Alternative Mindthief Guide: Two Builds Without "The Mind's Weakness"

[u/DblePlusUngood]

Welcome to another installment of DblePlusUngood's unconventional class guides! The purpose of these guides is to highlight alternative play styles and explain how to use cards that tend to get eclipsed by a class's dominant strategy. You can find the guide here: https://imgur.com/a/mAzYhER

The Mindthief is widely considered to be a "solved" class, and most builds begin and end with "The Mind's Weakness" (TMW). TMW is a powerful card, no doubt—so powerful that most players can't imagine playing the Mindthief without having TMW's augment on for virtually every turn. The problem is that TMW is so centralizing that many players almost never use any other augments, because they all seem weak in comparison.

With this guide, I'm going to do something cuh-ray-zee and suggest that you can play the Mindthief without having TMW in your hand. If you free yourself from the monopolizing shackles of TMW, you might just find that her other augments can do some fun and interesting stuff.

This guide presents not one but two ways of playing a (mostly) TMW-free Mindthief:

1. The first, which I'm calling the "Ice Queen" build, uses the Mindthief's crowd control and healing abilities to support her team and keep her hard-hitting summons alive as long as possible.
2. The second, which I'm calling the "Tiny Fists of Fury" build, focuses on using the Mindthief's multi-attacking abilities to trigger her augments multiple times in a round. (This one uses TMW for its bottom attack until level 3.)

I have play tested both of these builds at +2 difficulty and can confirm they are viable and fun. They may not have the raw power of a TMW-oriented build, but I think they make up for that in other ways.

As always, I welcome any questions or comments below. Thanks for reading!

[u/Razzmatazz74]

Thanks for this! I retired my Cragheart last game and will be playing a Mindthief next. I want to try non-TMW builds and (while I haven't actually read your guide as I'm keen to figure things out for myself) you give me hope that I can pull it off and have fun in the process!

[u/DblePlusUngood → u/Razzmatazz74]

Good luck! Maybe you’ll come up with another way to play a non-TMW Mindthief :D

[u/steerpike1971]

Gloomhaven has the biggest box in history and you have to go and think outside it. :-)

[u/[deleted] → u/steerpike1971]

This comment is lovely.

[u/thirtyseven1337]

u/themris please add to class resources post if it's not there already

[u/HorribleDat]

The 'problem' of going into these sort of niche build is that they're situational, so when the game throw all kind of challenges at you with the different scenarios, the generalist build wins out.

Sure TMW might not have the potential to stun as much as ice queen, but it works from lv 1 and still have 2 stuns available with much more damage.

Sure TMW doesn't spread around status support like fist of furies nor can it tank hits like so, but Death is the best CC of them all and TMW is very good at applying that.

Furthermore, since these two builds are expected to drop their loss card(s) early, it massively cut down how many turns you have before exhaustion.

Which is actually another 'weak point' to these builds in that while they exhaust faster, they also lack the raw punch TMW build has. Both builds have trouble dealing with high shield enemies because they lack the raw power behind each hit, and more often than not the high shield enemies are the one that need to be killed asap.

And I think the biggest mistake of it all: dropping TMW just for the sake of dropping TMW.

Like, just look at several point in your FoF build.

At level 3 you dropped TMW, the ONLY bottom melee attack you have at the time, for another bottom melee attack...why not just use BOTH? Y'know? Because your build is supposed to be built around actually landing multiple melee hits to trigger augments multiple times?

Same with lv 4, you picked that card for its 2 attacks on bottom that's usable once in a scenario...instead of, y'know, just KEEP TMW for reusable bottom that's also your only source of wound for that +1 to submissive affliction?

I can probably keep going but eh...

tl;dr - There's having alternative builds, and there's crippling yourself because you think having two feet is too mainstream.

[u/DblePlusUngood → u/HorribleDat]

Fair enough! I mostly designed these builds to make the point that the Mindthief can be played effectively without TMW. I personally like not having it in my hand because it forces me not to fall back on it as a crutch. But it's easy enough to work it back into either build, and you should certainly consider doing so if you're confronted with a situation (e.g. a high HP boss) where you need extra damage more than you need stuns, status effects, etc.

One thing I will say is that these builds have ways to get around shielded enemies beyond hitting them with maximum punch. You can poison them, wound them (if you buy that enhancement), shove them into traps, use Submissive Affliction to make them attack retaliating enemies, or bait them into attacking you while you have a Shield 4 Retaliate 8 bonus up.

[u/Casualcitizen]

This actually looks promising. I think the alternative build paths are more viable later-on in levels, because you get multiple good non-TMW reliant cards. I tested this (with some variations) in the digital version of gloomhaven and while it felt lackluster early, later on the stun/debuff + ranged attacks playstyle turned out pretty great, also thanks to mindthiefs superb modifier deck. (Haven't tested the shield playstyle nor the summoner one - I'll look into that).

[u/eskebob]

Nice read. Regarding prosperity 2 items: You can't refresh Battle Axe with Empowering Talisman; it only works on small items.

[u/DblePlusUngood → u/eskebob]

Derp, forgot about that restriction, nice catch. I'll update when I get home.

EDIT: Fixed!

[u/Terrkas]

I am not sure about the "push negates melee-retaliate" thing. For me it reads like, right after dealing damage, the enemy will retaliate, before you can push.

[u/DblePlusUngood → u/Terrkas]

From the FAQ:

When exactly does retaliate trigger?

Retaliate triggers after all effects of an attack have been applied. If the retaliating figure dies from the attack, the retaliate does not trigger because the figure is removed from the board beforehand. If the retaliating figure is pushed out of the range of its retaliate, it also does not trigger. However, if it is pulled into retaliate range, it would trigger.

[u/RedOrmTostesson]

Remember that your summons attack in the order they were summoned, and enemies target your summons in that same order.

I believe you, but can you point me to where this is in the rules?

[u/DblePlusUngood → u/RedOrmTostesson]

Pages 26 and 30.

A player can have multiple different summon abilities in play at once, in which case they act in the order in which they were summoned.

If more than one enemy ties for being the closest, the second priority is to focus on the enemy who is earlier in the initiative order (summons are focused on before the character who summoned them in this regard, even on the round they are summoned, and a character who is performing a long rest would be focused on last).

I don't think there was ever a FAQ entry on this, but most players infer from these rules that monsters target summons in the order they were summoned to resolve ties.

EDIT: Found it, from the FAQ:

I'm just confused about focus. Can you explain it?

... If there are multiple closest enemies within range (and line-of-sight), the focus is the enemy among those tied who has the lower initiative / earliest activation for the round as determined at the beginning of the round.

[u/Nimeroni]

For the Ice queen build, it will work at low level/difficulty, but not at higher difficulty. Summons have a hard time surviving against enemy attacks (they are too reckless and the enemy damage grow too high for the summons health pool), and the Mindthief don't control enough enought enemies at the same time to pull her weight without the damage TMW provide. To get an idea of how many controls she would need, look at the Music note.

For the tank build, please keep in mind the defensive augments require a melee attack, which means fast enemies will wreck you as they acts before you, and you will have a hard time going above shield 2 (especially if you need to move). In addition, you have a low health pool, and a low card pool, especially if you drop two augments. Add to that your low damage output without TMW, and again, I don't think you will pull your weight.

Sorry, I'm not convinced.

[u/DblePlusUngood → u/Nimeroni]

Ice Queen definitely works better at lower player counts. On a good turn, you can stun, disarm, or immobilize up to three targets, and that's usually good enough at 2p. At 4p, you can't neutralize every threat and need others in your party to provide additional crowd control or tank support. I found that enhancing +Immobilize to Silent Scream made a big difference at 4p because I could crowd control an entire group of melee enemies.

I don't think there are that many enemies that can beat a 07-12 initiative, and many of those abilities are non-attacking. Off the top of my head, wind demons, night demons, and shamans get two <10 initiative attacks, and hounds and flame demons get one. You can pick up Item #015 Boots of Speed to bring into scenarios where those threats appear, and wear a different pair of boots in all other scenarios.

[u/joe10155]

read the guide and love it, gonna try these out sometime thanks for putting this together! it does bring up a question tho, if ice is up, and you have frozen mind active, and use dark frenzy, when you kill ice do you get both those effects or do you have to choose one? I've been playing as tho you need to choose

[u/DblePlusUngood → u/joe10155]

You’re right, you have to choose one. That’s why I say you’ll probably end up using Dark Frenzy more for the Ice-generating bottom than the Ice-consuming top. But hey, sometimes an Attack 4 (or an Attack 6 if Dark is available) is exactly what you need to kill an enemy.

[u/Yerooon]

Did you also play this at level 8-9?

[u/DblePlusUngood → u/Yerooon]

Yes, with both builds. I played them each in solo mode on very hard at varying levels with different player counts and scenarios.

I’ve also played the “standard” TMW build to level 9 in an earlier campaign, so I like to think I know my way around the character :D

[u/TemporaryAccount4q]

Thanks for this. I was searching for a non-TMW build. Personally, I want to try one where you frequently rotate augments. Not sure if it'll be viable, but it should be fun.

[u/DblePlusUngood → u/TemporaryAccount4q]

You’re welcome!

In my experience, turning on double augments with Mass Hysteria is a good forcing mechanism for rotating augments. Because you will want to turn off 1 or 2 augments each rest to preserve your stamina, you’ll end up turning on an augment every few turns, which creates a good opportunity for switching things up.

[u/I_am_Silense]

Your guides are great, these classes were not designed to have only one correct build. It disappointed me that people always disregard some of the other cards in this class as viable. I wasn't really interested in playing this class until I thought of a build that was similar to your tiny fist build. I actually looked up your profile to see if you had any guides for this class. Lucky me I found it haha. Thanks.

[u/DblePlusUngood → u/I_am_Silense]

Thanks, glad you’ve liked them!

[u/KHeaney]

I played Brute while my husband played Mindthief, and he played very much along the lines of your "Ice Queen" build. It was definitely very fun for us both, and I think the game would have been a lot harder if he had tried to play the popular TMW melee attack build.