Howdy, all! Some of you may know that I’ve dipped my toes into SoTM homebrew a few times. I’ve had a lot of people asking for advice on what to do/not do for homebrew decks. Sentinels is a game where “every rule is made to be broken-“ except for a few, anyway. I’m trying to assemble a list of some of the common threads that would instantly raise doubts about a homebrew deck. In short, what are the biggest “deck design sins” in Sentinels homebrew?
- All decks should have the proper number of cards.
- Hero decks should not have “win the game” conditions. They should only have “lose the game” conditions in the rare case that an effect would make them indestructible with some regularity.
- Heroes should not have keywords, except to differentiate “forms” as with Sky-Scraper.
- Villains should not be immune to damage or damage types in such a way that certain hero teams would be unable to defeat them.
- Environments should not have “win the game” conditions.
- Heroes should not have more than 4 copies of any card, unless said card is a “dummy” card to fuel effects.
- “Broken” effects are fine if you need 3+ heroes to accomplish them, but not otherwise.
- When designing villains, remember that Savage Mana is a thing.
- Heroes shouldn’t just negate the environment. Even Akash takes a minute to start.
- PvP isn’t Sentinels.
Those are just a few, and many of them have been from my own experience (in that I failed to uphold them, and then learned the rule from that failure).