Review of Founders of Gloomhaven

Blurb from the publisher: 'The city of Gloomhaven was not always a bustling hub of commerce and intrigue. Hundreds of years ago, it was nothing but the ruins of a long-dead civilization. But as the humans spread across the map, making a tenuous peace with the Valraths of the south, the Inox and Vermlings of the forest, the Savvas deep in the mountains, and the Orchids and Quatryls across the ocean, plans were drawn forth to build a town on the eastern shores. It was to be a symbol of the many races working in harmony.

Founders of Gloomhaven is a fully-contained game that does not require Gloomhaven to play.'

What you get: Your EUR 50 or equivalent will buy you Founders of Gloomhaven, an auction, hand-management and tile-laying boardgame for 1 to 4 players that is played in over two hours.

In addition to the English rulebook which can also be downloaded from the company's website free of charge, the game also contains the following: one double-sided Map board, 2 secondary Boards, 9 Player Boards, 93 cards, 150 Influence, Road and Money tokens, and 9 playable Races with 400 wooden player pieces.

As stated in the publisher's blurb, the game is not an expansion of Gloomhaven, the game that currently occupies the first spot of BGG's rankings. It is a different, independent game, that shares the same world and background. In the interest of full disclosure, I have never played that game. Thus, I cannot readily comment on the thematic continuity between the two.

Gameplay: In Founders of Gloomhaven players may choose between nine player races, each of which behaves differently. As an example, the Savvas can expand with roads very fast when next to stone resources, while the Valrath demand payment from everybody else for each claim token the other players have on Valrath resources. The game can be played in either of two maps. One appears to emulate Gloomhaven, while the other provides a much more open board which can accommodate friendlier games. Each map is divided in three sections, and hosts four different types of terrain: entrance, coastal, forested and central. Different buildings can be built on each side. The 18 (!) different resources are divided in three tiers, each of them with a different number of them. The eight basic resources include population and crops, and occupy one square only, the six tier 2 resources occupy a 3-square area while the four tier 3 resources occupy a 4-square area.

During play, each player performs a single action by playing a card from his hand.This can be a standard card or a recruited adviser card. The player may either place the card face up in front of him on the table and take its main action, or face down and take one of the four basic actions: gain one money, gain one fleeting influence, build a connected road, or place a worker for a racial or a prestige-building action. When a player plays the card's action, the other players may follow him by performing that same action or by taking a basic action. Players can Recruit, Trade, Upgrade, and Construct different buildings. If the active player however performs a basic action, the other players may not follow. Additional actions include racial actions (namely the special action each race has), and prestige-building actions (placing a worker on an active prestige-building card). When a player has at least two cards played in front of him from previous turns, he can play Call to Vote. That card provides additional basic actions for the cards the active player holds on his hand at that point, resets his workers, allows every other player to collect income, and forces players to secretly and simultaneously vote on the building that should be built. Players' lasting and fleeting influence weighs on the outcome. Votes are revealed, and the winning building is placed by the player who influenced the decision the most.

As the game progresses, prestige buildings will see their required resources delivered. Each time this happens, completion tokens are placed on them. Game end is triggered when six tokens are placed. Each lasting influence counts as one point, as does every set of four money. The player with the most points wins.

The game also includes solo rules and three variants. One relates to achievements (immediate, mid-game and end-game), playing a simpler version without workers, and Shaping History, a thematic game that ties events in this game to the Gloomhaven game.

The strong points: Founders of Gloomhaven is an interesting piece of eurodesign that boasts a bit of every mechanic available on the market. Most of those have been previously encountered in other games (from other players repeating what you are doing, the timing of you resetting your deck, its incredibly open-ended nature, the cleverly-done tech tree etc). All these mechanics contribute towards one single goal: turn the game into a huge, involved exercise of planning and logistics. Do not be confused by its components; this is no simple tile-laying game like Carcassonne or Urban Panic. The only similarity between those games and the present one is that negative play will not win you the game. What you are building is an adaptable production engine. And I say adaptable because of the way player actions create synergies and alter what you are doing. The Follow Action is a very clever mechanic and allows the players to immediately react instead of waiting for their turns. Where in many other games what is yours can only be used by you, in Founders of Gloomhaven players may strongly interact with each other's creations through the distinction between ownership and access. If anything, this brings the theme nicely forward: everybody is building the same city, yet they are doing so competitively. I enjoyed the nuance and how it comes out on the board.

Those enjoying brainburners are very likely to enjoy the processes of Founders of Gloomhaven. The game is a complex exercise and takes pride in it. Timing matters incredibly. Mistakes, especially those in early game, can cost you dearly, even though that premise is valid even on much easier games like, say, the Catan game line. There are many routes to victory and options are as meaningful as they can be. Replayability is sky-high, thanks to the asymmetrical races (even though I am not convinced about their internal balance), as well as the randomized elements that make up each different game.

The solo game is a nice challenge, even though it differs significantly from the multiplayer game which is the one I recommend. Go for a full table, if you all have the patience for it. If this is the only solo you have, it can serve its purpose, even though much better ones exist. To be fair, I feel that the solo rules deserved a dedicated automated opponent like the one found in the (otherwise totally different) Pericles: The Peloponnesian Wars.

I understand that the races and buildings mentioned in the game link directly to storylines and events transpiring in Gloomhaven. As I already stated, I am not able to comment on them. However, they are very likely to pique the interest of Gloomhaven fans.

The production values are very high, with glossy cardboard, hundreds of wooden pieces and what have you. The box is as sturdy as they get. Even though there are a lot of components, the pictographs are fairly easy to understand, and most of the numbers on the game's elements are big and distinct enough to be seen from a distance. In what I always consider a classy move, the game includes an additional half a dozen more zip-lock bags to the ones that already host its numerous components. If anything, you are unlikely to miss

The weak points: The obvious warning first: as much as Glommhaven and Founders of Gloomhaven take place in the same universe, they are totally different from one another when it comes to gameplay. If you buy this believing that it provides a similar experience with a strong narrative, or that it expands on the points that made its predecessor famous you will be severely disappointed.

Depending on where one comes from, he might find Founders of Gloomhaven to be extremely bloated. I wouldn't go that far myself, yet admittedly it has not found the right balance between playing time, player involvement, and the satisfaction it provides. The mechanics don't contribute the same towards the game's final goal. In fact many of them give out a vague feeling of being superfluous or that they could have been better elaborated upon.

The game demands a lot of thinking, with planning spread out in numerous steps. By definition this means that players that can't think fast will be prone to AP. Expect a long learning curve; your first games will last double the amount of time that the game advertises. At the beginning expect the game to occupy full gaming sessions without allowing you a breath, seeing how messy and fiddly the board is. Progress during the game is slow, very slow even. Anybody paying attention should be able to understand the way things are heading, this however by definition will not make you plan better.

Founders of Gloomhaven is not an easy game to learn, and unfortunately, this isn't only because it is heavily exception-based. During the game it is impossible to tell at a glance who has access to what. The rulebook has typos (even the game's box has typos!), the writing is neither unambiguous nor to the point, while a lot of the game's concepts are only presented through insinuation hidden between rules and the game's other elements like the cards and the tiles. The order in which the rules are presented is convoluted, sending the reader back and forth. Exception-based games which come out as hazy however are unlikely to excite, namely because your first two or three games will be full of mistakes and illegal placements that you noticed too late. The learning curve is substantially higher than it needs to be, and I am convinced that many will give up before getting a good idea of how the game works. The only remedy for this is, frankly, a rulebook written from scratch.

High as the production values are, the artwork is not good for the game. It is extremely busy, with a rather counterintuitive way of presenting information. I would have preferred less art and drawings and more abstraction, personally.

Conclusion: Founders of Gloomhaven uses solid euro design elements. The mechanics are interesting, the production values are top-notch, and the amount of analysis it requires is adequate to put it into the category of games that I usually enjoy. I will not lie however: with all the convoluted rules and AP issues that plague it, it rates a lot lower than what I personally expected it to. A thorough rewriting of the rules from scratch as well as a few rethinking of the concepts behind it is likely to alleviate at least some of its issues.

For more info on Founders of Gloomhaven and Cephalofair Games visit its website at http://www.cephalofair.com.

Shameless plug: for more gaming news and content (including, for example, pictures of Founders of Rumbleslam that I am unfortunately not able to upload on RPG.net for the time being), and to better keep track of my reviews, subscribe to my Antonios S facebook and twitter page.