Gloomhaven - Tips & Strategies

This tip came to me from DeS_Tructive on the BGG forums. I started a thread looking for the best ways to manage multiple groups that play instead of having tons of separate parties and this may have been my favorite answer:

“Our group distinguishes between main, secondary and guest players.

The main players are the ones who try to show up for every game. We usually run main story scenarios, have fixed characters and have life goals.

Secondary players are happy to join the game when a main can’t, but can’t dedicate themselves fully to the campaign. They have fixed characters, but no life goals.

Guest players aren’t expected to show up regulary at all. They don’t have life goals and pick up whatever class currently isn’t claimed.

Priorities for participation, pick priority for items and classes are all primary>secondary>guest.

That aside we have a common item pool across the whole campaign. It causes a higher build diversity and spares us constant gear juggling. There’s also a google document that recaps every scenario and event briefly (but pretty humorously).”

Thread can be found here: https://boardgamegeek.com/article/28123851#28123851

Setup takes a while for Gloomhaven. In my game group, we decide at the end of our session where we will go next and we pull the map pieces, obstacles, traps, treasure chests, monster standees, monster cards, etc. We place it all in a gallon bag and put the game away. That way, when we decide to play, we can jump right into the fun part. It makes it a lot more likely someone will suggest a game because we know it is ready to go.

The first scenarioes with my initial game group made a lot of mistakes, and even to until recently with my second game group we still slip here and there. I have had a lot of help understanding the rules by watching play through veidoes, and I’d recommend watching the play throughs where Isaac (the game creater) participates in.
My most recent discovery was that when a monster draws a shield/retaliate card, it’s not active until they have acted on their initiative (in the mean time being blanck). Another one is that you can wait until everyone has taken their turn before you decide if you want to short rest, not as we have played it that you had to decide on the end of your turn.
So have fun and stay safe!