Instead, we are talking more defensively. Of course, when we talk about transforming the Brute we are not, oddly enough, talking about increasing the damage it can do in combat. Time and time again we have had that “Hulk Smash” moment, and it is all due to the Brute being able to transform. Like the Mindthief has a strategy revolved around the gaining and acquisition of experience, the Gloomhaven Brute has a strategy around becoming an absolute beast in combat. It can deal out a lot of damage early on in the game, making it an incredibly useful tool, with cards that do 2, 3, and 4 damage as a base.įighting demons and things that look like Ringwraiths… The Brute Strategy of Becoming a Tank Of course, the Brute is about one word and that word is damage. Despite the name, the Brute is not a purely offensive character, but instead, is a character who needs to consider defence just as well. This means the Brute needs to stay alive, and luckily, he/she/it is pretty good at doing that. Yes, you can freeze it and it will do a lot of damage however, if it stays in one place for too long it will go soft and collapse pretty quickly. The Brute in Gloomhaven is kind of the equivalent of a cannonball made out of butter. The Brute is very good at combat, but he/she/it is very good at a specific type of combat. Where it is very good, it feels like a bit of a misconception to discuss which the best or worst classes are due to how different they all are. Our very first game, we all hid behind the Brute, sending them forward to certain doom because we thought (very wrongly) that it was the best combat based class in Gloomhaven. Whilst it seems very simple to pinpoint straight out of the box as being the thug of the party, it doesn’t quite play out that way. That being said – this isn’t so much a strategy as an exploration of the class at lower levels. I’m going to set this out like I did my the other Gloomhaven strategy article because consistency is the spice of life – or something like that.
Right, now all the boring spoiler alerts are out the way, shall we talk about the Gloomhaven Brute? Yes? Let’s do this. Likewise, I do use images from our Gloomhaven adventures in this article – so if you don’t want to see any photos of potential scenarios you haven’t done yet then please consider yourself warned. Alternatively there are a few more generic strategy articles. I’ve already mentioned the Mindthief article which may or may not be of more interest to you. If your party isn’t playing the Brute, and you don’t want to be exposed to even the basic concepts of the Brute then this is a good place to stop reading. Leaving aside the starting cards (Level 1 and X cards) we will not be mentioning any later cards by names, but instead we will be using general principles when talking about the places where the Brute excels above the others. PLEASE READ THE PARAGRAPH BELOW BEFORE CONTINUING.Īs I pointed out in the Mindthief article, Gloomhaven is a legacy game, and so I really don’t want to be “that guy” who gives things away. Today let’s look at the Gloomhaven Brute strategy and what it entails. We’ve already explored the Mindthief strategy on this blog, so now it’s time to look at one of the other classes. That other role is the Brute, and the class I would like to focus on today. Our group comprises of myself as the Mindthief, two friends as the Scoundrel and Tinkerer, and one more friend playing another role.
It includes moral choices, real consequences, and more strategy than you can shake a swarm of rats at.
In the game you (and your gaming group/friends/only you as it can be solo) take control of a team of unique adventurers looking to make their way in the world.
The epic game, designed by the epic designer Isaac Childres, is a dungeon crawler come adventure come exploration come RPG game that takes tabletop games to a whole new level. We have a pretty ace group in Gloomhaven.