Frosthaven Class Spotlight: Harrower Geminate
Today our Frosthaven class spotlight will be the Harrower Geminate. While most Harrowers exist as a single hive mind intelligence formed by a swarm of insects, some instead develop two distinct minds, known as a Geminate. Geminates will shift between their two configurations, often with their own unique forms, strengths, and weaknesses.
Is playing a Geminate in Frosthaven for you?
In terms of playstyle, a Geminate will involve being a hybrid class that switches between a melee damage-dealer/tank in one form, and a ranged damage-dealer/support in the other.
The biggest potential hurdle to playing a Geminate will certainly be the complexity. The Geminate is rated as a 5/5 in complexity in Frosthaven, making it one of the most challenging classes to play in the game. As opposed to a single hand of ~10 cards, you have two different hands of seven cards, each associated with an individual form. You will need to plan your turns in sequence in order to make sure you both use the tools of each form effectively while also avoiding getting “stuck” in one form without the ability to switch back into the other.
How does the Geminate play?
Each Geminate card has a symbol and color-coding corresponding to one of their two forms. When building your hand for the scenario, you bring seven cards from each form. While in a form, you can only play cards from that form. In order to access the other form’s cards, you must perform an action with the “switch” symbol. Accordingly, it’s important to carefully space out cards with those symbols in the two forms.
The Geminate also has a very large total hand size of 14, meaning to get the most out of the class, you’ll need to play some cards for loss actions. This allows you to boost your party’s effectiveness when they need it the most, but you’ll have to be careful to maintain enough cards that let you switch forms such that cards don’t get stranded with a handful of cards you can’t access without a long rest.
Setting up your first Geminate
The first priority when setting up a starting Geminate is to take as many form-switching actions as possible. The most valuable of these will be those you can trigger at any time, like those on move actions.
In the same vein, a tool I would highly recommend for a new Geminate is the persistent loss on Reshape the Guise. Being able to switch forms on short rests gives you added flexibility when you need to rest in combat and the ability to choose which card to lose makes sure you can keep your two hand sizes mostly balanced against each other even while you play cards for loss actions.
Lastly, it’s useful to identify a couple of loss actions that will be consistently useful in most scenarios. Hornbeetle Carapace is excellent for significantly ramping up your damage output for a room. Drag Down allows you to leap into the middle of the fight safely, or otherwise bail out an ally who’s in trouble.
With all of this in mind, this is a safe recommended starting hand.
What are you looking for on level-up?
Each level-up with the Geminate provides the choice between a ranged-form card and a melee-form card. Depending on your party’s needs, it may be beneficial to specialize more into a specific form. If your party is mostly melee, improving your ranged prowess may better complement them. If your party is more fragile, they may appreciate you becoming a more effective melee combatant to keep the enemies away from them. If your party has no significant strengths or weaknesses, a balanced approach taking some cards for both forms may be best. In any case, be careful about removing too many of your level 1 cards that allow form switching.
Items
Starting items:
The best starting purchase for a Geminate by far is the Amulet of Life. While this item is ready, you can use Reckless Jab with all of the bonuses at no cost. The remainder of your gold can be spent on Leather Armor, which will help to keep you safe while on the front lines in your melee form.
Crafting early items:
A Crude Spear adds welcome flexibility for targeting and positioning while in melee form.
Crude Boots are a welcome bonus that can often be the difference between getting to where you need to be and not.
For potions: you can use almost any type of potion so feel free to pick up those your more specialized allies struggle to use effectively.
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