Publisher: Greater Than Games
Designers: Christopher Badell and Paul Bender
Year: 2011
Players: Two to five players
Ages: 8+
Playing Time: 60 Minutes
Genre: Cooperative superhero card game
Retail Price: $39.95
I think I’ll begin the review with the positives and then hunker down into reality as some major issues regarding the game and its gameplay begin to rear their ugly heads…
To begin I do like the art in Sentinels of the Multiverse; it’s fun and colorful and brings to mind the artwork you might find outside of the big two in the comic book world. Each character card is presented as the cover of a comic and the character’s hit points are displayed as an issue number. Each character comes across with a bit of personality as well and you might be drawn to giving each of the ten heroes a run for their money just to see what each brings to the table.
In the game you have three factors in play: Heroes, Villains, and Environments. All in all you’ll end up breaking down the over 550 cards included in the game into eighteen decks. You’ll have a deck for each character, good or evil, and the environments. There are four villains and four environments in which to do battle. This means there are a lot of possibilities and these factors give a great boost to replayablity.
The environments are a nice touch as well because they can be a boon or a bane to the villain or heros.
Each turn will play out in the same order. First, the villain begins by performing any effects that take place at the start of turn, then they draw a new card from their deck, and finally and end of turn effects take place. Each of the heroes will each take their turns by playing a card, using a power on their card, and then drawing a card from their own deck. Lastly, the environment takes a turn as well played out exactly as the villain’s turn.
That’s it! There you have it! So teaching the game is pretty quick and it won’t take anyone long to get the hang of the sequence of the goings on. I’d say ten minutes or more can get most first time players up to speed.
Looks like things are shaping up for this to be a winner, doesn’t it?
Sad to say the downsides of the game appear rather quickly and there are a multitude of them.
Sentinels of the Multiverse has way too much record keeping for a game of its nature. Every time you turn around you’ll find that you’re adding and subtracting a multitude of modifiers based on the villain’ effect, the villain’s card in play, your hero, you hero’s card in play, the environment, and the environment’s card in play. Sure, we’re not talking about long division here but I was surprised to see so many cases of adding this, subtracting that, adding this, subtracting that, etc. Plus you’ll always forget some modifier of some sort. This became more and more irritating after repeated play. Tracking the hit points of each hero and villain is a wee bit of a chore as well since the total is constantly changing – better bust out some D20s to lend a hand.
While the game is easy to learn that comes back to bite the design because the players never feel as if they have a whole lot to do. You’ll find almost every turn you get to take just breaks down into simply playing a card that will deal out the most damage. It takes a few plays before this starts to really set in but, by the time you might break the game out for a third or fourth time, you’ll find yourself scanning your game collection to see what might be more engaging than Sentinels of the Multiverse.
Two last issues need to be addressed…
There are situations that can arise, depending on the villain and environment being tackled, where you can have cards in play that reduce the players to nothing more than spectators. You can actually find the heroes in a spot where they can’t use a power, play cards, or draw any cards. Those are the only things you do in a turn so if you can’t do any of those things what’s the point of playing? This “screeching halt” isn’t something that’s going to happen very often but it does exist and needs to be mentioned. The fact that this happened within the first four play throughs was not a good thing.
Lastly, and this wasn’t a huge issue for me but I can guarantee that this would possibly induce Elliott to have a stroke, is the storage set up of the game. As in there isn’t one… You’re going to divide the cards into all these different decks but there’s absolutely no way to properly sort them due to the shallow depth of the box. So you’re left with either using rubber bands or baggies to sort the cards or just leaving them to intermix inside the box waiting to be divvied up again the next time you play.
If you’re someone who really would dig a co-op superhero experience you may want to give Sentinels of the Multiverse a try. For everyone else, myself included, taking a pass might be a better idea.
11 Comments
Ouch! Most of the reviews I’ve read or watched so far have been gushing about this title. To be fair though, most of the issues you mentioned were also mentioned by one or more of the reviewers. So, while they love it, they aren’t blind to its shortcomings.
I agree with you about the game being “fiddly” due to all the stats you have to manage. I printed out the official hit point trackers from the vendor’s web site and then made my own custom tokens to track the other bonuses and effects that come in to play. Using these has made it much less likely we forget something and reduce the need for scratch paper.
It should be noted that as the game is cooperative, it can be played solo. I’ve done this a number of times and, while it increases the “fiddleness” of the game, its still an enjoyable experience. The lack of scaling does force you to play at least three heroes if you want any chance of winning.
In my opinion, for a first effort from a new company, (which was founded strictly to publish this game) they did a great job. Also, despite the issues you mentioned, I enjoyed them game enough to jump on board the Kickstarter campaign they’ve set up to fund an expansion. I should point out that I haven’t read a comic book since high school and I’m old enough that I saw Aliens in the theater when it was released. I mention this so that you realize I’m not blinded by some comic book fanboy mentality, but, instead, am just blinded by a Sentinels of the Multiverse fanboy mentality. 🙂
Keep up the good work. I enjoy the site and appreciate the all the reviews, even if I don’t agree with the final score.
Hmmm… It almost sounds like you’re a shill for the game.
If people are talking about the same issues I found in the game, I can’t see how they would be “gushing” about it; if something is broken, it’s broken and there’s no way around that. We don’t review games simply because we want to dislike them as there are plenty of other people out there who want to play that angle – we want every game we tackle for review to be incredible and to drive the hobby to further heights.
With this game there were issues that either weren’t addressed, missed, or ignored in playtesting that made their way into the finished product. I can’t say that those issues will be addressed in a Kickstarter expansion or not.
Personally, I don’t give a rat’s ass about what other reviewers think of a title or not. I would hope our visitors wouldn’t either. This is The Gaming Gang and we look at games in the way we do and other reviewers are welcome to present their reviews in whatever manner they seek. If they’re willing to overlook gamebreaking issues and “love” a title then that’s how they are. We, on the other hand, are not.
Ouch, again. Well, I can honestly say I’ve never been called a shill before. I’m not affiliated in any way with the developers of the game other than I’m a fan. Obviously I can’t prove that thru an anonymous commenting system (but I am submitting my real email address, so, feel free to contact me there and I’ll give you whatever info you might need to convince you otherwise). If I came off as being critical of your review or of your opinion, it certainly wasn’t my intention.
I doubt the expansion will address any of the issues you mentioned as it is my understanding that it will just include additional villains, heroes, and environments. So, if you don’t like the base game, this probably won’t change your opinion.
The main reason for my original post was to offer up that despite the short comings you mention I still like it.
I almost thought the commentor was advertising for Sentinels as well.
I had an opportunity to play Sentinals at a friend’s house and have to say the review is spot on as we didn’t enjoy it much either. We didn’t run across the game breaking scenario that was mentioned but we still thought it was a rather poor game regardless.
I bet my friend wishes he had read this review before he ordered Sentinals.
You got this one wrong; not a 10, but 5.5 out of 10? Come on… We played this cold out of the box, loved it… Too much record keeping? Threw down some dice and various change, managed to survive the difficult counting thing. You whiffed – no worries, anyone can have an off day…
I stand behind my review 100%. Obviously people don’t like the same sort of games or like some better than others. As far as the counting thing I wrote, “Sentinels of the Multiverse has way too much record keeping for a game of its nature.” And it does! This isn’t some sort of historical simulation but supposed to be a fast paced, filler sort of game played within an hour.
The game didn’t receive the score it did simply based on the fiddliness of the modifiers but due to a number of additional issues that I mentioned: scaling problems, lack of real involvement for players, the combination of of cards that left us with nothing for our heroes to do against the villain – which should have been caught in playtesting, and the lack of even basic storage separation for the cards.
Even with all that, if you read our explanation of our review ratings you would understand the Sentinels came in as an “average” game.
I’m sure there are plenty of games out there that I really enjoy which other gamers wouldn’t like and vice versa. I’m sure the gang at Greater Than Games are happy to know there are people who love their game; I just happen to be someone who didn’t. I certainly didn’t “whiff” on honestly presenting my critique of the game.
We will agree to disagree – Lots of detailwe could talk about here, but I’ll leave it as is.
Do appreciate the response and get that we may just see it differently..
Cheers!
I had a chance to play Sentinels of the Multiverse at Gencon and have to say I wasn’t knocked out by it either. Although, I happen to like card games quite a lot and I thought this might be an interesting one to check out. Jeff’s review seems very fair and mentions valid points, some of which my girldriend and I noticed the first time we played. And this was with someone running the demo for us.
As a longtime visitor I get the impression that the people who are posting issues with the published review have ulterior motives. Where were they when the review was published? The review is from August yet the two people who are unfairly taking the author to task wait until just days after a Kickstarter expansion is announced to tell Jeff how wrong his review is?
I think Jeff had it right when he wrote he smelled a rat. Neither commentor has written why they love the game, just that they love it and it’s wonderful. Not much of a rubutal in my book. Since there’s an expansion looking for funding I have a feeling these guys are searching Google for reviews and then arguing with the reviewer if they don’t agree with the published review.
Hmm… As a non longtime visitor, someone sounds a bit conspiracy minded… If you take a minute to ponder, it might occur to you that even a review written in the dim past of August 2011 might be stumbled upon at a later date…
“I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Greater Than Games running dog lackeys corporate prole Party”
Ahem.
Z
I’m an experienced gamer and game designer who played the game with a gaming group recently and am considering buying it based on my experience. I don’t consider myself to have sufficient games under my belt for a complete rebuttal, and I’m not affiliated with the company, but, Jeff, it may be worth revisiting this one, perhaps as a review of the upcoming second edition?
The “scaling” issue seems to have been a clear design oversight, and appears to have been addressed in the expansions and second edition via the “H” mechanic, where damage dealt out scales based on the number of heroes the players used. Obviously I don’t have enough games under my belt to comment whether that’s actually correctly balanced or not.
The designers appear to have addressed the “fiddliness” via the use of tokens in the second edition; my group (playing first edition) used a couple visible counters to keep track of the cumulative +/- for the group’s attacks and the villain’s attacks, which seems to get at the same idea; I never had any trouble having my numbers ready to go on my turn. The game did bog a bit when there were ten villain minions in play, causing us to scan each of them for “start of turn” and “end of turn” effects.
I didn’t experience the “screeching halt” problem, but looking at available card lists, it looks like that’s (still) a potential problem with one of the environment decks. It also looks like that’s a problem that would require a combination of strategic error and particularly bad luck to leave the players unable to do anything about, as they can discard cards to get rid of two of the effects, or deal damage to get rid of the third. From my admittedly inexperienced reading, it would take several turns to build up to the “screeching halt” situation – if a character were stuck on zero cards when the “no draw” environment comes up, it is incumbent on the players to attack that environment .. if the other environments come up first, it is incumbent on the players to discard cards to get rid of them .. even if they both came up AND a player had no cards in hand, if you take no actions on your turn, you draw two cards, so you’d have two cards to discard at the start of the environment turn, to make them both go away.. which would happen before you drew the “no draw” environment card.
The game I played saw a plethora of minions who reduced damage dealt out, stacking against the players; had we let that build, perhaps we’d have been left in the cold, but it was pretty clear to everybody at the table that we needed to attack the characters that were limiting the damage we could deal out, before we got reduced to being unable to damage anything.
That said, I agree with you that that is a major flaw; as a designer and a player, the mechanic of “take away what the player can do on their turn” is definitely a turn-off. Nothing is worse than sitting through turns where you feel like you can’t do anything, and if you get to the point you described, the game would be lost. Perhaps it would be more palatable if it were listed as a game-end condition, “players lose if all players are unable to play a card, use a power, or draw a card” or as specific text on the cards in question (“If X, Y, and Z are all in play at the end of the environment turn, the heroes have lost”), but even then, what’s the fun in not being able to play a card or use your cool power?
My biggest concern, personally, is the replay value – since many of the cards in the villain, environment, and hero decks are repeated, I definitely felt some “oh, another fire broke out” even within a single game. However, I never felt like my choices were limited to “do the most damage”; there were often strategic considerations such as “do less damage to a side target to get a crippling effect off the board quicker?”, “set myself up for the future or take an immediate win?”, or “how can I get my teammate out of a bind?”. Also, it seems pretty clear that some of the hero decks require more strategic thought than others.
Still, once you’ve hit the boredom point, especially with the base set, it looks like it really would hit a “buy the expansions or shelve it” point. On the other hand, that’s true of Dominion too, isn’t it?
Thanks for the read, and keep up the good work!
Most of your criticisms were addressed in the enhanced edition now being sold – such as tokens for hp and modifiers, dividers and scaling