Jaws of the Lion hands-on: Gloomhaven comes to the masses

Gloomhaven has become a legend. It is massive Board game That comes in a £ 20 box and costs around $ 120. It has earned a lot of critical praise and top ranking in the popular board game enthusiast forum BoardGameGeek. Gloomhaven even has a sequel coming out next year Frosthaven This is (for now) the most funded board game in Kickstarter history after it has raised nearly $ 13 million in pledges.

For some, however, Gloomhaven might feel too far like a bridge. The huge box with plastic pieces for organizing, the thick manual of the rules to be learned and the high price form a steep entry barrier. Enter the new Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. This beginner-friendly version only costs $ 50. It is easier to learn and is even sold (initially exclusively) in Target stores.

Just like the original Gloomhaven, Jaws of the Lion is a Fantasy adventure board game where your mercenaries defy dungeons to fight monsters and collect treasures. It’s cooperative and the world changes as you play. Story elements take you from one mission to the next and your characters gradually become more powerful. The campaign is lengthy, but you can easily save your progress from one session to the next.

Organize yourself

After spending a couple of hours with Jaws of the Lion, I’m happy to report that it does what it’s supposed to do quite well. At least I’m pretty sure it is. I am not a beginner in Gloomhaven. I’ve spent hundreds of hours (no exaggeration) in the original game – it’s my favorite and I can’t get enough of it. Because of the social distance, I can’t just gather a group of friends and turn them as usual.

But just like the original Gloomhaven, Jaws of the Lions supports the solo game, so I put myself in a beginner’s mindset and delved into it. Jaws of the Lion immediately provides a helping hand with instructions on how to organize everything in the box and a couple of containers and plastic bags so that you can understand all the plastic efficiently.

Within an hour I had punched all the plastic parts out of the six perforated boards and put them away. An hour is not insignificant, but it is still a big, complex game. It only offers an olive branch if you are not used to large, complex games.

For comparison, it took me a whole day to properly organize and get my Gloomhaven set ready, and I bought additional tackle boxes, bags, and file folders worth $ 20 to $ 40 to get the pounds and pounds of plastic understand. Jaws of the Lion provides functional organization within the box and guides you through the process.

Learn how to go

Gameplay is still complex compared to Catan, but this version contains a lot more explanations. If you want to try this with the family, it is important to set the right expectations. You won’t be able to open the box and let everyone play and kill monsters left and right within minutes. Even if you have organized everything, it takes time.

Jaws of the Lion includes instructions to learn how to play and a scenario book for each chapter of your adventure. The Learn to Play guide is great. It literally guides you through every step of setting up the game and completing the first five tutorial missions. During the first mission, you alternate between the manual and the scenario book, as it helps you in the first rounds with explicit suggestions for movements and instructions on how to manage your characters.

In such games, it is generally up to a player to learn the rules and explain everything to newbies as they go. Fortunately, the first tutorial mission is nice and easy too. The game offers few options for what you can do in each round and simplifies the actions of the bad guys so you can learn the basics.

For comparison, the original from Gloomhaven uses a standard encyclopedic instruction manual. It’s well written, but you and everyone in your group need to know how to play the game in its entirety before you start. The first mission is a little easier than the others, but not essential.

I have introduced Gloomhaven to many friends and they all generally see murderous intentions in their eyes when I dive into the fourth or fifth level of complexity that they need to understand before we can start playing.

This look generally disappears after a couple of rounds that I can actually play in as I can continue to help them, and many of the friends I introduced to Gloomhaven eventually bought it myself. As soon as you know how to play, you are quickly captivated.

Jaws of the Lions picks up the same learning process and splits it into five missions, so players can alternate with simplified move sets much earlier and hopefully before the murderous intent begins. This successfully eliminates the need for a Gloomhaven Sherpa to lead you up the mountain.

Make the first curve easy

One of the most difficult moments for new players is choosing this first round. Each character starts with a unique deck of 8 to 12 cards that define what you can do in a fight, and you have to choose two. You usually use one card to move and one to attack, but with all the unique things that each character can do, the decisions can feel overwhelming.

Jaws of the Lion even addresses this problem. For the first missions, you have a much smaller deck, specially tailored to the tutorial, with simplified options and explanations directly on the cards. The Learn to Play Guide even offers two recommended cards for this first move. All tutorial decks have only six cards per character. So for the next move, you just have to choose two from the remaining four, then roll.

The fifth mission feels like you’re actually playing the real Gloomhaven, an interesting Gloomhaven mission. The fifth mission involves a boss fight and tough enemies that are unpredictable and hit hard. You have access to a large card game with unique cards and difficult strategic decisions to give your team a chance of success. But you get there step by step.

If you’re a Gloomhaven veteran, you may want to skip the first few missions, but be sure to read through the story elements as they make up a large part of the storyline. You should still be playing this fifth tutorial mission. Then you have 20 more missions and four new characters to enjoy, which should be the perfect amount to surprise fans until Frosthaven comes out next year.

A good starting point

Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion is an experience for beginners with enough new content to satisfy returning fans. If you like the idea of ​​Gloomhaven or Frosthaven but haven’t had a chance to try it out, you should definitely start with this one. I wish I had it for some of the groups I introduced to the game.

Over the years, video games have discarded instruction manuals in favor of in-game tutorials. Perhaps Jaws of the Lion is a sign that board games can follow suit and introduce more people to the magic who can offer complex games.

If all of this sounds appealing and you like the idea of ​​Gloomhaven but have been turned off by some aspect of its immense scope, I recommend trying Jaws of the Lion. It’s still $ 50 and seven pounds, so it’s not a small game. But it’s tailored for new players with missions that teach you the rules when playing. It contains significantly fewer plastic parts and helps you to organize them better. This also makes setup and cleanup much faster. Jaws of the Lion makes the daunting task of immersing yourself in the world of Gloomhaven much easier.