Gloomhaven rules how to#

New cards and concepts trickle out with each fight, adding options without swamping you.

Gloomhaven rules how to#

First, you learn how to pair cards to move and attack, then how to navigate your environment, manage the decks that regulate enemy actions, charge up elements to boost your moves, and finally how to square off against a miniboss.

AdvertisementĮach of these concepts is taught over the course of the first few scenarios.

Here, the focus is squarely on the good stuff: the game’s novel card system rather than, say, the fact that you lose hit points until you fall over. The original Gloomhaven didn’t exactly throw its players into whitewater rapids, but “deep end” wouldn’t be an overstatement. Jaws of the Lion is one of a few modern board games to try a tutorial. No, I don’t know why my king is in love with his biological sister. A good tutorial walks a tightrope between talking down to us like we’ve been living in a cave for the past fifteen years and assuming we hold a PhD in Interpreting Game Design Intentions. The problem is twofold: either the game belabors the stuff we already know, like how to look around and click to shoot, or it fails to really dissect all the little subsystems that make the game purr. I’m speaking mostly of video games, where tutorials have been a staple ever since we collectively decided we weren’t going to read the manual anymore.