In this actual play video, Deanna and I continue to learn how to play Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion. Jaws of the Lion is the new gateway to Gloomhaven, slowly introducing the full Gloomhaven rules through a series of tutorial scenarios.
In this episode, we play scenario number 4 A Ritual in Stone. Note despite being experienced Gloomhaven players are we are experiencing Jaws of the Lion for the first time. While playing we will be highlighting the differences between this new edition of Gloomhaven and the original.
Jaws of the Lion Scenario Four Actual Play:
Details and other links:
Recorded August 21, 2020
Scenario: Jaws of the Lion Scenario 4: A Ritual in Stone
Difficulty level: Normal
Scenario Level 1
Two Players: Valrath Red Guard and Human VoidWarden
Watch our other Gloomhaven and Jaws of the Lion actual plays on our Gloomaven Playlist on YouTube.
Past Jaws of the Lion Tutorial Episodes:
Scenario 2: A Hole in the Wall
Feel free to also check out our Jaws of the Lion Unboxing Video also on YouTube.
For a comparison of Jaws of the Lion to the original Gloomhaven check out our Jaws of the Lion Review and comparison.
My thoughts on Scenario 4 of Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion:
Wow, did the difficulty of Jaws of the Lion ever jump with Scenario 4!
At this point pretty much all of the rules for Gloomhaven are in play. Scenario four adds in the rules for the elements, the element track and cards that use them. Scenario four also introduces a bigger map. I really like the way Jaws of the Lion does this by using a separate spiral-bound book that you end up putting up against the existing scenario book. At this point, you are also now using the full monster action decks for your foes.
Battle goals are also introduced in this scenario. The new battle goal deck is one of the few items in Jaws of the Lion that you can port over to the regular Gloomhaven game. The biggest change for us as players was that we now had access to all of our cards and actually needed to do pre-game deck building to decide which cards to bring with us. This does lead to some delays at the start of this actual play as we basically had to re-learn all of our cards.
As for the scenario itself, it was interesting and fun. Our goal wasn’t to kill all of the enemies this time but rather to destroy a set number of objectives on the map. With that, as the scenario goes on new monsters spawn on the board. I will say it was much harder than the previous scenarios. We actually really had to think about this one and work together to get it done. This felt a lot more like the original Gloomhaven.