Hey guys,
Just thought I’d share the review I wrote for the game over on BGG (it should be posted soon).
[i]So I’m going to give away what I thought of the game at the beginning, then tell you why. I LOVED IT. Or, perhaps even better than that, my wife and I BOTH loved it.
The Gamer’s Perspective
So, I’m a gamer. This means I like games. I spend time looking for new games, follow designers, and of course, have a healthy collection of board games. This game is the first game since Summoner Wars that I just read the rules and knew this was a cool game.
It was even better when I got it. No matter how nifty it looks online, it looks way better in person. The card art is simply spectacular. In terms of quality, the card stock is slightly better than Magic cards, but it’s not nearly as hearty as FFG’s version of Citadel’s cards either. And yes, as other reviewers mentioned, there is no life tracker included. We used a combination of post-it notes and Summoner Wars wound counters, that wasn’t so bad. I would like to see some nice cardboard wound markers in 1, 5, and 10 made for this game. However, I don’t think this is a criticism, I appreciate the design decision to stuff the gamebox with as many decks as possible and not spending money on counters to jack up the price (I’m looking at you Fantasy Flight!).
The game has a great and very strong theme. It’s super easy to teach. It is a highly text based game, so light on rules, but heavy on card reading. I prefer that though, I’m not a fan of symbols in games, so this works for me. If you hate words or co-op games, this one is not for you.
We played through about two rounds in the space of about 2 hours, so the playtime is reasonable, even on the first time, and the game definitely doesn’t lag. Since it’s just the two of us, our initial game I used two characters and my wife used one, so we did Tachyon with Bunker and Tempest against Baron Blade in the Ruins of Atlantis. We got beat bad that game, Tempest went down early and was just doing his support action. Oh yeah, when a hero’s down, he’s not out, and sometimes, his ability is pretty freaking awesome, even if he isn’t actively doing damage. One of Tempest’s abilities when down is to make all heroes immune to a damage type of his choice. He kept us in the game for a little longer, but ultimately we at one point were dealing with a super-villain in robotic armor, his minions, and a pair of giant kraken attacking us. Yeah, we lost that one. And yes, that’s right, the Ruins of Atlantis have kraken, and they are not nice.
So, we had so much fun (even though we lost!), that we decided to play another round. My wife felt confident enough to go ahead and play two characters too. So, this time, we matched up against Baron Blade with Tempest, Legacy, Tachyon, and Fanatic in Insula Primaris (aka Jurassic Park). This game was fascinating, it felt completely different from the first, the Baron got different cards out that were more annoying, but he was unable to prevail against the damage increases that Legacy gave to his squad. We beat him pretty handily, but he wasn’t getting as many high damage cards this time, and Tempest/Fanatic smashed pretty much anything that came out in play.
I know I already mentioned the theme, but this game seriously made me feel like a little kid again, watching Spiderman duke it out with vampires, the Green Goblin, and more. Playing this game felt like watch a classic Saturday morning superhero cartoon. That’s a really good thing for me. Full disclosure: I’m not exactly a Eurogamer. I don’t do farm games. If you only like sophisticated mathematical farm games, I’m pretty sure this game is not for you.
The Gamer’s Wife’s perspective
Now, my wife is not a gamer, she games because she married me. She doesn’t like super complex rulebooks, she doesn’t read the rules, she wants me to teach them. She also has real issues with analysis paralysis, you give her too many options with no guidance and she stops enjoying the game, it becomes too much like work.
She loved this game. It presents just the right amount of options, the rules were intuitive, the cards made sense. The kick butt women heroes actually wearing clothes were nice too. She especially loved that this is a family friendly game, you could easily play this with kids no problem (as long as they’re old enough to read)! She was already talking this morning about playing it again on Friday. Games definitely do not usually have that effect on her.
Overall, this game is a nice break for us too. We’re both really competitive and like to win. That means sometime we enjoy a super-competitve game like Yomi or Summoner Wars, but during a busy work week, we’ll go to Sentinels first, because we work together and don’t have to feel bad if we beat each other.
Who Will Like this Game: “Casual” gamers, people who love co-op games, superhero fans (come on, who isn’t?), people who like more narrative style games
Who Won’t Like this Game: high complexity gamers (i.e. if you only like games with a 30+ page rulebook), people who like 3+ hour long games, people who only like high competitive games, people who don’t like co-op games (although they should still give it a try, because it’s awesome)
So, what are you waiting for? Go pick up a copy for yourself. You can get one at http://greaterthangames.info/[/i]
