An Article on Geek & Sundry about SotM

Here.

I found the article's choice of artwork to be amusing.

They also used artwork from the video game (the main article image) but didn't mention it. Hopefully they will update the article =)

Heh, it also says "other players' cards are hidden" and that "as a result", everyone has to work together to beat the villain. I've never played like that...I mean, with cards hidden - why hide your cards when it's a co-operative game? The "working together" part is kind of the entire point of the game, so hiding cards has nothing to do with that ;).

Nice to see Sentinels still getting nice publicity and stuff on these kinds of random websites, though - I'm sure it'll bring in even more players to assist us all in our global domination and...you know, all that kind of stuff >:).

Depends on who you play with. I hide my cards (as you've seen) - usually this is just a formality, and I'll always tell people what I can do, but there are a couple of people I play with sometimes who would probably end up trying to make everyone's moves for them if we played open-hand.

You hide your cards when your group has, what I call, the Alpha gamer. That guy. The one who treats co-op games like they are solo games with meat puppets drawing cards for them.

If your group has no one like that I can see why you've always played open. We have one or 2 people like that so we've been playing with cards in hand so everyone feels like they contributed in the win, or beat down, equally.

I always play closed-hand. My usual group has mixed preferences so often we have games where some people play open and some closed =)

I like to play open-handed, because I like playing support characters and it helps me plan out my moves.

That said, I occasionally veer toward being That Guy in RL games, since half the time I play with someone new to the system who needs all the cards explained. At least one told the table at large, "Just tell me what to play," because she didn't get a feel for it right away.

I'll play open-handed with the Grasshopper (age 10), but generally closed-handed with other adults. I'm looking forward to trying it out with the Munchkin (age 6) in the near-ish future, but it's going to take an afternoon where we can dedicate the time to being patient about it.

i can see it working with a 10 year old, but I've never really thought a six year old would grasp it. I guess I always pictured 12 or so and up. But me know how that goes for you. 

I've run demos for children as young as 7. It really depends on the children and how patient the parents are with them, but there are definitely some younger children who can play without a problem. But I'll often play those demos open-handed (so I can make sure they understand the cards) then manage the parents to let the child make the choices.

My kids both read really, really well. (The older one started first grade in public schools reading at a minimum 3rd-grade level. the Munchkin was being sent to a 1st-grade reading group before the fall semester was over, and can comfortably read a Magic Tree House book mostly by herself.) I was playing with the Grasshopper when he was 7, after being convinced by Rob Donoghue (of Evil Hat) that it was worth trying.

The big issues in trying to run a game with all three of us will be keeping the Grasshopper from getting bossy, and the Munchkin's tendency to go straight to meltdown without much in the way of visible upset beforehand. I'm keeping my eyes peeled for a raindy weekend day when they're with me, so that we can start more or less as soon as we've cleaned up from lunch and let it take as long as it takes.

If you're keeping your cards in your hand so other people can't see them, do you not have difficulty looking through them all easily on occasions where you've got a large hand? Mine are always just laid out in a line on the table, with another row above that for my in-play stuff.

My son started just after his 6th birthday, closed handed, he's never been a great reader (certainly not reading above his grade level) but he could memorize what each card did once he asked and I told him, he stuck to playing a few favorite heroes (1s and 2s), but now getting closer to 8 he is trying more variety, often playing two heroes at once and can read most of the cards though he does interpret the effects wrong sometimes usually its becasue he read it too fast. (2 targets 1 damage vs 1 target 2 damage).

He definitatly could not run the game by himself though in a couple more years that could be possible. My next oldest is 5 now and I'm not seeing her being ready in a year, she has desires to play but doesn't have the patience, things can change in a year though.

I often split my large hand into cards I'm likely to play soon and cards I'm not, leaving the cards I'm not likely to play in a pile in my play area to grab from for discards. I'll occasionally revisit the piles when game state changes significantly, but I tend not to worry about it too much / spend too much time going through my hand.

(This is something I started to do to avoid anlaysis paralysis.   Plus it helps that I often know the cards well enough that, if there's something I suddenly need, I'll know it and can easily go retrieve it from the other pile.)

I tend to hold my cards too, and then organise them as we play, thinking a couple of turns ahead and putting the ones I am about to play at the back (so I can simply flip the top card of my hand if I put them face down in a stack) and rearrange them when I draw a new one. If someone asks "Hey can you do X?" I either know I have that card as I was planning on playing it soon or I can look through the cards closest to me and see, I never need to go more than a few cards deep to answer their question.

It's very cool to know that parents can play this game with their kids. :D

Not having kids of our own, spouse and I play it with our niblings.

I play with my oldest daughter who's 9 now. Her current go to heroes are Absolute Zero and Dark Watch Mister Fixer. It all depends on the child, but you can definately play this with your children.

We always play with closed hands, even when playing with my daughter (12).

Table talk is encouraged; so if someone needs assistance, we can always say what we've got. 

However. the fun of playing closed hand is that when something bad pops up from the villain, one of us can go, "Don't worry, I've got this." and surprise the rest of the table with a great play.  That just isn't as cool when you know what cards other people are already holding.

Well, you don't have to look at whatever cards they have laid out on the table ;). And it's possible they'll have something really convoluted in mind that you haven't thought of and which may involve other players doing stuff too (eg the Adept letting off a string of powers which involves letting someone else use something to help deal with the current problem). It's also easier if you are playing someone who supports other characters a lot to know what the other players are actually capable of - much easier to glance across at Unity's section of the table and see a bunch of bots sat there when you're trying to decide whom you should give a free card play to, for example ;). There is always plenty of talk in any game I play as we discuss what we should do - no-one ever tells anyone what they should be playing or anything and if they did I'd tell them off for it ;). When we've been playing at the London meets there are some people who seem to play with their hands hidden, but we tend to use a lot of decks that most other players present don't really know all that well anyway (owing to one of said players being a playtester who also happens to own all the Cauldron decks as well :D), so it probably wouldn't make much difference if we could see their cards or not ;).

You forgot has his own characters all printed in tiny font on plain white cards. :-)

Oh yes, I did think of that but I figured that as it's difficult enough to see the text on someone's cards when they're sitting at the other end of the table, I felt I didn't need to also add that they were text-only-on-a-white-background-and-therefore-all-look-much-the-same-at-a-glance ;).

You don't need to read the cards when you've played the video game enough times you recognize them just by the art :D

You don't even need the video game for that!

I play with my 5 year old.  He still can't read but he grasps the concepts just fine.  He likes to play Ra which is pretty straight forward.