Gloomhaven publisher Cephalofair has, in board game terms, made it to the big time. What was originally one man with a Kickstarter and a dream in 2014 has blossomed into a fully-fledged company. Crowdfunding still has its part to play, but Cephalofair is established enough to sell at retail, too. It houses multiple product strategies. It has enough creatives to warrant payroll.
I bring this up because Cephalofair’s next Gloomhaven board game, Mercenaries Wanted, is all about the quiet admin that makes small companies successful. That’s right, eager adventurer! You’re not here to delve any dangerous dungeons. Instead, you’re taking on a challenge even more frightening – recruitment.
Mercenaries Wanted is a drafting game for one to six players designed by Dennis Vögele. As the name implies, you want to hire the best mercenaries the city of Gloomhaven has to offer. Mercenaries Wanted doesn’t hit retail until December 4, but Cephalofair CEO Price Johnson was showing off a prototype at this year’s Gen Con.
He tells me no prior knowledge of the hit legacy game series is necessary. However, longtime fans can expect “a lot of Easter Eggs” in Mercenaries Wanted – some even hinting at future products.
Your ultimate goal for the mercenaries you hire is to enter them into three end-game ‘tournaments’. These are high-profile events where your employees will show off their skills (and definitely not do menial labor like cleaning out a sewer). Before that, though, you’ll need to make sure their skills are up to scratch – and you’ve got one long weekend of overtime to make it happen.
Every player starts with a hand mercenary cards, and four job cards are shared in the town square. Your mercs have four stats that represent their resume, showing off their attack, defence, mobility, and support skills. These are the skills your hires need to meet the minimum requirements of a job ad.
Your employees might also have special tags that mean they meet the job’s secondary requirements – which means bonus pay. When hiring, bear in mind that employees can only contribute one skill, so no multitasking. Some job listings even specify that they need a minimum number of hands on deck.
As well as basic skills, each merc in the deck has a unique power that triggers when you draft them to your team. Even when classes and races are shared among staff, their ability is always one-of-a-kind.
“This is the heart of the machine”, Johnson tells me. “I’ve been playing all Gen Con, and I’ve not played a game where my team has even remotely operated the same way.” “There’s a lot of replayability – no two games are going to be the same.”
You’ll take turns drafting cards from your hand until you have four mercs face-up in front of you. The remaining cards didn’t make the cut, and they head to the discard pile. You’ll then trim the fat further by only keeping three of your best candidates.
Drafting is done simultaneously, which Johnson says keeps Mercenaries Wanted to its snappy 45-minute play time, regardless of player count. Actually selecting the job you want to go for, however, is done in turn order. In the first round, turn order is decided by your team’s combined Mobility score. After that, the player with the lowest points (cash) goes first.
Applying for a job requires placing your job token there, and you’ll score a -1 penalty if another company has already applied. Jobs are scored, and you pick up your pay. A new day begins, and four new jobs are listed. The grind never stops.
Your team has gained something valuable, though – experience. They’ll have sourced some loot that can be repurposed as company equipment, giving you an item card to empower your team for the rest of play. You also get to promote one of yesterday’s top performers. Your new employee of the month is placed face-down in your challenger pile, ready for the end-of-game tournaments.
Meanwhile, one of your remaining employees retires, and the other returns to your pool of mercenaries for the jobs of the day. You’ll draw new trainees, interview four, and keep three – just like the job before. This time, though, your original employee stays in the team, so you’ve got four mercs to work with instead of three. The cycle repeats each day, with your retinue steadily growing.
On the third and final day, you make two promotions instead of one. This gives you a team of four for the last leg. You’ll send your best and brightest, kitted out in the gear you’ve accumulated, to three tournaments.
Everyone is competing to have the most of a relevant stat, tag, or element. The winner of a tournament gets six coins, while second place takes home three. In solo mode, you instead need to beat a numerical threshold to profit from each competition. More revenue is always better, so the richest competitor wins the whole game!
Mercenaries Wanted is a fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek little package with a surprising amount of decision points. The concept is delightfully cynical, and on first impression, the gameplay is easily warmed to. It doesn’t feel much like Gloomhaven mechanically, but it dresses the part very well.
Johnson says Cephalofair’s recent roster of smaller games was partially driven by the board game industry’s recent tariff turbulence. Cephalofair was a prominent voice at the height of the US-China tariff war, and Johnson says the instability encouraged “a lot of us publishers known for larger games to look for smaller titles to put in our catalogs”.
That’s far from the only reason Cephalofair made Mercenaries Wanted, though. Johnson says this has been a passion project for designer Vögele for two or three years. Plus, “our customers are asking for it”. “They want more bite-sized content they can step in and out of without the investment.”
“We want this to be another way to stick your toe in the water of Gloomhaven”, Johnson says. “This is a 45-minute experience for $24.99. It’s something you play while you’re waiting for your team to show up for Gloomhaven night, or you’re introducing your friends that aren’t into dungeon crawling campaigns.” “We have big games we’re working on”, he adds, “but they take time, and we want our fans to have something to enjoy in the meantime.”
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Source: Wargamer
