Gloomhaven

Before you start — what this guide covers

One scenario is one play; scenarios strung together make a campaign. A scenario usually finishes in a single sitting, and what carries over to the next sitting is the town phase that follows it.

• There are no dice. Every attack draws one card from an attack modifier deck that raises or lowers the value.
• Your cards run out before your hit points do. If your hand empties, your character leaves the scenario even at full health — that is exhaustion.
• The turn order changes every round. Characters and monsters alike are ordered by the initiative number on the card they played this round.
• Nobody plays the monsters. One ability card is revealed per monster type, and fixed rules decide who they focus on and where they move.
• Six classes are available when you first open the box — Brute, Tinkerer, Spellweaver, Scoundrel, Cragheart and Mindthief.

Components

Scenario setup

1. 1Lay out map tiles and overlay tiles as the Scenario Book shows. Only the starting room is populated at first.
2. 2Place monsters according to the player-count markings — black means none, white a normal monster, gold an elite. Randomize the standee numbers as you place them.
3. 3Read the introduction and apply any negative effects from the “Special Rules” section.
4. 4Choose the scenario level. The recommended level is the party's average level ÷ 2, rounded up; you may shift it by −1 (Easy) up to +2 (Very Hard).
5. 5Deal two battle goal cards to each player in secret; keep one and discard the other. Keep it hidden until the scenario ends.
6. 6Decide which items to equip. If an item adds negative modifier cards, shuffle that many −1 cards into your attack modifier deck.
7. 7Pick a hand from your available card pool equal to your hand size. At the start you only have Level 1 and “X” cards.
8. 8Place your figure on any empty hex marked as a starting location.
9. 9Apply the effects of any preceding road or city event now.

The shape of a round

1. 1Card selection — everyone secretly places two cards face down, or declares a long rest for the round.
2. 2Determining initiative — reveal one ability card for each monster type on the map, then reveal your played cards with the leading card on top.
3. 3Turns — everyone acts in order from the lowest initiative number upward.
4. 4End of round — shuffle any deck that showed a shuffle symbol, wane the elements one step, clear round-bonus cards, and anyone who wants may take a short rest.

The core — two cards, one top action and one bottom action

Every ability card is split into a top and a bottom action and carries an initiative number. On your turn you perform the top action of one of the two cards you played and the bottom action of the other. You may do them in either order, but you must finish one completely before starting the other.

• Whatever is printed on it, any card can be played for a generic “Attack 2” on top or “Move 2” on the bottom. Used that way the card is always discarded.
• If the action you performed carries the lost symbol, the card goes to your lost pile instead of your discard. Lost cards only come back during a scenario through a specific recover ability.
• Actions with a persistent or round bonus are placed in the active area in front of you. When the last use is spent the card goes to the lost pile.
• Abilities on a card are resolved in the printed order and cannot be interrupted by the other card.
• You may skip parts of an action, except any part that would harm you or your allies — that part is mandatory.
• Items can be used at any point in your turn, but an item that affects an attack must be used before the modifier card is drawn.

Lost cards, resting and exhaustion — cards are your real health

The only way to pull discarded cards back into your hand is to rest, and every rest loses one card permanently. Your number of turns in a scenario is therefore fixed from the start, and every round you are really asking whether this round is worth two cards.

• Instead of taking damage you may lose one card from your hand or two from your discard to negate it entirely. Any conditions attached to the attack still apply.
• The two cards you placed down at the start of the round are in neither pile, so they cannot be used to negate damage.
• “Recover” returns discarded or lost ability cards to your hand; “refresh” restores spent or consumed items. A card marked cannot be recovered never comes back, however it was lost.

The hex map — movement, terrain and line of sight

• “Move X” means up to X hexes. You may move through allies but not through enemies or obstacles, and you cannot end in an occupied hex.
• A Jump ignores all figures and terrain effects on the way — but the last hex counts as normal movement, so a trap there still goes off.
• Flying ignores everything including the last hex; you still have to stop in an empty hex.
• Nothing moves through walls. Two hexes separated by a wall are not adjacent, and range is never counted through a wall.

Attacking and the attack modifier deck

1. 1The attacker's own modifiers first — bonuses from active cards, items and effects such as Poison.
2. 2Then draw one attack modifier card and apply it. You draw one card per target.
3. 3Finally subtract the defender's shield. Because this is done per target, one attack can deal different damage to each enemy it hits.

• “Null” makes the attack deal no damage; “×2” doubles it.
• A rolling modifier means you draw another card, and you keep drawing until a non-rolling card appears, then add everything together.
• Curse shuffles a curse card into the target's deck. When it is drawn it is removed from the deck entirely rather than discarded; Bless works the same way.
• There are separate curse decks for monsters and characters, ten cards each, so no single deck can hold more than ten curses.
• A monster brought to zero hit points dies immediately and the rest of the attack's effects are not applied. Unless it was summoned or spawned, a money token is placed where it died.

Conditions and elements

Only one of each condition can sit on a figure at a time, but reapplying it refreshes the duration. Conditions land whether or not the attack that carried them actually dealt damage.

There are six elements — Fire, Ice, Air, Earth, Light and Dark — and three columns on the element board: Strong, Waning and Inert. A plain element symbol in an action means that performing it infuses that element to “Strong” at the end of the turn. A symbol crossed with a red slash means you may consume an element sitting in Strong or Waning, moving it to Inert, to get the augmented effect printed after the colon.

The rules play the monsters

• One ability card is revealed per monster type on the map, and every monster of that type follows it.
• They perform the listed abilities in the printed order and do nothing that is not listed — no movement or attack unless the card says so.
• Hit points, move, attack and range come from the side of the statistic card matching the scenario level; elites use the elite half.
• Order of action is all elites first, then all normals, each in ascending standee number.
• If the card shows a shuffle symbol, that type's ability deck is shuffled at the end of the round.

1. 1Before acting, each individual monster picks one enemy to focus on.
2. 2The measure is “how few hexes must I move to use the attack on my card”, and the figure reachable in the fewest steps is the focus — it does not matter whether it can actually get there this turn.
3. 3If two are tied, compare actual proximity in hexes, then initiative order. A character taking a long rest is focused on last.
4. 4Having chosen a focus, the monster moves the fewest hexes that let it attack with maximum effect. A move without an attack simply closes to the nearest hex adjacent to the focus.

• Ranged monsters back away to avoid Disadvantage. Staying in range while losing adjacency takes priority over hitting extra targets.
• A monster without Flying treats traps and hazardous terrain as obstacles when working out focus and movement; it only crosses them when there is no other path, and then takes the path through the fewest bad hexes.
• Monster healing goes to whichever of its own side has lost the most hit points.
• Monsters summoned by monsters never act on the round they appear and drop no money token when killed.
• Bosses have their own statistic cards but act from a shared Boss ability deck. They are neither normal nor elite, and a “C” in their stats means “per character”.

Ending a scenario and cashing out

• Success means meeting the goal on the scenario page. Failure means every character is exhausted.
• Once either condition triggers, the rest of the round is played out and then the scenario ends.
• Win or lose you keep the experience earned and the money tokens you picked up; tokens convert to gold by scenario level. Anything not looted is gone.
• On a success you also gain bonus experience of 4 + twice the scenario level and the checkmarks from any completed battle goal. Every three checkmarks grants an extra perk.
• A success lets you read the conclusion text and take the listed rewards — achievements, gold, experience, prosperity, unlocks.
• Afterwards recover all lost and discarded cards, refresh spent and consumed items, and reset hit points to maximum. Strip out any curses, blesses and temporary cards added to the modifier decks.

The campaign and the town phase

After a scenario you either return to Gloomhaven or travel straight on to the next one. Travelling on means resolving one road event — unless you are replaying the same scenario or the two are listed as linked.

• In campaign mode you may only play scenarios whose required global and party achievements are active, and a scenario completed in campaign mode is never played that way again.
• In casual mode any revealed scenario is available, but story text and rewards are ignored. Experience, gold, battle goals and personal quests still count.
• Reputation belongs to the party and runs from −20 to +20. High reputation makes items cheaper, low reputation makes them dearer.
• Prosperity belongs to the town and applies to every party. Raising it opens new items in the shop and lets new characters start at up to the prosperity level.

• Levelling adds one card of your class at or below your new level to your pool. Your hand size does not grow, so each scenario becomes a question of what to leave behind.
• A perk is surgery on your attack modifier deck — remove a bad card, or add one carrying an effect. Every three checkmarks yields one more perk on top.
• You may equip one Head, one Body, one Legs, two One-Hand items or one Two-Hands item, and small items up to half your level, rounded up.
• Retiring returns the character's gear to the box and the shop and raises the town's prosperity by 1. From then on every new character that player makes starts with one extra perk, and this stacks with each retirement.

Strategy that follows straight from the rules

• Count your remaining turns first. With N cards in hand, each rest costs you one. Knowing roughly how many rounds you have left makes “is this the moment to burn a lost card?” an easy question.
• The leading card is about *when*, not *what*. Once you know which attack you want, pick the leading card that puts you before or after the monsters as needed.
• Movement mostly lives on the bottom halves and attacks on the top halves, so playing two great attacks means standing still.
• Ranged classes should avoid adjacency — shooting the hex next to you is automatic Disadvantage.
• Because monsters follow fixed rules, they can be baited. Treating traps as obstacles, and focusing on whoever is cheapest to reach, are both tools you can use.
• Elements are a shared, one-round resource. Line up roughly who creates and who consumes before the round starts — without naming numbers.
• Battle goals usually ask you to fight in a particular way. They are not worth losing the scenario over — on a failure you get nothing from them at all.

Editions and expansions

• Reduced randomness: treat “×2” and Bless as +2 and “Null” and Curse as −2. You still shuffle as normal.
• Permanent death: dropping below one hit point kills the character outright. A character exhausted by running out of cards keeps their figure on the map, where it can still be attacked.
• Open information and solo play: show your hands, but raise monster level and trap damage by 1.
• A separate removable sticker set is sold for the base game, so a finished campaign can be reset.

Rules people get wrong

History and background

• Designed by Isaac Childres and published by Cephalofair Games in 2017.
• The 2015 Kickstarter raised about $386,000 from 4,904 backers; the 2017 reprint campaign drew over 40,000 backers and roughly $4 million.
• It took a sweep of 2017 Golden Geek awards including Board Game of the Year, and in 2018 the Origins Award for Game of the Year and the SXSW Tabletop Game of the Year.
• It held the number one overall spot on BoardGameGeek from 2017 until February 2023.
• The box holds 95 scenarios and 17 classes, six of which are available from the start.
• The Korean edition is published by Korea Boardgames, which has also released Forgotten Circles, Jaws of the Lion and Frosthaven in Korean.
• Digital versions exist for Windows (2019) and macOS (2021).