Sentinels of the Multiverse
| File:SOTM-Box-cover.jpg Cover art | |
| Designers | Christopher Badell Adam Rebottaro Paul Bender |
|---|---|
| Publishers | Greater Than Games |
| Players | 3 to 5 |
| Setup time | 5 minutes |
| Playing time | 45 minutes |
| Age range | 13 and up |
Sentinels of the Multiverse is a designer card game published by Greater Than Games and released at Gen Con 2011. It is a cooperative game in which players control a team of comic book-style heroes battling a villain. Each player controls a different hero, while a villain and environment deck each run themselves. A given game includes 3 to 5 heroes, 1 villain and 1 environment, which can be mixed and matched to create a number of different scenarios. The core game comes with 10 heroes, 4 villains, and 4 environments.
Gameplay
The game mechanics of Sentinels of the Multiverse include aspects that are somewhat similar to a variety of other card games, including Magic: The Gathering and Dominion. Each hero comes with a fixed deck of 40 cards, as well a "character card" that specifies initial HP for that hero as well as an innate power. On their turns, the players may each play a card, use one of several "powers" provided by cards, and draw a card. On the villain and environment turns, the players reveal the top card of the villain and environment decks, respectively, and perform the specified actions. When a hero is reduced to 0 HP, they lose the ability to play cards or use powers, but remain in the game as an "incapacitated hero" with a fixed set of abilities with which they may aid their allies. The game generally ends when either all heroes are incapacitated, or the villain is reduced to 0 or fewer HP, though some villains include alternate win conditions.
Reception
Sentinels of the Multiverse has been well received by players and critics since its launch, with Tom Vasel of The Dice Tower podcast giving it the #1 slot in his "top 30 games to look out for from Gen Con 2011"[1], and the review blog Giant Fire Breathing Robot awarding it "Board Game of the Year: 2011" [2]. Reviewers generally praised the art and gameplay, while criticizing the small box, lack of HP trackers, and difficulty scaling among different numbers of players.[3][4]
Expansions
Greater Than Games released an expansion, Sentinels of the Multiverse: Rook City in the spring of 2012. The expansion added 2 heroes, 4 villains and 2 environments to the base game. The villains in Rook City also include an H icon in some cards, which represents the number of heroes in the game, as a way to improve scaling. The cards used in Rook City is also of a better and thicker cardstock as compared to the base game.
In the autumn of 2012 Greater Than Games released their second expansion, Sentinels of the Multiverse: Infernal Relics. Similar to Rook City, this expansion added an additional 2 heroes, 4 villains and 2 environments to the game. This expansions also introduced the concept of a super villain group, containing multiple villain characters in a single deck.
At the same time, Greater Than Games also released a new edition of the base game, Sentinels of the Multiverse: Enhanced Edition. This edition of the game has minor change to some of the cards and added the H icon to the base game's villain to improve their scalability. A better box with built in storage inserts were also introduced with this edition along with dividers for all of the deck available to date. Other improvement includes better card stocks for all the cards and new artwork for the environment cards in line with what was introduced with Rook City and Infernal Relics. 162 tokens were also included in the new edition to help keep track of damage and the various different types of modifier in games.
On October 30th, 2012, Greater than Games began a Kickstarter Campaign for a third Expansion, Sentinels of the Multiverse: Shattered Timelines. Similar to Rook City and Infernal Relics, this expansion will add 2 heroes, 4 villains, and 2 environments to the game. [5] The Shattered Timelines expansion will feature the winning fan-created villain from the Create a Villain Contest run by Greater Than Games in September 2012. [6]. The Kickstarter campaign ended successfully on November 29, 2013 having raised $185,200 [7]. Shattered Timelines will be available in the spring of 2013.
During the Shattered Timelines Kickstarter Campaign, Greater Than Games announced that they would use some of the funds raised during that campaign to help finance their fourth expansion Sentinels of the Multiverse: Vengeance [8]. The Greater Than Games team has announced that this will be a "mega-expansion" which will not follow the same format as the previous expansions. Vengeance will be available in the fall of 2013.
Heroes
The current heroes in the game include:
Base Game
- Legacy
- Absolute Zero
- Wraith
- Tachyon
- Bunker
- Haka
- Fanatic
- Visionary
- Ra
- Tempest
Rook City
- Expatriette
- Mr. Fixer
Infernal Relics
- The Argent Adept
- Nightmist
Promotional Characters
- Unity
- Young Legacy
- Rook City Wraith
- Ra:Horus of Two Horizons
- Redeemer Fanatic
Villains
The current list of villains in the game include:
Base Game
- Citizen Dawn
- Baron Blade
- Grand Warlord Voss
- Omnitron
Rook City
- The Matriarch
- The Chairman
- Plague Rat
- Spite
Infernal Relics
- Akash'bhuta
- Apostate
- Gloom Weaver
- The Ennead
Promotional Characters
- Ambuscade
References
- ^ http://www.dicetower.com/top_ten_lists/current-top-ten-list-tom-s-top-30-games-to-look-out-for-from-gen-con-2011.html
- ^ http://gfbrobot.com/2011/12/01/variant-and-the-board-game-of-the-year-goes-to/
- ^ http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/15/15483.phtml
- ^ http://opinionatedgamers.com/2011/11/21/review-sentinels-of-the-multiverse/
- ^ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gtgames/sentinels-of-the-multiverse-shattered-timelines
- ^ http://sentinelsofthemultiverse.com/blog/2012/08/create-villain-contest
- ^ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gtgames/sentinels-of-the-multiverse-shattered-timelines
- ^ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gtgames/sentinels-of-the-multiverse-shattered-timelines/posts/357084