Dale Yu: Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs – Pub Crawlers Expansion

Posted on October 2, 2026 by Dale Yu

Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs

Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs is a solo play game, with an original campaign story written by Isaac Childres, that features a playstyle similar to Gloomhaven in a fraction of the size.

 

Explore a new adventure in the micro mercenary realm of Gloomhaven with Pub Crawlers. Continue exploring the tiny side of Gloomhaven with new mercenaries in this single-player adventure!

 

Players will be able to explore 17 new scenario cards with the original Buttons & Bugs mercenaries or with 2 all-new mercenaries! The expansion comes with all-new micro miniatures for these 2 new playable characters, as well as new foes, dice, and more.

 

So we recently just reviewed the base solo game of Gloomhaven: Button & Bugs, and the expansion for it has just come available for pre-order this week.   This small expansions adds a few new twists to the base game to give you plenty of options of how to play the game.  Importantly, the expansion is both backwards and forwards compatible.

There are two new characters, the Fungal Monk and the Whistlecry.  One of the largest differences is that they come with 5 cards (instead of 4) for each level.  This adds a bit of a strategic challenge at the beginning of each game as you have to choose which 4 of the 5 cards you’re going to bring in.  Further, there is a new tag – the “micro” tag. Whereas the original six classes in Buttons & Bugs were mercenaries shrunken down by magical means, the two new classes in Pub Crawlers are micro, meaning that they are naturally small, and the micro world is their home.  Within Pub Crawlers, whether you are playing as a shrunken or micro mercenary will impact which scenarios you play and the storyline you experience.

The expansion also adds in allies – scenarios that may now ask you to protect, escort, or receive aid from various tiny allies along your way.   Additionally, there are now some persistent action cards – well cards that have a set number of uses.  You’ll simply rotate the card 90’ in the direction the arrows indicate every time a charge is used. This is a nice elegant and space saving solution.

This expansion also brings in the Bless and Curse tokens which are seen in the base game. There are two “pools” – one that all the enemies share, and one that you and any of your allies (if you have any that scenario) have.  A pool may only have either bless or curse tokens in them at a time – never a mix of tokens.  When any figure with bless/curse tokens in their pool performs an attack they will roll the ten-sided bless/curse die along with the usual modifier die. If the number you roll equals or is lower to the number of tokens in your pool, that attack value is either doubled (bless tokens in your pool) or is reduced to nothing (curse tokens in your pool). 

 

The expansion comes in a box which is about half the height of the base solo game, and given how packed the base solo game is – you won’t be able to consolidate everything into a single box.  But, they are so small, it’s easy enough to band them together in a small package. 

 

If you’ve liked the base solo game of Buttons and Bugs, there is a lot to like here.  There are new scenarios to challenge you as well as two new heroes to play.  You can bring the original four heroes to play the new scenarios and you can take the two new heroes back to the original box scenarios.  I’d say this is a must have for anyone who enjoys Buttons and Bugs.

 

 


Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

  • I love it!
  • I like it. Dale Y
  • Neutral.
  • Not for me…

 

Preorder link: https://cephalofair.com/products/gloomhaven-pubcrawlers-a-buttons-bugs-expansion

 

 

 

About Dale Yu

Dale Yu is the Editor of the Opinionated Gamers. He can occasionally be found working as a volunteer administrator for BoardGameGeek, and he previously wrote for BoardGame News.
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