Forty-eight, in fact, at last count, including five big boxes, dozens of miniature packs, and seven skirmish maps. Of course, this being a FFG game, there are expansions. Various cleverly linked narrative campaigns offer months of entertainment for a dedicated group, while the skirmish mode allows two players to select small armies and battle one another on an equal footing-two very different games in one admittedly expensive box. ( An app allows up to four people to play the game fully cooperatively.)
Imperial Assault is a romp from start to finish, with one to four players taking the role of a crack team of rebel heroes, fighting another player who either controls the might of the Empire and its many storm troopers or various other villains from the Star Wars movies and expanded universe. Read our review here.Ģ-5 players, 60-120 minutes, age 14+ / $88 at Amazon, Miniature MarketĬombining Fantasy Flight Games' long-running and ever-more-finessed dungeon-crawling ruleset with a Star Wars veneer, this is probably the purest and best distillation of the genre on the market today. If you have a group with the wherewithal for Gloomhaven's "legacy"-style campaign play (and the patience for its admittedly arduous setup), this is a board game experience of a lifetime. Gloomhaven's high MSRP doesn't put it in impulse-buy territory, of course, but if anything, the game is underpriced due to the ridiculous amount of content on offer.
There are no dice-everything is driven by multi-use cards that represent both your stamina and the moves you can do, which makes for much more strategic play than your run-of-the-mill dungeon crawler. But best of all, the gameplay is fun, deep, and different.
The game's co-op campaign, taking place on 97 different maps, will take you well over 100 hours to complete. Almost obscenely excessive, Gloomhaven's 20-pound box is filled to the brim with hundreds of cardboard tokens and dungeon tiles, dozens of decks of cards, 17 plastic miniatures (each with its own pack of accoutrements), sheets of stickers, and a bunch of mysterious sealed boxes. Further Reading Gloomhaven review: 2017’s biggest board game is astoundingly goodWhen we said that Gloomhaven is the best dungeon crawl board game we've ever played, we meant it.