Last Updated on by Samuel Franklin
This Gloomhaven Beast Tyrant guide recommends how to build this unique Gloomhaven character that has two miniatures to command in scenarios. The Beast Tyrant is an unlockable mercenary with durability, high damage and highly unique utility with card choices, perks, card enhancements and notable item purchases detailed below.
Table of Contents:
– Beast Tyrant Cards, Perks, Enhancements and Items Overview
– Beast Tyrant Cards Detailed
– Beast Tyrant Perks Detailed
– Beast Tyrant Enhancements Detailed
– Beast Tyrant Items Detailed
Gloomhaven Beast Tyrant Guide Overview
This quick section template maximises your bear summon to tank damage, deal damage and heal the bear which is my recommended method to play the Beast Tyrant. This means always using the persistent Concentrated Rage bottom action aand ignoring other summons given these are weak uses of our limited 10 card hand size.
Beast Tyrant Cards Overview
- Level 1: Remove Soaring Ally, Disorienting Roar and Relentless Ally to create your starting deck of cards
- Level 2: Energizing Strike replaces Focused Aggression
- Level 3: Vicious Ally replaces Venomous Ally
- Level 4: Punch Through replaces Spirit Swap
- Level 5: Rampage replaces Howling Bolts
- Level 6: Blood Hunger replaces Borrowed Essence
- Level 7: Storm Sigil replaces Disappearing Wounds
- Level 8: Lash Out replaces Forceful Swipe
- Level 9: Jaws of Death replaces Punch Through
Beast Tyrant Perks Priority Overview
- Remove two -1 cards
- Replace one -1 card with one +1 card (take three times)
- Add two rolling heal +1 cards (take three times)
- Replace one +0 with one +2 card (take twice)
- Add one +1 wound card (take twice)
- Add one +1 immobolise card (take twice)
- Ignore negative scenario effects
Beast Tyrant Enhancements Priority Overview
- Add attack to the bottom of our core bear attack cards (Vicious Ally, Blood Hunger and Storm Sigil)
- Add heal/strengthen/bless to the bottom of Patch Fur and Blood Hunger
Beast Tyrant Items Priority Overview
- Minor Stamina Potion
- Minor Healing Potion
- Cloak of Invisibility
Gloomhaven Beast Tyrant Guide Detailed
This detailed portion expands on the overview section decisions so that players can make small deviations where they consider them necessary for their specific party combination or preferences.
Beast Tyrant Cards Detailed
The Beast Tyrant cards decisions are detailed in below in level order and includes the cards to remove at each level up to optimise your bear focused playstyle.
- Starting Cards: For starting cards we want to take away our weaker melee summons that simply aren’t useful in the Gloomhaven meta as they will quickly fall to enemies with their low health pools. This means Soaring Ally and Relentless Ally are first on the chopping block as neither of their bottom actions are particularly notable while you can keep Venomous Ally around for now given the decent bottom attack action. For the third removal card Disorientating Roar is a good choice given both the top and bottom actions have only niche uses.
- Level 2 Cards: Level 2 for the Beast Tyrant is an easy choice with Energizing Strike becoming a core card for us with the strong bear attack on top with the benefit of strengthen. This card also has a nice utility heal all allies with no range that makes it ideal to cure small status effects. The alternative in Earthen Spikes is simply not even a comparison choice with weak top attack we will never use as we will be sending the bear forward and often not moving our Vermling miniature for an entire scenario and a bottom burn that lacks value as well.
- Level 3 Cards: Level 3 can be a bit of a trap to the new Beast Tyrant player and you may see Unstoppable Beast as the card of choice with its area of effect attack and bottom move but you’ll actually want to grab Vicious Ally instead to maximise your bear damage output. This is because the bottom attack is a potential attack 5 target 2 when paired with the effects if Concentrated Rage which is simply stronger and more flexible than the top of Unstoppable Beast. Given the Beast Tyrant also doesn’t need non-command move cards we don’t mind losing the potential move 5 either unlike other heroes.
- Level 4 Cards: Optimising for bear at level 4 is an easy choice with only one card focused on the bear playstyle and so we take Punch Through which gives the bear one of the best pierce attacks in Gloomhaven. This is a flexible card and one that you can freely swap in and out of your hand as necessary for the scenario as you start to unlock better attack cards. Our alternative in Ancient Ward is actually a wonderful card and a great choice if you aren’t being bear focused as it provides a large bottom heal and multi target disarm but with the bear playstyle we’ll constantly be out of range of enemies and allies beyond the first room.
- Level 5 Cards: Level 5 cards are disappointing but we take Rampage as the top burn can sometimes be useful and the bottom action gives us some specific control over the bear when required. In practice this means you probably won’t use either of these actions often but you’ll appreciate having it around when the time is right and up until that point you can just forgo it’s actions through Concentrated Rage. For card removal this is a good chance to replace the large bottom move of howling bolts as the bottom of Rampage can serve a similar purpose albeit not quite as powerful.
- Level 6 Cards: Level 6 is all about healing with Blood Hunger the better card with the deadly command attack and self heal (for the bear) that is an incredible combination to have on a single attack, particularly a bottom for the Concentrated Rage empowerment available. This is a good time to drop the Borrowed Essence as we now have an additional bear heal to ensure the bear stays healthy without drawing from our own health pool. Primal Blessing isn’t worth consideration as we won’t be in the front lines and while the bottom is designed to keep us forward it’s simply extra work and unfortunately sends our bear backwards. Had the bottom of this card been teleporting to an adjacent hex to our bear that would be something we might have been interested in but unfortunately that isn’t the case.
- Level 7 Cards: By taking Storm Sigil we have a potential attack 7 bottom action for the bear when combined with Concentrated Rage and can even push this up to attack 9 with enhancements for high burst damage. This beats the alternative card despite it offering a stun for the reasons already noted above for other levels as it doesn’t fit into the bear playstyle. With the upgrade to the bottom attack this is a great candidate to replace Disappearing Wounds since we removed Borrowed Essence last level we also have less uneed for the heal self for the Vermling character.
- Level 8 Cards: A clear split between a Vermling focused and bear focused build we take Lash Out that offers two command actions from an attack all adjacent enemies and a push to capitalise on traps or other hazards. If these combinations of actions looks familiar it’s because this card is a clear upgrade to Forceful Swipe that makes it an obvious replacement choice.
- Level 9 Cards: For level 9 we have the choice of another sigil themed card in Tribal Sigil which can be difficult to use effectively in Gloomhaven given they have no movement values so you need to pick your summoning point carefully or utilise them only in single room scenarios which are rare. Our other level 9 card in Jaws of Death offers great command value with an execute top and flexible bottom attack/move combo. With the top performing a similar role to Punch Through as many shielded enemies have lower health pools this is a good replacement choice by default. For scenarios you want the additional pierce for your team I’d add Punch Through back in for Maul given the similarity of these cards.
Beast Tyrant Perks Detailed
With our bear sharing our modifier deck these perks are still critical for the Beast Tyrant and follows a similar flow to other Gloomhaven characters. One notable choice though is the rolling heal cards that are fantastic at ensuring we clear the poison and wound effects from the bear with some regularity that enhance its survival and helps fill the void until we get some of the larger command heal cards with progress.
With this in mind our priority is still to remove negative values first to improve consistency of attacks and then add these rolling healing values before moving into positive value options. This includes adding wound and immobilise in that order based on their usefulness when randomly drawn and we can generally grab ignore negative scenario effects near the end as these rarely impact our bear playstyle.
Beast Tyrant Enhancements Detailed
Enhancements are some of the simplest in Gloomhaven for the Beast Tyrant with a focus on buffing our command cards to get more value from our bear summon. This should focus on the bottom attack cards we bring (Vicious Ally, Blood Hunger and Storm Sigil) given they are our source of damage output when empowered by Concentrated Rage.
Second to this we can look towards buffing some of the heals with additional heal value or benefits like bless and strengthen although we do already have a built in strengthen with Energizing Strike so not a major priority compared to the raw attack values.
Beast Tyrant Items Detailed
Given the reliance on the bear our item choices as the Beast Tyrant are fairly limited as there are only a few equipment pieces in the game that benefit our bear playstyle given our Gloomhaven bear lacks the hands to utilise items. For starting items things that improve our card efficiency with Minor Stamina Potion is a good start while the Minor Healing Potion can help us heal the bear early through the use of Borrowed Essence until we obtain some of the command healing cards. A lower priority choice is also the Cloak of Invisibility to just help us in those early scenario rooms but is more of a luxury than a core item.
Beyond starting items anything that allows the player to take additional turns, regain cards or provides healing (while using Borrowed Essence to turn our healing into bear healing) will be a priority and it’s likely you won’t fill up all of your equipment slots when playing as the Beast Tyrant bear build.
For information and build guides on other Gloomhaven character options visit our Gloomhaven classes overview and the related Gloomhaven class tier list.
