1. Probably my favorite thing about Sentinels of the Multiverse how accessible it is to everyone. SoTM is basically the game that got all of my non-gamer friends into gaming. I had played hundreds of board/card games before SoTM but none of my friends would even get close to anything other than boring standard games (Monopoly, UNO, etc). Then, I had my friends play SoTM and now they're as big of gamers as I am. My best friend probably owns as many games as I do now and he's only been gaming for maybe 8 months (compared to my 5+ years).
2. The second thing I love about SoTM is the endless replayability. I usually only play SoTM with 5 players so I'm pretty sure I'll never see all possible hero/villian/environment combinations, even if I play for the rest of my life!
What are some of your favorite things about Sentinels?
I love the fact that it is a cooperative experience that can be shared between 2-5 players. Sentinels has practically replaced my group's attempts at starting up a role-playing game together. I love that >G has taken on the role of being a "team game" company, and it makes me proud to be a playtester for their products. It will keep me a dedicated fan for years to come.
Yeah, the cooperative aspect is amazing. That's really what got my friends interested in gaming. They really dig other cooperative games like Pandemic, Legendary, etc. (but SoTM is our fave coop game).
thematic (it's not just a mechanical game, it has such a strong theme tied in to it that you can almost see a story unfolding rather than simply attrition of hit points to see who dies first)
replayability (never the same game twice)
simple rules making it accessible to gamer nerds like me and my less-than-gamer-nerd friends.
co-op (we all celebrate the victory or defeat together)
I love that it is almost impossible to create a good superhero game because of the range of powers, roles and thematic elements. I'm always looking for superhero related stuff but anything that covers the range and versatility and crazyness of the source material is rare.
Other than that it is a great, easy to set up game. For me and my friends it feels like we are playing an AI game of MTG against a computerized opponent.
I love the co-op nature that lets me play it with my mostly non-competitive family. Plus, I love making all the accessories for it. I'm hoping GSF turns out to be good for homemade accessories.
Probably the biggest thing that I love about this game is the story/atmosphere/thematics of the game. I have loved super heroes ever since I was a little kid watching power rangers before school (the original, I was born in '88 so im a child of the 90s). I love heroes fighting against opponents that are stronger mostly because they do not have lines that they wont cross. While I dont like actually reading comics, I love comic book heroes and villains and this game captured their essence so well and is the perfect mix (for me) of being involved in the comic book world without having to read actual comics. The characters are very well designed and fleshed out, not only in their own decks but across all the decks. I particularly like the nemesis mechanic and how it is reflected in their deck designs as well. It is very easy to imagine the scene (hell the game even includes the scene itself!) and imagine the epic battle of heroes fighting the army of super powered minions on the island of dinosaurs.
I like the game mechanics as well. Each hero feels unique, and while there are some common things between some heroes, each hero has their own spin on it. Take AbZ and Bunker for example. Both are equipment heavy heroes, but AbZ is all about turning himself into an elemental dynamo and either doing some damage while keeping himself alive, or exploding and putting out substantial damage on to his enemies as well as himself. Bunker on the other hand utilizes his modes to optimize his turns to either setting up, recovering or unloading with a variety of weapons. These are generalizations of those heroes, but you get my point. Each villain feels unique as well. Both the heroes and villains have their own flow, and a lot of my fun comes from discovering and then maximizing that flow.
The game itself is pretty each to pick up, and with so many characters, can easily accomodate anyone with a hero or two (or more) that fits their ideal playstyle(s). The game can also be quite challenging but not in a way that makes you feel cheated. I have yet to play a game that wasnt fun, even the defeats were fun, because we tried our best but the villain was simply better (or luckier hah).
The co-op style of the game is great. We all work together to bring down a single baddy, which thankfully does not have a human behind it. We often compete to see who did the best in the game (most supportive, most damage, who kept us alive,ect) for fun and competition in that sense tends to be more enjoyable and breeds a helpful/positive atmosphere but without any bitterness that might be generated when people compete to win over each other by destroying them (in the game). If that makes any sense.....
I lied before, the best thing about this game is the creators and the community at large. Ive only been playing this game for 2ish months and i've been on these forums quite frequently since then. All i have seen is people asking questions and getting helpful answers or pleasant discussions about every aspect of what is, what could be and what we hope might be. Spiff and Flamethrower with your homemade accessories and awesome guides, you guys especially are so helpful. I know a lot of people add a lot to the extras of the game, and if I forgot you I'm sorry. And to you three that made and run this game; You guys rock. You guys put a lot of effort into this game and it shows clearly. This game is awesome and so are you. Thank you.
THEME!!! I really enjoy the fact that I feel like the hero when I am playing this game!!
Although... I have friends that have the opposite experience and feel that the heavy reading involved (especially at first) and the amount of effects to keep track of (AZ and AA I am looking at you...) takes away from the experience so they don't quite enjoy playing as much. I think those friends are just weird...
Yes, I love practically everything, but for me, the best part is that it can be played solo, and has a really cool theme. I don't know a lot of people who would play hardly any game, so the fact that Sentinels is about 1,000 times more exciting then Solitaire or FreeCell would have to be my favorite.
I love that at our most recent game day all three tables were full of five people apiece playing Sentinels. It has captured out imaginations that thoroughly.
I'm into co-operative games, so that's a major plus point right there. I'd say that plus the replayability generated by having so many different possible card/deck combinations means I'll be continuing to play this game for a very long time yet…as long as my partner doesn't get bored of it, lol.
I am surrounded by people who do comics professionally -- my wife is a librarian who maintains the adult graphic novel collection at a local library, and my best friend (with whom I've been gaming since 1982) maintains the graphic novel collection for a large Midwestern University. I've been an avid reader of comics and an avid gamer since the early 80s. I am, however, not really that competitive. I play hard, not to win, but to generate the best possible play. But I don't care who wins. I'm not a fan of collectable card games, where it seems you can buy a victory. I like supporting small companies.
SotM pretty much hits most of the things that work for me in a game - being a cooperative superhero game. I am really happy with how it captures the feel of a 6 issue trade paperback, and the diverse power levels (to steal a term from Mutants and Masterminds) in a typical super-hero team. I like that if you want to play an easy game, you can grab Tempest, Ra, Haka, and Wraith and go. I do this with my 8 year old, who's pretty much memorized Ra.
If you want a complicated game, your grab AZ, AA, Nightmist, and the Scholar. SotM can play as either ICONS and the Champions.
I enjoy how different the heroes and villains play.
So much this. Also, the characters are awesome! It's as if >Games took all of the superheroes from Marvel, DC, and Independant Graphic Novels, and took all the stuff that was good about them, put them in a big 'ol blender, and made perhaps the most likable, funny, and interesting bunch of characters I have seen in fiction for a LONG time (perhaps even rivaling those of Avatar: The Last Airbender). And for me, it's ALL about the characters. They make a good story. And every game therefore has a good story in there.
And of course, the third thing that I love is the variety. It seems every hero is VERY diffrent and so every time you play, it's diffrent. Even changing one hero agianst a villian makes all the difference in my enjoyment.
All the close moments the game presents and the fact the tides of the game can turn at any time because of a combination of Environment/Villan cards in play.
Everything I love about the game is what everybody loves. It's so easy to spread this game around to huge groups of people, and it is very, very rare to introduce it and the the players feel 'meh' on it.
It's very fantastic to link the cards together into a running narrative. People get really into the spirit of the game when that happens, sometimes even making decisions for their characters instead of just the game.
I love that I actually have an emotional attachment to these characters. The fact that the universe's story is detailed and intricate with loveable characters that I want to see and learn more about. Really, those flavor texts in the cards are our only insights into their minds because GTG doesn't have enough time to spend giving us as rich detail as is implied in the flavor texts. That's why we map it out ourselves and take what we can while these guys busily run their company.
I'm sure there will come a day when GTG will have the time to give us more insight into who the characters really are and such. But we can wait until then and discuss interpretations of them amongst us fans. That's why I love the "World" section of the forums.
I'm forcing myself to stop right here. I have other things I must do, and if I try to into why I love this game, I'm going to take forever and start going into individual characters and events. Hence why I simply wrote "LITERALLY EVERYTHING" as my first post in this topic. Because that basically covers it.