Questions about the team The Sentinels

Other Games SotM Game Engine
#41

No, that's what I said it should do, but it doesn't.  Plague Rat is not being listed as an example; it is the only thing mentioned.  No analogy is created between it and anything else.  No other scenarios are even acknowledged.  They could have done it in a single sentence, and didn't bother to.

If something affects "a hero" and the Sentinels is/are that hero, you can then choose which of them is the specific target who recieves the effect (whatever it is).

Again, that's certainly the apparent intent, but I don't think there's any excuse for them having not said it outright.  It's just like how they failed to mention shuffling decks in the EE rulebook; why would you leave such a fundamental detail unspoken, no matter how obvious it is?

#42

Well, I don't really see why you wouldn't shuffle a deck when it's run out of cards, otherwise you'd have to stop playing right there or something. But I think the hero/hero target thing has been clarified not just in the rulebook, but here on the forums as well. Maybe have a look in Spiff's rules clarification thingy as that contains everything that has been officially (ie, by someone from >G) stated with regards to resolving rules queries and stuff.

#43

Or you could just be stuck with whatever you have (I'm speaking in a general games context; it would work very poorly for SOTM in particular).  Shuffling decks when they run out is certainly not a meta-rule that all players of all card games will know to apply in all cases, so I do think it should have been mentioned.

#44

When I started playing, my play group thought that you didn't reshuffle, and that was part of the risk of playing Tachyon - she was really powerful and fast, but if you ran out of deck before you killed the villian you were hosed.  We hadn't seen the Matriarch or Akash'bhuta yet, who obviously require deck shuffling.

#45

My group did figure out we were supposed to re-shuffle, but it took a long while to actually find that rule in our rulebook (Enhanced Edition, newer printing) when we needed it, since it appears in a Quick Reference but not in the main rules sections.  I believe in Magic and various other games you actually lose outright if you need to draw and your deck is empty, and in Vs. System, I'm pretty sure nothing happened—unless you were playing the one team that had a strategy of depleting the opponent's deck and the card that let you win if their deck was empty.  So it's definitely reasonable for a new player to be confused about what they're supposed to do: re-shuffling, the heroes losing, and nothing-so-your-resources-are-limited-now are all possibilities from other games that folks may have played.  (At least based on the base set, since as jsz2 noted, some later villains like Akash'Bhuta help point players towards the answer.)

I've also got to agree with Edwin that the Sentinels entry in the Vengeance rulebook probably could have had a bit more information to help figure out unusual situations.  It notes that the player gets to decide what happens if it's ambiguous which character card is affected, but that doesn't actually explain how to handle cards that say they effect just "the hero."  It might be that this line was intended to convey something like "if something affects the hero as a whole, pick one Sentinels character card and apply that effect to just that character card," but I don't think it actually gets there.  First you have to know that the effect will apply to just one of the character cards before the language about ambiguity seems to apply, so I do wish there'd been a sentence explaining in general terms how to handle effects that impact just "the hero," or a clause added like Edwin suggested.  There is an example about Plague Rat, which is helpful, but it starts with "Note that Plague Rat's Infections interact with The Sentinels oddly."  If anything, that language is suggesting that the rule about Infections is not giving you a rule to follow generally, because it's talking about Infection as a strange interaction rather than as an example of how The Sentinels work generally.

 

By the time I came around, the reshuffle rule was in the book (again?), so while I agree it's important, I'm covered there.  Some of the rules about The Sentinels, though, I think we're all still figuring out and/or relying on forum consensus—the rules and official rulings we've seen before do leave gaps here and there that we're still filling in.

 

#46

This has probably been discussed before, but I just wanted a quick reference: since they all have the same nemesis symbol, does one member of The Sentinels deal extra damage when forced to damage another one?

#47

I would imagine so - any other targets on the same team who share a symbol (eg the Ennead) deal extra damage if forced to hit each other, so presumably the Sentinels have the same problem.

#48

When dealing with an ambiguous option, the player chooses, right?  So the Plague Rat sounds like a classic ambiguous situation.  Ergo, the player chooses what happens.  Also, the Sentinels get nemesis bonuses against each other.

#49

 

They shouldn’t. I remember Christoper saying that Nemesis bonuses were designed to work between decks; since The Sentinels share the same deck, they shouldn’t apply the bonus when dealing damage among themselves. But they apply between the four Void Guards and between The Sentinels and each Void Guard.

 

As for the general discussion about how The Sentinels work with effects that target only “a hero”, the ruling seems pretty clear to me: they are a SINGLE hero, but made up of four separate hero targets. When it’s not clear who the precise target of an effect is (just like when a card says “a hero” or “one hero”), the player gets to choose the specific hero target to be affected. So if a card deals damage to “a hero”, you choose which one of the 4 takes the damage; if an effect heals “one hero”, you choose which one of the four gets the healing.

#50

Each individual character of the Sentinels is a nemesis to each other much like Ennead members.  The rules clarifications for them from MigrantP and Christopher Fireside chats are compiled here:

https://sentinelswiki.com/index.php?title=Sentinels/Clarifications

#51

Yes, the Sentinels get a Nemesis bonus against each other like the aforementioned Ennead, and also like the Chairman and the Operative. A Nemesis bonus applies between different targets, not different decks.

You're right about the Sentinels counting as one hero with four hero targets, however - I'm pretty sure this is mainly for the purposes of Plague Rat's Infections.

Also, just realised this thread has just been awoken since 2014 :O.

#52

Also, the OblivAeon heroes share Nemesis icon too

#53

Yay!! I’m the dead threads awakener!!  :stuck_out_tongue:

As for this clarification:

  • The Sentinels' setup card works like the Ennead setup card in that it is a ghost card; it does not count as a card in play and nothing else can affect it.
It’s definitely been changed from the Vengeance rulebook, where it clearly says that The Sentinels start the game with FIVE cards in play.

About the Nemesis bonus, I’m pretty sure Christopher said “decks” during the somewhat recent Void Guard preview stream when asked if the Void Guards would get the nemesis bonus when dealing damage to one another; he said something about the nemesis bonus being envisioned to work between decks and so definitely it would work between the four Void Guards; but this would make it not work inside the Sentinels deck.

#54

It does and has been ruled to work against members of the Sentinels.  The only time nemesis bonus doesn’t apply is if the source the damage is dealing damage to itself.  

#55

Yes, decks with multiple targets are basically exceptions to the rule - since the Ennead and the Chairman/Operative get a bonus against each other, so do the Sentinels. And if any of the group villain decks share any Nemesis symbols within the same deck, they will too (but I haven't fought any of them enough to know if this is the case).

#56

I didn't see this noted in the thread: in the video game, you can mix and match the Sentinels with their Adamant counterparts when they are deployed (so I assume that's part of the tabletop rules). It's easy to do when they replace a hero in OblivAeon mode, but a little tricky otherwise - you have to slot them in the hero section, click on them in turn, and press the variant buttons as needed.