That’s correct, everything else listed under ‘Add-Ons’ is part of the $200 ‘Sentinel’ level but not the $100 ‘Hero’ level.
I actually only watched the playthrough to the end of the first turn, but I really liked what I saw. The big changes I see from my admitted one play of Defenders is giving characters stats rather than making each type of minion take a certain roll to defeat, and making the 'generals' (villains and mastermind) a bit less of a threat overall. I like both of these!
I'm pretty excited for this. :)
They were having lots of fun, but it didn’t look like they were making super-great decisions. For instance, they went up and took a swing at Ambuscade at a point that was not set up for success.
That’s part of it. It’s session 1. Your’e learning the game. There’s no cushion for “I’m not making the best decision every turn”.
I hope that as more information and videos come out, I’ll have my mind changed about this game. But for now, I don;t see this hitting the table that often with my gaming group, and this not worth the Mega Ultra Upgrades to me.
Me being the big lore person I am, I dug into the Tabletopia promo to get a feel for the flavor and art bits, and. You guys. AZ's personal tasks are the best. And by "best" I mean "hilarious".
You are correct. :D
Personally I like losing on my first attempt at a solo game; I also find the intro game for Sentinels of the Multiverse too easy for me. But of course tastes differ. (And a superhero game should thematically have a higher win rate than many solo games.)
I was worried about this. When the game was announced, I played Defenders of the Realm on TTS with my friends. We lost. More importantly, afterwards we couldn’t think of what we could have done differently that would have resulted in a win.
We took on the bosses as soon as we felt like we had a decent chance to win, and we only barely did, so we felt like we called that well. We took out the dragon pretty early, but by the time we took on the orc, all three remaining villains were just a couple of spaces away from the city, and the demon got there quickly thereafter.
This wasn’t like Spirit Island, where was also lost our first game, but afterwards we realized some of the planning mistakes we made, and there were options for making things easier than default, so we were hype for a rematch. This was just straight-up discouraging.
Having just played the game for two hours, I can mirror this exact sentiment. We knocked out one villain, but by the time we felt comfortable going after a second, the game was basically over. The group wasn’t sure what we would have done differently to change the outcome, given the first question was ‘okay, what should we have done in the first place?’ One player also said they would much prefer a digital version (a-la Handelabra) that would help with bookkeeping while letting the players focus on playing the game, but would probably not play this game physically.
I still hold my opinion on variability and replay. With the current stretch goals, we would need to at least double the current funding to consider the prospect of a new mastermind, if that’s even on the table. While there are 8 villains, the color variety means you’ll keep seeing the same one or two tech, brawn, mind, or spirit villains. I feel after two or three games, it’s going to feel repetitive with few knobs to turn to adjust that. (To me, my comparison would be if you bought the Vengeance expansion of Sentinels and tried to keep playing games with just that content.)
Comparing the $50 version to Spirit Island, which right out of the gate provided a ton of replay value, I don’t see the value prospect on this one. Doubling (or Quadrupling) that price for some bells and whistles also misses the mark.
Thanks for your thoughts, they are helpful to me.
They have revealed this: new mastermind at $300K. Current funding is $183K, it seems likely they’ll hit it since they just yesterday announced more minis for those into that kind of thing.
Also, I thought they said there will be multiple scenarios to play against Blade, and each will play differently, so the scenarios will provide that high-level replayability.
Based on my first game, those scenarios would have to shake up a lot between sessions to get the replayability you're talking about. Not saying it won't, just watching with a cautious eye.
(I missed the new mastermind at 300k when I posted earlier, since it wasn't in the KS update, but was added to the overview. That should help some.)
And based on blurry art, the new Mastermind should be Miss Information.
DIsappointed in the sexualization of the female characters, to be honest. :-( But the quality of the art is amazing, other than that.
Good news, everyone! One of the playthroughs managed to beat the first scenario.
Tantrum House Playthrough with Richard Launius
Bad news is, even with the designer there, rules got overlooked and forgotten a few times, including by Launius himself. Means it's a tad complicated to keep track of.
So it's like playing Sentinels. XD
Ha!
I see they are very nearly at the second mastermind.
Is it just me, or are the figures almost *too* big? They're probably three times as tall as the Tactics minis. Regardless, the value proposition does look better with all the villains as figures, too, and with the second mastermind and additional scenarios coming up.
Are any of the videos actually reviews of the game, or are they just previews of the content and mechanics? I've seen a few presenters give impressions of the game - generally sounds like it does a good job marrying gameplay and theme, everybody loves playing Tachyon, and there was at least one comparison to Pandemic (a good thing) - but there's not too much about how it plays, how people like it, how much replay is there, do they think it will hit their table often, and stuff like that.
I have not yet made it through all the videos linked in the Kickstarter. I'm sure some are reviews, and not just playthroughs.
To be fair, considering this is an unusual case where you can get to see for yourself how the game plays before backing, the need for pre reviews is lessened because you can just decide for yourself from watching how it plays, if you/your group will like it, etc.
Does anyone else here think that Tachyon's Mind ability being a 4 is a tad unthematic? A Mind roll will only succeed 50% of the time for our master scientist/quick thinker? I mean it doesn't.bother me enough to not get the game, but it bothers me a bit. I feel like she should have the best Mind score of the Freedom Five. Probably too good/unbalanced to suggest it to be a 2 (lower is better, if you didn't know), but a 3 seems like it'd be more thematic.
Anyway, just wondered if it bothered any other Sentinels/Tachyon fans?