There seems to be a flurry of interesting cooperative board and card games on Kickstarter this Month!
1. Venom Assault Expansion: Villains and Valor
Venom Assault is a cooperative Deckbuilder set in the world of something legally distinct, but highly reminiscent of GI Joe! Venom Assault made my 2017 list of Top 10 Cooperative Games (well, Honorable Mention, if only because it wasn’t clear if the release was late late 2016 or early 2017, depending on when you got your Kickstarter).
You can get the expansion and/or the original game! The expansion adds the new idea of medals, for adding something else to be working towards on your turn! Check it out!
2. Endangered
This dice driven cooperative game has the players working together to save a species from extinction! The art by Beth Sobel and Ben Flores looks fantastic. It looks a little different than most cooperative games (not just a Pandemic reskin), so check it out here!
At the time of this writing, the game is very close to being funded! Don’t let this “Endangered” game fall away!
3. Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time
This cooperative game is blowing up right now! See here! I am not 100% sold on it, but it might be worth getting simply because there are so many stretch goals unlocked! And there’s a lot of buzz, so I admit to being a pawn to Kickstarter hype and have backed it myself! Check it out here and see if it’s something you are interested in!
I had some trouble with balance in Sidekick Saga. In a couple of ways:
Issue 2 was too easy. At a playtest in Las Cruces, the players just walked through it.
The more players there are, the easier the game
After tweaking the game a little, I had a playtest the other night. And it went AWESOME. I am so happy with the game right now.
Issue 2 Balance Issues
Issue 2 was too easy, so I stepped up the difficulty by replacing as card or two, and added another “Ice-a-cane” (Thanks to Cristina Mamar for the art!)
The interesting thing about this card: it can’t be hacked, attacked, put into disarray or anything. The only thing you can do is (a) wait it out or (b) suck it up and barrel in. With two of these on the board, the players were able to wait out one of them, but someone had to make the supreme sacrifice for the second one! (If you don’t, you have no way to attack the main Villain and you will lose).
IT WAS AWESOME! The players “argued” about who should make the supreme sacrifice! And then in the end, one player did it before the other! It totally reminded me of a “Teen Titans” comic where Cyborg and Raven argue about who’s going to make the sacrifice for the team … and then Robin does it while they arguing!
This is EXACTLY what I want in a comic book game! Players arguing over WHO will make the sacrifice! This is great. The only thing that would have made this better was popcorn. 🙂
Balance Overall
Early playtests led me to believe the game was much easier when 3 or 4 players played. Why? It seemed in like a 2 player game, the characters are much closer to death, whereas in a 4 player game, the characters were all very healthy. The game gets the same number of actions (total), Bad News cards (total) and actions, regardless of the number of players. So why the difference?
Because I didn’t vary the Hit Points. With 2 Players at 12 Hit Points each, there are a “total” of 2*12=24 Hit Points for the Bad Guys to inflict to win. At 3 Players, that’s 3*12=36 Hit Points. At 4 Players, that’s 4*12=48!
I learned one great lesson on balance from the “Warhammer Quest Adventure Card Game”: the number of hit points a character has diminishes as the number of players goes up. My original playtests showed that making this exactly 24 Hit Points each time was TOO restrictive. (4 Players would just DIE quickly as 6 HIT POINTS each was no where near enough). Why? Because of imperfect communications, sharing of cards is less direct, and you usually don’t do “perfect” strategy when you have more players.
So, this seemed like a good compromise.
At 2 Players: Each Player gets 12 Hit Points
At 3 Players, Each Player gets 10 Hit Points
At 4 Players, Each Player gets 8 Hit Points
That seems to keep the game balanced a little better. Thanks Warhammer Quest!
Final Thoughts
I feel like Sidekick Saga is ready. I saw the closest game of Sidekick Saga I have ever seen the other night: Only 1 player was alive and she went in and just barely defeated the main Villain. The Sidekicks won in the very last Act, even though the other 3 players were defeated. It was Epic, Tense, Fun, Cooperative! (And we got some new art … see above! Each City Location has its own art now!)
It’s already been another year! 2017 was a great year (with a good top 10 cooperative games). RICHIECon 2018 came and went …
2018 was an interesting year: it felt like most of the new cooperative games I played came out near the end of the year! So, there are a few I didn’t play that are still on my pile! (Notably, Detective, Direwild, Metal Dawn and a few others) But, this was still a pretty awesome year! There were a lot of Superhero games (which isn’t surprising if you know me).
As usual, we will invoke Saunders’ Law: (Does the cooperative game have a viable solo mode?) when we discuss this year’s top 10 cooperative games!
Honorable Mention: The 7th Continent
Playable Solo? Yes, you can play solo easily.
Strictly speaking, The 7th Continent came out LAST year. But it never hit retail. It was ONLY available on Kickstarter! So, I missed out on the first printing. Well, it turns out they had a 2nd Kickstarter in 2018, which is “arguably” a 2018 release? Strictly speaking, it’s not a 2018 release, which is why it is an Honorable Mention for 2018.
This is a great adventure game with a lot of content: very choose your own adventure as you explore an evolving landscape. Very fun! This would have ended up in the top 3 if I were allowed to put it in this year’s list …
Playable Solo? Yes, it plays solo, but you have to play two characters.
This game has a lot going for it: it’s a Richard Lanius game, it has Batman, and you get to play SuperHeroes! Batman, Robin, the Commissioner, and CatWoman! I must admit, I was very nervous when I first played this game! It looked a LOT like my own game Sidekick Saga, but it turns it was very different. This is a dice game, where you all work together to keep the City of Gotham from being destroyed by all the Villains in the Batman’s Rogue’s Gallery! Each Superhero has his own way of mitigating/enhancing the dice roles, so each character plays very differently. It’s not super deep (no pun intended), as you role dice and do the best you can to stop the Villains. It’s a fun, medium filler! (The rulebook could have used a little more work, but it was good enough). Check it out!
Playable Solo? No! There’s no mention you can play it solo, although if you take 2 characters, you can play it solo. It works well enough that way.
Forbidden Sky is the third in the “Forbidden” series, with Forbidden Island being the first (a good entry cooperative, especially for kids), and Forbidden Desert being the second (an excellent medium-weight cooperative game). In this game, the players collectively build a skyramp (see picture on box), trying to collect the lightning so they can launch their spaceship! The players have to avoid high winds, the self-same lightning, all while trying to build this circuit to launch their spaceship. Now, here’s the cool part: you actually build a real-life circuit where real electricity flows! When you complete the physical circuit (which is on the game board), the rocket “launches”! Well, it makes real-life noises pretending to launch! It’s cheesy, but pretty cool.
I think Forbidden Desert is still my favorite of the series, but Forbidden Sky has high “coolness” factor building a real circuit, and it’s a fun game!
Playable Solo? Yes, but the game doesn’t work well until about 3 players.
See my full review here: This was a Kickstarter that delivered in 2018. It’s a fairly fun reading/storytelling game, aimed at a younger audience, but I find that I enjoyed it. It has a lot of educational value (I know, usually the kiss of death), but it was fun.
Playable Solo? No, not really. You could kinda fake it with 2 characters, but this game is all about the interaction with multiple players.
So, my friend Sean brought this game over to one of our game nights. We played it all the way through AND HAD A BLAST! I picked it up myself soon after that! It’s a very lightweight filler game, but you can make it last as long you want! Each session last 5 minutes, as all the players collectively and simultaneously play cards to defeat the bad guys. If you continue to play, the bad guys get harder and harder! It is a realtime cooperative card game, which I usually hate, but this one was fun! Thanks Sean! I think the Superhero nature of the game pumped my enjoyment a little …
Playable Solo? Absolutely: A great solo mode where you play just one character!
This one was a surprise to me! I almost backed the Kickstarter, but didn’t. I got it later from a friendly retailer. If I am in a bad mood, I was describe this as “fiddly Pandemic meets Hacker”. BUT, I think a better description is “Dynamic Pandemic meets Hacker!”
Hacker is a old Steve Jackson game where you build a network of computers and work competitively to take over the most machines. Renegade takes this premise and makes it cooperative as you all fight against the SMC! (A Big Bad!) It has a Pandemic-like mechanism as sparks collect, and three sparks cause a Guardian. And sparks and guardians “collect” on your servers and partitions (instead of cities and countries of Pandemic), and if too many come out, you lose!
There’s a lot of rules to this game! It’s very thematic, with neural nets and viruses for battling sparks, but there are a lot of rules! I almost gave up on this game because the game seems sooo fiddly. It could really use a player summary card. BUT once I got into it, it was fun, challenging and very interesting! Give it a whirl if you are looking for a more “complicated” Pandemic!
Playable Solo? Inasmuch as Sentinels of the Multiverse plays solo. See my post here on how to play Sentinels solo. You can apply that here.
It took quite a while (2+ years?) to go from Kickstarter to delivery. But the game finally arrived in 2018! This is more than just an expansion for Sentinels of the Multiverse, this is a very different way to play the game! See my reviews here and here! This is a VERY fun Superhero romp! It’s EPIC! It’s CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS … I mean multiverse, as you are trying to stop THANOS … I mean OblivAeon from destroying the multiverse!!!
It’s a very long and fiddly game. 3+ hours and lots of rules to wade through. BUT, it is the most EPIC SuperHero game you will ever play! But, whatever you do, DO NOT play this until you have mastered the base Sentinels of the Multiverse game! There’s just too much until you know the game.
It’s a fun game, as your heroes die (!), you move back and forth between realities and fight SO MANY BAD GUYS! Fun.
Playable Solo? Strictly speaking yes, but these games go SO MUCH better with a few people!
One of my favorite experiences of 2018 was playing this Unlock adventure with Delia and Sam at RICHIECon! It’s one of the more intricate Unlock games, as you play all the 4 characters from the Wizard of OZ. And without giving away too much, it has a really cool little cardboard device you use throughout the game.
Probably not a good Unlock game to start with, but once you kind of know how the Unlock games work, this one is fantastic. Yes, I would play it again.
Playable Solo? Yes, but you have to play 2 characters at once (alternating)! The game is balanced so that the Heroes always get 4 actions per turn, regardless of player count.
So, this game is a reskin of Warhammer Quest: the Adventure card game!
Unfortunately, Fantasy Flight and the Warhammer people (Games Workshop) “broke up” about a year ago, which meant Fantasy Flight couldn’t use the Warhammer IP anymore.
Which means NO MORE expansions and NO MORE game! (The Warhammer game had two very minor expansions by adding two new characters, but that’s it).
This is a great game system! It’s simple, as each player only has to manage 4 cards. Each card is “tapped” after you use the ability, and you have to do a “heal” or “rest” action to get all your cards back. A very simple mechanism as you explore dungeons!
This is pretty much the same game. You are just in the Terrinoth universe instead of the Warhammer universe. There are minor differences, but it’s the same game. It’s a great game! The main problem with the original game was that there were ONLY 5 scenarios with the game! It CRIED for expansions! Now, with Fantasy Flight owning all the IP for Terrinoth, maybe we will get some …
If I had to characterize this game, I’d say it’s an old text-style adventure game! What? In the old adventure games, you could only “manipulate” the items on screen on in your inventory. “Get light”, “Drop light”, “talk man”, “ask guard about skull” and so on. In this game, all your items are on cards in front of you! When you want to interact with the items, you use your smart phone to scan a code on some cards! So, if you want to “ask guard about skull”, you’d scan the code on the Guard card, then scan the code on Skull card! And the phone would tell you what he said!
This interaction is great! Except, you are trying to solve a crime by interacting with the world in front of you! Really, really fun! You move around from location to location, physically LOOKING at animations at locations (really!), and then scan cards. (“I think there’s a shovel here at this location … Um … Oh! There’s a ‘gardening tools’ card! Scan that!”)
Surprisingly fun, amazing graphics (you HAVE to have a smart phone to play), but a lot of content! It’s also easy to play! A GREAT game!
It shouldn’t shock you that my favorite game is a Superhero game. What should shock you is that it’s basically a DICE GAME! I usually don’t like dice games that much. But this one was fun fun fun!
This game is a surprise on so many levels! It was a Kickstarter that delivered ON TIME! The components are absolutely amazing! (See my review/unboxing here) The gameplay is interesting and uses Player Selected Turn Order (one of my favorite cooperative game mechanics)! The game is hard! But, there are so many interesting decisions even if it is really just a dice game.
This game also introduced me to Superhero world of the Reckoners by Brandon Sanderson.
This was my favorite cooperative game of the year 2018, and it shocked me too.
If you are wondering why we haven’t finished a few reviews for this site, it’s because we have been busy working hard on Sidekick Saga! I’ve been working a lot on the art and graphic design with some great people! (Well, I have getting art from some great artists and great people to help me with graphic design). And getting ready for the Kickstarter! So we’ve just been busy!
Dice Tower Con West
I am excited that we will be previewing Sidekick Saga at Dice Tower West this March 2019! We will have a booth there … come by and get a demo of Sidekick Saga!
Here’s a picture of Scenario Book Cover!
Here’s a sample card (it will be spruced up some more, but this is pretty much what it will look like):
Fewer and Fewer Games!
As this Sidekick Saga Kickstarter gets closer and closer, I am actually playing fewer and fewer games! (So that’s why we have had fewer reviews …) I have at least 6 cooperative games that I really want played, but I am spending all my time getting Sidekick Saga ready to Kickstart in March 2019!
Here’s a quick look at some cooperative games that have gotten little-to-no play!
Forbidden Sky: We’ve actually had 3-5 plays of this, and its decent! Some people like it better, but Forbidden Desert is still my favorite.
The Batman Animated Series Game! Dang! I wanna play this! Richard Lanius and a CO-OP. Maybe this weekend.
7th Continent: Spent at least 2-3 hours sleeving the darn thing. Still haven’t played it!
Detective: Still sitting there …
Heroes of Terrinoth: Just came in the mail the other day. I am a huge fan of the Warhammer Quest Adventure Card Game (which was basically unsupported after Fantasy FLight lost the Warhammer license), so this is supposed to the be the same game in the Terrinoth universe!
Exit games … so many exit games …
About the only game that’s gotten consistent play: Pandemic Legacy Season 1! We have actually been playing 1 session a month where we play 1 or 2 games (if you lose, you have to play a second game to try to catch up). Next month, we will finish everything! One way or another!
Soon!
Our apologies … we hope to get some of the games played over the Turkeyday break, and give your you our thoughts! Have a great Thanksgiving and PLAY GAMES!
So, last night I got home (Friday, October 5th, 2018), and “some big package” was in the living room. The Reckoners? I think? I checked my Kickstarter page: they promised to deliver in October 2018. “That can’t be right. A kickstarter delivering on time?”
A kickstarter delivering on time? That’s unheard of!
Ah well, I know what I am doing tonight!
A Month of SuperHeroes!
Sidekick Saga Cover
The Rulebook for The Reckoners
So, adding in The Reckoners, this month I have been playing almost exlusively cooperative SuperHero games! What a great age we live in! Legendary, Sidekick Saga, Oblivaeon, The Reckoners! All cooperative SuperHero games. They are all very different. I remember 10 (?) years ago, I was clamoring for ANY SuperHero game, let alone a cooperative one. (And Batman: The Animated Series cooperative game is coming out any day too! Watch this space for a review!). Let’s take a look at The Reckoners.
The Reckoners by Brandon Sanderson
Apparently, this game is based on a novel/series of novels by Brandon Sanderson (see novel names above). The theme of these novels is that some humans seem to get Super Powers, but everyone who gets Super Powers becomes evil! These bad guys have taken over cities! And SteelHeart is the worst of the lot! The humans have banded together to “defeat” (cough, cough) all the evil, powered, bad guys. They have technology, smarts, and are working together to take out the bad guys.
I consider myself a comic-book collector (having collected for roughly 40 years), and I knew nothing of this IP before I got the game. I knew this was a cooperative SuperHero game with the backstory described above. That’s it! So, I had no emotional baggage going in! Let”s see what it looks like!
Unboxing
I ordered the “Epic Version” (see green sticker), which has metal (!) bit replacing a lot of plastic bits. This is a pretty big box!
What’s in the box?
The game comes with both a rulebook (on the right) and a “What’s their weakness” book (on the left). One of the key elements of the game is doing “research” on a bad guy (called Epics) to find his/her weakness. I believe Brandon Sanderson wrote the text for the “Untold Epics” book (i.e., find-their-weakness book).
Under the rulebooks … holy cow! Look at those trays!
At once, I was struck by how amazing the components are. Wow! Look at those trays! The tray on the left will end up holding the equipment market, noting some stats (population and money and hideouts) for the Reckoners. The tray on the right: that’s SteelHeart’s tracker. The big bad. Ooh! And I got some miniatures!
Prepainted miniatures. Really nice. There’s 6 Reckoners (heroes) total in the game. Usually, each player will play one of them.
Each Reckoner has his own tray.
Dice
At the end of the day, this is a dice game. Each Reckoner will get 3 normal dice (the lemonade colored dice), and 3 of this own special dice. The special dice seem to have one side that gives an “extra boost” on some resource/stat if you roll it.
If I were to boil the game down to its very very core, it is Yahtzee with special abilities. You roll your dice, select up to three, reroll the rest, select up to another three, then roll one last time. BUT: that makes it sound boring. It’s not! There’s so much more to it! We’ll talk more below.
But the dice are AMAZING. I don’t typically like dice games and the dice were so cool I wanted to roll them! They are big, colorful, easy to read, fun to roll! These dice are just amazing!
Cards
Two types of Cards: Epics (left) and Equipment (right), snug in their little holders
The cards in here are very nice. There are three types: Epics (the bad guys OTHER than SteelHeart, on the right) and Equipment (stuff the Reckoners can buy) and Player Summary Cards (see further below).
One of the stretch goals of the Kickstarter was that we get sleeves for the cards! Hurray! The good news is that you get more than enough sleeves and that the card fit back in their little holders even when sleeved! See picture below.
I love it when games include a Player Reference Card! We get one here! (It’s the same size as the Epics).
All cards sleeved fit in. Note the Player Summary Cards as well!
A bunch of extra cards were included as “Kickstarter Exclusives”. Here they are below for completeness.
Kickstarter Exclusive Equipment Cards
3 of the 6 (plus rules for Hotness) Kickstarter Exclusive EpicsOther 3 Kickstarter Exclusive Epics
Metal Bits
The tokens in this game are pretty amazing. The metal resources markers are limited to the Epic edition(left and middle) , but the metal brackets (far right) were a stretch goal, so I think everyone gets those?
I know I splurged on the Epic version of the game, but WOW. I love these metal tokens! The metal plan token (far left) are AMAZING. I feel completely spoiled ordering those.
The Rulebook
The Rulebook for The Reckoners
The rulebook is quite good. I got up and going “fairly quickly”. Caveat Emptor: there’s a lot of stuff in the box, so I really feel good that they have a components page. Some people don’t even look at a component page, but I always do, just so I can learn the names.
Components page from Rulebook
The Set-up was fairly involved, but the Rulebook did a great job showing a picture:
Game Setup from Rulebook
And the rest of the rulebook is quite good: it shows example of how to play, big text, lots of pictures, and a lot of explanations of Icons.
Ya, there’s a lot of Iconography in this game.
Just SOME of the Iconography
When a game centers on Dice Rolling as its main mechanic, I guess there has to be lot of Icons. Having said that, the rulebook does seem to explain just about everything (but NOT the Kickstarter exclusive cards .. grumble ..)
First Play
Set-up for first play
So, after following the Set-up from the rulebook, I got set-up. For the record, this game takes a lot of space. The city Locations are at the top, the Reckoners board is at the left, SteelHeart is at the right, and the characters are at the bottom. A LOT of trays!
I played a 1 player game, which means playing 2 characters (pretty typical). I was happy that they just had 1 little sentence telling us the simple way to play solo: take two characters (yay, they followed Saunders’ Law). So, there is an approved solo mode built in.
Gameplay
Gameplay is pretty quick. You roll your dice IN ANY ORDER THE PLAYERS CHOOSE and select what you want. Your dice will “typically” only affect the things in your city Location (above, you can see everyone is on the Museum Campus). So, this is crucial: you are working together to get the best dice you can to handle the problems!
As we said earlier, this is a very Yahtzee type mechanic: you roll all your dice, keep up to three (see “Roll #1” slot below). Reroll what you have left, keep up to three (in slot “Roll #2”) then finally keep the rest of your dice. Yahtzee!
Place dice after rolling
But, NOW IT GETS MORE INTERESTING! You get to play (activate) one die at a time, and the players can activate these dice in player-selected turn order! Yep, The Prof can activate a dice (by putting it in one of the 6 slots on the top of the card) , then Abraham can activate two dice, more, or zero! Back and forth in any order! This is very cool! (As some of you might know, I adore player-selected turn order in my cooperative games. I feel like this gives us the best chance to win!)
SteelHeart’s Board
Throughout the game, you use dice to:
Eliminate the Enforcement guys (these are “the police” that are more annoying than painful, but they make Epics more powerful): little red stars is the symbol.
Do research on an Epic or Steelheart (you have to do research on SteelHeart or you can’t even fight him): a little clue
Contain: move the little metal markers above to the left. The further to the right, the more “powers”/”bad stuff” happens when you activate an Epic or SteelHeart
Damage an Epic: a little skull
Money: gain money to buy some equipment ($)
Plan: take an action now to have more in the future
And those are the 6 main things you can do (6: 6-sided dice) with each die. Some of Reckoner specific dice have multiple symbols, which means that action can be taken multiple times.
This Game is Hard!
A “winning” game! Well, I cheated twice …
So, I “sorta” won my first game. How do you win? Do enough damage to SteelHeart to bring him to zero Hit Points! Only after you do enough research (little clue tokens) on SteelHeart specifically, can you damage him! It’s really hard!
You lose if the population is reduced to zero! (When the Epics activate, they typically kill some of the general population). Your job is to mitigate this enough so you can take out SteelHeart.
This is a hard game. I started on “easy” mode, and still got trounced! Well, I cheated twice so I could make it to the endgame and see how it goes. On the very last turn, I had to do 18 Damage total in one turn, and I just barely did! (See game above)
You have to use every die to its maximum effect, take advantage of doubles of dice faces, buy gear early, and kill Epics as soon as possible (killing lower level Epics usually gives you rewards and stop them from doing bad stuff)! Seriously, this game is HARD!
Potential Issues and Pet Peeve
Equipment is key to winning the game!
So, this game is HARD. You will feel very overwhelmed very quickly. If you don’t like games that trounce you (like Ghost Stories), this may scare you away. Even on Easy mode, it was overwhelming! A simple way (not found in the Rulebook) to mitigate some of the difficulty is to simply give yourself some more money at the start of the game so you can buy tons of equipment. Seriously, you can’t win the game without equipment that augment your dice rolls.
I love Player-Selected Turn Order, but it can quickly lead to Analysis Paralysis. Even with just two Reckoners, the order their dice should be played can be a bit much. The thing is, the game is so overwhelmingly hard, that you feel like you want to do the absolute best you can! So you will over-analyze and take forever. Depending on the context, I don’t mind it too much, because I like solving puzzles, but it can be very distracting for some players. Caveat Emptor.
Finally, I have a beef against art in Comic Book games: I feel like “no game really gets it right”. Don’t get me wrong, I LIKE the art in this game! It’s great! But it feels more like BOOK COVER ART than COMIC BOOK ART. For instance:
The art of the book covers looks a LOT like the art in the game! Kind of like a painting … I guess for fans of The Reckoners books, that’s what you want! But, I don’t feel like that is comic-booky! What I want is something more like this!
I like the bright colors! The sharp lines! The action! The Heroic poses! Seriously, I love the clean, striking art (especially of George Perez and John Byrne), and I feel like most comic book games don’t strive for this aesthetic. This is a Pet Peeve of mine. What I think it really means: “I really wish somebody would hire John Byrne or George Perez (or someone like them) to do the art of as Comic Book board game”. This is just me.
Conclusion
Examples showing Player-Selected Turn Order!
I have no prior knowledge of the IP. And I typically don’t like dice games. But I like this game! It’s a cooperative SuperHero game with AMAZING components! The gameplay is fast and quick (although you can get caught in a bit of analysis paralysis), but still quite deep! I am surprised how deep my analyses had to be to do well. It’s hard, and potentially overwhelming, but I think it’s easy to teach and easy to play. The solo mode works great.
If you don’t know the IP, this game is still very accessible! I suspect if you like those books, this game will hit a lot better for you. But I liked it a lot not knowing anything about the books. (And, I don’t even like Dice games usually!)
Right now, this is hovering between a 7-8/10 for me (on the BoardGameGeek chart). I will get it to the table a few more times. I am guessing it will fall at 7.7 or something like that.
I played my first game! And I lost! Sorry I destroyed the Multiverse guys!
Oblievaeon: The Sleevening!
I meant to play my first game about two weeks ago. After I got it out, I told myself: “I should really sleeve these!” So, about 700 card sleeves and 2 hours later, it was all sleeved! At that point, I was exhausted and couldn’t play. But at least everything from the Kickstarter fits into the Oblivaeon box with sleeves …
Oblivaeon: The Rulebook-Readening!
Rulebook for Oblivaeon
So, the rulebook is okay. It’s concise, seems to describe everything. The font is big enough to read, and I ended up referring to it a lot during play, and it worked fine for that. I have two smallish problems with the rulebook:
I don’t think the Comic Book font is right for the Rulebook proper. This looks something like VTC-Letterer-Pro, which is all upper-case, comic book font. And this font looks great on the cards, as it evokes the feeling of reading a panel in a comic book. It’s very thematic! But I think it is the wrong choice for the rulebook! The font isn’t very expressive (not really an italics), I feel like other fonts would be better on the eyes. For a rulebook of any substance, I think it’s too much. I had to read the rulebook from scratch, and I think the font detracted from it. (Partly because things that should have been italicized or bolded weren’t). Your mileage may vary.
I really wanted a list/pictures of Components! This new expansion in SOTM has a lot of new concepts and cards! So, when the rulebook refers to a Scion or Battle Zone or Shield or Aeon Men or Devastation or Objective or Reward … what is it talking about? Granted, I was able to “search” the cards, but even after they were sorted in the box, there was still some hunting. It’s not the end of the world, I figured it out, but that very first set-up was daunting and cumbersome.
In general, the rules were good enough. I was able to read them, set-up, and play the game without having to go the Internet or BoardGameGeek.
Oblivaeon: The Choosening!
My go-to group!
The first thing the rules ask you to do is to choose your starting Heroes. Since I didn’t know ANYTHING about how the game would work, I went ahead and chose my goto team: Legacy, Tempest, and Wraith (aka, Superman, Aquaman, and Batman). I’ve been able to beat just about every Villain in every environment with these three: I know their decks really well. So, since I had SO MUCH NEW STUFF to learn (see below), I wanted something familiar. I strongly encourage others to choose Heroes they know for their first game … there’s just too much otherwise.
So, the rules have a nice abstract set-up page, showing what the game looks like set-up:
This is what my set-up look like on a table:
There’s a LOT of stuff here! Here’s the basic layout:
The bottom has the player area for the three Heroes.
The upper left has the two Battle Zones with two different environments and two different Scions.
The middle area is for Oblivaeon, his booklet (!), his Villain Cards, and his Shield.
The upper right is for the Devastation card and Devastation tokens.
The middle left is the Scion deck and the Scion rules, with Scion cards.
Finally, the middle right is for Aeon Men and Objectives.
Whew, a lot of components!
Battle Zones! (Not the Atari Tank Game!)
Thematically, Oblivaeon (the main bad guy) is destroying the Multiverse. If he succeeds, the players lose! (And I guess everyone else does too). So, in the game, the players (and all the bad guys) bounce between two dimensions (“Battle Zones”) to fight.
Each Zone is self-contained: there’s an environment and a Scion (really awesome Henchman of Oblivean) in each. When the Heroes are in one Battle Zone, all of their powers and effects are limited in scope to JUST THAT BATTLE ZONE. And Oblivaeon glides back and forth between them.
You can see Hero 1 (Legacy) in Battle Zone 1 and Heroes 2 and 3 (Tempest and Wraith) in Battle Zone 2. This means that Legacy’s core power (to strengthen everyone’s attack by 1) wouldn’t do anything, because the other Heroes are in the other Zone!
Obliveon’s Area!
Oblivaeon’s Area!
Oblivaeon is pretty complex. He has his own little rulebook describing how he works. Basically, he goes through 3 phases in the game: 10,000 Hit Points, 180 Hit Points, and 120 Hit Points. You really can’t do much to him until he’s in the third phase (at 120 Hit Points) anyways. You mostly just have to survive until then.
To make matters worse, there’s a Shield card (lower left)! Basically, Oblivaeon is invulnerable until you get rid of his shield! Getting rid of his Shield is messy: you have to all be in the same zone as Oblivaeon and take damage at the same time. Then, as the shield flips, he incapacitates Heroes! Once he has done that, then the shield finally goes away!
Incapacitate!
So, when Oblivaeon incapacitates a Hero, that Hero Card is taken out of the game, and the player can just become a new hero! As long as there are Hero Cards, the players can do this all day. You reclaim all cards, shuffle them up, and then start with 4 cards in hand. To be clear, you can use the original deck again, but you have to use a variant variant Hero Card (see below) to play the same deck again!
So, when Oblivaeon incapacitated my base Legacy, I chose this variant so I keep keep playing his deck!
In all the time I have played SOTM, I didn’t use the variants AT ALL. I kind of like this rule! It forced me to use my variant cards for the first time! And it’s also very thematic! Besides the “Oblivaeon is Thanos” motif of the game, there’s also a “Crisis on Infinite Earths!” motif in the game.
In “Crisis on Infinite Earths!”, there were multiple Supermans, Flashes, etc. And so it’s cool to see multiple cards for Legacy, Tempest, etc.. Very thematic!
Devastation!
This card handles two things:
The Countdown! Everytime the counter goes to zero, Oblivaeon flips to his next phase (from 10,000 HP to 180 HP to 120 HP). Of course, if he flips once too often, the players lose another environment! Closer to Game over! The Countdown counts down the phases of Oblivaeon.
The Devastation Tokens! As the game plays, the Multiverse is slowly being eroded away. Every Devastation Token added to the pool represents this erosion. When there are 12 in the pool, you must destroy an environment! There are a total of 5 environments in the game. If the last one is destroyed, GAME OVER! The Players lose!
The Devastation Tokens are particularly thematic to my mind: just a little bit of erosion every turn, but if you don’t keep it under control, the Multiverse just dies!
Objectives! (Well, Missions)
A Challenge!
You might have noticed that there are a LOT of ways to die! Well, to balance this a little, there is now the notion of an Objective! Well, they call it a Mission in the rules, but it’s labeled Objective on the cards! On a Hero’s turn, he can choose to take, swap, shuffle objectives. He can then work towards that objective. Every objective card has the same feel: take a bit of damage/lose resources to “flip this card”. In the case above, you have to destroy some equipment cards to get a Reward!
The completed Objective! I mean, Mission!
They are potentially useful, but I never got any Objectives completed in my first game! Maybe that’s why I lost?
Tokens
You need a lot of tokens to keep track of stuff! There’s the standard SOTM tokens (effects, energy types, hit points), but now there’s even more things! So, grab some extra token types as well. I went ahead and used the Stonemaier Money tokens for the Hit Points. And you know what? They worked great as hit points. And were very satisfying.
Gameplay
Mid Game
My first game: I spent 30 minutes setting up, 3 hours playing, and I lost. I didn’t really have much of a chance at the end, but I might have been able to win with 2 more turns. I fudged a few times in the game, just to see how it played out. I probably should have died much earlier.
There are two things that really keep the game going: the rulebook and some Hero summary Cards. I kept the rulebook out non-stop, as it shows the summary of turns, and so does the Scion top card. In other words, the summary sheets worked fairly well.
Rulebook for Oblivaeon
But, there are a lot of rules. And I mean a LOT. I love Sentinels of the Multiverse (it’s one of my favorite games of all time)! BUT, even I have to admit, it’s a little fiddly. If you don’t like fiddly, you would hate this game! There are a lot of effects and rules to keep track of as you play: Multiple Environments, Aeon’s Men, Scion effects, Oblivaeon Effects, Objectives, and all the normal SOTM effects.
At one point, I actually just didn’t care about the environment. I just drew the card and didn’t read it. There was SO MUCH going on, I didn’t want to have to try to sort “just one more thing” going on. I was exasperated!
Final Thoughts
End game!
In the end, I lost. I lost because all 5 environments were destroyed, and thus the Multiverse was destroyed! I felt like I couldn’t do a lot, if anything, to stop the devastation. The only way I could have won was to kill Oblivaeon. I just ran out of time.
I feel like I should have done more with Objectives and been smarter with incapacitating Heroes. The Objectives give some nice rewards, probably for a smallish cost. The incapacitate is actually quite useful, as you essentially heal all your hit points! (And let me tell you, your Heroes take a LOT of damage!)
I’m sure I played wrong dozens of times as there were so many rule and effects to follow. It was a little debilitating. A few times, I just didn’t follow some effects because it was just too much to handle. Now that I’ve played through a whole game, I think I could do better at it.
Oblivaeon: The Conclusioning!
So, I got to use my 20 point money markers. That made it all worthwhile!
Seriously, though, I think I liked it. I think. There’s a lot stuff going on, and this definitely is not a game for newbies, anyone who hates fiddliness, or anyone who’s only played SOTM a few times. You need to be very comfortable with SOTM before you give this a try.
It’s a fun game, but it is definitely “an event” where you need to set aside at least 3 hours to play. We’ll see what I think of it after a few more plays. Let’s hope I can convince my friends to play …
Well, I knew what I was going to be doing tonight … I got an email from Greater Than Games saying “it has delivered”. Joy!
It finally came!
Oblivaeon! And Other Stuff from the Kickstarter!
As many of you know, Sentinels of the Multiverse is my favorite game. I talk about it here, here, and here.This expansion for Sentinels of the Multiverse Kickstarted back in February 2016! And it was supposed to deliver (ahem) in January 2017. I JUST GOT MY PACKAGE today, and it’s August 1st, 2018 (and I am one of the earlier receivers). So …. it took a while to get here. Ahem.
I think if this was just about any other game, I would be very very very annoyed. But for some reason, I just can’t stay mad at the Greater Than Games guys. They did a pretty job of getting at least one update a month. They kept us in the loop about why it was late. And watching the carrying case saga unfold was very interesting! So, although it was tremendously late, they at least kept us informed. Which is more than I can say for some Kickstarters! So thank you to the Greater Than Games folks for all this great stuff!
Just an Unboxing
So, normally when I do this, I unbox the game, play a few games and give an initial impression. Then later, after playing it with other people, I wrap up the review. So, usually my reviews come in twos. Not this time! There is SO MUCH CONTENT, between the new game, the Kickstarter exclusives, the new Hero decks and variant covers and Foil cards … we are just doing an unboxing this time. They may be upto 5 parts to this review … Look how much came!
All the stuff that came in the box … well … ALMOST all the stuff …
What’s in this big thing? Keep reading ….
Obliveaon is NOT Thanos!
Oblivaeon doesn’t look ANYTHING like Thanos … well …
Let’s start with the basic game expansion that started this whole thing! The Oblivaeon box!
So, let’s get this out the way … yes, Oblivaeon looks like Thanos, and yes, he’s a star-spanning Villain bent on destroying the Universe like Thanos. But he’s not Thanos. *Cough*.
The game comes with a nice rulebook (similar to previous Sentinels rulebooks). There are a number of new rules: it’s not just a straight-up expansion like others. It also comes with a Comic Book describing “The Beginning of All End”.
Tokens galore to go along with the new rules. And new markers for Hit Points. Wait … is that Hit Point marker for 1000? Yes … yes, it is. And you know why?
Is that a 10,000 Hit Points???
Oblivaeon, in his first form, has 10,000 Hit Points. Ahem. Hm. This game seems to be harder than the previous. You get a bunch of cards as well.
Pulling these apart, you get 5 New Heroes! Hopefully they can take Thanos (I mean Oblivaeon) out!
Five New Heroes that come with Oblivaeon
You also get 5 new Environments.
Five New Environments
The Villains are a little different this game. We saw Oblivaeon, but he has supporting Aeon Men and Scions who do his bidding.
This base game has a lot of content. I look forward to fighting a Villain with 10,000 Hit Points!!! Gulp!
Big Box
What’s in this big thing? Keep reading ….
I know, I know, all of you are wondering .. what’s in the big box?
The Ultimate Collector’s Case for Sentinels of the Multiverse!
Here it is …
It’s hard to get a sense of scale, unless you compare it to other big boxes LIKE GLOOMHAVEN and THUNDERSTONE QUEST!
And, yes, it is bigger than Gloomhaven!
Bigger than Gloomhaven!
It’s supposed to hold every single Sentinels card every made. It opens on the front with a magnetic latch and has a drawer for all the different types of cards.
Here are some of the drawers opened up …
I plan to put all my stuff in here, but it’s going to take a while …
All my Sentinels stuff PRE-Oblivaeon
Mini-Packs
Two new Heroes NOT strictly part of Oblivaeon! They just came out at the same time …
If you have the Sentinels of the Multiverse App for iOS or Android, there’s a decent chance you’ve already seen and played these fellows. I downloaded Mini Pack 3 last week and got a chance to try them out. Decent heroes!
Sentinels and The Void Guard
There’s a real interesting Hero that came with Vengeance (I think) called the Sentinels. They are one of my favorite “characters” to play. They are a little different because they wrapped 4 “baby-heroes” into a team and called it one deck. It’s clever because they are supposed to be teen-agers, and they don’t have very many Hit Points.
They have cards to resurrect a hero when he dies. This is real fun to play.
But now they’ve grown up!
The VOID Guard
Each member is now their own deck! So this comes with 4 new heroes!
I am looking forward to playing this expansion quite a bit, maybe even more than Oblivaeon …
Villain Foil Cards
When I first saw these, I thought, “Meh”. But, after opening them up and seeing the Foil, I think these will really augment the game when playing. They are pretty cool looking.
Variant Cards
Variants
These are simply “variants” on the Heroes in the game. The base Legacy boosts everyones damage by 1, but this Variant (above) has Atomic Glare. Here are a few more from the deck.
More Variants?
There was one more deck that came. I think these are Kickstarter exclusives! It’s been so long, I don’t remember everything that was supposed to come! But there are a few more variants in this pack …
Conclusion
Back of Oblivaeon box
So, Oblivaeon has arrived! I spent a few hours going through things, taking off plastic, looking at cards, and I have to say … I am happy! They’ve done a great job (as usual). I think this will be an AWESOME expansion. Set of expansions?
I will get it played and give my first impressions … soon!
I also have to fit all of this …
… and this …
All the stuff that came in the box … well … ALMOST all the stuff …
Earlier this week, the newest version of the Prototype for Sidekick Saga arrived in the mail. I am very excited because the art on all the Sidekicks and Secret Identities is done! On my birthday, I went ahead and took the day off and solo played the first three scenarios. It’s working real well! Most of the changes now are fixing grammar issues, clarity issues, and some game annotations. The main mechanics seem to be working.
Last night, I had a group of 4 people over to “blind” playtest Sidekick Saga. The newest prototype arrived earlier in the week, and it was time to test out all the things the previous playgroup encountered!
Prototype
The current version of the prototype has all the main characters fleshed out. Phil Cho really delivered some fantastic art!
The Hero Cards!The Secret Identity Side!Markers for each of the Heroes!The Secret Identity Side
Semi-Blind Playtest
Strictly speaking, a blind playtest of a game is where you give the rules and the game to someone AND WALK AWAY! Can they figure the game out without you? Last night, I did a semi-blind playtest. I stayed in the room and took notes as they played, but tried very hard not to speak up. And I got some great feedback!
Playtest Playtest Playtest
If there’s any advice I have to give any designer: playtest playtest playtest. You want the game as good as you can, and playtesters can give you feedback, you can see what’s working, what’s not working, etc.
I still plan more and more playtests to check balance, accessibility, rules, etc. But last night went very well. I think Sidekick Saga is on track. The core rules seem solid and fun. The hope is that we do a January 2019 Kickstart! We need to get some more art, clean up the rulebook and of course, playtest, playetest, playtest. Watch this space for more info!
Charlie, Alison, and Sean play 3-Player Sidekick Saga
This weekend, there was an UNPUB event here in Tucson! Thanks to Mozu productions for helping put this together.
Thanks to Charlie, Alison, Andrew and Sean for coming out! (Andrew came late but offered his support!) Everyone had fun and we had some great feedback by everyone. My favorite part was when Sean started showing Andrew how to play! Sean (who I had never met before that day) was emotionally invested enough to show Andrew how to play! That was great.
Sidekick Saga
Blackbird: one of the Sidekicks from Sidekick Saga! Art by Phil Cho!
Sidekick Saga is the newest game from Return from Subroutine Studios. It’s been in development for about a year. The hope is to kickstart in January 2019, but I won’t kickstart it until it’s ready.
Sidekick Saga is a cooperative SuperHero gaame for 1-4 Players. It’s an adventure, exploration, and combat game where the Sidekick explore the city, fight Bad Guys, and try to find out what happened to all the Big, Powerful, Superheroes!
Watch this space for more information about Sidekick Saga!
Art by Phil Cho
Venom Assault: A Kickstarter from late 2016
I kickstarted a game called Venom Assault a number of years ago. Good game! It even made the Honorable Mention from my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2017. One of the things I liked best about the game was the art—it was done by an artist named Phil Cho. I am working with Phil Cho right now to draw Villains, Heroes, and all sorts of art! So far, I have been blown away by how great his art is. It really adds to the VIBE of the game: His clean, colorful heroes kind of reminds me of John Byrne meets George Perez.
I am super happy (no pun intended) with the direction. People seem to be enjoying the game, the art is coming along great, and I am happy with how this is turning out. Watch here for further developments!
A few weeks ago, I posted my initial impressions of Robit Riddle: a cooperative, story-telling game for 1-6 players. I was able to get it played at RichieCon 2018, and I got some great feedback.
Number of Players
A 3-Player game of Robit Riddle
From my first thoughts, I mentioned that, although I was happy there was a solo mode (yay, Saunders’ Law), it wasn’t very fun alone. It felt kinda … sad … playing and telling a story to myself. Two player was better, but my group said “I can’t really see playing this with less than 3 people”. We didn’t get a chance to play with more than that, but the overwhelming opinion was that this game needs 3-6 players. It’s great to learn the game with 1 player (my preferred way to learn and teach), but the game shines at 3 or more people.
Why more people? Because this is a game of shared story-telling. Taking the narrative and expanding on it. It was fun and cute.
Audience
One of my friends who played the game is a teacher at mid-school, and another has a couple of younger kids. They both echoed my thoughts: “This is a fun game, and I’d play it again, but it feels like it would go over best as a family game with kids 8-12.” Yes, I think older players can play this, as it’s a fun light game (not a filler per se), but it would do best with kids.
Educational Content
My friend who is a teacher pointed out something quite interesting. He uses board games in his classroom (for kids who are having trouble with reading and vocabulary) to help them
He has used both Mythos Tales and Tales Of Arabian Nights to help kids read—I’m the one who introduced Junkerman to Mythos Tales at RichieCon 2017! He has great success in the classroom. With Tales of Arabian Nights, he is getting kids to read, expanding their vocabulary (the vocabulary of Arabian Nights is quite sophisticated). Kids who were lack-luster and uninterested in the classroom lit-up/engaged when playing Mythos Tales–it teaches problem solving, cooperation, reading, and literacy. Both of those games were just so successful!
What did Junkerman think of Robit Riddle?
Continuing Narrative
Junkerman told a very interesting story about his kids and the kinds of things they are tested on. In a recent test, the kids had to take a paragraph and “expand” upon it, using the same tense, voice, and narrative style, to continue a previous paragraph. He thinks Robit Riddle would be perfect for this kind of exercise. It has terrific educational content.
Continuing the narrative, like Robit Riddle does, engages the imagination, while the same forcing constraints on the narrative. I personally believes this shows that imagination can be used in all contexts, not just free-form and untethered.
From this perspective, Robit Riddle really succeeded. You know what, and the game was fun.
Conclusion
I still stand by some of the negative things I said earlier: The entire game (cards and rulebook) could still use another pass by an editor. The cards were pretty low quality. But, overall, this was a good game. We had fun, and I would give it a 7/10 on the BoardGameGeek scale. It’s probably best as a family game, but it would work wonders in an educational scenario.
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