I’ll preface this by saying the title question probably doesn’t apply to the people who created the game! and also by introducing myself.
Hi, my name’s Jonny, been lurking on the forums about a week now and decided to join the party. Mine’s a pint of ale.
My wife’s from California but lives with me here in the South of England, so we recently returned to CA to visit her family. While there we wandered into Capitola Mall to visit an indie bookshop we’d been told about. It had a great selection of games, and we got chatting with the shop assistant about what we’d been playing recently. She recommended Sentinels to us - I was sold on the comic book influence alone - and we returned to buy the core set later in our trip.
We didn’t have a whole lot of time left in our trip to play, but my brother-in-law and I started by trying two heroes each against Baron Blade. The mechanics took me by surprise - Blade’s trash grew before I realised we had to stop it - and we lost pretty quickly. By that time we had a decent idea of how things worked, though, and we took Fanatic/Haka and Legacy/Tachyon for our second outing. We were a lot more successful that time!
Since returning to the UK we haven’t had a chance to get our usual suspects together for a proper four-player game, but my wife and I have played through a couple more times - with two heroes each, as before - taking down Blade and most recently Grand Warlord Voss. Kristina’s already a massive Wraith fangirl, while I’m taking the time to try out every character before I find my favourites (early indications leaning towards Tempest, though). I’ve yet to play Wraith, AZ, Fanatic or The Visionary.
So how did you guys find Sentinels - and how was your first experience?
My experience isn’t incredibly novel or anything. I was at GenCon last year, where >G made their first appearance. I was wandering through the dealer hall, and Christopher made a compelling pitch to give a demo a go. I played Ra and had a blast. Came back a little later and bought my copy. One thing I can say is that Christopher is one heck of a salesman. I was pretty much broke at the time and sacrificing proper eating to buy games. That meant a game had to be really special.
My friend came over and brought a couple of games, and he had brought Sentinels. We played against Citizen Dawn with 5 characters. I think they were the Wraith, Tachyon, Fanatic, Bunker and Legacy. We actually won by a lot, but we looked through her deck at the end and we hadn’t shuffled very well, as all of her “ouch” cards were at the very bottom.
I partly blame my first defeat on bad shuffling. Legacy drew a lot of bolster/redirect cards but no attacks, Tachyon had several HUD goggles in succession, Chris couldn’t get enough variety into Bunker and Ra was being held off by Elemental Redistributor. We were doomed.
I knew Christopher previously. With some trepidation I tried out his game, hoping it didn’t suck so I wouldn’t have to figure out how to be nice about it.
A friend (that arenson9 guy, above) had met Christopher before GenCon’s release last year. He told me to check out the >G booth. I went first thing when they opened the exhibitor hall (I usually get there ~8:30 for the 10:00 opening ::)), and couldn’t find the booth. :-\ (Turned out the booth number was wrong.)
Later in the day, I got the right booth number and wandered over. Met Adam and Christopher, then had a quick demo from a lady helping at the booth that went okay. The demo didn’t go well, but I saw a lot of potential in the game.
However, I don’t buy games I can’t play with my spouse (as it’s just not worth the money to have a game just sitting on the shelf), so I brought her back on Saturday and Adam demo’d for us. The demo went really well. We left and talked about it for a while, and she said she was highly entertained by the flavor and concepts, and she thought it was a great game for the two of us to play together.
I actually heard an advertisement for it on the Icosahedrophilia Podcast. I thought it sounded interesting. But, as I am wont to do, promptly forgot about it after I got out of my car. Soon thereafter, my wife and I discovered cooperative board games. We decided to look for more and my brain said, “Hey! Wasn’t there something about a cooperative, superhero, fixed-deck card game? Something with that many adjectives has to be cool! You should totally look for that.” Never one to argue with my own inner-psyche, I looked it up on the Icosahedrophilia blog and then ordered it online. We were hooked before we finished the first game. I promptly went back online, because I had seen something about an expansion in my searches. We had just missed the Kickstarter for Rook City, so I checked the SotM website and forums at least twice a week, waiting for it to come out so I could give >G my money.
Did a demo at PAX East… what is interesting is that I was on a low budget and was only gonna buy one boardgame, and they sold me on it over other gorgeus and fun games.
I was in Seattle visiting a friend when we wandered past a game store with SotM in the window. My friend went off to do something, so to pass the time I looked it up on BGG on my phone and it got good reviews so I resolved to pick it up at my local game store when I got home. Turns out, I couldn’t get it at my local game store because it was still so new and you could only get it from the web site at that point (the Seattle game store must have picked up copies from the designers directly, since I think PAX had happened the weekend before).
In any case, the fact that I had idly wanted to check it out but then couldn’t check it out meant that now I HAD to check it out. So I ordered a copy online and have loved it ever since.
A friend at game night had asked for the game as a Christmas present. Turns out his friends/family aren’t good at communication and he got two copies. He brought it to game night and we played it. The next day I asked him what he was going to do with his extra copy…
…which is now mine. And, amusingly, will probably also wind up being a gift for someone down the line once EE comes along to replace it.
I run events for Fantasy Flight Games at GenCon. This has some great advantages, but a minor disadvantage is I don’t get to spend the same amount of time in the dealer room as I did in the past. I count on my friends to keep me informed of the booths to check out. Not one of them mentioned SOTM to me, however one of the players in my events mentioned to me that there was this neat game called SOTM. He said it was fun and so on Sunday after my event commitments were done I had some small time to wander the hall. I saw the SOTM booth and was able to get in a demo. So, I’m horrible with names, but the person running the demo was somebody’s wife(I’m soooo sorry I can’t remember your name) and I played with one other new person and a 3rd player sat down who had played earlier.
I got to play Bunker and I had a blast. Here was the key: “The demo woman was single handedly the best demo person(male or female) I have ever had at GenCon” She was enthusiastic, knew how to play, and made the demo experience great.
Insert Rant: It amazes me on a yearly basis the amount of poor demo people GenCon has. I mean these people are there to promote games and whether it is rudeness, little knowledge of what their teaching, just not seeming to care, or something else many, many sales are lost. If you are going to goto a con and show your game, please, please make sure the people you have running the demos are competent I once had a demo person who was actually pretty decent and after the demo was over I told one of the other gamers in my group that they should buy the game. He listened to me and a few days later we played. The game was not that great. Come to find out the demo person did not teach us the rules of the game at all. I’m not sure if he made them up or maybe if it was the rules from an earlier version, but he definitely didn’t teach us the real rules…
Exit Rant(Sorry about that):
So, after play I was hooked. One minor problem. The GenCon game budget was gone. I mean it was Sunday. I was tapped out. I spoke to guys to see if they would be interested in any FFG product(hoping I would use the credit I had earned there) in exchange , but no one took the bait. So I left GenCon with no SOTM…
And all my friends heard about it. I’m sure they were like “Shut up about it already!”, but they were nice. Then one day at work a buddy of mine called me at work to say he was on lunch and stopped at a game store. “What was the name of that game you’ve been talking about?” “Sentinels of the Multiverse?” “They got a copy here, you want me to grab it for you?”
Having gotten more into gaming outside of the basic household ‘family’ games (Monopoly, Clue, Scrabble and so forth) I’m definitely gathering the impression that I need to find a local convention, gameshop or comic book store and acquaint myself with more gamers. Sadly they’re fewer in the UK than they seem to be in the USA, unless I want to travel to London or somewhere… :-\
I saw it on a list of great Christmas gifts on The Escapist. The folks got it for me for Christmas. A few days later, I found out the store I had worked at for four years (my first and only job) was closing down and I was gonna be laid off. Happy New Year! So, I called up two of my best friends and just said “Guys…I feel pretty crappy. Can we just try this new game out and have some fun so I don’t have to think about this?” We played Baron Blade in Megalopolis with Tempest (me), Bunker (friend), and Fanatic (other friend). We won and had a lot of fun doing it! We played a few more games that night and a couple of times that week. After that, we started exposing our friends to it. I now have a Sentinels group that roughly consists of ten to fifteen people. It is rare that we play the game with less than four players!
Fast forward to now: I’m $225 poorer, playtesting Infernal Relics, and eagerly awaiting my crate filled with SotM IR swag!
Pretty much exactly the same thing happened to me a couple of years back. I worked for Borders Books UK (which split from the US company a few years before that) and we got news the company was collapsing - right before christmas 2009.
Luckily I jumped ship in time to get a christmas temp job at another bookstore. Ended up working there for another six months before I moved away…
You might want to check on http://www.meetup.com. I don’t know if there’s a board game group near you, but it’s a good place to find out. And if you do suffer from insanity and make it up to London drop by the Red Herring Pub on Good Street (near St Pauls) Tuesday or Wednesday evening and you’ll find a lot of gamers to play pretty much anything you like with (London on Board on meetup, just for info). Me and my copy of SotM will almost certainly be there.
And to answer the qusestion, I can’t remember where I got it. I’m pretty sure I happened to see somethiong on BGG and that sparked my interest but I can’t remember where I bought it from, or my first game. But it’s definitely my favourite game right now. Well, I say answer the question but that really doesn’t answer it, does it?
Ahahaha, tbh I need an excuse to visit London more often, I only live in Brighton, just don’t have the money to travel as much as I’d like. Cheers for the heads-up though, I’ll definitely drop by if I get the chance ;D
I remember my first time… Playing SotM of course. I went to my local game shop after a year hiatus and was really looking for a game that would bring me back to card games. There were still the classic MtG tcg and Yugi stuff but I wanted something more, something new and fun. I then turn and there behold I saw the SotM box. I will say the art was the thing to first catch my eye then the theam. So I asked so many questions that they just ended up demoing it for my friend and I and it was love at first sight.
I chance upon the title Sentinels of the Multiverse because someone used it to create a forum thread in another forum that I frequent. The name caught my attention. I look it up at BGG, saw Tom Vasel’s and Jeremy Salina’s video reviews and right away knew that it’s going to be a sleeper hit! I bought it right away, and even convinced a friend to buy his own copy before I had even played my first game.
I missed one of Richard Launius’ game days and was jealously reading a geek list from someone who was there. Launius liked it, and Frank Branham thought it was okay. I loved the fixed deck concept and bought it for a friend and i to play at lunch. We developed an each player takes two turns each round variant but found the game was a bit easy because of this. It wouldn’t work with the H mechanic at all. I loved it and he thought it was okay. Strange how that goes. He and I both love magic (cheap EDH/Commander magic) but it didn’t have the same impact for him.
So now I am in Sacramento instead of Alpharetta with one night a week to game and it doesn’t hit the table as much as I would like and I can tell you why: all of my sleeved cards are in a Thunderstone box so nobody sees it for what it is. >G advertising would go through the roof if only I had a box that fit my game. :
I was at PAX East 2012. Was invited last minute. LOng story short, I only went because my brother wanted to go, and for silly reasons, he couldn’t go If I didn’t.
After seeing the Panel I wanted to see I just wandered around. I saw Sentinels. Thought:
Super-heroes? Check
Co-op? Check
Cool Art? Check
? ? ? Check?
Profit for >G
I then bought the game, the expansion and helped their kickstarter.
and also by introducing myself.
