Tom_Mc
6001
Ok the caveat is I’ve only played Sentinels. I have read up on DC an Marvel and the impression I get s that Sentnels is the most thematic and you really get the feeling of paying a unique hero. There is no deck building and as a result the character them is tied completely to its deck. You’ll even see unique mechanics come up, a speedster who’s cards keep building up actions, a batman like character who’s gadgets pile on to make an awesome array of options and so forth.
Now to the games I haven’t played. I’ve played Ascension and I was lead to believe tha DC is very similar. Not a bad thing I suppose but if your looking for a thematic experience that really sells a story I have seen opinions saying that cn be lacking. Legendary is supposed to be a little more detailed of a desk builder but there is some overhead in setup and play complexity.
I can wholeheartedly recommend Sentinels but the other two you’ll have to have some opinions not based on hearsay.
Tom M
Another voice for Sentinels of the Multiverse. I did not expect to like it as much as I do (I usually don’t care for “pummelling bags of hit points” type mechanics). I have played almost nothing else for the last two or three months of gaming.
Another for Sentinels. Darn good game. It has a ton of theme, compartmentalized decks (heroes, villains, environments) that makes its setup and tear down fast while also being very modular for varied experiences (sort of like how I remember Cosmic Encounters or Small World). In many ways SotM is a lot like Lord of the Rings the Card Game, but without all the finicky need to construct decks.
About the ONLY negatives that I can think of for Sentinels when thinking about Marvel and DC are:
[ul]
[li]Sentinels is not a deck builder, so if that is what you want, it won’t matter how superior the game is. However this is what lets theme and play style really come through over a deck builder
[/li][li]The life tracking can be a pain in the rear (highly recommend having an iPad and the Side Kick app at the ready-- good for randomizing play too)
[/li][li](not really a bad thing) Sentinels is not a licensed super hero product, so while you won’t have Batman or Wolverine, the game design is not boxed in or hindered by perceptions or limits of the property either
[/li][/ul]
From what I can tell DC is the weakest of the three with nearly zero theme as the flavor seems to have been eaten up by trying to brand a generic deck builder “engine”. Marvel suffered schizophrenia in that it was cooperative, but you were trying to compete for victory points over your fellow players who all controlled the same pool of characters. This made the game too easy to “win” and with a weird feeling of competition not unlike Thunderstone. Supposedly this has been largely addressed by the recent Dark City expansion. However if you are looking for a deck builder like Ascension, you are stuck looking at DC or Marvel. If you want a super hero game that feels like super heroes fighting to save the day, I just can’t see why you would want to pass up SotM. I guess some might get hung up wanting to play the licensed heroes, but in the end Tempest is Storm and Bunker is Ironman. I remember our first game where Wraith (Batman) died to stop an out of control commuter train in Metro City at the last moment giving the heroes just enough time to wipe out the minions so the Metro City PD could sneak in and land the final blow on the towering AI of destruction to save the day.
That said, as I miss deck builders and the last one I bought was Thunderstone 1.0, I picked up Marvel Legendary and its expansion last night given the positive feedback with the new set.
<spit take> Side kick app!? What-the-there’s-who-how-gotta— <logging into app store>
=)
Oh yeah. It is a MUST BUY for Sentinels. I believe MarkL told me about it, so credit should go his direction.
Sentinels…
It is one of my all-time favorite games. Very easy to teach, and can easily be played anywhere from 1-4 players (and probably 5 players, I have just never played it with 5). Solo is easy to do. Just a great and fun game.
I want to get the DC Deckbuilding game…but I just made a LARGE gaming purchase…so my gaming purchases need to slow down for a bit.
The randomizer I am now using for the Marvel game is available as an app on Google Play, and it was just updated with the Dark City expansion stuff…Here is the link to the solo variant I use, in case anyone is interested: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/913835/the-variant-reviews-legendary-solo-variant-version/page/1
Okay, good work selling me on Sentinels on the Multiverse. Good thing it’s the weekend, so I have to wait until Monday to make an impulse purchase, at which point it’s not an impulse purchse. Win!
I strongly disagree. It’s a slick and simple game, but the theming is excellent. Wonder Woman lassoing villains; Superman storing up superpowers like heat vision, X-ray vision, and super strength; Aquaman’s weird deck-manipulation power being associated with his trident; Batman hoarding gadgets and hopefully scoring the Batcave, to boot; Bizarro turning weakness cards into positive scoring; arch-villains attacking all the players and then coming back later to mess with certain players; specific heroes fitting neatly with their comic book counterparts; and so on. It’s not a complex game, but it uses its simple mechanics to very good effect.
-Tom
one of the complaints I have read about the DC game, in regards to theme, is that any hero can get any card. So, Batman could get Superman’s Heat Vision, or the Flash could pick up one of Batman’s gadgets…
I personally do not know, as I have not played it, and I do not have it. Just basing this on what I have read…
Okay, so Sentinels of the Multiverse is co-op. Ugh. I am now officially uninterested.
Yeah, the basic gameplay is like Ascension, so everyone’s competing for the same pool of cards. Some players naturally want certain cards more than others, so part of the strategy might be depriving your opponents of the cards that most help them. That means it’s definitely not, uh, realistic, but I don’t consider that a theming ding. I suppose it could be awkward if you were RPing. How are you going to explain Aquaman having super strength or Wonder Woman wearing a utility belt?
-Tom
Yes, it’s cooperative, but in my opinion it doesn’t suffer from a lot of the issues that coop games like Pandemic do where there’s not a lot of meaningful choices to be made and one person can easily direct everything that’s going on. Sentinels has enough complexity and tracking that it’s much easier to let each person keep track of their own character, and playing solo, while totally doable, is a bit of a logistical challenge.
I have not really had any issues playing 4 heroes in a solo game. It is actually pretty easy (at least, I think so). Sentinels is one of my favorite games I have. And every person I have played the game with, they have loved it and wanted to play more.
Tom,
I have all three games (DC Deckbuilding, Legendary and Sentinels), so I can give you a quick rundown of the Marvel game as it compares to DC. As a plug, Sentinels is my favorite, but I have two young kids and co-op gets alot of pull in my house.
So the easiest compare is an analogy. The DC game is to Dominions as the Marvel game is to Ascension. You do deck building in legendary, but you are pulling from a random assortment of the heroes at any given time (5 cards are on the board from a main hero deck you compile that has about 50 - 60 cards in it, 13 for each hero I think). So you end up with alot of choices that aren’t optimal for your strategy, but you don’t want to waste recruit points (like runes in ascension) for a given turn. The Time pressure for game is set up by the scenario which is chosen from a list of 7 or 8. Each one plays pretty differently. Some have a simple timer mechanism (draw the 8 villian scheme cards and you lose) to more complicated. Ultimately you are trying to beat a supervillian like DC, but it is more cooperative. Everyone either wins or loses, but at the end, someone “wins” more by having the most victory points in their pile. No where near the player versus player card play that DC has, but a few of the supervillians give one time powers that let you screw your fellow players out of points.
I like Legendary, and my kids love it, but fair warning…it is a pain to set up. You have to pick your heroes you are going to play with and then shuffle that deck together. You then pick the villain and henchmen you are going to play against and shuffle them together…and then at the end have to break it all down and put it away. To get a good distribution before play I find I have to prep the decks alot and setup and breakdown take about 15 - 20 minutes all told. DC is much quicker to throw together.
(After this was posted I realized I got the basic mechanic of the DC game wrong…faulty memory on my part. Both it and Legendary played the same with the random draws from a shuffled hero pile. The biggest difference is the notion of the villain deck in Legendary and the timer it places on the game with the schemes).
I was wondering about picking up Legendary and it’s expansion next week myself and am pleased at the discussions. That last page has convinced me it would be good pick for family game night. Mind you, I think I’ll be buying Sentinels as well because the family loves a good co-op game as well and that last page has pushed me over the edge on that one. And that DC game sounds like fun too, Tom’s defending of it in that last page has me intrigued. Darn, that last page got expensive…
Played Fantastiqa for the first time tonight with four players (two teams), and it was a hit. The rule book is very well done; we needed to consult the FAQ only once. As is typical for such a unique game, we spent the first game struggling to come up with strategies. But by the end of the first game, the men’s team was victorious, and viable strategies finally coalesced in my thick noggin. The second game played much more quickly than the first, with the men coming away victorious, again, with me earning the most points for our team.
Each player’s initial deck of 12 cards consists of the same 9 nine cards (each containing a symbol that subdues one other symbol) with their adventurer depicted on the front, 1 Dog (used to fetch you a gem when played), 1 Peaceful Dragon (“The Peaceful Dragon is useless–he just takes up valuable space in your hand drinking tea and refusing to fight or Quest!”), and an Artifact chosen by the player from the five starting Artifacts. Each player also chooses a starting Quest (his first Personal Quest) from the nine starting Quests (each of which is fulfilled with two of one of the nine symbols).
As in most deck building games, you’ll want to “release” (remove from the game) your weak cards as you acquire more powerful cards (cards with more symbols, cards with Special Powers, cards that provide a gem when subdued, etc.). Beyond that, you won’t receive any additional insight from me. :-) The first player/team (in a 4-player game) to accumulate the target number of points (chosen at the start of the game based on how long of a game the players want and represented as chalices on Quest cards) wins the game!
The production value’s incredible! The cards will never need to be sleeved, and the cardboard stock (even for the box!) is thick and rigid. You won’t find warped components in this box! And the storage design provides proper storage for all components. I should also mention that the theme is so well integrated into all the cards, from the translation of real-life items to fantasy items (for example, a toothbrush is a magic wand), to the symbols associated with each creature (and the symbol needed to subdue said creature) and to how the descriptions on the quest cards reflect the Region in which the Adventurer must be in order to fulfill them.
I’ve scratched only the surface of the game here, but it’s one I highly recommend!
I, honestly, was all about to completely give up on Legendary…glad I went ahead and bought the Dark City expansion, because I am playing almost nothing but Legendary now. And, in October, the Fantastic Four is supposed to release…and I believe there will be 5 more heroes (the FF and possibly Silver Surfer), and then there will be Galactus…must buy for me now.
Thanks for the breakdown, Jay. Now that I won’t be impulse buying Sentinels on Monday, maybe I’ll just use the money I saved on Legendary.
Can you guys tell me a bit about what Dark City does to change it?
-Tom
Makes the Villains much, MUCH more difficult…plus adds another several Heroes (I am thinking 16 more, I just know that combined with the base game, there is now 32 Heroes). The Villains and Heroes now have new abilities…it adds 3 or 4 special types of Bystanders (where each of these new Bystanders are no longer generic like they were in the base game. New Schemes are added and now I think there are 20 to choose from (I think). There are more xmen added, and a couple of new teams (X-Force and Marvel Knights), more Villain groups and Henchmen, not to mention more Masterminds…one of which is Apocalypse. Very scary guy, that one is.
It just adds so much more variety to the game. I use a Randomizer (app) I got from the Android Market (for free).
Just really turned my opinion of the game completely around…
Since when is a game being co-op a BAD THING? You’re dead to me, Chick!
Mysterio, I’ve really enjoyed Fantastiqa as well. I don’t know what that designer has against regular 4 player games (that one plays four in teams and his other game, Road to Canterbury, only plays 2 or 3!). But anyway, I think he’s brilliant about choosing a theme that provides him with awesome public domain artwork. The game is beautiful. And I love the theme. I can’t believe there’s a full-page short story at the beginning that’s actually worth reading before starting play.
If you enjoy boardgames I recommend a podcaster/Youtuber by the name of Trent Ham. He hosts a podcast on iTunes called “20 Minutes with Gaming Trent” and uses the name GamingTrent on YouTube. He’s very articulate and informative. Highly recommended.
If Coop is the hang up, Marvel won’t help. It’s a semi (or fully) cooperative game. You are working towards beating the villains and the master mind. The main difference is you have score points for what you collect like Ascension.
What I meant about DC having the weakest theme is as others and you have said above. It is mostly game numbers and mechanics with a super hero paint job over the top. Why not have laser beam eyes on Wonder Woman, it is just a collection of cards and not really Wonder Woman or eye beams. The lack of deck building and the prebuilt hero decks in SotM is what makes the theme and carries the story. It is hard to not see it as cinematic instead of just collecting a card that gets me plus 2 draw or whatever.
