Gloomhaven - Unlocked Sun class, and campaign part 3

Our group's first unlocked character!

Guess what? There'll be some tame spoilers, because I can't show a model without showing it!

The Valrath Sunkeeper suffered from the same awkwardly flat pose that the Inox Brute did. This was another more minor modification, mostly trying to get some movement into a pose that felt neither dynamic nor imposing. Basically, I twisted the wrists and head to give her some more movement, and then smoothed out what I cut.

By the way, some modeling advice: I would say, at least 2/3 times*, if a model's pose is too static, changing the angle of the model's head will be the easiest fix.

On this one, I departed a little more from the standard paint job, because I didn't feel like the trim would read very well, nor would it probably be worth the painstaking detail involved, so, instead, I focused on making the gold nice and trying to be sure the more demonic parts of the model stood out a little more.

*not counting ones where the hair will make that rough, but, even in the above case, it wasn't that bad re-sculpting the model's locks.

Campaign, part 3

continued from part 1, part 2

(copy-pasted explanatory intro)

This will inevitably have some spoilers so it doesn't read "In a level, there was a room with guys, then we completed the thing we were supposed to do," which would be completely incoherent and boring.

However, in keeping with GH's obfuscation (which is a pretty neat mechanic and is teaching me to maybe tolerate legacy designs), I'm trying to keep spoilers on the light side. I'll be using italics for story stuff that might be more spoilery.

This will probably be best read either as someone who's already played, or read by players who aren't immediately going to play (so my vague spoilers aren't particularly fresh in your mind when you get to the scenario).

A lot of this will, therefore, be about the experience rather than the details.

I'll vaguely describe strategies, emphasized with bold my group found worked well (or didn't), so, if you're browsing this for tactics, it might also be useful. Also, hopefully this will keep things interesting enough without spoiling details with describing more memorable surprises.

I'll also be using location names, not numbers, to keep the map a little more obscured in theory.

Okay, I considered obfuscating things, but nope, it's too hard. There will be class spoilers of a light variety.

Scenario 11: Temple of the Elements (xxx)
Following our clues, we ended up at the Temple of the Elements. We did one good deed and one mercenary deed. In other news, we've found out that violent benders are rewarding.

I admittedly pushed Archibald (my Tinkerer) a bit too far at the beginning of the scenario and, well, our entire plan got kind of derailed as our careful coordination turned into mostly doing whatever happened to be close by. But (!!) we did a pretty solid job judging threats, and pulled off a win, with room to spare. It was a bit weird, though, because for the last four turns Janett (the spellweaver) was sitting around shooting the last target, with all the other players exhausted and all the baddies dead.

We then got presented with a bunch of options, but, instead, we decided to pursue a much earlier path that we'd skipped.

Scenario 12: Crypt of the Damned
Gezelda, our Vermling, needed only 3 more kills to get her objective, so we decided to go somewhere in which we were certain about getting her goal.

Well, we learned we definitely went in a different direction than the game designers intended: in the intro, our characters were shocked (shocked!) to discover some guys we'd been pretty used to fighting as heavy baddies.

The fight itself was pretty straightforward, and mostly involved just a little care pacing. Coincidentally, all of us took the opportunity, seeing an easy-ish, small-ish looking level to try some goals we weren't used to.

Gezelda, level 5, had found order... through killin' dudes she didn't like, retiring and replaced in our merc party by Almathea, the Valrath Sunkeeper.

Scenario 13: Ruinous Crypt
Continuing our clues from last time, we visited another crypt, now with Almathea.

Our new party dynamic went pretty smoothly, and certainly didn't hurt our first turn, though the baddies in this first room had a lot of obnoxiously low-initiative moves (due to luck or design; I didn't check deck probability), making defense all but impossible.

We managed to almost entirely loot the area, and felt very good about opening the far side, without springing the trap, which mitigated a lot of our footslogging need. Other than the fire demons, which my Tinkerer happened to have a perfect response to, the baddies weren't too bad.

Scenario 14:

Our first escort mission!

This one was a bit rough, but we eventually figured out that we needed to stop thinking like we'd trained, and we eventually spearheaded the final room with reasonably durable guys, enough to, with decent damage, distract far more enemies than we could have outright killed.

Scenario 15:
Another first, as a defense scenario!

Our Tinkerer and Cragheart made a gauntlet along one flank, delaying some baddies  from getting into the fight by as many as 3 turns. I don't know if it was that or what, but we pretty much romped through this scenario.