Any ideas? We played pretty heavily for a while during the first part of 2013. I still love the game and look for any opportunity to play. The others in my group, while they enjoy the game, have become burnt out on it and no longer wish to play. With Vengeance on the way I'm getting excited to play again, but how can I reignite their interest in playing it?
Some might disagree with me on this, but I'd recommend taking a break from it. Play another game for a little while, bide you time - THEN GET VENGENCE! When you get Vengence it feel all fresh and fun again for them, don't worry.
I agree; you don't want them to get burnt out on the game again before Vengence.
I was basically going to say what has been said. When was the last time your group played? If you've played recently, I'd give it a break, but if it's been a few months:
I'd suggest maybe getting together a week before Vengeance or so to play 1 or 2 games. This might rekindle the fire a little, then mention "Oh yeah, a Mega-Expansion for this game will be out in a week or so. We should get together to try it out once I have it!"
What are they going to say? No!?! Psh. As if.
Plus that adds the excitement of discovering things together, since you'll all be new to it.
That's the problem. It's been several months. I need a SotM fix. We've played a lot of other games, but I keep thinking "Why aren't we playing Sentinels?"
You could play solo. (I recommend 3-hero games, but I know there are some proponents of some 2-hero variants around.) Yeah, it's not as much fun, but it does at least give you that opportunity to play.
Forum games are also an option. I would suggest letting your group have a break, then when Vengeance comes out press for a game, then hope for the best.
Solo games definitely are fun; they don't have as much satisfaction as a group of friends putting their heads together to take down a tough villain, but I still do solo games during the week so I can understand the hero/villain/environment decks better.
Bribe them.
"Pizza, brownies and soda at my house - but we ARE PLAYING SENTINELS!"
"I'm on a diet."
Play with us on G+!
But how can anyone be burnt out? Does not compute!
Hey, anything can get old if you push it hard enough. I've played just under a hundred games, and that's nowhere near enough to make me lose interest, but I can believe that if that number were to reach, say, one thousand, I'd want to stop, at least for several years. There just aren't enough different villains, environments, and heroes to reach that order-of-magnitude of replayability, at least not without a fairly prolonged delay.
I'm fairly certain I have played well over a thousand games within my 2 and half years of playing, and I have yet encountered a time where I am tired of playing Sentinels of the Multiverse. The complete opposite is actually true, I wish I had more time to play more.
Even though my group tends to play from about noon til midnight on Fridays it still doesn't seem enough time, glad I've also got Wednesdays now at Arsenal, may even start coming to the Tuesday meetings if I don't have anything planned.
I've almost certainly clocked more than 300 games in the 13 months I've had Sentinels (playing online means I get in more games than the "average" player), and like Ronway I'm nowhere near burnout. There has to be literally billions of different hero/villain/environment combinations, and even with the exact same setup you'll see different cards and a different game. Not to mention promos...
I believe randomising everything helps a lot. If you always play Haka or prefer to take Tempest every time you face Voss, you're more likely to get bored.
You can certainly try to pick a different way to set up the game--if you typically choose characters, go random. If you typically pick randomly, instead try to select thematic set-ups.
You can also try the campaign variants that people have created (boardgamegeek.com has some in their forums) where you play a linked series of games and success or failure affect future games. There are also variant heroes and villains to try (with some variation in quality).
Of course, you may have already done these things, in which case try another game for a while. Legendary is probably the best super-hero themed game (other than SOTM of course) right now. I recently picked up the Mage Knight board game and it's spectacular, but be ready for long games. Or check out some of the "modern classics" like Carcasonne, Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico, or Agricola.
Now I know everyone loves Settlers, but I want to say right now that I hate that game.
My recommendation for a non-Sentinels game for people who like Sentinels would probably be Flash Point: Fire Rescue. It's a co-op where you really have to work together to win, and it isn't as prone to alpha player syndrome (i.e. one experienced player controlling everyone) as say, Pandemic. Plus it has genuine tension and moments of both panic and relief.
Another good one is Betrayal at House on the Hill.
Today was a monthly gaming thing that pwaston, Ameena and I meet at, we spent 6 hours playing SotM and I played the same character all day*. I am not burnt out.
- I wanted to try and play the same character all day to see if it felt different each time I played, I picked a complexity 1 character for this experiment. I felt the first 2 games went the same way, I was looking for the same combination both times. While in later games I did get the same cards it was not always the best play to try and get 'teh uber combo' to go off and I played other cards. Despite playing a single hero all day I never felt underwhelmed by my choices and think I played every card in the deck at least once (by choice) during the course of the games. It was an interesting experiment but not one I feel I shall be repeating.
Not saying which hero?