Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion

Gloomhaven for people who looked at Gloomhaven and quietly put it back down.

The standalone entry point to the biggest cooperative campaign game there is. Four new mercenaries, twenty-five scenarios, and a campaign that begins with a tutorial built into the first few missions rather than a 50-page rulebook and a wish of good luck. The scenarios play on thick card map pages in a book, so there are no map tiles to lay out and setup takes minutes instead of a quarter of an hour.

Underneath it is the real thing. Each character has a hand of two-ended cards and every turn you commit two of them, choosing which half of each to use and burning through your hand as an exhaustion clock. There's no dice-based randomness to hide behind and no healer class to bail you out. Isaac Childres' system is still the best tactical puzzle in co-op gaming, and this is comfortably the sanest way into it.

Perfect for: A group of two to four who want the same campaign running for six months, and anyone who has been told to try Gloomhaven and found the box weighs more than their cat.

1–4 players | 30–120 minutes per scenario | Age 14+