This is the fourth scenario of Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. We’re still in the tutorial for the game — this scenario introduced scenario goals and city events.
I’m not sure how fast people play through this game, but we’re going super slow. With COVID, we only meet every two weeks, and if something comes up on that day, we skip additional weeks. If we used Tabletop Simulator or something similar, I suppose we could meet — whenever, but we love seeing each other, eating pizza, and being together.
Board gaming is the excuse for the family to get together. This game will take as long as it needs to.
But it’s a really great game!
We, the famous mercenary group “The Jaws of the Lion”, were tasked to find a missing blacksmith by his wife. We followed a trail of vermlings to a hidden ship, where the smith and the other unfortunate victims of the Vermlings were found — dead. But not entirely without use, as red-robed zealots seemed to have other plans for the corpses.
We ran them off the ship, but lost track of them. On our way back to Gloomhaven, we saw a burned-out husk of a warehouse that, when we’d passed on the way out, seemed still standing.
Our investigation was interrupted by the sudden attack of a river creature! We were preparing to fight, when a strange Valrath woman ran up and starting… singing to it, calming it. We could have taken that pause to rush in and kill it, but instead we just kept the swiftly gathering crowd back and let the woman do whatever it is she was doing. In the end, the river creature turned and jumped back into the river, followed swiftly by the Valrath.
With that excitement over, we returned to the warehouse, and found the only thing of interest — a stone stairway leading down into the caves below Gloomhaven. Descending, the air became colder… and then turned warmer. There was a blood red light below, and we could hear the sounds of ritual chanting. We’d stumbled upon a zealot nest.
We burst in and saw zealots gathered around four summoning stones. They didn’t see us, at first, but the two stone guardians they’d summoned began to turn our way.
The “Jaws of the Lion” were on duty once more, and we weren’t even getting paid.
All I’d read of the scenario before we’d started playing was that we kill two summoning stones. I thought that would take us fifteen minutes, tops. That was NOT the goal.
Once we’d taken down first two summoning stones, more zealots rushed in — and they were prepared, fairly quickly taking the Demolitionist out of the game with their wounds. The rest of us struggled gamely, finally destroying the other two, and permanently ending their ritual.
But the zealots weren’t giving up that easily, as even more rushed in, along with another stone golem. As so often happens, we barely had enough cards to finish the scenario. I think I’d set the scenario at a level higher than suggested on the Gloomhaven Helper app. The wounds given by the elite zealots were a constant drain on my healing, and Voidwardens are in no sense healers.
The 3D-printed miniatures and set decoration add so much more to the game. I still haven’t been able to print the actual floor tiles, and at this point, I don’t think it’s necessary. While the base Gloomhaven game’s tiles were necessarily generic and eminently replaceable, the Jaws of the Lion scenario books have a lot of art custom to each scenario.
When Frosthaven arrives, whenever that is (Winter 2021? Maybe?), I may have learned enough about 3D printing by then to do the tiles in a way that adds to the game. Doing the set decoration will be enough for now.
