Well, I am glad to say that we continue our Frosthaven adventure again in four-player team! That opens a lot of new options, as such composition allows for much flexible approach to various scenarios. And believe me, in the sequel to Gloomhaven, the good preparation and combination of company skills is key to tackle the more difficult scenarios. And one of such we decided to try this time – one which is leading almost to the end of the Lurkers campaign!
Our Frosthaven Campaign in scenario order:
#1 Town in Flames
#2 Algox Scouting
#4 Heart of Ice
#5 Frozen Crypt
#7 Edge of the World
#8 Crystal Trench
#9 Glowing Catacombs
#10 Crystal Enclosure
#13 Frozen Fjord
#14 Jagged Shoals
#15 Ancient Spire
#16 Derelict Elevator
Some interesting materials about Frosthaven World: Frosthaven – first look – starting characters (1/2) Frosthaven – first look – starting characters (2/2) Frosthaven – monsters' analysis & strategies – Lurkers Frosthaven – monsters' analysis & strategies – Unfettered
So a brief look at our merry company. Most of us are after one or two retirements so you will see a lot of unlockable characters; plus Adam with Drifter – as a newbie to Frosthaven, we felt this is best character to start with.
- Frozen Fist – level 4 (me) – a guy with pretty unusual mechanics (losing health to recover cards), proves to be a decent damage dealer while also can soak up some damage.
- Infuser – level 4 (Kuba J) – crazy mechanics with infusion, possibility to send swords as summons, strong attacks with decent health. Another damage dealer capable of taking some beating.
- Snowdancer – level 4 (Kuba G) – crowd control and manipulation master, creates a lot of hazardous terrain and then pulls or pushes monsters. Especially useful in open terrain scenario. Not like the one below…
- Drifter – level 3 (Adam) – yes, Drifter is back! That super versatile character, who can heal, attack, take the beating and is no dependent on elements is a strong addition to our team.
Scenario Specifics
Below we analyze scenario, its set-up, win conditions and complexity levels:
Three dots? Bring it on – we have Drifter now in our team! We move under the water, pushing the bathysphere through rubble-cluttered corridors, full of Deep Terror turrets, with the need to reach for air every 3-4 turns? Well, that seems like a most complicated adventure so far!
I am aware that many groups were struggling a lot with this scenario. I am not surprised – the need to have air for each an every action – with maximum 7 bubbles of oxygen which can be refilled in particular places – is a nightmare. If you add to this fact that in the first room we have 8 (!) range turrets AND you have to clear debris (each of them 6 HP, you need to destroy 6-8 for bathysphere to be pushed forward) it is getting dangerous very quickly.
And here versality of our team really shined. My Frozen Fist – mobile and jumping – simply thrived here. Drifter, as a very flexible character, also did not have too much problems. But Snowdancer and – to some extent – Infuser were suffering from that type of adventure. But they have collogues to work together and bring that very long, very complicated and pretty tedious chapter to an end!
PS. As always, feel free to click on below images for full details.
Session Report
Summary
That was long game. Like 4 hours to play it end to end, with Road Event. I can’t imagine going through it again – and it was not so impossible, as even one exhausted character would mean our defeat. To say the scenario – especially in room one – was tedious is to say nothing. What made things even worse were two cancel hits drawn by Infuser in first room and his Health which most of scenario was oscillating around 2 HPs 🙂 Glad and relieved we won!
More reports to come!
The Boardgames Chronicle 
We have been putting this scenario off forever! It just looks impossible and unfun, especially since we’ve lost our Drifter and the replacement character is not really cutting the mustard. But then they’ve really leaned into LONG TEDIOUS scenarios in Frosthaven, haven’t they?
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Yes they did, and that does not mean this is change for good 😦
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I’m not sure but i think i (Infuser) had even 3 cancel hits in my first 4-5 attacks. With Snowdancer we’ve managed to take out one turret easily, but the 2nd nearby was resilient i kept picking cancel hits and received retaliation damage. Michal’s Snowfirst had to assist us with that bad monster. I quickly went down to 1-2 HP and neither me, nor Snowdancer had more (some were already used) healing abilities. I’ve been avoiding any battle and damage for few rounds, until i finally recovered a bit. Sadly for me Drifter got stranded on the other side of map, so i was outside his healing range. The only good part of my start was that i’ve managed to infuse my mobility and i had no problem to move long distances to airpockets or avoid enemy fire. I didn’t like it, but i had to hide behind friends to avoid taking more damage, waited for them do deal some damage so maybe i could finish off enemies (and not take retaliation damage). I desperatelly needed to get healed. The 2nd room went fairly easy, we dragged ice elementals from the corridor and took them one by one outside black imps’ range. Even ot low health my infused character can do crazy things, like running 8-9 tiles in a single turn without burning cards, then early next round attack 2-3 enemies and withdraw outside shooting range, or attack again. I did such crazy jumps twice- once against black imps, thank to drifter’s assistance we’ve cleared few of them fairly quick, and Snowfist and Snowdancer cleared area- the second jump was even crazier – in the final room against those 6 turrets where i risk being attacked by 4-5 of them in the next round, luckilly we’ve handled them well enough, spread their hits between 2-3 characters and we survived.
We’ve picked the hard way to resolve Airpockets – we’ve decided that a character must end movement on airpocket(to really occupy that tile), moving through it wasn’t enough, on the other hand if no action(even basic one) was used (no movement or attack) we didn’t loose air. Picking 2 cards for a round doesn’t mean using them as actions/abilities. Sometimes we had no room to go, or nothing to attacks so we only burned 1 action/one oxygen resource, or even none if we remained dormant (during long resting).
That was a tedious game, we started quite early and ended later than usually, we didn’t have stamina to do the outpost phase after that. Interesting mechanics, annoying enemies(ranged and retaliation is never fun), not just complex, but difficult as well. We were little too tired to feel satisfaction. If we managed to do that bit quicker, woul’d be nice, but getting curses at start and picking them few times in a short period, along with own miss card really slowed us a lot (if i killed turrets quick, i wouldn’t need to recover so long, i could clear the road faster, etc.). Glad we have this one behind.
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