From the publisher’s rulebook

Who goes first in Gloomhaven?

Cephalofair English original edition

Players secretly choose two cards and select one as their leading card. Reveal those initiatives and a card for each monster type present; the lowest initiative acts first.

Official tie-break or fallback

For tied players, compare their non-leading cards; if still tied, the players decide. A player acts before a monster type with the same initiative. Players decide ties between monster types.

If your rules call for a random choice, use the player picker.

Rule details

Initiative is determined again each round. A long rest has initiative 99; it can only be chosen when the character has at least two cards in their discard pile.

Source & edition

All 3 Cephalofair Games starting rules

Related games and editions

Browse available game rules
Embed this answer on your site

Copy this HTML into a blog post, forum or game café page. It’s plain text with a link back to this rule, so it works almost anywhere. More embed options

Found a different instruction in your edition? Send a correction with the game, edition, and source.