Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the Podcast where I pick up my audio recorder when I step

off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.

I'm Brendan Riley.

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Good afternoon, listeners.

It's a lovely, sunny day here in suburban Chicago.

I'm enjoying my walk from the train back home and I was thinking on the train, "what is something

I should talk to you about?" and I realized I couldn't remember:

it's been a long time since I've done a Message from the Deep episode.

So long so that some of you might not remember this ever being an episode idea.

I don't really don't remember the last time I did one.

So essentially a Message from the Deep episode is a thorough in-depth review of a game.

Generally it's going to be a thorough in-depth review of a game I really like because I generally

want to have played it many times before I do an episode like that.

I have done a number of them in the past but it's been a while since I've done one.

More recently I've done a lot of duels.

I've done an episode where I'll put two games that I've played a lot against each other

and kind of compare them.

But I haven't gone back and done just a Message from the Deep in quite a while.

So the idea of a Message from the Deep is to share my experiences like a deep and intense

review of a game.

And generally what I do is I pick out three or four characteristics of the game that I

find interesting, talk about how they are special in the game and then sometimes I will relate

them to other games.

And if you haven't played that game maybe you could understand what the game is about.

That's the general idea but I'll start with a basic summary of the game.

So today I'm going to talk about Frosthaven.

I'm talking about Frosthaven in the general circumstance of talking about all of the

Haven games, Gloomgaven, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, Gloomhaven: circles of whatever.

That's actually the only one we haven't played.

We haven't played those.

And then Frosthaven.

To start with, if you haven't played these games, you don't know anything about them,

these are Euro-style dungeon crawl games that are heavily puzzle focused and heavily tactical.

So generally the idea of any of them, I'm just going to say Frosthaven from now on but

this applies to all the games.

I'll mention when it doesn't.

The idea of these games is that you have a character that like a long form RPG is developing

over time and you use them to go on sort of dungeon crawl style adventures in fantasy land.

In Gloomhaven it's a fantasy land in the world surrounding the city of Gloomhaven.

In Frosthaven, Frosthaven is a new outpost city being built in the northern climate,

north of Gloomhaven in the frozen wastes and so you're adventuring in Frosthaven.

Each game is a scenario and the scenario is outlined in a book and it involves setting

out some tiles and setting out, getting out different sort of figure enemies and then there's

a little story involved and you try to accomplish the goal of the mission and then if you succeed

you get some sort of reward.

If you fail you're allowed to do the mission over again.

Generally the idea is if you fail you're exhausted, you never are killed unless you're

playing--there are some people who will play with a permadeath mode where if you are killed,

if you are exhausted during an adventure you die.

I don't know of anyone who plays that way but there must be some people who do and the idea

is that after each adventure you gain experience, you gain loot and over time your character

gets stronger.

The basic gameplay mechanism is that you have these action cards.

Generally you have a large selection of action cards but you can only bring some of them

on each adventure.

So after you learn what the adventure is, the first thing you do is select the action cards

you're going to bring.

The way the action cards are formatted, each card is divided into a top portion

and a bottom portion.

Generally the top portion is some sort of action or attack.

The bottom portion is an action or a move.

Each card has a generic attack strength 2 and move strength 2 as well.

So you can always, even if a card doesn't have the move you want, you could always use

a card to do a generic move 2 or you could always use a card to do a generic attack 2.

So the way the game works is that you have this hand of cards, let's say you have ten of

them in each round, each player selects two of their cards to play, one card where they

will use the top portion of the card, either the action that's on the card or the generic

and one part they'll use the bottom of the other card, either the bottom action or the generic

move.

You're not allowed to use the top part of two cards and after you use those cards they

go in your discard pile.

At some point you could choose to rest.

When you rest you get all your cards back but you lose one of your cards into your lost

pile and the lost pile are gone for good.

So as the game goes along you cycle through your deck, if you're very efficient you use all

your cards or almost all your cards before you rest then when you rest you get one less

card back.

So as the game goes along you slowly lose your action cards until you actually get to

the point where you run out.

If you run out of action cards then your character is exhausted and you're out of the scenario.

Each scenario has a goal that you're trying to accomplish, many of them, I'd say more

than half, are "kill all the enemies."

That's the goal.

There's some story wrapped up in it but often it's here's what's going on therefore

"kill all the enemies."

There are many scenarios that have some other thing you have to do as well.

Have everybody "stand on the switch for two rounds" or "kill all of one kind" or "kill one character"

and there's a bunch of other enemies running around or there's also two different things

you might have to do.

The enemies are represented they have these sort of character cards and then little decks

of cards that you flip to determine what the enemies do.

There's a whole lot more to the game.

I could spend the whole time explaining how the game works and then you wouldn't hear

anything about why it's amazing.

So I'm going to stop there.

I do want to talk about four things about the game that I find really compelling.

As I said many of these things are true for both Gloomhaven and Frosthaven.

Again I'm thinking here of Frosthaven because that's the game I've played most recently.

When I was preparing to do this episode I did discover that I did do a message from the

deep episode about Gloomhaven.

I think it was number 84 or something like that of the podcast.

So seven years ago, eight years ago I did a message from the deep episode about Gloomhaven.

So I have covered this on the podcast before but it is much further along.

Right now the 'haven system--Frosthaven, Gloomhaven, Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion--is my number

11 game.

I wonder thinking about where does this game fit.

It is my number 11 game of all time.

All right so the first thing I want to point out is complex teamwork.

One of the things I like about this game best is it is a full co-op and it involves people

working together to try to figure out what they're going to do.

The game allows for limited communication but you're generally allowed to say what you're

going to do.

Like I'm going to try to go here and do this and the trickiest part is when are you going

to do that?

You're not supposed to say directly a number that you're going to use when you can do that

because the initiative you pick one of your cards to be your initiative and it's a number

between zero and a hundred and the enemies will have varying initiative as well.

So sometimes a big part of it is like you have a thing you want to do but you want to go

before the enemy scope or you want to go after the enemy scope and that can make a huge

difference in whether your action for the turn is successful or not.

For example if your character is a melee fighter and the enemies are right close to you but

sometimes they have ranged attacks you want to go before them so you can hit them because

when they come to the ranged attack they'll step back to shoot at you and then so if they

go first and you didn't plan a move then you aren't in range to hit them.

For example but the co-op part is really interesting because often players can provide buffs

for each other. There are these magic elements that activate that make your attacks stronger

and so often there's a thing where like if I go early I can charge up the sun element

and then someone later in the round can use the sun element and then they'll do better

so kind of talking to each other about what you need and what you want to do.

Talking about where you're going to go because players can't co-occupy the same space.

So if I need to move to a spot to do a thing and you move there first that can really

screw up my turn so the communication together about the different potentials is really

I think useful. The game that I can think of that feels closest to this in my experience

is Spirit Island. Now Spirit Island is a full co-op as well. It's very complicated like

Gloomhaven. You can't really keep track of what everybody has to do and everybody's

got different cards in their hands so it's very hard to like tell somebody what to do

but you can certainly talk about like hey here's a threat we have to deal with. Here's

something we have to watch out for we should work together for this. So the complex co-operativeness

of Spirit Island reminds me of the complex co-op at the core of Gloomhaven so that would

be a game that has complex teamwork that I would point to similar to Gloomhaven or Frosthaven.

Another one that comes to mind is Aons End, which is not nearly as complex as Gloomhaven but similar

thing where working together to feed off of each other's plays can really pay off

in terms of setting up something that the other person can take advantage of that really

can be a big part of making a successful round. So the second thing I like about Gloomhaven

there is a bit of random to resolve in Gloomhaven. I didn't say roll to resolve because there's

no dice in Gloomhaven instead there are these cards and there's a couple different places

where the cards come into play in terms of what happens. The first one is when the enemies

go. Each enemy has their own little deck of action cards and so each round after players

have selected what they're going to do the enemies reveal one of their action cards and do

something. So the randomness of when the enemies go and what they do is really compelling

and useful in terms of understanding what's going on in the game. It makes for really good

play. The second place that that happens is both a second and third place I suppose is

in the attack of both the enemies and the heroes. When you attack you're going to flip a card

out of a deck and that card will modify your attack. The modification can be small to large.

Generally when you start out you have a bunch of zeros so your attack is not modified. You

have a couple plus ones, you have a couple minus ones, you have like one plus two and one

minus two and then you have a 2x and a miss. The rules do have a thing where you can remove

the two X and the miss if you don't like the variance that that creates but we leave

it in because that's really fun. Of course it feels like we pull the miss more often than

we pull the 2x and most of the time the cards you're drawing don't really make a huge

difference but sometimes they're clutch. Sometimes you get a miss when you really can't

afford a miss. Sometimes you get a doubler when you absolutely needed that in order to be

able to win and it's those moments that create really compelling memorable moments in the

game is that random to resolve element. So it's part of what makes the adventure part

of the game feel like an adventure right? It is not deterministic combat. By contrast like

I've talked a couple times recently about how I played Voidfall. Voidfall is very interesting

but it's deterministic combat. You know whether you're going to win before you go in or

not and I think that's fine and for a game as complicated as Voidfall, sure. I like it.

I like it the way it is but I do like the element of chance that goes into something like

Gloomhaven's hit deck. The chance of having your deck really reward you or really screw

you can is really satisfying and building into your play some wiggle room so that if you

do draw a miss you aren't totally screwed can be really fun. Now this is in contrast to my

general experience. I generally don't like roll to resolve or random to resolve but there

are some games where I find it pretty satisfying. Star Wars Rebellion is one where I really like

the way that you're maneuvering, you're doing all sorts of stuff that is not

randomized but every now and again there's a battle and the battle could go your way or

it might not and I find it pretty satisfying to have that little bit of luck in there.

Games that involve a significant amount of dice rolling also have that pleasure like occasionally

I'll play Axis and Allies with one of my neighbors and while that can be frustrating

on an individual battle like you have an individual battle you're like "oh man why didn't I survive

that! That's a real bummer." Most of the time the dice come out pretty close to what the law of averages

says they should, right? If you're supposed to win a third of if you're supposed to get a third

of these dice as success usually get between 20 and 40% of those dice as success and so because

the law of average because you roll a lot of dice in that game the law of averages come out in your

favor but I feel like in games that are simulating battle and war but having that element of luck

that element of randomness feels authentic to me so that's another thing that I really like about

the Gloomhaven system I like it has just the right amount of random to resolve. The next thing that I

want to comment on in Gloomhaven is customization and growth. I mentioned that you have a character and

they can grow there's some really interesting systems in play for as your character grows. Each

character has nine levels and kind of like a dungeon like a Dungeon & Dragon type role playing game

each time that you level up you get to gain experience and you get to gain or gain specialty and

you do that in two ways. First of all there's a first of all there's a check mark system where there's

a bunch of perks that you can get for your character you get to check off one of those perks. Each perk

gives you a slightly different benefit and that can affect you in different ways. For example my

character that I'm playing right now uses a lot of fire and wind magic elements and so one of the

things I've been taking as one of my bonuses are cards for my hit deck that not only help with my

attack but also boost the fire and the wind elements so that it's more common that I can play the

cards that use those and be able to take benefit from them. You know if I weren't using the cards that

did that if I were leaning in a different direction maybe I wouldn't take those perks early on I would

do something else instead. So that's one example of the kind of thing you can do. There's a whole bunch

of different stuff that you could choose in customizing your deck. The other thing in actually the

part that's even more compelling is each time that your character levels up you get to add a new card

to the pool of cards you might take with you on an adventure and this is some nice cruelty from

cruelty but also the possibility for specialization. The characters get two options for cards

for each level that they pass. So when you're level four or my character is just leveled up to level

five in a Frosthaven there are two level five cards that I can choose from and get to add one

to my deck or my pool of available cards. Now I'm also allowed to go back and look at all the other

cards that are below that so like if I don't really like either the level five cards I could go back

and add the other level four for example. But I can't I don't think I've ever passed on one of the

current level cards to choose a lower level one but you could. So again this gives you a lot of

room to customize and a lot of times if you go on boardgamegeek there are people who've written

whole things about different sets of cards you might take to really optimize what your characters can do.

Now we haven't gotten into that level because generally we play each we play through the game once

right we're not even our full journey through Frosthaven but I imagine once we're done with it

we're probably not going to start over and play again. Some people do. Some people have played

many times but that isn't really our approach. Customization and growth is the next thing I

really like about that game and that is a thing that really comes from role playing games you know you

see that in D&D you see that in legacy games a little bit but it's generally not super common in

other games. You know the only other game that I know that does that really well is Arkham Horror

the card game. In Arkham Horror you get experience after each adventure and you can use that experience

to buy new cards for your deck that make your deck stronger but other than that I don't know a lot of

games to do that because I mean campaign games but I haven't played a ton of those so there are

probably other campaign games that give you the ability to refine and grow your character over time

as well. So we're just about out of time the fourth characteristic that I really like is something that

come that I also see in legacy games and this is the reveal. The reveal is where there are components

of the game that you don't have access to at the beginning there and envelopes there and sticker

sheets there and boxes and you only get to look at them when the game tells you to open them up

and that is endlessly interesting. Every time the game tells you to open it up and look I love it

and I'm really enjoying the opportunity to do that occasionally so that's the fourth thing

like I said that's mostly from legacy games and I'm out of time so I'm not going to spend a lot

more time talking about that. Well hopefully you found this conversation about Frosthaven and

the other 'Haven games pretty interesting. If you're interested in trying them out I encourage you to

check out Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion which is the cheapest way to get into the game or you could...

there are digital apps that would allow you to try the game it's very close to the online game although

the physical game although frankly it's harder. I don't know why maybe in the physical game people

fudge their things a little bit sometimes or get the rules wrong in ways that help them. The online

game doesn't do that and also never lets you take back a move or reconsider whereas often we're

playing and like oh I'm going to move to and then we look and like wait if I move to I can't get

where I want hold on I'm going to come up with something else. I don't think the game lets you

take things back so but if you're interested in trying out the system the digital version gives you

a lot of access to how the game works for much less than the cost of actually playing the game.

Well that's about it for me today I'm curious to know what do you think of Frosthaven,

Gloomhaven, Jaws of the Lion or Forgotten Circles. Head over to boardgamegeek guild 3269

and share your thoughts there. What do you think of these games? How often have you played them?

What should what else did I miss? What's great about them? Thanks for joining me on my walk today.

I hope your next walk is pleasant as mine was. Bye bye.

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