Current Play - The Fantasy Trip To GloomHaven part deux
 

I finally broke down and purchased GloomHaven - which is a fantastic "legacy" tactical fantasy campaign. I actually have minimal intention of playing using the GloomHaven rules, since I have a different set of tactical RPG rules I rather enjoy :)

I pulled three Fighter cards (Jon of the Isles, Mad Olly, and Danira) and created a simple 10/11/10 Wizard (edit: Just realized I shorted myself 1 stat point. D'oh!) to round out my team. I posted earlier with the stats I came up with for the foes for the initial scenario.

Since the game is a "legacy" game, which basically means that you permanently alter the game board as you play, I grabbed the map and sticker sheets, which are posted on BoardGame Geek, printed them out, set up the first scenario, and grabbed dice.

Here is a picture of the first scenario, just before the bloodshed.

We barely won the first fight, then we fled, carting Jon's cooling corpse with us. The dice were reasonably fair, but having three foes with broadswords was just too much damage output for us to soak.

I think I'm going to downtune the baddies just a bit. That does lower the difficulty, but I have a feeling it will be needed.

Gloomhaven uses 1.25" hexes as opposed to the more awesome 1.5" hexes of TFT, and the chambers are small because GloomHaven movement is lower than TFT, but it all seems to work. We shall see what happens as I get to more advanced scenarios.

Re: Current Play - The Fantasy Trip To GloomHaven part deux
 

Second time through tonight, with slightly reduced stats (27-30 pt enemies) was a completely different game.

My team wiffed all attacks in the first round, but after that, we cut down the bad guys (mostly bandits, with a few undead) without a problem. First time in three attempts that I made it through the first scenario.

I will say this - today was the first day I actually used the dry-erase Fighter cards, and they worked incredibly well. I think I'm going to step back and create monster cards for the baddies for the next go-around.

One of the reasons I've started dabbling more in this GloomHaven/TFT crossover is that this is the type of adventure/product I would love to see for TFT. I hope to work on a "light" (10 scenario) version shortly, but part of the fun is not knowing the storyline.

Re: Current Play - The Fantasy Trip To GloomHaven part deux
 

I don't have Gloomhaven (yet), but I've heard awesome things about it in terms of overall play, and think it might be just perfect for a huge solitaire campaign (me against the system). I just have to get a break from all these TFT Kickstarters for a few months so I can save up enough money to pop for that bad boy... ;-)

Re: Current Play - The Fantasy Trip To GloomHaven part deux
 

What does Gloomhaven add that playing TFT LEgacy with something like one of the solo adventures from Dark City games?

Re: Current Play - The Fantasy Trip To GloomHaven part deux
 

Gloomhaven is a lengthy campaign, not a one-off adventure.

Re: Current Play - The Fantasy Trip To GloomHaven part deux
 

Ah ok. But it would still be possible to play some of the DCG adventures in sequence as they are scaled for different power levels. Would that not have a similar effect?

Re: Current Play - The Fantasy Trip To GloomHaven part deux
 

Absolutely! I have five DCG adventures (not counting the free ones) and will be buying more once my wife gets over the shock that the next credit card bill will bring (with Decks of Destiny and the Four Perilous Journeys kickstarters being charged on the same statement).

But, there's nothing wrong with more choices, and I figured I'd share my experience converting one popular game that's out there over to TFT.

Heck, I picked up "Rangers of Shadow Deep" - a cooperative tactical skirmish game by the author of "FrostGrave", and have been pondering attempting those scenarios using TFT.

Re: Current Play - The Fantasy Trip To GloomHaven part deux
 

Absolutely. It's just that the DCG stuff can be played straight with no need for conversion.

Re: Current Play - The Fantasy Trip To GloomHaven part deux
 

As I've aged, I've lost quite a bit of my fondness for numbered-paragraph solo adventures. I personally get frustrated when I have to track where I am and where I was by writing down numbers, and have to flip a bunch of pages just to figure out my next step.

So, while a GloomHaven scenario has fewer choices than many of the numbered paragraphs in a solo-adventure style adventure, the simpler layout is a definite plus for me.

And with the way GloomHaven tracks progress, I can box everything up, then open it up, set up the next scenario I choose to play, and play.

Re: Current Play - The Fantasy Trip To GloomHaven part deux
 

Well, technically you can play just about ALL of the DCG modules as an extended campaign (if you get Fire in the Streets, you get a mini-campaign setting with it...and they periodically update where the adventures are set in their blog); however they are not ... "organized" as a campaign, is probably the best way to put it.

My understanding of Gloomhaven is that each adventure (labyrinth crawl?) is embedded in a matrix which is affected by decisions you make outside of the dungeons as well as what you do inside them. In short, it's a self-running campaign story line (as opposed to a series of isolated incidents) that should work well as a solitaire campaign construct in that it provides an overarching structure but which still can surprise you as the player since YOU aren't the one making it up from scratch (and random die rolls) as you go along. To me that's the big attraction here...