Two enormous boxes, both around twenty pounds, both promising a hundred-plus hours, both from the same designer. They cost roughly the same. The internet will tell you Frosthaven is the better game and then leave you to figure out what that actually means for your group.
We should be upfront: this is a research-led comparison rather than a “we finished both campaigns” one. Nobody at our table has 200 spare hours lying around, and anyone claiming to have completed both of these and kept a normal social life is lying to you. What we have done is spend a long time with the rulebooks, the community consensus, and our own Gloomhaven verdict. That’s enough to answer the buying question honestly.
At this price you deserve the answer early, so:
Buy Gloomhaven first if this is your first campaign game of this type. It’s cheaper, the early characters are gentler, and it asks you to learn one system instead of two. Buy Frosthaven if you’ve already finished Gloomhaven or Jaws of the Lion and you want a bigger, more varied campaign with a town to manage between fights. Frosthaven isn’t Gloomhaven 2. It’s Gloomhaven with a settlement management game bolted on top, and whether that counts as an upgrade depends entirely on whether you wanted a second game.
Related reading: Is Gloomhaven Worth It? · Best Cooperative Board Games
Quick Comparison
| Gloomhaven | Frosthaven |
|---|---|
 |  |
| Gloomhaven | Frosthaven | |
|---|---|---|
| Players | 1 – 4 | 1 – 4 |
| Play Time | 60 – 120 min per scenario | 90 – 150+ min per scenario |
| Ages | 14+ | 14+ |
| Scenarios in box | 95 (101 in 2nd Edition) | 138 |
| Character classes | 17 (18 in 2nd Edition) | 17, all new |
| Starting classes | 6 | 6 |
| Between-scenario phase | Buy items, level up | Full outpost: building, crafting, seasons, defence |
| Resources | Gold only | Gold plus nine materials |
| Setting | Temperate city and surrounds | Frozen northern outpost |
| Best for | First campaign game | Groups who’ve finished one |
The Real Difference: There’s a Second Game in the Frosthaven Box
Both games share the same combat engine, and it’s the reason either box is worth owning. You hold a hand of cards, each split into a top and bottom half. Every turn you play two of them, using the top of one and the bottom of the other. Your hand is your health clock as much as your ability list. Cards burn permanently, and when you run out you’re done for the scenario whether or not anyone laid a hand on you.
There’s no randomness in what you can do, only in the modifier deck that resolves your attacks. It’s a puzzle where the pieces are your own dwindling options, and it’s genuinely excellent in both boxes. If you like this in one game, you’ll like it in the other.
What Frosthaven adds is everything that happens when the fighting stops.
The outpost. Between scenarios in Gloomhaven you visit a shop, buy some items, maybe level up, and move on. It takes ten minutes. In Frosthaven you’re running a settlement — constructing and upgrading buildings, allocating materials, and deciding what the town works on next. It’s a proper economic layer with its own decisions.
Resources and crafting. Gloomhaven has gold. Frosthaven has gold plus nine material types you gather during scenarios and spend on construction and crafting. That means loot decisions now happen mid-fight: do you spend a move grabbing lumber, or do you kill the thing that’s about to kill you?
Seasons. The campaign runs on a calendar that alternates between summer and winter, changing which resources are available and what the outpost has to survive. Winter brings attacks on the settlement itself.
Scripted time. Events fire based on where you are in the calendar rather than purely on random draws, so the story lands in a more deliberate order than Gloomhaven’s.
Stack those up and you get the honest headline: Frosthaven scenarios take longer, and a chunk of that extra time isn’t combat. A Gloomhaven night runs 60 to 120 minutes. Frosthaven tends to run 90 to 150 and up once the outpost phase is included. Across a whole campaign that gap is enormous.
Difficulty and Where Each One Starts You
Gloomhaven’s six starting classes are a deliberate on-ramp. The Brute hits things, the Cragheart is forgiving, and a new player can pick one up and contribute in their first scenario without understanding the whole system. Complexity arrives later, as you unlock the stranger classes.
Frosthaven doesn’t do that. Its starting six are more mechanically involved from scenario one, and several have unusual personal systems layered on immediately. Community consensus is consistent here: it’s a steeper opening. It settles down once you’ve got a few sessions in, but the first night is harder than Gloomhaven’s first night.
Frosthaven’s scenario balance is generally considered the better of the two. Gloomhaven has some notoriously rough early difficulty spikes and the sequel learned from them. So Frosthaven is harder to start and fairer once you’re going. That’s a trade, not a straight upgrade.
Editions, and the Cheaper Way In
Two things muddy the buying decision, and they’re worth knowing before you spend the money.
Gloomhaven has a Second Edition. Released off the back of the Frosthaven work, it folds the sequel’s design lessons back into the original: 101 scenarios rather than 95, an eighteenth class, new art and miniatures, and a pile of rules and balance fixes. If you’re buying Gloomhaven new today, this is the version to buy. The original first edition is now the strictly worse purchase at anything like the same price.
Jaws of the Lion exists, and it’s the actual answer for a lot of people. It’s a much smaller, much cheaper standalone using the same combat engine, with four characters and a campaign that teaches you the system scenario by scenario in a tutorial-style opening. It’s about a quarter of the commitment and a fraction of the price.
If you’re not certain your group will stick with a campaign game — and most groups aren’t, honestly — buy Jaws of the Lion first. If you finish it and immediately want more, you’ve lost very little and you now know which of the two big boxes you want. If you bounce off it, you’ve saved yourself a hundred dollars and a very heavy shelf ornament.
Which One Should You Buy?
Buy Gloomhaven (Second Edition) if: this is your first campaign game of this kind, or your group’s attendance is unreliable, or you want the tactical combat without a town-management game attached. Sessions are shorter, the on-ramp is gentler, and it’s the cheaper of the two. It’s also easier to pick up after a three-week gap, which matters more than people expect.
Buy Frosthaven if: you’ve finished Gloomhaven or Jaws of the Lion and want more, or your group meets reliably and can give a session three-plus hours, or the outpost phase actively appeals rather than sounding like homework. It’s the bigger, deeper, more varied game, and it’s the better campaign — provided you’ll actually play it.
Buy Jaws of the Lion if: you’re not sure yet. Which is most people.
The mistake we’d steer you away from is buying Frosthaven first because it reviews better. It reviews better among people who already know the combat system cold and wanted more to do between fights. Coming in fresh, you’re learning a demanding tactical game and a settlement economy at once, in three-hour sittings. That’s how an expensive box ends up half-finished on a shelf.
Neither of these is a game you buy for a spontaneous Tuesday night. They’re a commitment you make with specific people, and that decision matters more than which box you pick. Get it right and either one will pay you back for months. Get it wrong and the pricier box just gathers dust faster.
Check Gloomhaven Price on Amazon
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Check Jaws of the Lion Price on Amazon
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