Cracked LCD 21.9: Sentinels of the Multiverse Review
This week Mike checks out a new superhero card game.
Date: Thursday, October 13, 2011
Author: Michael Barnes
Game: Sentinels of the Multiverse
Publisher: Greater Than Games
Designer: Christopher Badell and Paul Bender
Genre: Co-op Superhero card game
Players: 2-6
Playtime: 30-60 minutes
What's Hot: Great original characters and world-building; fun co-op boss battle concept; simple mechanics matched with vivid gameplay
What's Not: Inexperienced design; numbers/modifiers heavy resolutions affected by “ability sprawl”; no administrative devices to track HP; rules lack clarity/consistency
by: Michael Barnes
I wrote a piece for this column a couple of years ago lamenting the woeful underuse of comic book superheroes as a theme for board and card games. For reasons unclear, costumed do-gooders and four-color crimefighters have never had the traction that high fantasy, horror, or science fiction have had among the tabletop set. Now, there’s a new superhero game on the block and it’s the only significant one since Marvel Heroes hit back in 2006. I’m not counting the obscure Capes and Cowls since practically no one owns it. (I do! I do!– ed) Greater Than Games’ Sentinels of the Multiverse is the latest go at the mythical Great Superhero Game, and although it acquits itself rather well it still isn’t quite the Watchmen of its class.
Sentinels of the Multiverse is a small box of nearly 600 cards- no other components- but the quality level is high for a first-time production. The game is an AI-less co-op game in which players each take a character into battle with one of four super villains, with the surprisingly vivid brawl taking place in one of four locations represented by unique decks of environment cards. It’s a simple process, with the villain getting a turn modified by various character-specific functions and ongoing abilities. Then the heroes get to play a card (which could be a strike, a piece of equipment, or a persistent effect) along with one of their available powers. Heroes can target the Boss or one of the many minions, henchmen, or pieces of hardware that he, she, or it summons with a card flip. The environment—such as a Mars Base or a good, old fashioned metropolis also gets a card flip and an overall gamestate-changing effect. The goal is simply to beat the HP out of the villain before they accomplish their victory condition.
Cooperation is critical as many cards directly affect the team and the game plays best with four or more players, or at least with two or three players taking more than one character. Each of the characters has a completely unique deck that represents their particular powers and advantages, and although the characters are unique to the game Athere are obvious analogues to popular characters. There’s the All-American super strong flyer. The technologically augmented hero. The speedster. The moonlighting vigilante. Elementalists and a psychic. No copyrights were harmed in the making of this game.
Initially, I felt like the lack of licensed characters would be a liability. Comic book heroes are so iconic and so integral to pop culture and it seems that other games that have tried to introduce their own characters have missed the mark. But I have to say that I’m duly impressed by the world-building and authenticity that the designers have imparted to their creation. I totally bought each of these characters as genuine superheroes. Nice touches like made-up quotes cited from comic issues that never existed sell the illusion and the spirited, well-executed artwork looks outstanding. There are also archenemies between heroes and villains, which creates a greater sense of a meta-narrative that is really crucial to the comics theme. It’s very telling that the rulebook has more back story and fluff for each of the character than it does rules.
This is unfortunately where the game begins to not hold together so well. The rules are strangely off-the-cuff, lacking focus and often needlessly vague, particularly in conjunction with card texts. It’s not a complex game by any means, but it is one where there are lots of card effects and situations where firmer rules would have been appreciated. There are strange issues that come up: for example, does Ra’s staff that does a three point strike and also imparts a +1 bonus to damage actually do four points? There are questions that come up regarding damage triaging, and there are no hard and fast rules for timing. There’s a lack of clarity that smacks both of insular playtesting and good old fashioned newbie mistakes.
This is also a rather old fashioned game in some ways, where adding up modifiers and keeping track of card effect sprawl sometimes gets in the way of the fun. We’re not talking about complex mathematics here, but parsing which cards are imparting which positive or negative modifiers takes you out of the bang-zap-pow. It doesn’t help that there are no tracking or administrative devices, and players have to meter hit points for each character, the villain, and all of the villain’s entourage using dice or pen and paper. Usually I’m OK with that, but this is a situation where some counters or sliders would have been advisable to keep game information organized and easily read at a glance.
When you’re not bean counting, the cooperative action is good and it’s all surprisingly vivid. I like the directness of the “boss fight” format, and the homebrew characters certainly lend a lot of personality to what could have been a boring, old fashioned game concept. I like Sentinels of the Multiverse and I think it’s a better superhero game than Marvel Heroes was and these guys are definitely on the right track in terms of bringing a robust comic books theme to the table. But it also feels like their design is lacking tightness despite the obvious passion that has gone into it. I’d love to see a cleaned up second edition of the game with some revisions and cleaner texts, as this could easily be the best superhero game to date rather than just the most heartfelt one.
Finally, it should be noted that the dreaded Comic Sans font does not appear anywhere in the game. It’s all hand lettered. Jack Kirby be praised!
