revolving door

I’ve got mixed feelings about Gloomhaven’s retirement mechanic. On the one hand, it prevents anyone from being stuck in a class they don’t like (tinkerer). It provides things to unlock (we love unlocking things) and keeps the gameplay fresh from both an individual and team standpoint, since the team dynamic is always changing.

On the other hand, if you’re enjoying a class (scoundrel), switching is kind of a downer. I recently hit level 6 scoundrel, was excited about my new card, and then realized I had just enough money to retire…so I felt obliged to do it. Game progression, you know. But I was just getting into a good vibe with the class and wasn’t ready to move on. I’ll miss running around deleting enemies with Visage of the Inevitable + Doomed Compass. Ah well. I bought some enhancements, so if we ever run out of new classes and I go back to scoundrel, I’ll be stronger than ever.

We’ve had a bunch of turnover lately. The team is beginning to feel like a big revolving door. newbie did his Brute solo mission—back to the Black Barrow, the very first mission of the game—and killed enough bandits to retire. One mission after that, Dante (Beast Tyrant) and I both retired. Plagueherald is now the senior squad member and is rapidly nearing retirement himself. Feels weird.

Earlier, I was worried about who would tank for us after the Inox Brute retired. Turns out that newbie and I are co-tanking! newbie is the Sunkeeper, a paladin, and I’m the Quartermaster, with a lot of equipment-based skills. I can ignore negative equipment effects, which means I can wear heavy armor, and I have a bunch of shielding and item refreshes. Rolling refresh cards! So it seems like our front line is in good shape. newbie-senpai can give me tips on effective tanking.

Meanwhile, Dante is the Savvas Elementalist, which is an extremely big-brained class. The consensus is that his cards have a whole lot of text. Many of them have multiple effects he can proc by consuming different elements. My play has largely been element-independent so far (both tinkerer and scoundrel have one card that generates an element, but do not consume it), for which I am grateful.

So, our current teamcomp:

• meisnewbie, Valrath Sunkeeper (main tank)
• Achaius, Valrath Quartermaster (off-tank)
• HGR, Plagueherald (debuffer; poisons and curses enemies, causing them to miss)
• numbers, Aesther Summoner (melee dps kinda?? because of Rengar and Warwick?)
• Dante, Savvas Elementalist (??? probably ranged dps? he has like 5 hp, he better be ranged)