Gloomhaven Mercenary Work, Card by Card

Combat runs on ability cards, and they are a resource as scarce as your health. Each turn you pick two cards per mercenary, but you only get the top half of one and the bottom half of the other. That single rule turns every round into a decision: the big attack now, or the movement you will desperately need next turn? Spent cards burn away, so a fight can be lost to exhaustion as easily as to a blade. You drop your strongest combo early, the second wave of monsters walks in, and your hand is suddenly very thin. Planning several turns ahead is not optional here. It is the whole game.

The branching campaign runs 95 story missions, and the city of Gloomhaven is up for grabs: powerful factions want control, others hunt ancient crypts and forgotten artefacts. You are a mercenary, so you can sell your sword to city officials or corrupt cultists alike. You are paid for results, not questions. The question is where you draw the line. Siding with the inhabitants is always on the table too, but it may not pay well. Every path is paved with difficult choices, and the story follows the ones you make. A narrator carries the tale along, and it does a lot with a grimy, unsentimental tone.

You explore with a band of 2 to 4 mercenaries drawn from 17 unique characters, each with their own skills and more than 1,000 abilities to master across them. They play nothing alike, so switching classes means learning new strategies and building a new deck from scratch. Between missions you prepare: enhance abilities, unlock perks, level up, buy equipment and chase powerful artefacts. Choose the right combination of mercenaries for each fight, because a party that steamrolled the last dungeon can walk into the next one unprepared. Characters also retire once their personal quests are done, so your roster keeps turning over.

For deckbuilding fans, this is the deep end. You assemble each mercenary's ability deck before setting out, then live with your choices in turn-based fights where every card is spent, not recycled. Enhancements and perks modify cards as you progress, level ups offer new abilities, and equipment changes what your hand can do. The tension comes from watching your deck shrink: burn too many cards for power and you exhaust before the last room. Building a hand that peaks exactly when the fight does is the skill the whole game teaches, and it rewards it generously.

Online co-op supports up to 4 players, and coordinating a party is where the tactical depth really opens up: setting up combos across classes, deciding who takes the hit, who burns cards to finish a room. The game handles all the setup and rule tracking a board game night demands, so sessions move. A fair warning from long sessions of play: multiplayer has had persistent bugs and syncing trouble, so it is best treated as the bonus rather than the core. Solo with a full party of your own works well, and the game is fully playable that way.