend a shared spreadsheet like Google apps to track scenarios. It's super handy to lay out what's available, a blurb about what exactly is going, and if there are any requirements. Can color code scenarios that you've finished, don't yet meet the requirements, or that blocked.
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Jul 17, 2018 17:18
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Some scenarios list new scenario numbers in text, but don't have a New Locations box. For example, Scenario 14 lists scenario numbers 7, 19, 31, 43 in the conclusion. Are these added to the map and made available?
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Jul 17, 2018 17:29
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New Locations box adds them to the available scenarios (ie the map), but you may not have the requirements to actually play the scenario. Scenarios like 14 which list numbers in text are usually tied to unlocking those requirements. So long story short...no those #s are not available to play if only given by scenario 14.
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Jul 17, 2018 17:33
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ChiTownEddie posted:New Locations box adds them to the available scenarios (ie the map), but you may not have the requirements to actually play the scenario. Scenarios like 14 which list numbers in text are usually tied to unlocking those requirements. Curses. Guess I didn't finally unlock a Living Swamp scenario then. Thanks, I guess we'll just pretend those stickers aren't there for now
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Jul 17, 2018 17:34
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Kaza42 posted:Curses. Guess I didn't finally unlock a Living Swamp scenario then. Thanks, I guess we'll just pretend those stickers aren't there for now Yeah, I think that one trips tons of people up. It definitely got us the first time we ran into it.
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Jul 17, 2018 17:36
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I ride bikes all day posted:This thread went really gamers.txt in the last 24 hours. Sorry, I don't mean to dog on the way other people play the game. A lot of things people post in this thread does not match the experience I've had at all. I'm just curious to understand how people are playing the game when they say things that very obviously goes against my personal experience. It goes without saying that you should play the game in exactly the way that's most fun for you and your group, and I apologize if the tone of my posts ever implied otherwise! Jimbozig posted:As an aside, taking the "always have an enemy on the map" battle goal is really rough even with open info - it's gotta be equivalent to adding a +1 to the difficulty, at least. Taking that goal with hidden info must be basically suicidal. (I'd still do it because it's fun and makes everyone else groan, which is my IRL battle goal.) I dunno, it's usually not that big a deal. It's pretty safe to open a door and dart back around the corner, and with the way we play, people go through stamina potions and short rests at very different rates and it's often not worth it to clear out a room and long rest before moving on.
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Jul 17, 2018 17:54
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Another thing my group learned early is that no matter who you are, what scenario it is, and what you know about the next room, you'll get chewed up if your move ends in the door and you don't have any damage mitigation (like invis).
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Jul 17, 2018 18:18
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Kashuno posted:What difference does it make at all? Parties tend to have an understanding of their stats compared to each other, and their health based on what they saw in the first room. Regardless of what's behind the next door, the person who can tank a few hits will try to get in front, the ranged damaged dealers will set up in back, and and any melee damage dealers will set up around the tankier character. You don't have any real option in this game; you're going into the next room and you are gonna probably take some damage when the cards flip. You have only a rough idea of what could happen when you open the door anyway because you flip cards. It doesn't add or subtract any difficulty or tactical action from the experience. If people want to set up ahead of time that's fine, and if they want to set up as they go that's fine too. To add to what others have said, there are at least a couple scenarios I can think of which have meaningfully different routes where there are different enemies depending on which route you take.
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Jul 17, 2018 18:50
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Zurai posted:To add to what others have said, there are at least a couple scenarios I can think of which have meaningfully different routes where there are different enemies depending on which route you take. that is true and fair. In a few scenarios there is a choice of path and that's actually when we tried to do it with only one room at time  Oh well! I think we will have to agree to disagree on this one, as long as we are all having fun with the game.on a different note https://twitter.com/BoardGameGeek/status/1019281607683985410 Teleport will be neat. Kashuno fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jul 17, 2018 |
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Jul 17, 2018 19:10
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:Sorry, I don't mean to dog on the way other people play the game. A lot of things people post in this thread does not match the experience I've had at all. I'm just curious to understand how people are playing the game when they say things that very obviously goes against my personal experience. No worries. I think it's safe to say all of us are a bit passionate about the game, and for good reason.
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Jul 17, 2018 19:20
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People can play how they want but they should be open to hearing that there might be a great change to make that could greatly enhance the experience in a way you didn't even know you were missing. But come on, to say that it makes no difference knowing what's in the next room is crazy. There's one guy left here, can we handle opening this door now? I'm going to play a big move to get in deep to melee guys, I hope there aren't two guys/traps blocking the door, I wonder if I need a jump move? Think the treasure is behind this door or that door? I wonder if you two can take that room while we head to this other one?
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Jul 17, 2018 19:41
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Kashuno posted:that is true and fair. In a few scenarios there is a choice of path and that's actually when we tried to do it with only one room at time Why is the Diviner wearing spanks? Teleport sounds okay but not anything revolutionary. I can't think of any scenarios in the base game where it would have been of much use over basic jump. I hope they don't design a bunch of the new scenarios around requiring it. "Oh there is a secret room here with no doors and it has the magic warp whistle. Hope you brought a teleport! " To that end I wonder if you can teleport into a new room with out opening the door? And how would you do that with out setting up the next room first?  The Diviner sounds interesting but I hope all the apps get immediately updated to support her. I'm never going back to using physical cards! The player mats going backwards in design to not use dials is annoying. Seems like a mistake since most people have the 2nd printing and don't have those hp/xp tokens.
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Jul 17, 2018 20:26
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Cocks Cable posted:Why is the Diviner wearing spanks? They come with the mats, I think. I also don't know if the mats are included in the mini-expansion?
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Jul 17, 2018 20:41
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Miftan posted:They come with the mats, I think. I also don't know if the mats are included in the mini-expansion? No, he mentions a 2nd kickstarter just for the mats later this year.
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Jul 17, 2018 21:01
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Those mats are pretty big for a game that already lends itself to table space being a premium
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Jul 17, 2018 21:07
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KingKapalone posted:People can play how they want but they should be open to hearing that there might be a great change to make that could greatly enhance the experience in a way you didn't even know you were missing. Yeah, I'm definitely going to convince my group to play at least a session your way. I expect it'll be less tactical since information is key to having tactical choices. Like, is it the right move to bust down the door now or should we wait til everyone is caught up? If we know what's in the next room, sometimes the answer is yes and sometimes no. If we don't know, I can't see my group ever picking anything but "we should wait." Because what if it's one of the times when it would be a terrible idea? Then we'll have to redo the scenario. Or one person will get ganked, exhaust early, and have to sit out the last hour of the scenario while everyone else plays. And we don't get to play often enough to want to redo scenarios. It comes down to randomness, right? Hidden information is like adding randomness. Some people like tactical games with lots of randomness and some like tactical games with nearly perfect information. Gloomhaven generally has less randomness than other dungeon crawlers. Games with more randomness force more conservative play (e.g. the new X-COM games). Losing due to randomness is fine in something like an RPG where the GM can make losing just as interesting as winning, if not more. But when losing just means replaying the scenario (and possibly getting screwed by randomness again), it pretty much sucks. Like, maybe adding 3 more misses and 3 more crits to each player's deck and the monster deck would greatly enhance the experience by increasing both the frequency with which you have a triumphant kill and the frequency with which your plan goes to poo poo because of a miss and you get caught out (much as you would if you open a door ill-advisedly). Critting is fun and having to try deal with the aftermath of a key miss is also fun. But what are the side-effects of cranking those fun sliders up to 11?
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Jul 18, 2018 05:20
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Honestly, it's almost never the right move to wait. Waiting costs everyone a turn, and if you don't know where the enemies are in the next room it might even cost them two if the cards they played don't let them get a good attack in. Whereas the absolute worst case if the person opening the door gets attacked too much is ... they lose a bunch of hp, which really just means they need to be a bit more careful in later turns. In an extreme case they might have to lose a card, which still costs you fewer turns in aggregate than everyone having to wait. Generally what we do is someone busts the next door once we have the current room almost cleared, so the frontliners can move forwards into the next room while the backliners move forwards to keep up and finish off the remaining enemies in the current room. The only real time we'd wait a turn is if we'd really been beaten up and everyone could do something meaningfully helpful in the downtime.
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Jul 18, 2018 05:50
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Jimbozig posted:Yeah, I'm definitely going to convince my group to play at least a session your way. I expect it'll be less tactical since information is key to having tactical choices. Gloomhaven is fundamentally a game about making plans in the face of imperfect information, and about having to improvise when those plans implode. By this definition it'd certainly be "more tactical" to play with modifier, monster AI decks, staged ability cards, and battle goals all face-up at all times, but it'd also be a completely different experience. That's the right way to think about it. You know the component list for scenarios so you always know what things could be behind a door, but not knowing exactly how they're positioned is the same as not knowing what initiative the enemies will act on, or whether your next attack will crit or miss.
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Jul 18, 2018 06:01
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Jabor posted:Honestly, it's almost never the right move to wait. Waiting costs everyone a turn, and if you don't know where the enemies are in the next room it might even cost them two if the cards they played don't let them get a good attack in. Whereas the absolute worst case if the person opening the door gets attacked too much is ... they lose a bunch of hp, which really just means they need to be a bit more careful in later turns. In an extreme case they might have to lose a card, which still costs you fewer turns in aggregate than everyone having to wait. Out of 4 people, nearly always at least 1 has something they would really like to do that doesn't involve going through the door, whether it's long resting instead of short, healing, catching up because they were 6 squares behind, setting up a good persistent loss card or summon, or etc. And typically a couple of the others have something they could do that's not ideal but also not totally a waste of a turn - strengthening themselves or others for the big blitz into the room, looting a coin, getting a couple of squares closer to allow them to choose the better initiative over the longer move when busting down the door, etc. 1 person going in a turn early, getting nailed by 5 monsters and having to lose all their HP plus a card is absolutely worse than everyone waiting a turn! Like, I could do the math to show you how much worse it is, but it is totally way worse. (Unless you're all low on cards and running out of time, in which case, sure, go for it. Time to gamble.) Edit: I realize that the math does change if you have a smaller party. In a 2 or 3 person party, if you rush in carelessly, you may not lose a card for it. In a 4-person party there are enough enemies on the map that you are likely to eat dirt very hard if you go in alone. Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Jul 18, 2018 |
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Jul 18, 2018 06:04
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I finally retired my Cragheart, Ricky Bismuth, and unlocked Sun. Then for my inaugural mission we decided on #31 the Plane of Night. Now obviously if you have a character reliant on light mana the first place you want to go is the level where light doesn't work at all, so you can wander around being ineffectual in what I would imagine must be at least top ten sloggiest curse scenarios in the game. I guess my character is a support/tank, but I did not really get any chance to shine considering we still have a high level Brute and another character filling both my roles better than me. Meanwhile I Move-2'd across most of the map, waiting for enemies to make themselves vulnerable and then watching the Brute kill them before I got a turn. Plus I earned a whopping 5 XP. I think I'm gonna call the next scenario my inaugural mission. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlA9hmrC8DU&t=153s
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Jul 18, 2018 10:21
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Jimbozig posted:Out of 4 people, nearly always at least 1 has something they would really like to do that doesn't involve going through the door, whether it's long resting instead of short, healing, catching up because they were 6 squares behind, setting up a good persistent loss card or summon, or etc. And typically a couple of the others have something they could do that's not ideal but also not totally a waste of a turn - strengthening themselves or others for the big blitz into the room, looting a coin, getting a couple of squares closer to allow them to choose the better initiative over the longer move when busting down the door, etc. That's why your door opening plan should never be "open the door, rush into the room and get murdered." Most common options for my group are 1) Open the door, retreat back into the main room. You should be out of range for most enemies and they move closer so you can get them next turn. 2) Open the door, turn invisible either in the door or inside the room. Whether to move in or not depends if you need to block off the door for protection or if you want the enemies to move forward so your buddies can get them. 3) Open the door, fire off a multi-target disarm (this was with Cragheart) Forceful Storm + Backup Ammunition means you can almost always get 3 people disarmed, and the Cragheart has enough HP to tank any additional hits.
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Jul 18, 2018 13:18
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Sun: Tank/support does not exist. Go for Support/Damage or Tank/Damage Death is still the best status effect.
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Jul 18, 2018 13:20
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Depending on party structure, you can totally go for tanking, damage and support. Sun has some insane synergy with certain classes.
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Jul 18, 2018 13:25
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Piell posted:That's why your door opening plan should never be "open the door, rush into the room and get murdered." Surprise is fun in and of itself, so the extra surprises might be fun enough to make that a good tradeoff. I'll let you know once I've tried it.
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Jul 18, 2018 17:07
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million dollar mack posted:Sun: Tank/support does not exist. Caveat: Some of the support abilities are realy good, especially the two ally-makes-attack ones, which are BIG attacks and bottom attacks - they're good if you can get them to work, but you need the right party, and at least one is attached to a top you'll never not want to bring, so... E: Dr. Video Games 0069 posted:I finally retired my Cragheart, Ricky Bismuth, and unlocked Sun. Then for my inaugural mission we decided on #31 the Plane of Night. Now obviously if you have a character reliant on light mana the first place you want to go is the level where light doesn't work at all, so you can wander around being ineffectual in what I would imagine must be at least top ten sloggiest curse scenarios in the game. I guess my character is a support/tank, but I did not really get any chance to shine considering we still have a high level Brute and another character filling both my roles better than me. Meanwhile I Move-2'd across most of the map, waiting for enemies to make themselves vulnerable and then watching the Brute kill them before I got a turn. Plus I earned a whopping 5 XP. For this scenario in particular you want to bring your 'burn night' card the name of which i forget, but mostly, you just don't get your sun bonuses - they're good, but they're not amazing, especially on the tanky build. Just tank and let your allies deal the damage. The real trick with this one is actually hitting the night demons without them going loving invisible thespaceinvader fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Jul 18, 2018 |
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Jul 18, 2018 18:29
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Dr. Video Games 0069 posted:I finally retired my Cragheart, Ricky Bismuth Just want to say I appreciate this.
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Jul 18, 2018 18:45
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Jimbozig posted:Yeah, this is what I mean by less tactical. Ages ago I was wondering about people talking about using invis cloak to open doors and I didn't really see why that would be so important. But yeah, if you don't know what is on the other side, then you need to stick to generic plans like that instead of being able to come up with one that suits the room. Your impression of what is tactical doesn't match mine. Tactics are in large part about figuring out how to respond to unexpected situations, especially ones where things didn't go as planned. Suggesting that a list of potential options which you have to choose from with little or no information is less tactical than having perfect information and working out exactly what to do to deal with the things behind a closed door is placing emphasis on puzzle solving over problem solving. Nor is that list of three items the only potential ways to approach opening a doorway. For that matter, the best option when going through a door depends heavily on a whole list of factors (scenario goal, party condition, known enemy types, available cards in hand). You can't just have a "generic" plan, you have to adapt to the specific circumstances, despite not yet knowing all of them. For example, in a scenario last night we were playing, you had to deal hp damage to doors and dropping a door to 0 hp "opened" it. Our tank ended up moving over to open a second door by herself before we'd cleared the first room, in part because circumstances made things too congested in the room for her to get in there (Cragheart created obstacles on top of lots of monsters) and in part because we were being forced to expend so many resources on the first room that we were worried about exhausting before we met the "kill all monsters" objective. The player had to play cards attacking the door which allowed for several potential contingencies if it opened (which, based on attack + modifier, might happen unexpectedly). If the room beyond had fewer monsters or if the monster tactics were non-threatening, she could enter the room or stand in the doorway to restrict the number of potential attackers; if the room was chock-full and had a mix of ranged and melee foes, she could back off. This character has built around retaliate damage, so she wants to be attacked but needs to control how many foes are hitting her and on which turn of combat as much as she can. If we'd had perfect knowledge of the room contents prior to opening doors, we'd have started off with a different room, and this player wouldn't have had to be as creative in his card selection because he'd know exactly the situation on the other side of the door. So from my perspective, the list of potential approaches to a given door is longer (and thus more tactically complex and interesting) than having knowledge of what's behind the door in advance and thus knowing that you can play a given move card and be in range to hit a target with a melee attack, meaning you select a single option and don't have to improvise as often. I also think that there's over-emphasis on damage avoidance in a lot of the online discussions about Gloomhaven. If you don't have a specific battle goal, winning a scenario with 1 hp and winning it without any damage makes no difference. It makes sense to take advantage of all the resources available to you, and health is a resource in the game. Overly risk-averse play can be fun for some players, but the game doesn't make it necessary and my group is certainly enjoying finding ways to win scenarios that appeared hopeless mid-way through. Once you allow that possibility, the "open door and do what" problem admits to a lot of potential solutions, including: 4. Moving in while coordinating with one or two other characters so that you can spread potential damage across all of you. 5. Deploying your clever shield/retaliation combination and charging into the room. 6. Moving in and dropping a summons to pull focus. 7. Opening the door and deploying a trap. 8. Opening the door, backing off a bit, and pulling one enemy into it to block the others. 9. Run into the room and drop an AoE stun. 10... Any of these could potentially be sub-optimal based on unavailable information, but that's the case in plenty of ways (shield/retaliate/some attacks are useless if an enemy has a fast Shield 5 instead of attacking on its turn). A clever player won't rely on one technique (move in, go invisible) when flexibility is more effective, although a few specific characters are optimized around a specific approach that works most of the time. For instance, going invisible and corking the door seems broken-good until enemies fly past you and focus on another character. Narsham fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Jul 20, 2018 |
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Jul 18, 2018 19:10
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Jimbozig posted:Yeah, this is what I mean by less tactical. Ages ago I was wondering about people talking about using invis cloak to open doors and I didn't really see why that would be so important. But yeah, if you don't know what is on the other side, then you need to stick to generic plans like that instead of being able to come up with one that suits the room. The game is also balanced around not knowing what's behind the door. That's why I originally said I hope people setting up other rooms are at like +3 (at least +2) which is how all this discussion started. We still usually breeze through +1 and that's with our sometimes wasted actions once the door is opened. Yes I know all groups are different, just informing about the balance issue.
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Jul 18, 2018 19:10
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KingKapalone posted:The game is also balanced around not knowing what's behind the door. That's why I originally said I hope people setting up other rooms are at like +3 (at least +2) which is how all this discussion started. We still usually breeze through +1 and that's with our sometimes wasted actions once the door is opened. Yes I know all groups are different, just informing about the balance issue. So if you fail a mission and want to try it again, you always bump up the difficulty? edit: you think one should always up the difficulty in that event, I mean?
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Jul 18, 2018 19:20
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KingKapalone posted:The game is also balanced around not knowing what's behind the door. Was anyone else not aware that the game was balanced around a 3rd party app that didn't exist when the game was balanced?
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Jul 18, 2018 19:50
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Narsham posted:... Ok, yes! I agree! But the analysis of what to do when you know what's behind the door changes with every room. Each room needs a new analysis. The analysis for a closed door is the same as any other closed door. So you end up using the same tactics over and over. Is Bob at full HP? Ok then he can go for it. Does Ali have the invisibility cloak? Ok then she can run in and go invis. Neither of those? Ok then it's time for Sara to use a big move and blow her AoE stun loss card. Like, I'm not just theorizing here. I remember earlier in the thread people talking about how crucial that invisibility cloak strat is to opening doors. And it is if you don't know what's behind the door. As a low HP character, you either need to have that item and use that strat, or you need to let the beefier characters go faster than you when opening doors. It forces you into certain approaches. Sometimes I run into a room and use a multitarget push to shove enemies into stun traps. If I don't know who or what is in there, I'm just gonna go with my usual invis cloak plan instead.
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Jul 18, 2018 21:38
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I ride bikes all day posted:Was anyone else not aware that the game was balanced around a 3rd party app that didn't exist when the game was balanced? People can play however they like, but the intent of the game's design (which is indisputably very poorly communicated by the actual rulebook text) is that enemy layouts are not open knowledge. One can then infer that some scenarios with nasty ambushes behind doors, or where there are branching paths with very different enemy groupings, were written with this fact in mind. To put this part to rest, here's the BGG link to where Isaac explicitly confirms this as the original intention: https://boardgamegeek.com/article/27426263#27426263 Again, do whatever feels right, but it is near certain that the difficulty was tuned assuming that you would not be able to flawlessly handle room transitions, and it's beyond certain that doing so would make the game a lot easier.
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Jul 18, 2018 21:56
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Yeah you're supposed to look at WHICH monsters are in the scenario just like you're supposed to know WHICH tiles you need to get out. You aren't supposed to know where any of this stuff is or how many of the monsters there are though. It might say there's flame demons so you know to bring your pierce cards but you don't know if you can use the other half of the action and rest in time before you encounter them.
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Jul 18, 2018 22:09
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King of Bleh posted:People can play however they like, but the intent of the game's design (which is indisputably very poorly communicated by the actual rulebook text) is that enemy layouts are not open knowledge. Oh, I know there's some post where the creator claims that's how he intended it. The problem is that nothing in the game's design that actually supports this. You're supposed to look at the scenario maps but not see where the monsters are? I'm curious how I'm supposed to do that with the tools provided. If this was actually intended, he could have rather easily used the same cards he used for random dungeons to present layouts. There's also the interesting fact that none of this was clarified in the 2nd edition. And let's not forget that difficulty doesn't adjust if you fail a scenario in the last room, or any room other than the first. Taking his words into account, I see two answers: He designed it very poorly for his intent, or he's misrepresenting a concept he thought would be cool but didn't try to include. Play as you prefer, of course. My issue is that this thread has dumbed itself down to gamefaqs levels with all the gamer purity nonsense being bandied about, and I like(d) this thread.
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Jul 18, 2018 22:09
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Isaac is not always great at getting his intent across (see all the people getting stuff wrong about how advantage actually works or what scenario level you are at or being able to discard a card to ignore damage). That said, people are perfectly fine with houseruling stuff (see advantage), but the people who tried to claim that knowing the full room setup before opening the door didn't give you an advantage are just lying to themselves.
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Jul 18, 2018 22:17
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Oh my god this is still going. Let’s talk about literally anything else than loving doors. What is your favorite class and why?
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Jul 18, 2018 22:21
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Kashuno posted:Oh my god this is still going. Let’s talk about literally anything else than loving doors. The Cragheart because he rocks
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Jul 18, 2018 22:26
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Kashuno posted:Oh my god this is still going. Let’s talk about literally anything else than loving doors. Triforce because Chain Lightning might be my favorite card in the entire game so far, and being able to create and use shitloads of elements is something I have wanted to do since I learned that the elements board exists in this game. Yes, sometimes your turns can get ruined if an enemy consumes an element before you, but that's a fine tradeoff for shitloads of aoe damage.
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Jul 18, 2018 22:31
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Piell posted:The Cragheart because he rocks Nice. Stab rat, because it's great having to use your skillset carefully to avoid getting your skull caved in.
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Jul 18, 2018 22:34
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