I've just started playing the PC version with no previous experience with the tabletop game, and I was blown away by the steep learning curve, complexity and complete lack of "holding your hand". Your channel and these videos have by FAR been the best learning for a newcomer as my self and i really do appreciate the simple way you explain and follow up with supporting visuals. You got yourself a new subscriber and I cannot wait to see what follows in the future from your side!

The basic math is: your hand size right after rests becomes smaller when the number of burned cards increases. Therefore, the number of rounds you play between rests becomes smaller. Take Scoundrel as an example: if you never use abilities that burn cards, the rounds you play between rests can be listed as 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 (very simple math, you can count yourself). That means you would play 4 rounds, rest, then play another 4 rounds, rest, then play 3 rounds, et cetera. Every time you play a card burning ability (or burn a card to prevent damage), you will shorten this number list by one number, and the catch is: you will lose number of rounds (without counting long rests) equal to the leftmost number of your remaining number list. If you don't quite understand, let me give you a simple example. Still as Scoundrel, you are playing your first 4 rounds. Your remaining number list is 4 3 3 2 2 1 1. If you play a burning card ability within these 4 rounds , after rest, your hand size would be 7 instead of 8. You can see now the number of your rounds between rests becomes 3 3 2 2 1 1 instead of 4 3 3 2 2 1 1! YOU LOSE 4 ROUNDS BY PLAYING THIS SINGLE CARD! (note: I don't count long rests.) Another opposite example is to play the burning card at the last round, meaning you only have 2 un-burned cards. You can easily see that no matter how you play you will get exhausted anyway. You can play card burning abilities on both cards, and you basically don't lose any rounds, because you have none left! There is no remaining number list anymore. The point is, as a general rule, the earlier you burn cards, the more rounds you will lose. Therefore, if you want to burn a card early in the game, you really need a strong reason to justify that ability. I personally play Scoundrel a lot at +1 difficulty. With a starting hand size of 9, normally I will try avoiding burning cards early, or just burning Single Out as a lasting buff if I have no other things to do, and save those high burst damage cards towards the end for the stronger enemies or bosses. Normally I can get by comfortably by doing that. Therefore, I can say, for my level of playing, I can afford to lose about 3-5 rounds in total as Scoundrel. Then, based on that fact, I think if I am playing Tinkerer, I wouldn't mind burning 1 or even 2 cards at the beginning because even after that the number of my total rounds is still much higher than the maximum of Scoundrels. (burning 2 cards brings Tinkerer's number list from 6 5 5 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 to 6 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1, still 6 rounds more than Scoundrels'). Unrelated comment: for me, I would say Single Out is still worth considering as Scoundrel. Use that card at an empty round so you don't need to waste more important rounds to cast that buff. Losing 3-4 rounds is definitely endurable in my party. You can long rest more and use stamina potion to catch up. That constant buff can really help at many occasions and is a source of more exps. If you always ONLY use Smoke Bomb and Backstab at the very end, you are basically saying Scoundrel almost cannot afford to lose any rounds, and that is not true based on my experience.

It’s videos like this that make me realize what an amateur I am. I’m just moving around the board killing things. 😞

The best video for newbies. Hand managememt is crucial to play GH properly.

agreed on the 16-24 rounds estimate. that's my experience as well. personally, i use burns in the last room or at the start. at the start because it's some sort of persistent passive. i also think kill enemy burns are worth it as more enemies get shields and higher hp. for the starting classes, i enjoy playing (brute, mind thief, spellweaver), here's how i schedule my burns: 1. spellweaver- i pack 6 burns + reviving ether and 1 non-burn. i use all 6 burns and reviving ether on the 1st rotation and then on the last turn before i exhaust. with long resting that gets me 21 turns before i exhaust (5 LRs). 2. mind thief- i pack 2 burns. i use both burns in the 1st rotation and then on the last turn before i exhaust. with long resting that gets me 23 turns before i exhaust (6 LRs). i discard the augments in play before i LR then i just re-play them. 3 brute- i pack 3 burns. i use all burns in the 1st rotation and then on the last turn before i exhaust. with long resting that gets me 19 turns before i exhaust (5 LRs).

Excellent guide that I would recommend for all beginners, having done similar calculations for my gaming group to highlight the impact of burns when we first started out. The minor stamina potion and it’s big brother when unlocked are key items for most characters 😊

Mando doing the LORD's work. Thanks man! This channel is going to explode now.

I love the game but it doesn't hold your hand at all! The advice in this guide is solid and useful, particularly re the scoundrel who I was having a real tough time stopping her get exhausted. Such a great game and the nuances to character development and play are such a refreshing change from the 'let's make it sooooooooo easy' games that seem to be the norm nowadays.

14:40 We started GH after finishing JOTL from march 2021 to september 2021 Lvl 3 brute (me) lvl 2 scoundrel/crag/tink Our scoundrel luckily drew the personal quest for 12 exhausts haha So he loves using his burns regularly to absolutely decimate early rooms and exhaust just into the last Luckily i as the brute am very good at avoiding burns and long resting. And our Tink always tries to combine with brute to do the "recover your discarded cards" card for the first or 2nd major rest cycle to allow brute (or crag) to go longer to make up for scoundrel going out earlier Tink and crag also long rest regularly

BoardGameMath for stamina calculator: bit.ly/3mk8FyQ GH tools and resources: bit.ly/3me4u6p Become a Patron for early access to videos - www.patreon.com/mandatoryquest Grab some sweet merch - www.mandatoryquest.com

I play Mind Thief and I try little strategies to prolong my hand playability but almost never burning a card, at least until the boss room and/or near the end goal of the scenario -and when I do, it has to count (risk analysis). I never summon (MT summons suck anyway) and I make ample use of STA potion. Many MT players go slow on first round and fast on second, but I try to stun ASAP/quickly, drink my STA potion, get my stun card back all in the first round, then stun again the second. With the right party, I can nullify the biggest threats in the room and we make quick work of the first room, setup everyone for optimum placement near the door/resting opportunity, then chokepoint the monsters and I stun again :) My favorite is when the nastiest monster in room just never gets a chance to go haha

bro tinkerer with his reset cards for ally is sooo good

Thanks for making these videos - this is the hardest turn-based tactics game I've ever played and I would have bounced off of the beginning levels without a guide. Now I'm having a lot of fun!

Thanks for this information! Friends and i are trying the digital edition. so nice to learn some tips, tricks, and the mechanics and flow of the game.

Great video. Thanks for taking the time to make this. Your general tips about how burning affects your hand and then specific examples about cards was an excellent strategy for maximized learning

Thanks for this video. It was very helpful! I had not been using long rest much, and now I realize how valuable it can be, especially before opening a door.

The Brute's Trample with Ancient Drill and Boots of Striding has saved me on so many occasions so far!

This video is just what I needed! Thank you for the fantastic job!

Great video. I'm a newbie to Gloomhaven - Jaws of the lion and war not sure about the cards and item strategy. Thank you 🙏🏻

this informations are super helpful for a GH/FH Beginner like me. Pets do a FH + GH JotL List as well. I played Jotl 2 yrs ago and it was fine. But now I am 12 scenarios into FH and I have failed a few now because of stamina (Fist+Kalp)

Excellent and very useful. Very frustrated with my poor performance in this game, and put it away because I can't get anywhere. But this will help.

thanks mate for the indept math about how this works always interresting. Also helped me wrap my head around some time management issues I was having. CHeers.

Very helpful, between this and your 'walkthrough' of scenario 1 and 2 should help me to get some momentum. Thanks! 🙂🥦🦖

I'm watching this a second time with my notepad handy. Thanks for the great info both here and on your channel.

Been playing with some friends because Epic gave it for free some months ago, played the first scenario and got destroyed, we finished it barely on our fourth attempt ( Its our first tabletop card game) we keep on playing it but decided to look a few videos to see the gameplay in a more profound way, thank you so much for your guides

Hi, First scenario first game Tinkerer entering last room late and playing Summons extended my survival time in the face of the archers as the Summons attracted attacks. Others all lay around exhausted (bad tinkerer) as I dispatched the last denizen with the first card of my last round before exhaustion. We could not have won through without the Summons and having saved Ink bomb and another multiple effect card to burn. I spent the start of the second room being frustrated trying to set up Proximity Mine which I dearly wished to employ in combination with my push card but it was just to hard to set up so I liked what you said about Tinkerers traps. This is a very helpful video to get a bit more of an idea of how to play within our party towards our strengths while working together. I will watch it again before our Friday game where we will try and complete scenario two as successfully as our first. Cheers and good gaming.

"Stop Burning Cards" And then Spellweaver's Reviving Ether literally is the exception to that XD!!!!!

I think early levels the tinkerers summon decoy is a great tanking card. It has as much hp as 2 of the classes and can be healed up. Can save a lot of burning cards for damage. It does lose its value pretty fast though.

The reason Gloomhaven does not allow multiple of the same class is because 4 Tinkerers would be so powerful, they would break the out of the game and begin to dominate our world.

Great analysis.Thank you!

Noice! I really like the pace and tone of this video a lot. Spoken in an instructive, clear and not too rapid way to make it very easy to understand. Of course the content is pure fire, thanks!

Knocking it out the park once again. Well done mando

been playing the board game and the video game, and been having a rough time trying to deal with some of the boss battles and making those choices to burn cards to take the boss out quickly since they tend to summon tons of monsters every round. sometimes feels like I can't burn enough cards to kill the boss fast enough before I get exhausted lol.

Hi MQ Just discovered your channel just after having bought the video game. The board game did not really convince me but it was mostly because it was too long to set up and things seemed to be a bit tricky. Nice video which explains some of my/our problems. After failing the first try on the "Chained Island", we came back with my strategy of rush and burn in 2 teams focusing mobs without killing them during the 1st round in order to deestroy the Spirits during the 2nd. It was OK but we finally lost because we all missed 1 or 2 cards to get rid of the last mobs. Your video explains all this and i'll try to stock to it. Thx also for the tacticas you created for each toon.

Great video man, cheers!!

In fact I never burn cards, I calculate it from the beginning! Plus you can buy an item where you can return to your hand one discarded card (not burned) and you'll have one turn extra because of that!!! So usually to do more damage, I activate one card with the infinite symbol ♾ (for example like the next 6 times you attack you add +1 damage, so it is activated for a while and help kill faster)... this way till now I never had to redo the level!!!

As always, thanks dude!

Just asked yesterday on twitch stream. Thank you as I think this info is core for playing GH! Like

Excellent explanation!

This was SO helpful!!!

Extremely helpful.

I was trying yesterday to play it on pc and the entry point is ridiculously high. After spending a few hours on going through tutorial and then dying twice on the 1st mission by card exhaustion it seems like it' s not for me. The worst game mechanic for me is initiative and planning your turn when u dont know what enemies gonna choose. It takes a lot of time when u do it for the first time and the results may vary from a check mate great combo to total disaster skipping the turn. Great explanation BTW :)

Great video!

Very nice video. Love that you dive into the mathematical analysis and link a turns to exhaustion calculator. I have what might be a niche complaint... the speed of your speech is very slow. I like watching videos on double speed normally, and had to go to about 2.8x to get that same speed here with third party software. Maybe check out how your videos would feel with a 10-40% increase in speed? I know radio stations get some extra engagement by punching up the tempo on songs a bit so maybe it would work for you :) just found the channel so looking forward to checking out your other vids.

Great video!!! thanks!

I'm stuck on mission 14. These wolves are killing me. (Spellweaver and brute)

Good non-burn cards are so much stronger than the rest of the cards!

Never tried it, but was thinking about Reviving Ether for Spellweaver. After she's used it to get her cards back once, if partied up with the Tinkerer, Tinkerer has a card that allows an ally to regain a burned card, thus Spellweaver could get another cycle?

Thanks for the Math and breakdown for us smooth brains this helped my gameplay and when to be greedy lol can u make a vid about best 2man comps or ones you like then if it does well do a 3man and 4man party vids?

Thanks!

This is why we use potion of stamina...

This only works if you never use an augment, summon or anything useful, and doesn't account for the actions of enemies. Not sure I agree with the maths, unless you play a really boring, perfect game every time.

Thanks for the great tips MQ! Is your charity speed run of gloomhaven digital going to be on KZfaq?

MQ, would you consider doing a video on monster AI? My understanding is that it's pretty transparent to players of the tabletop version, but kind of obscure for digital players that don't have to learn the rules the same way.

@MandatoryQuest ….Spoiler question….. Do you feel its ok to play the two main persistent losses with the 3 spears character or the combo not worth it?

Long resting just artificially inflates the number of rounds you are "active". You don't contribute anything to the group when you long rest as you cannot take any actions. Other than being around longer, is that the point? I.e. you're still there to act later on?

Thanks for this guide. I would have also liked some of your thoughts on the stamina potions bc my group is quite confused. In the english Gloomhaven it states 2/3 Cards In the german Gloomhaven it states 1/2 Cards Gloomhaven on Steam also states 1/2 Cards so which one is it? We played with 2/3 in the last 1 year and it was still barely manageble. If we have to resume play with that kind of "Nerf" i hope this calculator will help us to control our ressources more efficiently.

Ha! Too bad! My Paladin's personal goal is to exhaust twelve times 😅

The thing is that health is quite difficult to manage. At the beginning of the game, cards are always burnt because of damage.

Stamina og pots allowed u to recover 2 cards. That's insane haha

I must be one of the few in this comment section that had a very negative first impression with this game, to the point I felt like I wasted my time. The combination of the burn system and the super steep difficulty curve is very intimidating, and I feel like a little more in game help would be appropriate. I'll try again with this video because besides the difficulty I can see the potential in this game. I hope I'll have a better time next time.

Thanks bruh

Quick question, is a character unlock permenant or do i have to unlock them for every single campaign ?

Don’t forget stamina potions too.

What do u mean by burn one card per cycle? I m playing Spellweaver just getting into the game. I keep running out of cards quickly also quite difficult to make the fire combos…any tips pls?

Problem is, I keep getting slaughtered and need to burn to deflect damage lol

Is there a mod where no cards get burned BUT every round you get 2 random cards instead of choosing 2

How bad is it to shortrest when you have 3-4 cards in the deck that are not good for this turn.

More than a 20% reduction ia unacceptable.

Have you done a video on jotl too?

I'm not burning any cards but my scoundrel only last for about ~11 rounds. what am i doing wrong? :o

Are Solo Scenarios coded into Digital Campaign?

You said 2:34 spell weaver can revive all other 7 cards, but you have to play 2 cards, so you cannot revive the second card you played. So you can only really revive 6.

I love this however I have played this game for awhile back in early release. YOu always use long rest which sucks because basically that character is not doing crap and honestly with brute and scoundrel usuall in the thick of things. My best is surviving 20 maybe 22 rounds. I would enjoy playing with you and seeing how to use which card and how to be better, because sadly u do use a burn card in 1st or second round to prep up.

I feel scoundrel is pretty bad unless you are with 4 or more players.

Honestly find Demeo infinitely better because of this mechanic, the idea that simply walking through a hallway causes exhaustion is moronic. Its way way WAY too harsh IMO sure it makes it more challenging but when fun is taken away to make it challenging its no longer good gamedesign. I simply do not understand why people these days confuse difficulty with entertainmentvalue cause its not the same thing. You can have a hard as balls game that simply sucks at entertaining its players by putting punishing mechanics where it simply doesnt make sense at all. Having no basic movement or basic attack having to spend cards for every single action from picking your nose to full sprint heavy weapon swings, then having no redraw mechanic without recieving heavy penalties is just daft. Sure like Demeo put a cost at heavy attacks or especially fast movement but just walking through a hallway at a normal walking pace makes the game feel like a shitty slug punishing to be punishing rather than to add anything to the experience.

Trample + Warhammer..... that's legal? 🙃

I SUCK! I've only made it past a single seniour... It seems the decks are stacked against me, but I know they are not. Need help!

One of my problems with Gloomhaven is you have to discard cards to do anything, even walk 5 feet across a dungeon room. In fact you could avoid melee combat and still exhaust your character by only walking 50 feet, or skip movement and do nothing but stand during the encounter. Apparently in the GH world everyone needs a nap every 10 minutes! :-)

It's a hard game and all, I'm willing to accept and learn it for what it is and maybe even end up liking it. But I will never understand the design idea behind asking the player to play 2 cards to get to the door. I know this will offend a lot of fans of the game but it's one of the stupidest mechanics I've seen in a turn based strategy game. I would rather have a harder game than a insanely annoying one.

No way you could long rest every round, you’d get killed quick

Coment

I absolutely HATE the Burn Mechanic... especially when it comes to doing a Long Rest. It's a terrible mechanic and completely restrictive. I get burning to replace a Hit, but to have to Burn to recycle back in Discarded cards, just absolutely killed this game for me and other friends. It was truly unnecessary, and this game feels more like a "Have to do it this way puzzle" or you fail. I feel like I'm forced to make a decision that should be avoidable. If they alone just lifted that stupid burn on a Long rest, it would have greatly improved the playability.

Why am I watching this? I have 500 hours in gloomhaven, both digital, irl, and TTS lol Maybe I just dig the accent

yup, this is boring, i would much rather 'feel' my way through whether a burn is important or not. just gauge the number of enemies remaining, or the value of an early burn for like a passive effect like flame shroud or overwatch. almost never burn midway through a level unless they stick a really nasty monster there compared to the rest of the map. and that's it. if you lose try again, stop with this statistical nonsense

why you are telling me your life?, just let me know how tf i need to play to not burn a fkn card.