Last night I started my first campaign of Gloomhaven. I had been thinking about purchasing it for a couple of months, but another friend of mine bought a copy and invited me to join the campaign. I was looking forward to seeing what all the chatter was about. We met up at our local friendly gaming store (shout out to Paper or Plastic Sports and Games) and opened up the box. The next two hours was spent punching, organizing, and finalizing rules. My friend owned the game, had watched videos, but not read the rules. I wish I had sat down with the rules in advance but we were able to start playing.
I chose to play with Cragheart. I wanted to play a character that did a lot of damage, and he seemed to be similar to a barbarian. The two other players chose the Spellweaver and the Brute. Our first room went pretty smoothly, and we finished strong. We managed to kill all of the monsters in the room. However, when I opened the door to the next room I was met with a large opposition. The 6 bandits made quick work of me, and I was exhausted. My two other party members quickly met the same fate.
Overall, I enjoyed the experience. Before playing, I wish that I (or the person who owned the game) had read the rules in addition to watching how to play videos. It would have made the game a lot clearer when first trying it. The game was very thinky, and had a lot more strategy to it, than the usual dungeon crawl. I learned very quickly running through the dungeon and just focusing on killing all enemies would not get me very far. The resource management aspect surprised me. Our party did very poorly with that aspect. Now that I understand it, I am looking forward to trying that scenario again.
The Meeple Street 