Ok, here is my review of sentinels of the mutliverse. Let me preface it by saying that I had no prior knowledge of it and very little knowledge of card/board/tabletop games beyond my (apparently very small) sphere of experience.
Sentinels of the multiverse is a card game for... well, amazon says 2-5 (the game says nothing) but I think, with the set I bought you could go as far as 11 players if you were so inclined. I bought (what is apparently) the enhanced edition and the first thing that struck me was the size of it. I thought I had purchased a small game about the size of a deck of cards, but it isn't. It comes in (and here I sound a bit weird) a beautiful (but noticeably big) box. At first inspection the game seemed unfathomable, my particular brand of skim reading/ignoring the rules and hastily unpacking everything in the box did not stand me in good stead, but eventually I got there.
Now onto the game: Without giving too much away, the game is that you (and the other players) pick a hero each to play and a villain to fight and an environment to battle in. You follow a sequence of plays, using various types of cards to combat your foe and deal with the unpredictable things that they and the environment throw at you. The heroes fight as a team and ultimately they win or lose together.
The cards themselves are very cool. They look great and the fact they come with dividers so that you can keep each hero, villain and environment separate is a great addition. The set I bought comes with 10 heroes, 4 villains and 4 environments which allows each game to be as different to the last as you want. You can also buy add ons which I'm lead to believe introduce new characters, environments and in some cases rules. The gameplay is a little tricky to pick up if you're a novice like me. The rule book isn't much help at answering a lot of questions and there are (in my opinion) some glaring omissions. As there was no mention of reintroducing the discard pile back into play once you had used them all, my girlfriend and I played a long game to the conclusion that neither we heroes nor the villain had anything that could do any harm to anyone else anymore and so we all went home for a tea and scones.
That one fault aside the game is great. My girlfriend and I haven't yet got the hang of working together properly, instead just inflicting whatever damage we can on the villain and his cronies, but it doesn't detract from the fun. Each hero and villain has their own abilities and strengths which means that if you chose poorly, it is an awful lot harder to win, which for me makes it all the more fun.
So to sum up, I really like this game. It is fiddly and long winded in places and confusing in others but it is definitely not boring. It is action packed and genuinely had me on the edge of my seat at points when the wrong card from the villain could make or break the whole game. I recommend it and I will no doubt be buying some ad ons very soon.
