I have a date on Sunday morning to play SotM with my eleven year old nephew over Skype.
That’s awesome! You should post how that goes, I’m curious 
Me too! We are very interested in how our game plays among younger demographics. We have playtested it with the children of various friends, and it seems to go well, but more data is always good.
A few very young children played at GenCon also and picked it up very quickly. I’m excited to know how it goes.
Will let you know. Nephew Eric is VERY sharp, but tends to lose interest when he doesn’t think he can win.
I have a nine year old sister who I would frequently play with, and she very much enjoys playing. There are a few times that she may not know what exactly the benefits of using a card are, so she tends to not use it, such as Fanatic deals herself damge, she doesn’t want to get hurt so she never will use it. So there are some bans of her not using characters, Fanatic, Abosolute Zero, and The Visionary are the three as of right now.
The game went very well.
I was playing with my sister (Deb), her 11-year-old (Eric), and another 11-year-old boy (Avi). I played Visionary. The boys played Legacy and Ra. My sister played Tachyon. We defeated Voss in Atlantis on normal mode, though not before Visionary was knocked out. Forced Deployment was the first card, which lead to a lot of damage early on.
Age didn’t seem to be a significant factor – the boys were able to understand the game with little more trouble than someone older, I think. Note, however, that they are both very smart. Having gaming experience with such things as hit points, turn phases, and using powers makes a big difference for the learning curve, but this is true regardless of age.
For some reason, they played with their Hand face up on the table, which occasionally caused confusion about the difference between a card in hand versus a card in play.
Comments about using Skype, strategy, protecting cards, and a rules question will go into four other threads …
Everybody had fun and even my sister, who’s not in to games, is looking forward to playing again.
This is how I always play, it just seems to work better for me. I could see how it might cause confusion. With children you may try putting some sort of object between the cards “in their hand” and the cards in play… like a straw/pencil just for a visual reference.
The advantage of showing the cards that I have found is that you can easily ask others for advice, ask what a card does, and discuss strategy options (not like these things can’t be done without showing your cards, just my personal preference when I play)
If I sit my hand down and usually it face up as well, but it is behind my deck and cards in play are infront, so that acts as a barrier between the two.