Saw this review and BGG, and I thought the thoughts ( 
) on fiddliness were intereting.
I think the idea behind fiddly is a combination of tracking things and some of the luck involved. Basically all players need to keep in mind what is in play and how it affects everything else. Like you said if you find it too fiddly then you are doing something wrong or just can't keep track of things.
I love the game, but sometimes it can get too fiddly and We miss things thanks to allllll the stuff happening.
If that's the case, then slow down. That seems to be the primary reason things get missed.
"First I'm gonna... Then, I'm gonna..."
"Hey! Mind if we finish your first before we go on to whatever else?"
I did find it funny all the sound effects the guy did in his video review as he dealt damage with Grevious Hailstorm
I think that the game can be more or less "fiddly" depending on who you're playing. For example Kaagra Warfang or Wager Master require signifigantly more monitering than somebody like The Chairman or Citizen Dawn. And those require more upkeep than someone like Plaugue Rat, who is fairly strait forward. So I can see what he's saying, and there are a lot of times where the Villian can really slow down the gameplay
I don't know why people even bother to disupte that the game is fiddly. It absolutely is. The only question is whether or not you like it anyway, which many people do.
To a certain extent, I disagree. There is a difference between something being "fiddly" and "too fiddly". The former is simply an objective analysis of the game, e.g. this game is more fiddly than that game. The latter is talking about whether the fiddliness adds to the game, i.e. complexity vs depth. SotM comes off as a lighter game, so the question of whether the game is "too fiddly" can come into questions. Not that the game isn't fiddly, but whehther it is "too fiddly" for the type of game that it is supposed to be.
Often times when I hear "fiddly" and "SotM", this is what I am thinking. Not that the game isn't "fiddly", but is it "too fiddly" for what it is trying to do.
I play with a wide variety of people, and by that I mean smart and... not so smart. I have to agree with Powerhouse 2000's definition of fiddly. The game is fiddly, and yes even too fiddly by times.
Kaargra Warfang in the Encalve of the Endlings. make it worse with Guise, Nightmist, and Argent Adept. The complexity gets insane. Some people simply cannot keep track of all the cards in play, put the Favor in the right place, and keep track of whose action it is. There are times I have to get up and walk away, come back and ask, "When that died, did you do this, this, and that? Because Adept should be dead." "Noooo..." is the inevitable response.
The problem is short and long term memory. We are all different up there in the old skull cavity. Some remember a lot of things in short term memory, which allows for greater card interaction. But some simply cannot keep all the cards in play in mind at the same time, and things stop happening that should. Some have problems pulling the card effects out of long term memory for review. everntually even those with the greatest capacity for this are overwhelmed. that's when it has gotten too fiddly, even for me.
The Rules clarifications booklet is longer than the Rules themselves by 5-8 times. That indicates that the Rules are not crystal clear in the first place. An example... Reveal the top card of a deck vs. Play the top card of a deck. Which causes a deck shuffle, or do both, or neither? That's fiddly. The base rules play the game, but without the clarifications, it will not play the way we play. Usually, I complain about that. Not in this case. Leave it as is. Simpler is better, until people want those complex problems solved for them.
The RPG element is there, if you choose to add it, but most people that like deck games are not roleplayers. There is a significant difference in game enjoyment between deck players and roleplayers, so going there falls on deaf ears. I poersonally like all styles of gaming, but many people simply do not. You can't take a LARping vampire to a game of Sentinels and expect them to enjoy the game's role playing element. Sure, they could turn it into a story, but I doubt they'd stay for game 2.
Anyway, removing the fiddliness is, sometimes, as simple as restricting the villain and environment decks you play. Save the fiddly ones for players that can help with the complexity.
There are a lot of people who complain that SotM is so fiddly as to be unplayable, comparing it to filling in tax forms and claiming that a few damage modifiers are impossible to remember or process and that the whole thing is no fun and that there are no interesting decisions.
This annoys me, because I feel that most of them are exaggerating quite a lot. Sure, SotM can have some involved interactions, and a fair few things to keep track of, but it's really not rocket surgery. My brain usually manages okay (and has done since I first started playing) and I'm usually cognitively impaired with chronic fatigue and pain and fibromyalgia "brain fog". It's not that hard. Sure, it cold be more streamlined, but it's not that hard.
But I guess it's more interesting to them to say "this isn't even a game, it's a tax form" when what they actually mean is "I made some mistakes in my first few games because I'm not used to dealing with modifiers/triggers yet" or "I didn't enjoy this enough to balance out the work necessary".* Both valid opinions, I might add.
I guess people have always felt the need to try to persuade people who like something that they don't like that they are wrong, the old "stop having fun wrong!" effect. I don't like that.
*This is exactly how I feel about the Argent Adept, although I'd love to like playing him. The fun:work ratio just isn't high enough for me.
But I used to vampire LARP and I love Sentinels… For somewhat different reasons, but I do like the light RP element of Sentinels.
I do agree the game is fiddly, though. I've been playing solo games and the number of factors to track can balloon rather quickly. The counters help for tracking start and end of turn stuff, damage modifiers, etc. although I've still forgotten things. It's mildly frustrating so far, but I haven't tried anything really complex like multi-character decks, the vengeance villains, or Kaargra. I can say that I appreciate the app even more after having played the card game.
It'll be a couple of weeks before I have other players so I can't comment on my impressions of what it's like for multiple people.
I actually find the "filling in tax forms" commentary to be absurd. I have played games that have that element (Star Fleet Battles for one) and Sentinels doesn't remotely approach that level of complexity. There can be a lot to track, but not nearly to that degree. Maybe a 1040EZ (dead simple US tax form) if any are comparable.
I have the fibromyalgia and brain fog as well, and I am kind of tolerant of my cognitive issues and subsequent errors in that regard - I just figure playing more I'll learn how to track better.
Fiddly: Complicated or detailed and awkward to do or use.
Complexity varies, and hero decks are rated that way, you can avoid a lot of complexity by playing a less complex character. I've never found damage increases and decreases awkward to keep track of, since you can mark those pretty easily with the tokens provided.
Start and end of turn effects take a bit of time, but if you play cards in order you just check each card quickly and move on.
The game can get awkward when complicated decks interact, or non-hero cards activate outside of their turn, but that isn't all that common.
So the game is variably fiddly, depending on deck choices, but it is also really manageable with some organization and players being accountable for the cards they play and paying a reasonable amount of attention to global effects. If players can't handle that than this isn't their game.
I have no trouble with people pointing out the complexity, for many of us that complexity is a big part of the fun. The trouble with the word fiddly is the vast majority of the complex interactions aren't awkward, it is just organization and bookkeeping.
SFB was rules heavy, but hyper-accurate because of it. It required enormous long term memory, but you could find the rules you needed due to the diligence of the cross-referencing. I don't call SFB fiddly... I call it slow.
The tax form reference is better. Those tend to be complex sets of rules, but with no cross-referencing. When simulating a space battle, you know you're trying to simulate a space battle so the context is there. With taxes, the context is just money, which is numbers, and the context is gone, leading to confusion as your brain looks for pattern without the motivations behind the patterns. While superficially simulating a comic book, the rules on the cards often lack context on their own, leading to confusion because it doesn't seem to simulate what you think it should. Sometimes in this game, individual cards don't make sense without knowing what is on other cards. (Searching for equipment helps naught if you don't know what equipment the deck has in it.) So, sometimes, you're making decisions without the context, which may come later with that epiphany moment (like when I realized Haka kept cards out of play). As you gain experience, those decisions are made with the previously missing context.
(Been playng Adept a lot recently. Partially because he works so nicely with Guise. Except when Guise feels like replicating a Malmsteen riff.)
I think how fiddly the game is depends on who you're playing. For the most part, newbies should probably not play Zero. Not just because he's complicated, but because damage modifiers really affect how he plays. Someday, I will stop accidentaly killing myself with Thermal Shockwave when Exposive Wagons is in play.
I didn't call SFB fiddly, I said SFB was a game that actually resembled filling out a tax form. :) Or perhaps it resembles accounting.
But then I've never had much trouble with tax forms, either.
I get that it's sometimes hard to understand the context for rules on cards without having experience playing the relevant deck - my first time playing Unity was downright confusing because I did not understand her core mechanic. But that doesn't feel like a tax form to me. At this point, having played each of the 11 characters in the app as well as several other characters in the card game I think I have at least a basic understanding of how they work. Looking through the decks doesn't seem to help nearly as much as actually playing the characters, which is when the context starts to click and make sense to me.
Some decks are more complicated than others, and I 'd say all of them take some time to learn. I mean, Ra is probably one of the simplest decks since pretty much all his cards are different ways of saying "Hit stuff with fire damage", but it's still helpful to know that he has two copies of Imbued Fire, four Staves, four copies of Summon Staff, and so on. It took me a few games to get the hang of the Adept's deck but as I think I might have mentioned around here once or twice on occasion, he's my favourite character to play - that wasn't the case at first, I think he got wiped out in about five minutes in a game versus Voss the first time I played him. I supose people who find the game really "fiddly" (and I've never thought of the game in that way) are just those who have a slightly harder time of keeping track of stuff. I found Kaargra pretty tricky the first time we played her (my partner and I, not the one or two times we'd fought her at the London meets, there were other people to keep track of stuff) because there's quite a lot more stuff to keep track of - who gets Favour points and what for, when you draw a new Title from the deck, when each available Title can be claimed, plus all the normal villain stuff going on with Kaargra's actual deck.
Some people will find the game "fiddly" and others won't. If it's too "fiddly" for you to ever enjoy playing it, then play something else - it's a game, and games are supposed to be fun ;).
I do have a bit of a rough time keeping track of stuff, but it's getting easier with each game I play.
However fiddly it feels to me, I still really enjoy this game.
Played Argent Adept last night and found him quite interesting. I am not sure if I lost the game due to playing him badly or due to the environment and villain decks spitting out as many dinosaurs and drones as possible. Probably both.
The Adept is fairly complex but once you've learned his deck a bit he becomes easier, as you know hw many instruments he has, how many of each song and what they all do and stuff. He tends to do better in longer games where he has time to get set up, but can manage just fine with even two songs and an appropriate instrument - I can remember a long time ago in a game versus Dawn where we kept losing our stuff, I spent pretty much the whole game with one instrumentand one or two of the Rhythms out and very little else the entire game, but it still meant I was letting someone play/draw a card every time it was my turn, so I still got to help out ;).
Also, despite having the lowest hp (outside of the individual Sentinels) of any hero, he can have decent survivability once you get geared up enough to be healing about 6hp a turn (and two for everyone else) - you can even sort of tank based on this, provided you're up against something that can't hit hard enough to overcome the number of hp you're gonna get back on your next turn :D.
Yeah, I think I am going to play more Adept. I only got a taste of his versatility, and didn't get some of his useful cards (like say Sarabande of Destruction to deal with environmental hazards) but he did provide a significant amount of support.
I didn't find him fiddly at all, just had a lot of options.
Yeah, that's kind of why I like him so much - there's always something you can do. It takes a little while to get the hang of just how much he's capable of, but once you get to know the various combos you can be really amazingly helpful to everyone :D. My favourite, the one I called the "Power Combo" is the Harp, the Lyra, Inspiring Supertonic, and then any other instrument and appropriate songs for said instrument - Harp (or Lyra) activates Supertonic, which activates Lyra (or Harp, whichever you didn't use first), which activates the third instrument, which activates its songs, then finish off the Lyra (or Harp), then finish off Harp (or Lyra). Lots of hp for yourself and you get to do some other stuff too - if the third instrument was the Pipes and you had both copies of Rhapsody of Vigour, say, that's 2hp for everyone else as well as yourself. If you had both copies of Sarabande then you get to nuke two environment cards instead :D.