First Attempt in Gloomhaven

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Shipping a small game to the USA is already €25. So this is one in the category "I don't even want to know". 🙈

@JW From France to the US, it would be 145$. Not bad.

Crazy shipping fees have hurt the second-hand market badly!

Yeah, I'll buy it from you, JW, if you pay the shipping (instead of paying your mortgage bill).

Ah yes @Zerbique, but with Gloomhaven you have many more than 3 enemies to fight per scenario!! Don't you want to drag that on even longer?? 🤣

@Cadet Stimpy I didn't make myself clear: when I saw the rules, it was a turn off for me as well and I didn't get it! I'm very much with you regarding game complexity. As your numerous posts made rather clear, we are into the same tier of games. I'd say that less than 20% of my collection has a dreaded orange weight.

The only complex games I have played are Root (but it's really a sum of not too complex systems, each faction being "easy" to understand; the thing is that there are many); Tigris & Euphrates (that one is, in my mind, only a 3 because the decisions you must make are hard, and the consequences of your actions hard to disentangle, so it's "deep", but the rule set is easier than many other games I own); The Lord of the Rings: LCG (here again, the rules are fairly basic, but you have many cards with convoluted effects); Hexplore It (the only one I have played solo).

Hexplore It is an edge case. It deserves its rating somehow. The rulebook may be 70 pages long BUT it's written really big, the pages are small, and you have plenty of pictures everywhere, so it's actually a rulebook that is very easy to read (I spent 20 minutes reading it and learning it and I don't read quickly in English). The core loop of the game is "move, roll dice, draw a card, follow effect". Some are encounters, and the fight is "roll the die for the enemy, follow effect, pick an attack, roll the dice for yourself, apply damages"). Pretty straightforward. But it's big, with lots of stuff (even though few components), and a long play time, so it's "heavy" in its own straightforward and easy-going sense.

Gloomhaven is definitely daunting. I think I'm very happy this game exists, I love hearing about it, I'm extremely entertained by Derek posts and look forward the future ones, but I just know where I stand myself with respect to it -on the onlooker side!

@Zerbique It's nice to know that the guy who figures-out gravity and other assorted conundrums of the physical world finds some games a bit scary. Here at ST, everyone is bilingual (maybe multi-lingual), has PHDs all over the place, knows things I've never even heard of. I feel I'm at the bottom of the intellectual scale here, but I greatly appreciate all of you tolerating (well, I think you are) my sub-genius ramblings. I feel at home here much more than at BGG.

@JW - What was your turn-off aside from no dice?

@Derek Arsenault Even though I enjoyed the double purpose of the cards, gameplay felt way more a puzzle to me than a dungeon crawler. So my mistake for not looking into it properly. I'd received a bonus at work and treated myself to a few expensive games.

I will no doubt return to it one day (like I said, it's basically unsellable). I should try a few scenarios on easy difficulty. And leave it set up on the table for a while. I almost got turned off scenario based games because of Gloomhaven and another one that I forgot.

LOL I read this one over two days. Half the first day I got it and half the next. To let things settle in a bit.

Are these heavy games that require the "highly functioning gray matter" (I love that LOL), something that you would play if someone else has figured out the "how" part? Or you just avoid that heavy of games period?

@Derek Arsenault Oh, I'd prefer someone else doing the 'heavy lifting', so to speak. But, as you may know, Derek, games with an orange Complexity Rating on BGG scare me. LOL! I'd be willing to give a 'heavy' game a try, but I suspect my synapses would over-heat and start misfiring, and be sayin' to me, "Dude, tryin' to get us to comprehend Gloomhaven is like tryin' to get a stock Ford Pinto to go 200mph/320kmh - ain't happenin'!"

My brain:

Image Source: Wikiwand

Your brain:

Image Source: st.hotrod.com

Evidence of the scariness:

Image Source: BGG

Image Source: BGG

@Cadet Stimpy

LOL It's definitely in my head, I'm just not sure when I'll get to it.