Game(s) Played:
I am almost certain that this is going to be spoiler free but the internet can be a cruel and unforgiving place.
Opening – Gloomhaven
Game: Gloomhaven
Designer: Isaac Childres
Players: 1 – 4 Players
Playing Time: 30 – 120 minutes
Main Mechanisms: Role Playing, Legacy, Hand Management
Moving on, all the opening / unboxing portion of this post is neatly captured in the following video. After that I will cover all the prep work I did to get the game ready, not particularly useful for those who have already gotten their game months ago but perhaps this might be helpful for those who are getting Gloomhaven at retail.
So, here are the following things you may like to do in order to get your Gloomhaven ready for gaming:
This was the most time consuming task, taking about six weeks to source for a miniatures painter to commission the work. There are 18 miniatures in all plus they are all unique so you may want to provide your painter some portraits which you can easily get off boardgamegeek.
My DIY insert for ALL the SO, SO, SO MANY cards
And another insert for all the miniatures
I like having things all in one place and whilst I love inserts, I can't afford them and most of them aren't in a design that I like, so I made my own inserts. One for ALL the cards and one for ALL the miniatures. Bear in mind that before you do this, you need to sleeve ALL the cards. Some FLGS are even considering doing a bundle sleeves deal JUST for Gloomhaven, that's how many sleeves you're going to need.
Equipment for SALE! Get your adventuring equipment here! 15% off if blood stained!
Traps, Obstacles, Hazards, Doors, everything you need to go tomb raiding
So the only thing I didn't sleeve was the Item cards because I loved the idea of browsing through a folder like you're at a shop to buy items. To that end, I bought the Ultimate Guard Flexxfolio to store all the Item cards and all the little tiles for the maps. My only dismay is that it is nearly impossible to get a binder with the right size (mini American) in Malaysia, I say "nearly impossible" because the prices are ridiculously exorbitant.
Status effects are more important here than most RPGs
All the little Status Effects, Money, Summoning tokens and some dice (for recording monster damage as recommended by many other owners of Gloomhaven are all kept in these nice little jewellery boxes / medicine containers that you can get at most dollar shops.
One box to rule them all!
Here's where I diverted from the normal storage solution. I really wanted to be able to just pull out one pack for a specific monster and get everything I needed at one go (Monster Statistic Card, Monster Ability Cards & Monster Tokens). So I bought one big bundle of lunch bags, labelled them and threw them into an old shoe box in alphabetical order. Tadah!
Maps, maps… Where is that treasure map?
Something a little bigger would have been ideal but this came with the little labels sticking out which I can use as an index for the map tiles and it really was the biggest I could find that could still close without bending the tiles.
Here is how it all fits into the original box
I did end up having a lot more room but that's okay with me.
This was an immense pain to do
So, replaceable stickers are an incredible pain to do on your own. Seriously just get the ones done by Sinister Fish Games, I ended up paying roughly the same amount (before shipping) but the hours I put in were ridiculous. My first attempt ended in abject failure when I realized just printing the stickers off the pdfs on boardgamegeek means I had to cut each sticker individually. So I had to learn how to use Inkscape to draw the cut lines, get my sister to convert it to illustrator format and then get it kisscut (yes that really is the printing lingo). So yes, go to Sinister Fish Games if you want more stickers.
And another insert bites the dust
And so this is the entire ensemble for my copy of Gloomhaven. I don't expect to take it out of my home so having multiple containers for one game works fine for me.
So, I hope this was helpful in some way to you. Do look forward to our first session as I get my fellow Players to choose their starting character.
Ready Player One, Two & Three!
Until next time, keep calm and play better.
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