There's going to be choices to make if you want to cut your deck down to the minimum 40 cards, but other than that the biggest choice you're going to have in the core set environment is which aspect you want to pair with your chosen hero. That will no doubt change with the release of additional hero decks that will add additional aspect and basic cards to the card pool.

Maybe I am in the minority here, but I was actually happy to hear that this is only 30 bucks, when they announced the price. And I think it's just the right kind of expansion in that it greatly expands the current card pool and adds some new investigators and scenarios, without requiring cumbersome sideboards or tons of new token types.

Maybe I am in the minority here, but I was actually happy to hear that this is only 30 bucks, when they announced the price. And I think it's just the right kind of expansion in that it greatly expands the current card pool and adds some new investigators and scenarios, without requiring cumbersome sideboards or tons of new token types.

I don't wish to "Pile on" here, so I'll approach this from my own perspective alone.
For myself, $30-ish USD, does not seem unreasonable here--given the box design. My real quip, is that the economics of marketing in today's' amazingly prolific range of hobby games, makes it less attractive to make boxes/ containers that fit the contents. that is to say, that the push to establish a foot print on the shelves of retailers, in an effort to stand out and be noticed by consumers, is high. It may be, that this frequent disparity between the size of the box and the amount of content, can lead to feeling like we are purchasing as much air as game. And while I find it disappointing that FFG is particularly guilty of this, they are by no means operating in a vacuum--other publishers do this too.
Now I don't have any working knowledge of what the difference might be, in price, were the packaging to be more size appropriate, but I'd be surprised if that does not play into the equation. I do, however, feel that this has a meaningful affect on our perceptions of value, as consumers.
Far more of an impact on the MSRP, is the target profit margin on a given item. Before we can begin to know that, we'd need to first understand how much a given company budgets for the project, including; payroll, art, materials cost, warehousing, shipping, taxes, and so on, not to mention the impact of online retail, and whatever in-house decisions are made in terms of profit margin of a given product vs. the longevity of the core property when properly supported. Without those numbers, it's nearly impossible to know what FFG's expectations are for profit margin on an expansion like this (in the context of a $30 price point). I also think it's fair that FFG would expect to more than break even on their investment. 
As consumers then, it's up to us to decide what the actual "Value" of a product is on a personal level. From the after market prices on hard to find items, it's clear that there are those out there that would likely pay much more than $30 bucks for the right expansion to a game. Anyone who has ever researched the cost of the Arkham Horror dice sets, will know this all too well.
So in the end, I feel it's less about whether it's possible to argue that a company is being greedy, and becomes, with a little self-reflection, a matter of what we as gamers and consumers are willing to live with, how much enjoyment we expect to get out of a particular product, and then what we'd be willing to pay someone else to provide that for us.
I'm quite certain, that were I to cobble together the components of the Dead of Night expansion, not to mention the time it would take to play-test and balance it, collect the art, and so on, then have it printed by a third party printing service, I would spend more, possibly a lot more, than $30 dollars for my trouble. So, in that light, Yeah, I'll drop the cash on DoT, because I want to flesh out my core game.
For others, it may not be as cut and dry, and I respect that difference of opinion. These are hobby games, and as such, hardly worthy of getting stressed over things that are not, and will never be, within our control. Instead we make thoughtful decisions about what makes sense and what we can live with--choosing not to financially support a product that we don't believe in is absolutely a reasonable choice in my opinion.
 

Maybe I am in the minority here, but I was actually happy to hear that this is only 30 bucks, when they announced the price. And I think it's just the right kind of expansion in that it greatly expands the current card pool and adds some new investigators and scenarios, without requiring cumbersome sideboards or tons of new token types.

You are all wrong, sorry. The answer we were looking for here, is Tom Bombadil! 🙃

That's a really good point. In a situation, where you know that you would likely be knocked out during the counter attack, it would then be better to choose a weakness card to improve the odds of surviving the negate and last stand tests. You are right, that does seem quite ridiculous.

I've always played it that it's done immediately after the attack test, since it states "the test". As pointed out, it doesn't make sense to do another test (negate test) first and then use the ability, due to the shuffling/discarding issue. Obviously I'd like my successes shuffled into my deck if given the option (and if I was going into a last stand for sure), but does that mean I could select a weakness card to make the negate test or last stand have better odds? It's completely ridiculous that way.
 
As for Lead the charge, it makes sense to do it after the counterattack, because there's no deck issue and it seems to fit the intention of the card. But Gimli's ability was designed to be immediately after in my opinion.

You are all wrong, sorry. The answer we were looking for here, is Tom Bombadil! 🙃

You are all wrong, sorry. The answer we were looking for here, is Tom Bombadil! 🙃

The game is dying

I would say Gloomhaven is pretty cheap considering the amount of content it has. Playtime-wise, with 95 scenarios, it's probably closer to your standard dungeon crawler with five expansions. And you do not need to get one of those fancy organizers. Some small tackle boxes, zip-lock bags and other small cardboard containers work fine.
Anyway, I do not see this being too similar to Gloomhaven. Sure, the influences are there but to me this looks more like a compilation of mechanics from other FFG franchises above anything else. Either way, I'm curious to see how this works out. 

Just out of curiosity, what would your definition for long term support be in this case? How many years should the active life cycle of the game be or how many expansions should be released for this game - or any other game for that matter - for it to qualify as having long term support?

Visited my local store here in Finland yesterday and they had received a new shipment and had all the books back in stock.
Reprints unofficially confirmed! 🙃

Visited my local store here in Finland yesterday and they had received a new shipment and had all the books back in stock.
Reprints unofficially confirmed! 🙃

Visited my local store here in Finland yesterday and they had received a new shipment and had all the books back in stock.
Reprints unofficially confirmed! 🙃

Visited my local store here in Finland yesterday and they had received a new shipment and had all the books back in stock.
Reprints unofficially confirmed! 🙃

Can't please all the people all the time!  The randomness of EH for me is too much - nothing feels like it should be happening, rather, "Well, other monsters are breaking out, I will too!"  It also made the game too swingy for me - I was never convinced I would win the game (which is fine) but I was often right, and the decks got so huge that the distribution of what I needed from the game's start never showed up.
I agree with you on replay concerns, though.  It seems a bit like Mansions of Madness, where if you've played a scenario then you know what you should be doing.
Yup.  That's very much what it feels like.
Hm.  It might.  People voiced concerns about movement on a different topic here, and for me EH had that in spades.  This one board can be crossed in 2 rounds, assuming you had at least $1 before starting that movement.  I really like how polished this game is, and now I want to mess around in the framework of the existing game by creating personal challenges not unlike the Ultimatums present in AH:LCG events.
Much better put (and understood) than I could have...uh...put it.
I'm not good enough at that game to be able to overcome some of that.
The event deck is really cool.  It's interesting that as you investigate a neighborhood, it gets cycled into the encounter discard pile and becomes more likely to generate Doom.  The unequal distribution of the deck is also an interesting choice - not everything will explode in equal proportions.  If you have 3 clues floating in a neighborhood, that's eating 3 of its 4-6 event cards.  Do you go there and get those clues knowing that it will make the area more dangerous, or do you avoid it knowing that a section of the board won't be as much of a problem?

It will definitely benefit from a larger pool of encounter cards (after our 3rd play, we've already got a few memorized) and more scenarios will be welcome of course, but other than that I think they did a good job of making it feel like a 'complete' game.

It's a completer experience than Eldritch Horror is. Since the clue cards get mixed into the encounter decks, you don't get as tired of the same eight encounters as quickly, and you really don't get as tired of the same 24 Other World cards, that you see half of each game. 

It's still not the LCG, but it is a lot better.  If you've played Eldrtich Horror, this takes that and does it better.  All of the encounter cards are tied directly to the scenario.  The monsters, except for generic cultists and a pair of flying nasties, are also scenario exclusive.  The codex (cards in play dictating how the story progresses, for better or worse) advance the story and give you instructions the same way the Act & Agenda decks do, but with more flavor text.  The map changes based on which big-bad you're dealing with as well.
Overall, very much improved.  The randomness and lack of story in 2nd edition didn't wow me either.  This is somewhere between a Mansions of Madness story and maybe 2 consecutive scenarios in the LCG.  It's way more story based than Eldritch Horror.
This one doesn't have game mechanics that detract from the game.  Everything you're doing feels like you should be doing it and the focus is more on 'how do we stop this' and 'are we going to survive.'  Moving from 2nd edition to 3rd isn't unlike picking up Resident Evil 4.  Now I'll do the minigame to climb the - oh, I'm already up the ladder and zombies are here.  I picked up the shotgun, gotta go into my inventory, select the weapon, take the ammo - no, it's just in my hands ready to be used.
I feel like they figured out how to streamline the game enough that now you can actually enjoy it.  Spooky.

Got my copy. I will definitely be playing EH more overall I think. The narrative elements in 3rd ed are tighter, but that also makes it less replay friendly for me. Unlike the LCG where you can build your deck and that changes the experience a lot from game to game, I'm not sure what the motivation will be to replay 3rd ed scenarios. They're great fun, but EH has elements of randomness that 3rd ed can't even begin to approach yet with its limited card pool.

Additionally the game is scripted alternatively, and although EH's mysteries and research encounters are looser interpretation of a story at large, when you start the game, you never know which version you're going to be playing. 3rd edition offers story advancement by winning/losing objectives and choice, in the former case, you still know what order you will be running into these after a few plays; the latter case will dictate the story and objectives by choice and they'll be scripted.
I love the small town atmosphere in 3rd ed better, but I miss the randomness of the objectives and the challenge with adapting as you draw something unexpected. 

I'll continue to play both, but I think after I play all the scenarios a few times, we'll still see eldritch more for the moment. Maybe once 3rd ed fleshes out, it'll feel more at home there. A shame that Nikki may not be doing the expansions; I hope they expansion designer can add more without making it clunky and overwrought. She did an excellent job keeping things streamlined considering all of the moving parts.

It's going to be like the AH2/EH days. Some players prefer one, some prefer the other, and many of those people will snobbishly look down on the plebeians in the other camp who don't recognize true greatness. I'm going to play Eldritch more than this; I just prefer the wider-open board and the feel of it.
Of course, now I want Eldritch Horror 2, which grabs certain aspects of AH3, and cleans up other issues with EH1...

I can, but I'm going to wait until the game is out for a week.  Then I'll do it and sleep better about not giving away too much.
They all start with 'you don't know enough, go find clues' and diverge after that.
They've been taking me 2-3 hours, unless I die early - which only adds 1 doom to the scenario sheet and then you get a new investigator, but still.
For replayability, there's at least 1 that has multiple win conditions.
All the investigators have tweaks in how they play, so trying them out and finding your favorite is really fun (my favorites so far are Norman Withers, Michael McGlenn, Mihn Thai Phan, & Marie Lambeau (and not just together)).  All  investigators have a starting item/spell/talent/ally and 1-5 dollars, then you choose between 2 other spell(s)/item(s)/talent(s) before you start the game.  (Calvin & Rex have a different set of starting options, but you still get a choice.)  Not all of the options are equal, and some are better determined by scenario.
For example, Tommy Muldoon starts with $3 & Becky, a +4 Strength on Attacks weapon with 3/2-Sanity/Health and requires two hands to use.  His ability is that he can opt to have monsters engage him instead of other investigators in his space.  His other 2 cards are a motorcycle which reduces the bonus movement costs by $1 (so free at 3 and $1 for 4) and handcuffs which defeat non-epic human monsters if he deals them damage or they deal damage to him or if he evades them.  The first is good in every game, but the second is useless if the scenario has few human monsters, which can be the case.
Next, I want to run each scenario with Norman & Michael consecutively and see if the 2 of them can beat each of the 4 now that I'm not playing blind.  I'd really like to carry over some or all of their sanity/health, but I suspect that if I do, I'll feel I should similarly carry over some of their equipment.  The drawback to that would be how overpowered those characters would be if they started any of the games with certain gear.  Perhaps I'll instead add their items/spells/allies to the tops of their respective decks so that they'll have preferential access to that gear through encounters...

I have now played and won (and lost) with 1-, 2-, & 3-players, as well as having lost and won all 4 scenarios and played with all the characters.  Sorry.  I thought the game would be out by now too.
Monsters.  So far I'm concluding that you need one investigator who can deal with monsters for every two players.  That doesn't mean you need a guardian, if your mystics can get spells or if anyone can get the tommy-gun or shotgun, or any other means of reliably dealing with threats then you're covered.  Monsters spawn at an annoying rate, and all 4 scenarios start with 2 monsters on the board, with at least 1 of them being mobile.
In the same way that you'll have Swarm of Rats in many of your AH:LCG adventures, you'll have generic cultists or nightgaunts in most of the scenarios.  Every other monster, however, is exclusively in 1 scenario!  They behave differently & are easier/harder to beat on the whole depending on which AO they tie to.  That goes a long way to making the scenarios different.  The location decks are the same every time they are in play, but the encounter cards (the location cards you get clues from) are exclusive to the scenario, so they feel very different as well (even though mechanically they're very similar from one scenario to another).  The Codex (what cards with flavor and mechanics of how to advance the narrative), of course, is very different in each scenario, except for #2 - the rules for Anomalies - which is in 3 of the 4.  They all add to making the 4 scenarios feel unique.
Movement.  There is usual 1 or 2 times in a game when you can't get across the map fast enough.  It's an Arkham game though, so it just adds to the tension.
The game overall is about managing threats while waiting for the right encounters to get you what you want - spells, clues, guns, cultists, (Golden) Pocket Watch.  (That makes it sound less fun than it is.)  You could guarantee that nothing bad will happen to Miskatonic University, but to do that you'd have to ignore the rest of the board.  Instead, you reason how much doom/monsters can be on the board and in each neighborhood and you try to keep them stable enough.  It's like Pandemic.  How many disease cubes can you leave in Europe so that you can go to Asia and prevent a chain of outbreaks?  Is it worth San Palo outbreaking this turn if you can cure the Blue disease next turn?  You won't know which tokens are coming out next, but you will know what the missing token pool is; similarly, after you have a Gate Burst, the discard pile is shuffled and placed on the bottom of the encounter deck - cards are drawn from the bottom of the deck to spread doom - so you'll know what neighborhoods and locations are in the greatest danger.
All the investigators play differently and have interesting approaches to the game.  I don't actually know how investigators are chosen - if it's random or a selection.  I can safely say that taking Mihn (Seeker), Rex (Cursed Seeker), and Wendy (Survivor) does not beget easy-mode.  But both groups Mihn-Mcglen and Muldoon-Rex-Lambeau survived their horrors and the Agnes-Calvin-Daniela team was devoured 1 turn (I tested) before they could stop the madness.
The scenarios are not uniformly difficult.  I have an opinion on which is the easiest, which is the hardest, and I'm close to concluding which of the remaining 2 is easier than the other, although that's much closer call.
Unless I am blind and have completely screwed something up (which I did in new and exciting ways for the first 4 or 5 of my playthroughs), all 4 Scenarios start with the same Mythos Cups of 14 tokens - 3 Doom, 2 Monsters, 2 Clues, 2 Headlines, 1 Reckoning, 1 Gate Burst, 3 Blanks.
The mechanics work very well, and I have already played 3rd edition more times than I played 2nd (Sorry again).  It feels right, including that it will take you 2-3 turns to cross the entire board.  I think @Soakman's onto something with the game being more predictable with fewer players - fewer things can blowup in your face in a given round.  It's more strategic with 1 player than it is with 3.  I don't know that it's easier with fewer players, but it is more strategic.  With more players, you have more capacity to quell threats, so there will be times you will look at the board and conclude that you're doing well and you will just Gather Resources (get $1) and move to a preferred location.  In the same game, you will watch as the board explodes with 3 Anomalies and you'll wonder how each player can squash those before 1 more doom is placed on the scenario sheet advancing the plot against you.
I don't think the game is particularly swingy.  I think there will be rounds where you're surprised how little you were hurt in a round, but otherwise it's pretty much damage-control.  If you put the tokens back into the bag (Mythos Cup) after you drew them, or after a Mythos phase (so after everyone's drawn them), I think the game would be much swingier - it would allow for consecutive rounds of nothing bad or nothing good.  With it being emptied before refilling, however, I think Nikki found a really good way to randomize the chaos without unbalancing the game.
I think the size of the Item, Spell, & Ally decks is about right for the game.  You won't see every card in any deck (without very silly & lucky shenanigans) but they're small enough to be otherwise consistent as well.
TL;DR  I'm impressed with how much I like this game and I think you will too!