I just want to share a thing that just happened becuase it's to friggin good to keep to myself. I had been at our local goth club with my friends drinking some cheap drinks and listening to music that was sadly not very goth-y at all. After we were good and toasty we came back to my place and decided to start up a game of Sentinels. Because that's a thing you do when you get home from the bar at 10:45. At this point there were only three of us left (we almost had 4 but my wife decided it was bedtime for her), and we started picking heroes.
In turn order: One of my friends picked Absolute Zero because he had played him in the last game we played together but for a number of reasons he had kinda fizzled. He saw the potential there and wanted to give it another shot. It definitely did, but we'll get there later. Another of my friends (the drunkest among us) randomed up Tempest. I selected Visionary, partially because she's one of my favorites to play, partially because I hadn't played her in a while, and paritally because I knew there was good potential for her to make a really entertaining game with AZ on the field.
We ended up fighting Apostate for reasons I can't remember. I think I hadn't played him in a while? In any case it was between Apostate and Akash'Bhuta and we ended up fighting Apostate. We picked Insula Primalis because one of the people playing hadn't seen it yet and I knew he'd be stoked about the whole dinosaur thing.
This is the point where experienced (and not-drunk, so I'm excluded) players know where this is going. As it turns out, this is a recipe for a mind-blowingly entertaining game.
Apostate's first turn was Profane Summons, which turned up Runes of Malediction and Periapt of Woe. I'm thinking uh oh this is going to be brutal, and we're gonna be slogging through some heavy crap here. But by some benign turn of fate, AZ had a turn 1 Onboard Module Installation which he used to grab and play a Null-Point Calibration Unit, as all right-thinking AZ players do with a turn 1 OMI and no threats that can't be put off a turn. I had a turn 1 Twist the Ether, which I promptly put on Apostate becuase how can you not in that situation.
AZ was the highest HP, so I increased Apostates two little packets of damage and made it cold to heal, and Condemnation got increased and switched to cold for moar healz. So that's a tidy little 8 points of healing, which easily pushed AZ to full. Apostate got the one demon which pulls Relics from the trash when it dies, which we'd eventually have to deal with. But suddenly after seeing how that turn played out it gets through to me how this is going to go. We're going to have to work hard on the damage front, but as long as I can keep Twist the Ether in play and AZ can keep Null-Point Calibration Unit in play, there's no way we're going to lose this game.
A couple turns later is when it starts getting really ridiculous. I had Twist the Ether on Apostate so that AZ could heal-tank though anything the demon wanted to throw at us. I also had a Twist the Ether on AZ, becuase that shit's hilarous and I miraculously drew it on like turn 3. Of course I had him doing snickerdoodle damage and kitten damage because dammit I'm drunk and I know Christopher's sanctioned nonstandard damage types with TtE. We had some clutch plays, where Tempest let Visionary pull a Suggestion from her trash to filter the Demons out of Apostate's trash so we could kill the Runes of Malediction and have no Demons come out. Or where Visionary luckily drew her ongoing destruction power just in time to save us from Apocalypse.
But it really came down to simple math. At the end of the game we had two Obsidian Fields in play, and Visionary had both of her Twist the Ethers out. Apostate's base card was healing AZ for 8 a turn, and before we finished it off Condemnation was another 6. Before we killed Periapt of Woe, there was one beautiful turn where AZ healed a whopping 17 damage. 14 points of healing each round. For free. And the way we ended up killing Apostate was through sheer DoTs. AZ had one Impale on Apostate (6 damage), and another card which does 1 damage to all non-heroes (5 damage), Tempest had his AoE ongoing (3 damage) and Visionary had her AoE ongoing (3 damage). That's a total of 17 damage each round, just in ongoings.
Overall it was a total blast. A perfect storm of each element lining up to make this happen. It was easily the most ludicrous game of SotM I've ever played, and quite possibly the most fun as well.
Anyway, sorry for the wall of text, I just wanted to share this experience because it was such a good time, and each component of this game shook out just right to configure it to be as bonkers as possible.