Our 3-years long campaign in the the world of Gloomhaven recently reached its conclusion. We thoroughly traveled that world inside-out, discovering its mysteries, encountering various allies, monsters or mysterious creatures. It gave us a lot of fun and satisfaction, when overwhelming some especially dangerous enemies or retiring our characters and starting the another chapter with new ones. With this article I would like to conclude and summarize that chapter in our boardgames adventures.

Below I am presenting compilation of various interesting materials which I created during this time:

  • first section – strategy articles
  • second section – statistical summary
  • third section – retrospective on most memorable moments of our campaign

I hope you will enjoy the selection!

Right from the start we encountered some situations which were problematic for us. In above material we compiled them so others might avoid the pitfalls we endured.
For many of our characters, strategy articles were created:
Strategy guide - Brute
Strategy guide - Spellweaver
Strategy guide - Doomstalker
Strategy guide - Tinkerer
Strategy guide – Soothsinger

But similarly important was the knowledge of enemies you will be facing: 
Monsters analysis & strategies – Earth, Flame and Frost demons
Monsters analysis & strategies – Night, Sun and Wind demons
Monsters analysis & strategies – Inox
Monsters analysis & strategies – The Undead
Monsters analysis & strategies – Drakes
Monsters analysis & strategies – Vermlings
Monsters analysis & strategies – The Dark Creatures

General statistics

Couple of basic data points:

  • Scenarios played: 54
  • Scenarios won: 50
  • Win ratio: 92%
  • Time needed to complete the game: 3 years
  • Reputation: 14
  • Retirements: 8
  • Company composition:
    • 3 characters (39 scenarios)
    • 4 characters (15 scenarios)
  • Fun factor: enormous!

Advanced Planning Tool

I think that every Gloomhaven group creates some tools to help them with the campaign flow. I also created something like this for us – we called it “Advanced Planning Tool” 🙂 We tracked or played, unlocked and failed scenarios with dependencies between them. On second page of the tool we had visual depiction which scenarios are already finished and which open. Here it is how does it looked like:

“Advanced Planning Tool” really helped us to navigate through all the game scenarios, dependencies and possibilities of progression. That was great to see the tree growing and growing with each session!
But we also created a simplified Dashboard which clearly showed completed scenarios (green), permanently unavailable (red) and not played yet (white).

Session reports

Now let me provide links to all our games. By clicking on the scenario name you will be redirected to new window with detailed session report. I just went through all of them and it was such a great and nostalgic experience. You know now why my blog is called The Boardgames Chronicle – I love coming back to previous sessions and spend time recollecting them.

#1 Black Barrow#2 Barrow Lair#3 Inox Encampment#4 Crypt of the Damned#5 Ruinous Crypt
#6 Decaying Crypt
#7 Vibrant Grotto
#8 Gloomhaven Warehouse#9 not played
#10 Plane of Elemental Power
#11 not played#12 not played#13 Temple of the Seer#14 Frozen Hollow#15 Shrine of Strength
#16 Mountain Pass
#17 not played
#18 Abandoned Sewers#19 Forgotten Crypt
#20 Necromancer’s Sanctum
#21 Infernal Throne#22 Temple of Elements#23 Deep Ruins#24 Echo Chamber#25 Icecrag Asent
#26 Ancient Cistern
#27 Ruinous Rift
#28 Outer Ritual Chamber#29 Sanctuary of Gloom
#30 not played
#31 Plane of Night#32 Decrepit Wood#33 Savvas Armory#34 not played#35 not played
#36 not played
#37 Doom Trench
#38 Slave Pens#39 Treacherous Divide
#40 Ancient Defensive Network
#41 Timeworn Tomb#42 not played#43 Drake’s Nest#44 not played#45 not played
#46 Nightmare Peak#47 Lair of Unseeing Eye#48 Shadow Weald#49 not played#50 not played
Finale: #51 The Void
Aditional scenarios: 
#55 Foggy Thicket
#56 Bandit's Wood
#59 Forgotten Grove
#60 Alchemy Lab
#69 Well of the Unfortunate
#72 Ozing Grove
#81 Temple of Eclipse
#93 Sunken Vessel
#94 Vermling Nest
#95 Payment Due
Solo Scenarios Part #1 
Solo scenarios Part #2

Our group characters progression

One of key features of the Gloomhaven are characters, which retire so you can play with the new adventurer. Below table shows all the characters – including unlocked – played by our merry group, with numerical summary of scenarios played. Evidently I was progressing pretty speedily with the Personal Quests 🙂

Nationality1st character2nd character3rd character4th characterTotal Plays
MichalBrute (15)Doomstalker (16)Scoundrel (13)Sawbone (10)54
Kuba GTinkerer (26)Sunkeeper (17)Berserker (10)54
Kuba JSpellweaver (30)Soothsinger (14)Quartermaster (10)54
KonradMindthief (7)Summoner (2)9
DominikSunkeeper (6)6

The above data shows interesting information: the fastest retirement after 7 scenarios – was done by Konrad, but he had just to collect 200 gold. The lowest average number of games needed was in case of my adventurers, who on average retired after 14.5 turns. The record in length of playing with one character goes to Kuba J and his Spellweaver – 30. But he saved our situation so many times with the Inferno that we really did not mind him staying around for so long !

Memorable moments

Now, time for a sentimental travel through our adventures. When I was writing below, all those moment stood once again in front of my eyes…

First scenario, #1 Black Barrow, which very quickly taught us this will not be an easy game – won barely.
Second scenario, #2 Barrow Lair, where we killed our first boss – we heard many fails miserably on this adventure but we did not!
#10 Plane of Elemental Power and our first true meeting with Daemons. We had so many problems with them that I created special guides how to deal with this type of monsters.
In #21 Infernal Throne we met Prime Demon – our second boss we had to tackle. It was really hard to catch him but in the end we did him in first attempt!
Who would have suspect, that our initial employer will become our arch-enemy? In #20 Necromancer’s Sanctum we had a chance to get rid of this nefarious character! It was also our first retirement – my Brute was replaced by Doomstalker!
There is always this first time when you loose. Why we failed to win #28 Outer Ritual Chamber (twice!)? Just look above and see what Cultists can do…
If you are looking for most challenging and difficult scenario in the whole game #95 Payment Due will be among them. Not only we have powerful enemies who additionally re-spawn, but also difficult terrain!
Random scenarios are great feature of Gloomhaven. #55 Foggy Thicket gives you opportunity to try this – with each room more difficult than the previous one!
In #72 Oozing Grove w learned the power of Inferno – great card for Spellweaver. Do you see how many units are simultaneously hit? Can you imagine the total damage inflicted???
Scoundrel proved to be one of our best killers, delivering the damage with great regularity. But she had weakness for money and treasures – which she was gathering in enormous amounts like in #60 Alchemy Lab.
The #22 Temple of Elements will be long remembered as this was first time when Konrad (leading Mindthief) started to play with us!
In the second part of our campaign we started to encounter more and more Dark Creatures like in #31 Plane of Night. Those were quick, deadly and very dangerous!
The pizza scenario – #40 Ancient Defensive Network – was super-difficult due to the distances we had to cover. But Scoundrel really excelled here!
The #41 Timeworn Tomb was scenario to be remembered – because we had 4 simultaneous retirements! From the next session we felt like playing completely new game and it took some time before we adjusted.
In #39 Treacherous Divide summoner led by Konrad showed us what “a body wall” means. His summons really saved the day.
“Impossible to win!”; “Most difficult Gloomhaven scenario”! they said. Well, #48 Shadow Weald thank to Berserker Attacks and contribution of the rest of the team was THE SHORTEST adventure, which took 1.5 turns!
The last enemy in the last scenario – #51 The Void – was class of its own. Thanks to the great cooperation and abilities of Sunkeeper (lead by Dominik) our heavy hitters were able to use their killing powers multiple time. And WE WON THE GAME!

Summary

We spent 3 years playing the Gloomhaven – partially impacted by pandemic but the number of scenarios to tackle was also significant. That was time well spent – thanks to the progression of characters, the game was not boring and quite refreshing. We have chosen “righteous” path thus having Sunkeeper as character but of course you can play in many other ways. We faced many challenges, we had a moment with all the team members retiring at the same moment, we played in different set-ups – all this contribute to great experience we all shall remember for many years.

We now await Frosthaven. It was delayed couple of times but we are sure that once it is released the fun we got from Gloomheaven, the joy of discovering new things and learning new ways of playing will be enormous. And you can count on me we shall report our campaign in the cold, barren North of Frosthaven!