Gloomhaven: The Tower of Misfortune (Promo Scenario)

A clever premise ("oh hey check it out, it's laid out like a dice tower with dice falling down the tower, that's clever") that quickly turns stale with overcomplicated rules, something too many of these Gloomhaven promo scenarios do. The cheekiness of the dice rolls "falling" through the game board with random results is very quickly offset by the realization that this turns the usual 3 hour Gloomhaven scenario into a 5 hour Gloomhaven scenario.

What really prevents the additional mechanic from succeeding is its direct contradiction to Gloomhaven's game design: Reducing the randomization of dice rolls to favor clever player strategy. The results of the dice rolls are equally positive and negative, meaning that a lot of the time you do all this work to take 5 damage, then heal 5 damage, or get a +2 to your move and attack only to immediately also get stunlocked for a turn. The design of this one is clever, but just off. It feels like trying to shoehorn a clever idea into a game that it doesn't fit. Probably should have gone back to the drawing board a bit on this one.

Of course the reward for suffering through this complexity is (you guessed it) another random dice roll. Unfortunately for us, we rolled low and ended up feeling like the reward wasn't worth the effort, but maybe your party will be different. Still, I would pass on this one unless you're a completionist like myself.

This is a lot of dice for not a lot of payoff.

Fun dice mechanic for this scenario, gives you something a bit different to contend with during play.