Universe Games on Lake Street and Bryant Avenue is my suggested venue for games of Sentinels in the Twin Cities. There are probably better venues, certainly bigger ones, but I for one have a much harder time reaching them due to my lack of a car.
Having never been to Universe, I cannot speak to its size.
But if transportation ever isn't an issue, The Source off of Snelling in Roseville is pretty gigantic with plenty of space and tables. I'm certainly flexible though and am mostly free on weekends, though occasionally have a weeknight free.
The Source is big, yes, but it's a long way out for me. Tower Games is in between in both counts. But Universe is the one I know, and they have enough room for one game of Sentinels on all but their busiest days. Let me know exactly when you'd like to meet. I'm still unemployed so I have basically nothing to do with my time, except on Friday nights.
So, you had mentioned something called GPS for this coming Saturday? I have no idea what GPS stands for (obviously, Google searching "GPS" is going to get a ton of results) but is it located at Universe Games?
Either way, Saturday is iffy at the moment because I have a few friends crashing at my place for the weekend while they're in-town. But if this is something that happens weekly/often, I'd definitely like to check it out in the future. I only know a handful of people who play Sentinels regularly, and I don't get to see them that often, so I'd be stoked to play with other Minneapolis Sentinel fans.
GPS is the Geek Partnership Society, the people who run Convergence (or at least used to; I think they've…diverged). They have at least three rooms rented in the Waterbury building in Nord'east, which they proudly proclaim to be the "world's only geek community center". They have an all-day gameathon about twice a month, and several of the people there are into Sentinels.
No way! The Waterbury building in Northeast? That's basically minutes away from my house.
Awesome. Well, as I said, Saturday is iffy because of impending company that are probably crashing for the weekend, but I'll definitely look forward to that in the future.
I'm in Bloomington, but have car will travel. FFG Event Center is my favorite game space, but it's definitely not the closest. I happily run things at my home in Bloomington and also at my wife's super-geeky company The Nerdery, which has dry-erase tables (a huge boon to keeping track of life values!)
I'd love to get a regular game group going for SotM!
DanMarshall14 and I met up, along with my wife, and two of my friends, to play a 5-man SOTM pair of games last night.
This will be an every-other-week meet-up at FFG (Fantasy Flight Games) Event Center in Roseville on Wednesdays at around 6:00PM.
Game 1:
VILLAIN: Progeny
ENVIRONMENT: Insula Primalis
PLAYER 1 [DAN]: The Scholar
PLAYER 2 [LYNN]: Sky-Scraper
PLAYER 3 [ANDY]: G.I. Bunker
PLAYER 4 [ME, BOWIE]: Captain Cosmic
PLAYER 5 (eventually) [RON]: Ra
We started with four players, Ra had overslept for the meetup.
Very quickly, it became self-evident that Progeny was a real jackass. He tore through us like paper, piling on damage against all hope, comboing his Scions in such a way as to really neutralize us. None of us could find a card-destruction asset in our decks to save our lives, and we were (mostly) miserably slaughtered before any of us even got our combos going. Sky-Scraper and The Scholar held their own for a while, and Sky-Scraper made some BIG (and small!) moves, but ultimately she was decimated by the Scions of Progeny as well. Then, it was just the Scholar versus all comers, but by the time we all died, he had gotten a good regeneration cycle playing out and he was able to heal up while dishing damage as his primary action, and all three of us dead heroes were giving Use Power actions to him, which allowed the cycle to spiral wildly out of Progeny's ability to stop it.
Around 26 life left for Progeny, our fifth (Ron) finally showed up. We all sensed the end and were watching Dan play SuperSolitaire as The Scholar, so we allowed him to jump in as Unconscious Ra to give Dan a fourth Use Power boost just to speed up the inevitable demise of Progeny. Then, on a lark, I started stacking the villain deck to at least make it interesting. Ultimately, the Scholar was about to bring Progeny to one hit point...
And then Velociraptors played from Insula Primalis. Clever girl. Death blow to Velociraptors!
Game 2:
VILLAIN: Gloomweaver [Advanced]
ENVIRONMENT: Freedom Tower
PLAYER 1 [BOWIE]: Captain Cosmic
PLAYER 2 [RON]: Ra
PLAYER 3 [ANDY]: G.I. Bunker
PLAYER 4 [LYNN]: The Naturalist
PLAYER 5 [DAN]: Ex-Patriette
Andy and I chose to replay our same decks, since we both were taken out before we got to feel out our decks. And everyone else grabbed heroes as assigned by my SotM randomizer... and then saw the villain, which made a few grumble due to his Advanced immunities.
This actually looked pretty unfortunate-ish, at least as much as Gloomweaver attacking Freedom Tower with his zombies (what is he thinking?!) can be. The zombies, as well as Cultists, all did ridiculous H-damage with five of us. In addition, being immune to Projectiles and Melee neutered Naturalist, Ex-Patriette and G.I. Bunker, leaving Ra and Captain Cosmic as the true heavies and Bunks, Nat and ExPat having to do gymnastics to be able to deal damage.
And then Ra on his second turn changed all Hero damage to Fire, and Fire Damage to +1. Welp, that trivialized matters.
Between Ra's boosts, Freedom Tower only playing beneficial cards, and Captain Cosmic laying down every single conditional event in the world, damage rained from the cosmos and burned everything into ash. It was a brisk and painful experience for Gloomweaver, who was practically impotent the entire fight, playing cards that were instantly destroyed and otherwise doing a whole lot of not-much. We put that zombie in the ground!
Kill Shot: G.I. Bunker + Captain Cosmic + Ex-Patriette combo as Bunker plinked a Captain Cosmic Construct that allowed Ex-Patriette to use a power, letting Ex-Patriette play Pride and subsequent Prejudice, taking out the boss with two-gun mojo.
A good time was had by all. Can't wait for the next meetup! Dan and I also discussed how much a SotM RPG is going to be something we HAVE to do!
Glad to hear you got together and had fun.
Awesome write up, eviltoon! I can confirm that Progeny is a real jerk. Luckily for our heroes, the Scholar's Little Engine that CouldKickAss was chugging along too quickly for Progeny to keep up. I did feel pretty guilty that the game turned into me playing Scholar Solitaire (Scholitaire?!), but hey, at least we can mark another W on the score board. I cannot wait for the next mini-expansion for the Sentinels video game so I can play Scholar more often. My girlfriend loves Sentinels, but the digital version is so quick and easy that we rarely play the physical copy anymore, so it was great to actually get Sentinels on the table.
I also told my girlfriend all about our meetup and she said she'd love to join us next time.
And the Sentinels RPG hype is real. I can't wait to learn all about it from Gen Con coverage. I'm plenty curious about the system they're creating/implementing for it and how they plan on balancing the heroes. A Minneapolis Sentinels RPG session will definitely be happening.
Looking forward to our next meet up!
Next meetup will be at The Nerdery in Bloomington, my wife's work.
We will do a four or five top again. Andy is in, but my wife might be out.
If anyone wants to join in, message Dan or me!