A few years ago I was a bit despondent at the thought that Sentinels of the Multiverse's story would end and there would be no new decks.
Now, though, I continue to be amazed by the depths of replayability of this game. I've not played as much or know the decks as well as many on this site, but I certainly have played a lot and know a lot. Still, there's a ton that I don't know. I am following the discussions of the Darkwatch team with a lot of interest. Not only do I not know the Darkwatch variants as well as the original, I hardly know Setback at all, and there are depths to the others I haven't considered.
I played Naturalist last night. Yes, I've played that deck before, but not many times. I sat in Gazelle form the whole game with Allies of the Earth in play. Some might think that boring, but it enabled me to watch what all the other decks were doing. Still tons of fun and I really enjoyed contributing in that way. In that same game The Sentinels ended up getting out all of their Signatures while also being boosted by a couple of Captain Cosmic's constructs. They did all the things! It was great.
Why, exactly, the Naturalist was a friend to the Thorathian military isn't entirely clear, but there's another depth to the game that I haven't fully explored. Yes, I know a bunch of the story. Yes, I'm very curious about the story. But there's tons of released information I haven't gotten around to reading and grokking in depth, much less all the unreleased story, and on top of that, I've historically been so much more focused on gameplay than on story that there's still a great amount of opportunity for me to have fun thinking about the story of what's happening in these games -- another way to enjoy the same games that I've played before in a new way.
I imagine I'm preaching to the choir with all of this, but just felt like sharing my excitement at many years to come of playing this game, even if there is no more planned content.
I think the only time this game that has left me uninterested in playing for a while is the setup in Ridiculous Challenge Time posted by Peter Hayward. Other than that it's certainly been a game that has kept my interest much longer than I ever would have thought. It's the combination of mechanics and story behind that keep me wanting to play.
Something I’ve been doing lately as part of my competition between hero teams has been playing the same game on repeat until winning (ridiculous challenge time had been my only time playing this way prior to this). It’s a pretty interesting way to play as after awhile you start to develop strategy around the specific scenario and it’s pretty cool when you finally manage to win a really tough game.
Anyway I guess my point is that not only is there a hilariously large number of potential unique games you can set up but even the same exact scenario played on repeat is pretty fun… this creates a ton of replayability.
I'm impressed with how many extra hours I've spent on the challenges lately. I've abandoned the one-shots because it's impossible to retry for a mint, and I've already failed more mints than I care to admit. However, with the release of DW Setback and his unlock conditions, we've been given an achievement to overcome. Let alone figuring out how to unlock the variant to begin with. Thanks to some pointers from the community, I've figured out how to weather the city of crime and pain. And tears.
Previously, I've just hit the "unlock" button on the other variants just to be able to play them right away, but I've gone back and actually attempted to fulfill their conditions as well. The ones involving Spite are...not fun. But it gives me something to tinker with for a while. I can't wait for the stretch goal to be fulfilled, where we get the digital version of Villains: Challenge Mode. I've already done most of them with my gaming group, but this will be a lot easier to document.
Heh, I'm not even that interested in superheroes and yet Sentinels is one of my favourite non-computer games. One of the main reasons for this is probably the ridiculous level of replayability, though the fact that it's co-operative is probably the other main reason. I suppose it will be kind of sad when the last decks are finally released, but I'm sure we'll have many more years' worth of games to play even without adding in fan-made content such as the Cauldron :D.
There’s so much content in Sentinels already that there are lots of emergent interactions to discover. For instance, I just realized that Dark Watch Mister Fixer would combo up well with KNYFE, beggars destroying her equipment with Bitter Strike would give her off-turn power uses and card plays.
That emergent stuff, coming from the huge variety of different hero mechanics and combinations of teams, really adds to the replayability!
Dark Watch Fixer works really well with Omnitron-U as well. With as much deck searching and drawing he has, it's quite easy to get what you want quickly, and recylce with Reset.