Skinwalker Gloomy in The Temple of Anubis was a 4 HOUR GAME!

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1

I'm just going to open with the fact that this was by far the longest game of Sentinels I've ever played. And hopefully will EVER PLAY!

I introduced a set of new players to Sentinels earlier last night, and we played a quick game that we all thought went rather quickly. So one of the members in my group asked if we could play a villain I've never played before, so that it would be fair for all of us. Well, the only one left was Skinwalker Gloomweaver. We randomly picked an environment, and it was the Tomb of Anubis. "OK," I thought, "we got this."

I drafted Argent Adept, and they all claimed Chrono Ranger, Omnitron X, and the Savage Haka. I thought all of our bases were covered, and we started. At 10 PM.

I know that these were new players, but they all played really well. (I think the fact that they were all competitive MTG players helped.)

The 4 player game didn't end until 20 after 2 AM. Between the bad card draws, the appearance and destruciton of at least 12 Relics, healing and damage reducing cultists, and Mummys that kept allowing the villain to play more and more cards, it was a boarderline nightmare.

We ended up winning by the skin of our teeth. Argent Adept had all 6 instruments out and 7 diffent sets of perform and accompany cards. Omnitron X never took more than 5 damage in one round due to prodigal use of his platings, and Haka never managed to find a single copy of Savage Mana. Chrono Ranger ended up incappacitated about a half an hour before winning.

But the best part is, after all was said and done, they couldn't wait to play another game. I told my group I wouldn't be able to be back at the shop for a couple of weeks, and they all let out a collective groan of disappointment. They really enjoyed the game. And I think it speaks volumes of the immersive value of the game that we all wanted to keep playing, even after 2 games at 2:30 in the morning. If I didn't have a 40 minute drive back home ahead of me, I might have played a third round too.

tl;dr: This game is awesome, NEVER play Skinwalker gloomy in the Temple of Anubis, and even if the first couple of games play like complete opposites, the quality of the game speaks for itself for new players.

2

I've had a game take SIX hours, but that was playing solo and blogging about every turn after I played it.

Tomb of Anubis is one of the three hardest environments, I've found, but I'm curious as to the exact problem you had.  Also, never say "never"…lots of people will play whatever the randomizer gives them, and some of us rather like a challenge.

3

I don't tend to have too much trouble in the Tomb...but I can see it being tricky for a front-side Skinwalker Gloomy because of the way he plays a card when a target is destroyed (I think?), if you're blasting through the various targets in the deck.

The longest game I can recall having probably lasted about two hours or so, and was probably against Akash'Bhuta.

4

Yeah, that was a bit hasty. But I personally love the Tomb of Anubis. It's actually one of my favorite environments, along with Insula Primalis and Final Wasteland. I was more commenting on the combo of that version of Gloomy in the tomb.

As for the exact problem, I really don't know. Three new players were playing that game with me, and they never asked any questions about how any of the cards worked, so they might not have used something important. I never asked Haka if he had a copy Savage Mana, but I told him that some of those were in the deck... I just never saw any of them hit the table.

We spent most of the first hour trying to kill his relics the hard way until Argent Adept was able to destroy a couple by destroying any non-character card. So we killed at least 300 HP worth of villain targets just with the relics and Gloomy himself (Who was 150 over the whole game). Then whenever we killed a Mummy or a trial card, he ended up reshuffling his trash into his deck and played another cultist and another relic. The card that let him play the top 4 cards and then another villain card must have triggered at least 4 times that game.

I think we just fell for too many distractors without going for him directly. I normally try to clear the field of everything before I target the main villain, but that wasn't a viable strategy that game. And it cost us Chrono Ranger :(

5

What's the third? Is it MDP? I know Rook City is one of 'em, but the third was confusing.

6

I haven't played MDP.  The third is Time Cataclysm.  Main Computer Room gives the villain an extra card play, Marsquake and Sudden Shopping Trip are ruinous if the heroes are already getting beaten up as-is, and Fixed Point or Atlantean Throne Room can be a disaster if they come up at the wrong moment against a "kill me or I win" villain like Voss (or any villain with a comparable card in their deck, like La Capitan's ship or Matriarch's Cohorts).  Plus the Rifts in Time mean that it's basically a 13-card deck, so all of those potentially devastating cards show up more often than in any Environment that doesn't have two "play another card" cards (also found in Silver Gulch and on Mars).  Perhaps it's not inherently more dangerous than some other Environments, but it's the one I've learned to fear.  (I also dislike it for not making flavor sense, but that's a separate objection.)

7

I've never really had too much of a difficult time with Time cataclysm, (see what I did there?) but then again, I've also never had too much of a problem with Rook City. Tomb of Anubis is definitely hardest IMO.

8

My loss percentage in Rook City has a lot to do with my habit of pursuing an extremely dangerous strategy - when Toxic Sludge comes out, I tend to look at it and go "hey, the villain is beating me down to low HP anyway, why don't I let this hurt me even more, so that once I'm down below 5 HP it'll just hurt the villain"?  It has sometimes looked like it was going to work out, but then the villain gets the relatively-unlikely card play they need to wipe out my already-weak heroes.  I should totally try it with Legacy sometime though - Danger Sense + Lead from the Front would mean that his 4-HP teammates would be just about invincible.

9

Facepalm

10

It seemed like a good idea at the time....one of the heroes involved was Nightmist, who very often stabilizes at about 3 HP and is invincible thereafter.  I think another time The Scholar was involved, his healing is so amazing that it seemed like an acceptible risk.

11

Also, you can't Lead From The Front environment damage. Only villain damage.

12

He was refering to Lead From the Front in the context to redirecting Villain damage to Legacy, thus saving them from death. While Danger Sense will allow Legacy to be above 5 Hitpoints and ignore the Toxic Sludge damage that he would recieve.

13

Wanna what else works great? Wraith getting all three copies of Mega Computer into play, then Fixer with Riveting Crane hitting the villain.

14

Yeah, what Ronway said, McBehrer.

Hm!  I would not have thought of that.  Thanks.  (The way my brain works, I always think of Mega Computer as preventing the damage from being dealt, rather than preventing it from being received; I would probably have stared at the cards for dozens of games without ever noticing this interaction.)

15

Here's another one, just in case it was missed aswell. Riveting Crane also works great when Haka has Punish the Weak and won't be able to K.O. the lowest non-hero target.

16

That one I might have caught.  Hard to say.  Thanks for the heads-up anyway.  I need to stop classifying reduction instances as "invisible" when they're "baked in" to the game, rather than existing purely for their own sake.

17

Or when Mr. Smartypants The Scholar plays Alchemical redirection and Adept is planning to let him play Expect the Worst, so you smack him a good one in between and then laugh maniacally as he dies, Horribly.

(This did happen, and it was really funny.  Either that or we should have stopped playing Sentinels at 3am.)

18

Would that be where you got the idea of doing our PVP game, Phanta?

19

I am really grateful that you played, but I knew (and you admitted at the time) that you would be annyoned by the finicky nature of the game.

The PVP game was a very early plot device to merge the storyline we are in, and the one where Baron Blade destroys the Earth and the heroes, Omnitron and Chrono-Ranger escape a time-correcting wave by travelling into the past, and then get to try and figure out what went wrong.  They wrongly interpret some info and come to belive it was Legacy, not Blade who caused the destruction and with limited access points to the past go after his dad.

The ridiculousness of Bunkers incap and the inclusion of Adept (worst PVP hero ever) were huge oversights on my part.

20

To be clear, I wasn't getting on your case about it or anything, it was just an honest question as to the source of your inspiration.  You're right that I didn't like the game, but I went into it with my eyes open, knowing I probably wouldn't like it - it was an excuse to play Omnitron-X, and I regret nothing on that basis.