Frosthaven Strategy Guide - When not to kick open the door!

[@matthewmorgano610]

Thank you again for confirming things I have been screaming from the rooftops for months. You, as always, nailed it. I will hereby be coining the phrase “So what’s our breach strategy?”when someone nonchalantly offers to open a door.

[@lanselta]

Just subbed on this vid! I’ve just started this with my 8 and 10 year old boys. We’re all learning, and they are super keen. We rolled through S0 thinking we’ve got this. S1, my 8 yo with his full health drifter stops the door with no actions left. He then immediately got absolutely rinsed and died where he stood. The rest of us followed him soon after. The greatest thing was they loved it! We are all keen to do better, and this video is just what we needed. We’ll also do this at lvl0 next time.

[@RageBadgerGaming]

Thank you for the sub! I hope you and your crew continue to have this much fun! It's definitely a learning curve and starting with S0 was a good plan but there's absolutely no shame in doing level 0 to learn the game a bit for the first few scenarios! :)

[@govetenko]

This is an EXCELLENT discussion of one of the parts of the game that requires the most finesse. I have a hard time explaining to newer players these nuances and i might just show people this video. This was great, thank you

[@RageBadgerGaming]

You're very berry welcome!!

[@Nihongofreak]

Matt G Somers....my worst nightmare. Freaking Oozing Grove.

[@peterkay3686]

You really hit the nail on the head in this one. I think some people have struggled early on in FH more than GH in part because you can't just Scurry + Into the Night every door now. One thing that gets overlooked is how this has indirectly buffed other actions previously not seen as valuable in many contexts, namely top actions with shield/retaliate with no attack (especially shield of course) and also I find that the value of muddle is so much more important now than in OG Gloomhaven.

[@BalooSJ]

"Watch your doors and corners, kid, or the room'll eat ya." - Joe Miller.

[@jimmystrangus2687]

Only thing worse than a door is a door with a chaos demon behind it.

[@RageBadgerGaming]

... or two of them.

[@JingoisticZeal]

I laughed, I cried, I laughed again I laughed when you mentioned the scenario designer sadist trio. I cried when you mentioned people who open doors only to long rest. I laughed when you wrote a letter to shrike fiends, who are definitely worse than night demons. My team recently ran into one of those situations where we had to protect an objective after opening a door into the second room, but we were playing bear trap and Deathwalker. Our usual plan for opening a door was to open it and let the enemies come to us, but we couldn't do that in this situation. We had to run in and face-tank the hits with our squishy, delicate faces. It was a three-room scenario and we made it to the last room with a combined 7 cards between us only to discover there was a mini-boss who spawned infinite enemies. Sigh... Reset. We usually drop the difficulty by 1 every time we reset, so we went from very hard to hard to normal. I think we will finally be able to win this time (the scenario is still in progress). This scenario, like so many others in Frosthaven, would be much easier if we had someone on our team who can run into a room and tank hits. The general lack of hard CC in Frosthaven combined with scenarios that spawn infinite enemies or require you to defend objectives makes many scenarios far more difficult if you don't have at least one tanky character. It's certainly not necessary to progress through the game, as we have beaten many scenarios on higher difficulties with our two delicate characters. But it does make our effectiveness more scenario-specific than it would be if we had a tank.

[@BAMMTim]

Excellent video ! Thanks. I wonder if you might occasionally play through a little mockup (not an actual scenario ). Small hexmat - ok door here - Banner Spear opens - inside are Algox Guard, Algox Archer - this can happen, or this can happen etc ? [btw love the black cat in the background !]

[@RageBadgerGaming]

I want to stream Frosthaven somehow. I will someday, I don't really have a good setup for it but I want to!

[@Frankzoar]

That bathroom analogy was 🔥

[@Asian_Movie_Enthusiast]

Ahhh, I remember one of my favorite Brute plays during a door-opening turn. Have my little invisible rat friend open the door, then I go on Initiative 87 . . . Move 6, Attack 6.

[@Siegtalon]

Our biggest problem with frosthaven is there are so many doors that when opened introduce a monster spawner in the back scenarios 9 and 25 come to mind... this kills our let them come to us breach strat and has lead to some frustrating moments especially since special rules are plentiful we may be getting unlucky but my group wants a black burrows scenario to dilute the rules lol

[@shannimarmen8201]

We all need to up our strategy on breaching. The enemy you don't know is far worse than what you already know about. Good point on timing rests

[@nathanmays7926]

How would boots help with breaching doors? Is there something other than Flexible Slippers?

[@RageBadgerGaming]

Love the loot boots that's for sure.

[@richardmackinnon611]

Breach strategy: Play Demolitionist.

[@JD-ik4gw]

I was curious about Gloomhaven 72 after you kept talking about it how it's Glooms hardest scenario. Looked it up and realized this is the scenario my group literally just got decimated by 2 sessions ago. Agreed.

[@gideonpepys]

Awful scenario, until you go at it with a level 9 Spellweaver.

[@eikejmeyer]

Excellent video! :) Opening doors in *haven is the absolute opposite of opening doors in Dark Souls :D There it gives you brief windows of invincibility.

[@gorski1234]

-My party are all GH vets and we are somewhat competent at opening doors. It does not hurt that our banner spear picked the +3 movement on opening doors perk almost immediately. -There was one FH scenario with a split party where our tanks both opened doors with fast initiative. That was cool. -The door that killed us was a door disguised as a trigger. One of our players was absolutely convinced that something unusual would happen when we triggered X, but it was just a door and our party was scattered all over instead of being stacked on the not a door door.

[@dannyf1168]

We've played about 40 ish scenarios and lost 3. What kills us - surprises, and squishy 2p combos. Being surprised teleported into a new room and immediately wailed on. Or having a new rule adjust - but we didn't realise till half way. Second, 2 player - squishy combos being obliterated by long ranged enemies - Ancient Artillery from turn 1. We don't have problems with breaching. Typically having move left over is key.

[@Darkii1smile]

Just finished scenario 10 in frosthaven, it kicked me so hard

[@gabyvandinterenpmp956]

Yeah, that took me about 4 attempts as well with Banner Spear and Boneshaper. my summons were stupidly kicking 3-shield enemies rather than the actual targets and my banner spear couldn't really jump to those pillars and do them in, because, duh, he needs formations.

[@Darkii1smile]

@@gabyvandinterenpmp956 I'm glad I had trap + snowflake for these scenario, these duo just worked epic. But the door "surprise" is so unexpected

[@kunkudunk1133]

I’ve definitely seen a lot of complaints about doors. The biggest mistake I’ve seen people in my own group make is opening doors or ending turns in range of multiple enemies while their hand is empty. Without fail the *2 gets pulled and they bemoan having to lose 2-4 cards from discard and I’m just sitting there like “well what did you expect?” Also for any boneshapers out there, if your ally asks you if you can open the door, the answer is almost always no unless you have tons of health to spare to summon within the next room and someone else is charging in with you. Otherwise it’s not worth any existing summons not moving forwards on their turns.

[@ryanbeverley1546]

It never made sense to me in either game that apparently every enemy in every room is just waiting at the ready to attack anyone who opens a door. Too often we almost have 1 person immediately die just because they open the door. I can understand enemies that haven't activated yet going right away after spawning, but if the wolves finished thier turn, and another player/enemy has already gone, why do the new 3 wolves get free turns to go again? It makes no real sense.

[@lapulperiamtg]

It's super easy to avoid exhaustion! just buy stamina pot... oh, wait :(

[@RageBadgerGaming]

but wait... there's more...

[@TheJpftw]

Can you do a video on WHEN to do which type of rest? I think our group doesn't Long Rest quite enough...

[@RageBadgerGaming]

When to long rest vs short rest #frosthaven #gloomhaven

[@jaerin1980]

It's funny that I find a lot of these videos about what playtesters thought vs what actual players think show a lot about why the balance is off. The playtesters are FAR too experienced with Gloomhaven and Frosthaven. They balance around the idea that people know all classes, all monsters, all initiative values and if you don't then you should have known. I love Gloomhaven, but there is NOTHING intuitive about it at all. And I do mean NOTHING.

[@dannyf1168]

I don't think its NOTHING. But I agree with the sentiment. The way a 300+ game veteran/playtesters experiences the game isn't going to be simliar to the average players experience. My group has a wide range of people rotating in and out each week. You can really see the strengths and weaknesses of the characters they play when in the hands of someone who isn't a power gamer.

[@peterkay3686]

Are you saying you think the balance in FH is off/I.E too difficult because it was tested by veterans who underestimate how the average person will play? Just trying to clarify the point here as it's an interesting debate point. I tend to think FH balance is far, far better than GH but again I'm a very experienced player. That said, I play with very unexperienced players and while the classes are definitely a bit trickier to some degree, I'd say the balance is very solid across the board.

[@thomsen256]

Effing Shrike fiends! :p

[@BTysh]

You rock

[@catherinenyxsera3900]

Solid coverage.