F%$@ Gloomhaven Nightshroud aka Moon Guy aka Notinda Face

Retired character, so here we go with another character breakdown/review.  This review assumes you know how to play Gloomhaven.  YMMV

Broad Strokes: 

Don't take my moon

The moon guy is versatile.   He's not a great tank, but he can take a hit.  He's not the best support, but he'll throw lots of curses into the bad guys deck.  And he just flat out kills monsters, given the right magic.

There looks like two main paths you can go by with this guy; try to make him invisible as often as possible or try and make moon magic as often as possible.  I went with the latter, because it looked like I could make moon more reliably.

There's two movement cards that make moon; well there more than that, but the ones you will use to make moon most often are Smoke Step (L1) and Prepare for the Kill (L2).  The attack section on both these cards are adequate, but you're not really trading off a lot by using these to move and make your moon.

There are reliable ways to make yourself invisible, but the trade off's I deemed too severe.

Examples:

L5 card, Black Arrow's bottom half is turn yourself invisible, then spend a moon and perform attack 3, range 3.  Which can totally stack with some other invisibility style cards; but you don't move, there's usually better uses for your moon, and the top card half is attack 4, range 4, muddle and curse your target.

L8 card, Lurking Rain.  Top half is attack 5, add poison, muddle and wound if you're invisible.  Bottom half move 3, turn invisible.  Which is great, and I almost took that instead of the L9 card.  But the other L8 card, Gloom Darts is simply amazing.  Attack 3, Range 4, poison and curse your target.  Spend a moon and target 3 bad guys instead.

Don't take my moon

So why is making moon better?   These cards

L1 Spirit of the Night:  Attack 3, or spend a moon and kill a normal unit instead.  NOT A THROWAWAY
L1 Empoweing Void:   Move 2, spend a moon and all attacks you make this round are doubled.  NOT A THROWAWAY
L6 Swallowed by Fear:  Attack 2, or spend a moon and any other magic to kill and elite.  NOT A THROWAWAY (see the theme yet?)
L8 Gloom darts: covered above, but also NOT A THROWAWAY
L9 Angel of Death:  Top half Attack 4, or spend a moon and kill all normal units.  This is a throwaway.  Bottom half, Move 5 jump, spend a moon and kill an adjacent normal unit.  This half is not a throwaway.

There's other ways to spend moon, but those are the must haves in the deck.

Tactics: 

Don't take my moon

Use your execute powers as soon as and as often as you can.  Then make moar moon so you can use them again. 

You're the assassin, you're the guy who maneuvers to get to the high shielded guy so your team doesn't have spend 6 attacks chopping him down.

And while you're waiting for that to cycle back through, you zap all the monsters with curses.

Your gear choices probably won't be optimized to go toe to toe with 5 baddies so watch your aggro.  It's not as critical as it is for true squishees, but no shield and no armor equals no damage mitigation.

Perks:

Ok here's the bad news.  The Nightshroud probably has the worst perks in the game.  There's not a single +2 damage card available and your make moon and turn invisible cards are very likely to be buried in a stack of muddles and +1's

In a big way this doesn't matter, because your two best attacks don't even flip a card.

My Gear:  

Don't take my moon

Boots of Striding, or Dashing if possible.  Besides perks, if there's a single weakness to this character it is that he is totally move impaired.  Enhanced movement boots are an absolute must buy. 

Stamina potions, Major and Minor if they're both available.  I regularly used these as soon as I could to get my executes and my preferred moon generators back in my hand.  Must buy.

Cloak of Invisibility:  After making it my first purchase, I'm calling this a maybe right now.  I think the pouch robe would be just as effective.

Minor Mana Potion:  I bought this initially mostly because it was cheap and I had the pouch slot available.  I ended up using it more often to generate mana for my team mates than for me.

Scroll of Power (? name is probably wrong):  You use this on your allies attack and he gets +1 to all attacks made with that action.  I replaced the mana potion with this.

Poison Knife and Wounding Sword (I know these names are wrong):  In theory these were great, add a wound or a poison to a melee attack.  In practice not so much.  I was either killing guys outright or attacking at range.  I looked and looked and looked, and couldn't find any weapons I liked better.  I did consider taking the retaliation shield at one point though.

Hawk Helm:  Add +1 to all your ranged attacks this round.  I really liked this one too, because of Gloom Darts.  Probably not worth taking prior to that.

Moon Earring:  This, or the other upgraded refresh item pouches are probably a must buy too.  So you can get your boots back.  Seriously though:  Boots and knife and sword and helm refreshed with one pouch item.

Gear I'd consider instead:  

Don't take my moon

Any kind of armor or shield.  Invisibility was occasionally brilliant but that's not really how my moon guy ran.

The cursed helm:  Name is also 100% wrong.  This is the helm where you can bring back all your throwaway items by putting a curse in your deck.  I'd try to run an invisibility character with the Harry Potter cloak with this card.

On his retirement mission we unlocked the wand of make moon.  Thanks game!  

Card Upgrades:

I upgraded 3 cards total.  Smoke Step movement, +1 to +2.  Prepare for the Kill movement twice, +2 to +4.  And finally, Dancing Shadows movement +3 to +4 (on attack card half).  Dancing shadows was only upgraded because I had 45 retirement gold left and nothing else to spend it on.

Final words:
 

I'd really like to see someone take a swing at an invisibility build.   There's several cards that give you enhanced damage, or status effects if you're invisible.  But the make moon build was very effective.

Don't take my moon

F@#$% Gloomhaven - character review the Spell Weaver

a couple of words on Gloomhaven to start.

It's a fun game and there are several how to play articles/videos all over Boardgame Geek and Youtube, so I won't be discussing rules in depth here and some game terms that might not make sense are included (oh who am I kidding, Mike you know what I'm talking about)

It's tactical skirmish heavily influenced by video game MMORPGs and 4th ed D&D.

Ok Full Stop

wasn't D&D 4th ed so bad that WotC released 5th ed quicker than an average MS Windows version?  Yes.  But that is 100% because D&D was meant to be table top role playing and Gloomhaven was designed to be tactical skirmish.  You're expectations are different.  DnD4e's combat system routinely got in the way of the role playing while Gloomhaven's entire point was a series of missions unlocked by successfully completing previous missions with their tactical skirmish rules.

Anyways, Gloomhaven is fun because the game play uses both tactical and strategic elements; the choices you make tactically have strategic implications.  In game terms, selecting your cards early in the characters 'hand cycle' limits what you can do later on.  It is inevitable that you will paint yourself into a corner and get stuck with a useless, useless turn.  But then you'll get better at the game :)

Gloomhaven also has well developed campaign mechanics.  Your party unlocks new missions, your guys get better, and once you start getting sick of playing the same guy for months on end you'll likely be close to 'retirement' so you can start a new guy.

So that was several paragraphs not about my character and just my thoughts on the game at large.

Your Face went on a journey.

Your Face was a random archetype selection and named because of a multi year running joke, mostly funny to only me, but every once in a while, I make a clever pun and everyone laughs at Your Face.

Conceptually, Spell Weavers are the MMO version of a blaster.  An AoE glass cannon mage.  Low hit points, low card count.   You can easily put yourself in bad positions and then the game will smack you around.  Spell Weavers simply don't have the endurance to freelance a combat; they absolutely need the team.

Now it probably turns out, that I was the best choice to play a pure blaster character.  My favorite archetype in City of Heroes was the blaster.  Everything I learned about playing a blaster was learned the hard way, so the lessons stuck.

Your Face survives by managing her aggro.  Don't put Your Face in a position to get punched, unless a) there's no other choice or b) you're sure Your Face can take a hit.  Practically speaking, this means you routinely want to go late in the round, so the rest of your party gets the monsters good and pissed at them.

Going late segues into the next tip!  Know what you do well!  Spell Weavers have a ton of moderate damage AoE spells.   Don't fall in love with them!  Because in most encounters, Your Face won't defeat a monster starting at full health with one attack.  The ideal turn, is to go late, wait for your group to smack around everyone in the room, and then step in and finish 3 off.

A Spell Weavers deck is also ridiculously different than everyone else's that you might be playing a different game.  Everyone has super 'once a game' options on cards.  In general, you got to plan those carefully.  Because using a 'once a game' power in round 1 means that ALL  later turns will not only not have access to that card, but also go quicker, sapping your characters endurance and utility.  Not so for Spell Weavers.  Their signature card is Reviving Ether

It's the top half.  All your once a game cards return to your hand.   This is crazy powerful!  This almost always happens several rounds into the game; while your party is running out of gas you hit a button that damn near resets your game to round 1.  This card dictates how you play.  

1) You don't have to save it for the most optimal time, but you absolutely need to get your money's worth playing it.  4 cards back at a minimum

2) You really shouldn't take too many short rests.  This card is too important to discard randomly on a short rest, and you don't have the spare health to re-draw,

Early, Middle and Late level play

 Early on, Spell Weavers are one dimensional.  You do have some cards that let you tank the bad guys for a round, or heal some friends for a round.  But they're most definitely a cut below your attacks.  Either your attacks are the aforementioned AoE's or they're single target that earn you experience so you can level.  Oh yeah, it's quite easy to earn XP with a spell weaver.  Your two best AoE attacks  earn XP based on how many doobers you target and your single targets can be buffed with any color of magic; doing that earns 1 XP.   You usually get around 15 XP via cards.

Somewhere around level 4, you can start sculpting your deck based on what you think the scenario needs.  You can insert really good heals, decent defense buffs, or continue with the AoE blaster build.  I had two general build philosophies:  Build for a short mission or build for endurance.  Also, a Spell Weaver is a fantastic chest procurer.  Ride The Wind (nick named Jesse Owens from the Blazing Saddles line).  You move EIGHT with jumping.  So no traps or monsters can stop you! 

Going to the movies this weekend be like...

3 rooms or less I considered a short mission.  Build your deck to make Ragnarok level alpha strikes.  All the cards you need to achieve this are of the 'once a game' types, so you don't have any staying power.

4-5 rooms I built for endurance.  Get the single target bolts and the heals, those recycle back into the deck so you have some staying power.  Nothing sucks worse then be being idle for the last 3 turns of a mission because you got knocked out from lack of cards.

End game, I was disappointed with.   Ok, the Inferno card is super powerful and by the time you get it you can generate an alpha strike that shoots every mother f@#$er in the room

And last night, it was fun!  I got to use it in a two room dungeon.  Each room had 12 critters in it, and I dropped everyone in those rooms to half hit points with a single attack.   You know what was not fun?  Realizing that I could quickly get the necessary cards back into my hand and blast the entire room again.  Well fun for me maybe, but not so much for everyone else at the table.  I am 100% sure that Your Face could deal enough damage to kill everyone in that dungeon, demoting everyone else playing the game to providing me with a meat shield.  Truthfully, I would have preferred to see an uber damage buff at L9 than the nuke the room card.  But hey, I have 2-4 missions until retirement so what do I care?

Bucking the Conventional Wisdom

Every guide I read says the Crackling Air is a must have.  CA is a damage buff on your next 4 attacks; normally +1 damage, but if you prime it with wind magic +2 damage.   +2 damage is nothing to sneer at.  But my experience was that CA really drops your Spell Weaver's endurance.  If you don't exhaust immediately, you can't get it back with your Crackling Ether card or because it is in play.  A Spell Weaver remains quite effective even without this card.

Gloomhaven's designer raved about the summon the Spell Weaver has, but I never used it.  From what I saw of pets, they were only good to suck an attack or two.  Which could be useful, but I never thought it was worth a card slot.

Gear Choices

Must buys

1. minor damage potion (+1 damage on all attacks this round)
2. Harry Potter cloak (invisible for a round)
3. beer goggles (advantaged on all attacks this round)
4. armor piercing bow (ignore all shielding on attacks this round)
5. Viagra stamina potion (return 2 cards from discard to your hand)

The game recommends you buy the damage potion and the cloak to start.  And that's not bad, but we're playing 5 player which means that there might not be a stamina potion left for you to buy.  Every class can use the stamina potion.  The bow is situational, but when you need it, you really need it.

Useful not necessary

1. the pendants or items that re-arm previously used items
2. boots that make you move faster
3. boots that ignore obstacles, terrain or monsters
4. items that generate magic 

Avoid

any melee weapon, any single target attack buff, any armour, any healing item.

Perk Choices

The first ones to get are either the deck clean up (remove four +0 cards OR replace a -1 with a +1), or the status affects (stun, curse, wound).  and if you get the status effects first, clean up your deck next.  and vice versa.

The next ones to get are the +2 magic generators.

Finally get the quick magic generators.

Finally, the last ones you should take are two +1 damage cards.  And you only should only get those when every other option is exhausted.

To Sum up

Your Face needs retiring.  It was a fun campaign, but I am pretty sick of Your Face.  Would I play this class gain?

Probably not.  By the time we would cycle through enough characters that I'd want to replay this class, we'd likely have had enough of Gloomhaven.  This problem is not unique to Your Face, every class will have this problem.

Now would I recommend this class to someone else?  You betcha.  It runs different than all the other archetypes and it was a challenging and rewarding experience.

F%$# Tactical Skirmish Games

This post started out in my head as a review of Star Wars: Imperial Assault.  Which I don't like, not one bit.  But that really is not fair.  Because my problem with the game is that it's tactical skirmish, a game genre that I don't like at all.

So first, I'm going to rank it against some other tactical skirmish games I've played, compare how IA holds up against them then discuss what I don't like about them.

Finally, some thoughts on Imperial Assault.


Skirmish games if you squint

Car Wars 

No really Car Wars is Tactically Skirmishy.   You move your vehicle around the board declaring shots at opponents.

This hurts me to say it, because most of high school was spent playing Car Wars, but Car Wars is awful.  If no one has cars built, that's literally 4 hours gone before you even start playing.  If everyone designed cars pre-game it is still glacially paced and too much hinges on a few die rolls.  Imperial Assault is way better than Car Wars

D&D.

D&D has its roots in tactical combat, so step off.  Gygax and Arneson added a story telling element to it, and a genre was born.

I really enjoyed D&D for the most part when I played it, it just got stale.  I can still probably play it, but I wouldn't want to do it weekly.   In fact the conditions under which I would play are so restrictive that there's no way I could find a regular group.

D&D is better than Imperial Assault.  You design your guy, who has way more options than IA's and the campaign implementation for RPG's is better than IA.

Actual Skirmish games

"Convention Games" - I'm going to lump every Napoleonic, WWII, SciFi, Cowboy, and Pirate themed I've played game into this category, because I simply don't remember the names.

Within the last 15 years, when better board gaming options became more prevalent, I have had fun playing a miniature skirmish game exactly once.  It was Desperado, and the only reason it was fun was the session was only half full.

So in theory, these games at a convention are great because you get to see the pageantry and scale models without having to buy, paint and build them yourself.  In practice the session always books twice as many people as the game can adequately handle and it devolves into a slow paced incoherent mess.

A problem with quite a few of them, is they're designed for 'tactical' historical accuracy and not balance.  And also they ignore strategic facts.  There's an old war gamer joke, "Never tell a war gamer the Germans lost World War 2".     Most of these games do not adequately model air power, artillery or logistics.  So never play the Russians.

I digress.  The problem with all of these games together is the pacing vs decisions problem I discussed like 5 years ago.  Tactical Skirmish games take entirely too long to play for 'move here shoot this guy, repeat"

Imperial Assault is better than this thundering herd.

Descent

Descent was a modern revisit on these old miniature games.  Instead of a table with rulers it added D&D style squares.  I really got sick of Descent quickly for two major reasons.

1)  Monster Spawn.  I understand why this is a design mechanic (it keeps the defender in the game if the attacker has a ridiculously good round and kills everything), but as a player clearing out a room only to have it routinely re-spawn was deeply unsatisfying.

2) One vs. Many.  The game picks an overlord who battles adventurers.  This polarizes the table into the absolute worst killer GM vs. Party table top RPG sessions I've ever played.

To be fair, a lot has to do with the personalities at the table in the first place.  But I don't like the vibe.

Imperial Assault is better than Descent.  It's got better campaign mechanics for both sides.  Which is to say, it's got campaign mechanics instead of a series of increasingly difficult scenarios.

Imperial Assault

Imperial Assault has really similar mechanics to Descent.  I'm sure there's differences (I haven't played Descent since well before I started this blog).  But the core mechanics of Monster Spawn, One Vs. Many, and the move and roll dice to attack are close enough to one another, that I call it the same game.

It's got better campaign mechanics, which is the hook for the game.  Campaigns are fun!  Unfortunately, there's to much engineer in me and I can't get past other gaming platforms/genres do campaigns way better.

It's currently ranked 16th on Board Game Geek, and I think that number is very soft.

I think it's that high because of the Star Wars brand.  In my mind I can easily see a cowboy vs. Mexican bandit theme with the exact same mechanics called Magnificent Seven Assault! and that game would flop...because Western.

Ok, exaggeration here.  Descent doesn't have the Star Wars brand and it's still top 100.

the Final Word

If you enjoy tactical skirmish games then this game is for you.  It's better than virtually all it's predecessors, the Star Wars theme is neat, and there was actually thought into how to make this a campaign.

sunset