Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion (2020)

What’s New in Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion

A Welcome To Gloomhaven Guide and a Box Insert

A look at the box insert that comes with Gloomhaven Jaws of the LionOne of the most welcome additions to Jaws of the Lion is a two page Welcome to Gloomhaven guide that walks you through how to use the contents of this game. It explains not only what all the components are but how to organize and sort them. Jaws of the Lion comes with a plastic box insert and a number of baggies and this welcome guide tells you what to bag with what and where to place all of the cardboard bits once you’ve punched them out.

Four New Characters

This box includes four completely new character types. You can play all of them at the start of the game. These characters include the Hatchet, Red Guard, Demolitionist and Voidwarden.

These new characters are designed so that they can be used to play in Jaws of the Lion, and so that they can also be added as new classes to the original Gloomhaven game. As part of the new onboarding system, the card decks for these characters are split up more than in Gloomhaven. Characters only start with six cards identified by an A at the top.

Then there are a couple of cards with B’s marked on them that will eventually replace a few of the A cards. These are in addition to the normal x-9 cards you find with a full Gloomhaven character. Also, each character has their own attack modifier deck. Along with this, each character has two sealed decks with a HALT card on top warning you not to open them until told to do so. These include additional attack modifier cards you can earn through perks as well as cards for level five and up.

Each character now has an initiative token, something new for Jaws of the Lion, which makes tracking turn order during play easier. A health and experience dial and a character sheet pad are also provided for each character and these are the same as what you get with the original game.

Sixteen Monsters

There are sixteen monsters in Jaws of the Lion, ten of which are new with three of the new monsters being Bosses. There are cardboard standees for each monster, as well as plastic stands in both white and yellow to insert them into (these match what you get in Gloomhaven).

Each monster also has its own stat card, action deck, and initiative token. Three of the monsters have basic action decks which are only four cards thick and are used during the introductory scenarios when learning to play Jaws of the Lion.

Twenty-Five Scenarios

The scenario book contains 25 new Gloomhaven scenarios in Jaws of the Lion. You won’t find any map tiles or overlays in Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. Instead, all of the scenarios and maps are available in a lay-flat spiral-bound book.

The Scenario Book contains twenty-five scenarios in total, the first five of which are introductory scenarios which slowly introduce the rules of play. In addition to the main scenario book, there is a Supplemental Scenario Book for the use of some scenarios. This book contains information that didn’t fit in the main scenario book and you can combine them to make bigger maps.

A New Map of Gloomhaven and Sticker Sheet for Jaws of the Lion

The map board for Jaws of the Lion is much smaller than the full Gloomhaven map and features a much smaller area of the world, just focusing on the town of Gloomhaven itself.

A sticker sheet is provided for placing adventure locations on this map. There are twenty-five stickers, one for each of the scenarios included in Jaws of the Lion.

In the rulebook, the use of the stickers is optional as they are the only element of the game that you make irreversible changes with. Everything else in the box can be reset so that game can be played through a number of times or passed on to another group when you are done with it.

Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion Learn to Play Guide

The rules for playing Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion are split into two different booklets. First, there is the Learn to Play Guide. This very slowly and deliberately walks you through how to play the game. As you finish sections of the guide you will do things in the game, like read sections of the scenario book, place stickers on the map, and, of course, actually play through scenarios. As you finish one section the book will present more rules, slowly introducing the game one concept at a time.

This Learn to Play Guide walks your group through the first five scenarios in the scenario book. Many things are done to simplify the learning experience. For example in scenario one the monsters you face don’t use an action deck. Instead, they act on a set initiative and do the same action every round. Characters also have a limited deck of simplified cards with additional text on them to explain how each action works.

Each additional scenario after the first introduces more rules. When you hit scenario two, you will now be using a basic action deck for the monsters, learning new status effects and you encounter doors, traps and treasure tiles for the first time. At this point players also update their character decks, replacing a couple of their cards with more complicated versions which include things like lost actions, looting and area effects. This continues with each scenario introducing new rules until, by the end of the fifth scenario, your group will be playing with the full Gloomhaven rules.

New Event, Item and Battle Goal Cards

Since the entire campaign of Jaws of the Lion takes place in Gloomhaven there is no travel event deck, instead, there is just a new city deck (that is not compatible with the original). This deck contains twenty-two events. One change here from the original game is that none of these cards are meant to be destroyed or removed from the game. Instead, after using an event card, you can place it into a special slot in the insert reserved for used events.

Jaws of the Lion also has fifty-two new item cards. These cards only enter play after reaching a certain point in the scenario. And even then only a set number of them are added to the shop or available item deck. Many of these overlap items from Gloomhaven but there are also some new ones. Interestingly some items have slightly different abilities and costs than the matching items in Gloomhaven.

Jaws of the Lion also has a completely new set of Battle Goals. This box has thirty-two new, completely unique, goals, all of which are worth only one checkmark towards earning perks. It’s interesting to note that some of these Goals were inspired by a fan-created deck called “Satire’s Extended Battle Goals.” Isaac worked with the creator to adapt some of these into Jaws of the Lion.

The content of this article is originally from Board Game Geek and tabletopbellhop.com. For more information and a better understanding of the game, you can watch the videos below.