Wrote off Gloomhaven for two years until a buddy forced me to play it

I assumed cooperative board games were just lighter stuff where one person ends up quarterbacking the whole thing. My friend Mark in Denver brought his copy over and made me sit through a full scenario. The legacy system and hidden objectives actually forced everyone to stay involved. Has anyone else been surprised by a game they ignored for a long time?

2 comments

2 Comments

anderson.jason2d ago

You basically have to treat that first session like a test drive but without the sales pitch. Mark did the same thing with me for Spirit Island, and now the hidden information in that game makes quarterbacking basically impossible. Sometimes you just need someone willing to sit through the rough setup to see if the mechanics actually click.

kim_martin2d ago

Mark's approach with Spirit Island is the same thing that worked for me with a game called Eldritch Horror. I always figured it was just a bigger version of Arkham with the same quarterbacking problems, but the global board and mythos cards splitting everyone's attention made it impossible for one person to run the whole show. Setting up the first session felt like a chore, but once we got going and I realized it was everyone against the game itself, not each other, the whole tone shifted. Splitting up to handle different problems in different parts of the world was a great way to keep everyone engaged.