Gloomhaven

Soldier of Fortune? Expendables? Why yes! Welcome to Gloomhaven.

If you've been following big tabletop Kickstarters like me, you will have heard of Gloomhaven by Isaac Childres of Cephalofair Games. The game had a small first printing, and people who played it raved so much that demand came in like a wrecking ball. The game became so popular there wasn't enough for retail and with massive demand it sparked a second print run on Kickstarter. This time I did not miss my chance to blow.

2 weeks ago this unassuming box with the words Gloomhaven on the side arrived. Copy #514 of 23000.

After watching my postman struggle to get the box to my front door I dove into the 22 lbs of gaming goodness to check to make sure everything was there and correct.

There have been a lot of reports from backers that some boards have poor gluing and are falling apart. As well some boards seem to have 1 or 2 misalignments before cutting giving you potentially hard to read tokens.

So if you are getting your game from retail be sure to doublecheck your punch outs..

The reason why I mention this stuff right now is that retail copies will go on sale in late January once all the KS backers around the world receive theirs.

Things people are noticing are slight peeling, misaligned tokens, and 4 blank standees that were once rat people (Vermlings).

With all that being said though the amazing thing about Isaac and Cephalofair is the customer support. They will take care of you!

I hope you brought your towel...

Just reach out to Cephalofair Support on their website or mosey on down to Facebook and join the official Gloomhaven Group. Their Support person is incredibly responsive to posts about broken components.

PS the 4 blank standees is correct from factory as that is something that was not needed from the First to Second Printing. RIP your comment section if you post something about missing standees.

With that out of the way my copy had only a slight miss-alignment on one of the punch boards but not big enough that I care to complain. There was some slight peeling as well on some of the tokens and pieces, again we're talking cm here. Nothing my friend Elmer couldn't help me fix.

The game's premise is that you are hired mercenaries adventuring and completing scenario's/dungeons. You need to work together but each person has a secret objective they need to complete. The games mechanics are based around class ability cards that control initiative, combat and movement. Resolution of attacks is dependent on what you draw from a deck of cards instead of using dice like in other games. The game is also pseudo legacy, you are supposed to tear up cards and stick stickers to a giant map board of your progress. I would like to play this game for a long time to come so I will try to keep my copy as pristine as possible. The community at large has developed a lot of resources to help track your progress digitally so you can easily accomplish this.

The level of anticipation to play this game is immense and I am looking forward to getting Gloomhaven to the table during Christmas Break. There are a lot of hidden things in the game which gets revealed as you play. You only get to open the first six boxes and play with them until they level up and then you retire. From there that class will evolve and you can then open that box and continue.

I hope it's like Final Fantasy Tactics/Final Fantasy - Jobs where your class evolves! Cool! I'll be posting battle reports of this game as it gets played.

Without further ado my enhanced starting six from Gloomhaven: