Tabletop Tuesday — Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs

Hey all! It’s Tuesday, and I’ve got one more gaming gift from under the tree from Christmas to chat about today. It’s the latest in the Gloomhaven series, which we’ve (mostly) loved, with only a single real caveat—looking at you, first edition Forgotten Circles—and I’m thinking I might do an update on how we’re feeling about Frosthaven next week (spoiler: it’s… a mixed experience for us). Jaws of the Lion, which was designed as a “starter” version of Gloomhaven (but came out after Gloomhaven) was a great addition and one I whole-heartedly suggest you start with if you’re thinking of hopping on the Gloomhaven train, and honestly these games are the closest I’ve really found to an RPG-like/lite that plays out on a tabletop board game but still scratches most of the RPG itches, but now we’ve got a single player option.

It’s All You, Baby He’s riding a button palanquin!

Buttons & Bugs is a one-player, portable* boxed Gloomhaven experience with a campaign you can play with one of the six original character types from Gloomhaven itself, and the core conceit is you’ve been shrunk and you’re trying to make your way across a long-abandoned inn to get to someone who can help you. Yep. You’re literally bug-sized (and this is in a game where sentient bug colonies form collective consciousnesses, so it’s probably serious business!)

Quite a bit of the game follows the basic rules of the games that came before it: each turn you pick two cards, do the top action of one and the bottom action of the other (including adjusting them to basic moves and attacks if you don’t want to do what’s on the card), but the first “streamlining” to make this game box-sized is you only have four cards to work with for each character (though they get substituted for “better” cards as you level up), and there’s a different mechanic at play with them. They all start with their “A” sides face-up, and when you use a card with an “A” side on your turn, those “A” side cards are flipped to their “B” sides and returned to your hand instead of being discarded, but when you use “B” side cards, those are discarded like in regular Gloomhaven. That took a bit to get used to—it’s not intuitive, especially if you’ve played the other Gloomhaven games—and how elements are handled is also different, but it’s all in the name of streamlining.

The other difference is the relegation of a lot of the randomness of Gloomhaven (the battle decks, what enemy actions will be) has been shifted from decks—because that’s bulky—to a single dice roll. The dice has two plus sides, two minus sides, and to zero sides. Functionally, this changes enemies the most: they now only have three possible actions in a given turn: a plus, a zero, and a minus, to match the dice (elite enemies, instead of being generally tougher, instead act on two of those three possible actions every turn). The dice also replaces everyone’s battle decks, instead moving you down a track with each roll choosing from three possible alternatives each round. I should note I quite like this, as this version of a battle deck has the added advantage of you knowing exactly when that dice roll means you’ve got access to your 1-in-3 chance of drawing your miss or your critical hit, so it’s an extra level of planning you can work with. Advantage allows you to roll twice and choosing the best, Disadvantage is rolling twice and taking the worst.

Equipment is handled really cleverly, with strips of text at the bottom and top of every scenario you’ve completed representing loot from said scenario (including adorable things like using a literal button as a shield), and you choose your equipment from everything you’ve got access to during each scenario by tucking it under your character so only the loot text shows.

Elements, which are key for some characters more than others, are a bit fiddlier in this version of the game. You’ve got no chart of elements being infused, waning, or exhausted—instead, if any of your cards in your hand or in play show an element-is-infused icon, you (or an enemy) can use it—once. This is different from regular Gloomhaven for the enemies (in regular game, all enemies of the same type get the benefit of an element if any one of them uses it, but in Buttons & Bugs only one of them does), but plays out the same for a character in the sense of “if an element is there, you can use it up, but it’s gone for the rest of the characters and enemies.” It’s a pretty elegant solution and keeps the flavour.

In fact, most of the mechanics are like that—simplified, but in keeping with the theme and tone of the original game. I’m only a few scenarios in, as is my husband, but so far? Buttons & Bugs is pretty fun.

The Caveats

To start with, let’s address the asterisk up there when I introduced Buttons & Bugs as portable. Technically, it’s true—to the end of the first scenario. At that point, the rules run out. See, the complete rulebook for Buttons & Bugs is only available online and—this is the part I can’t wrap my head around—there’s no downloadable .pdf version you can print for yourself. It’s online as a website. There are downloadable scenarios in .pdf, and sure, you could use your browser to make a .pdf from the website, but that leads to funky printing results (lines of text can be half on one page and half on the next). It’s a glaring omission.

Next? The difficulty level. Oof. This game is unforgiving, and a great deal of that comes down to having only four cards to work with and needing to balance when you need your character to rest—which costs you a card—and how many enemies are going to pummel you in the meanwhile. It took me three tries to succeed at the first scenario because I just kept rolling poorly for myself and well for the enemies, and that’s unfortunate. Then again, Gloomhaven had the same balances issues now and then, too—Oozes, I’m looking at you.

Finally—and I’m aware this is nitpicky—it’s a bit too small. The box being 7.75 cm x 10.5 cm and 7 cm tall makes it portable, but it’s not quite “put it in your pocket” portable so I think I would have preferred a bit more size if that meant I wasn’t trying to move tiny plastic cubes (representing the enemies) on a small hex-grid card map where it’s all to easy to bump or nudge the card or cubes and accidentally move everything. Going somewhat larger would have been appreciated for me and my clumsy/damaged hands.