Interesting SotM games for experienced players

Give me combinations for games that are, for lack of a more descriptive term, "interesting."

Ok, what do I mean? Well, I have played a lot of SotM, to put it mildly. In the last six months, I would estimate around 100 games, not to mention I've had it since it premiered and worked two GenCons with >G. I gave up estimating my total plays. I love it. It's fantastic. We go everywhere together, and I want to spend the rest of my life with it. But in the bedro... um, on the table, I've found myself wanting to spice it up, keep it fresh.

Therefore, I charge you forumites. Give me games to play. But I have a few rules.

1) No new rules for the game. This is the biggest rule. I'm strictly looking for ways to play the existing game in the most interesting way possible.

2) Difficulty should probably be challenging, but difficulty alone does not make an interesting game. Fun hero and villain and environment interactions are ideal.

3) Specifying Regular or Advanced is fine. Bonus points if it manages to be interesting without being Advanced.

And go! Preferably a couple in the next hour and a half, before the next game I play. :-P

Do you mean games with side objectives sorta like the Senario points thing? Or just interesting matchups?

While maybe not fitting in with your criteria I am enjoying trying (what I call) "The Christopher Challenge".

In a podcast many moons ago Christopher said [paraphrasing] Any 3 heroes can beat any villain on advanced. So I am putting that to the test. If I ever get the urge to play and don't have anyone to play with I randomise 3 heroes and a random villain and try to see if I can beat them, then I tick it off my list (yes, the list is growing faster than I can beat them). If not I put an X by it and see how many battles it takes before I can beat them with that combination of heroes. I am finding this particular challenge very interesting, and I don't play many 3 players games, it's almost like playing the game again for the first time.

Matchstickman: I like it. It's a bit of a meta version of what I'm trying to do here.

Foote: Side Objectives wouldn't necessarily be turned away, but that's not really what I'm after. Interesting combinations of hero, villain, and environment. Whether that's thematically or mechanically so, I'm easy to please.

I know you said no new rules, but this came up naturally in a game, but you could force the situation. Bunker, Expat, and Tempy, (and you could add Wraith) versus Omnitron with Reactive plating. Having so much projectile damage makes it a fun challenge to get around, and kill the components in a timely manner. Playing ammo cards just to change the type, or using an Omni-cannon Flak cannon combo in Turret Mode as the standard. You also have to rethink when to squall all the drones and make Omni immune to projectile.

One thing I did a while back was make themed 3 hero teams (since I was playing solo) I could create interesting stories around. For example, my personal favorite is my "The Judges of Fire and Ice" consisting of Redemer Fanatic, Ra, and Tempest. Some others include "The Wisemen" featuring Eternal Haka, Scholar, and Argent Adept, the "Gadget Girls" with Unity, Wraith and Tachyon, and the secretive bounty hunting group known as the "SSS (Secret Sentinel Squad)" with Chrono, Expat and Nightmist (KNYFE will most likely replace the investigating expertice of Nightmist once Vengeance hits)

I think the most difficult Environment and Villain combo is probably Iron Legacy in Rook City.  Both the villain deck and the environment deck are basically stacked to just wreck the players.

For interesting hero combos, I would try and take him on with no real damage dealers.  Fanatic, The Wraith, and Visionary.  They have consistent damage, but no nuke abilities.  I think the Visionary is the one who makes it interesting, since you can basically use her to stack the environment/villain decks.  Probably not the most difficult scenario, but it should keep you on your toes.

Pydro:

Exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. No need to even force it. It's bound to come up at one time or another, with that crew.

Edit: All of you! Great! I'm loving this.

You may find it interesting to make this simple change:  pick a card (or cards) from the villain deck and put it (them) into play at the beginning of the game.  The idea is to see how a fight against a villain goes if you guarantee that he gets a powerful or interesting card or combination in play immediately.  Baron Blade with his Electropulse out right away, or Akash'bhuta with an Entomb right away, Apostate with a particularly bad relic out immediately, or Citizen Dawn with Blood, Sweat and Tears all out at the beginning of the game should make things more interesting, and more thematic -- for once, the villain came to the fight a little more prepared than usual.

That's a slight rules change, but I'll allow it. I suppose one could do the same thing with the environment deck. This deserves some thought.

I have a couple cool subtle mod challenges but I can't give them out until they are used or eliminated from possibility in my campaign.

Solo Games I've been doing nemesis challenges with 2 heroes + support deck.  I take Villain and Nemesis, a random environment, then choose whoever I want to go with them.  Then the support deck I use five heroes character cards who aren't in the gme and use their incap abilities to give the two heroes a better chance.

One ofthe best challenges I've had is going up against Citizen Dawn in atlantis.  You've got the manage the environment very, very carefully, sometimes preserve Citizens, and try really hard not to lose all your cards (to phosphorescent chambers and blinding blasts) or let Dawn get too far ahead (Pillars of Hercules, her various ongoings).  

The Matriarch in Atlantis can be very nasty as well (Mystical Defences versus ALL OF THE BIRDS). Similarly so in the Tomb of Anubis - Mdjai hits all the birdies, and Akana brings out the entire environment as a result :P.

Oh wow. That's kind of amazing. May push the latter tonight.

Edit: Played The Matriarch at Tomb of Anubis tonight. That was the most vicious game of ups and downs I've ever played. Also, we lost. But it was very interesting.

I like themed superhero groups based off of ACTUAL superhero groups: So far I've come up with 3.

Teen Titans: Last Stand Wraith, Young Legacy, Bunker, Naturalist, and Nightmist vs. Ambuscade, while treating Ambuscade as Wraith's nemesis. (yeah, yeah, playtest heroes. Guess you'll have to wait for this one.)

Avengers: Ra, Haka, Legacy, Absolute Zero, and Wraith vs. Kismet, while treating Kismet as Ra's nemesis.

Justice League: Legacy, Wraith, Fanatic, Tachyon, and Tempest vs. Cosmic Omnitron, while treating Omnitron as Legacy's nemesis.

Wouldn't Bunker be a better Iron Man homage than Absolute Zero?  I get that they're both in power-suits, but Bunker's more focused on modular weaponry.  The Gatling Gun is straight off of the War Machine armor, and the OmniCannon is pretty much a send-up of the Uni-Beam...

It's their personalities, mostly. Selfish, hotheaded, impulsive. Bunker is a strategist, calm and collected. NOT at all Tony Stark.

I guess, but Lt. Vance could practically be Col. James Rhodes, and Rhodey's spent almost as long in the Iron Man armor as Stark himself.

Wrathtful Retribution?

Yeah Wrathful in your opening hand is almost a guaranteed win vs. IL.  

Gloomweaver in the Tomb of Anubis.  It's like a game of DnD.  You fight a horde of mummies, zombies, and cultists as you make your way to defeat a dark god.  So.  Much.  Fun.

All projectile and melee group against the Ennead.  It becomes a race to kill them before Shu comes out and then trying to figure out a way around her.  Also Wraith has Inventory Barrage and Visionary is an Ongoing cannon against IL.

Absolute Zero, Fanatic, and Dark Visionary versus Miss Information in the Realm of Discord -- the serious/emo heroes having to deal with weirdness and silliness.

Shu is a "him".

I like, from time to time, to play versus Ambuscade beginning with all his traps face up in his deck.

In a recent game, I played against the Matriarch with the Time cataclysm environment - things became very interesting when the "Surprise shopping trip" entered play.

I am currently in a "Freedom Five retrospective" : the FF versus all villains on advanced. You probably tried it already, but I find the team dynamics in the FF very interesting. I'll try the same with the Freedom Six later.

I like to team Mr Fixer, Expatriette, Unity and Absolute Zero together, especially versus technological villains, but it's more a thematic thing than anything else - and the fun of having plenty of items to rebuild with Unity.

I had great fun in a recent game : The Chairman in Silver Gulch versus Chrono Ranger, Expatriette and a few friends. Guns, guns, guns and exploding dynamite.

We had the gun game of guns once. Expatriette, Chrono-Ranger and  Bunker  vs Ambuscade in SIlver Gulch. There were many shouts of "pew pew pew" and "budda budda budda".

I like to team Mr Fixer, Expatriette, Unity and Absolute Zero together.

I also really enjoy that group.  Add in a Visionary and you have a crazy powerful team with all kinds of shenanigans to pull.

1: Damage resolution in favor of villains.  If an environment would have to choose between a hero or villain target, always pick the hero target.

2: No communications allowed between players/heroes.  No sharing of information at all.  No discussion of how to do damage, what to hit, who has what cards to take care of a threat, etc.

Yeah, communication shut down is a really cool way to play.  You end up hoping other heroes have certain cards or jumping the gun and leaving someon else with nothing to do.  It is interesting.

Bunker, Absolute Zero, Wraith, Mr Fixer, on mars,  advanced, vs anybody.    Start with Baron Blade.

Akash'Bhuta on Rook City:   I like this one because I get to play RC.   RC is a rediculously tough environment that often has the effect of playing more villain cards.   But it doesnt have a lot of environment targets, so A-B doesnt play too many extra villain cards from her own ability.   Overall, this has the effect of evening out,  makes for a fun game.

We have an interesting game going right now. Here is the setup.

Sentinels = Scholar, Expat, Unity, Tempest, Omnitron X

Villian = Apostate

Environment = Tomb of Anubis

First round Apostate pulled Profane Summons. Artifacts revealed = Orb of Delirum, Gauntlet of Perdition, Runes of Malediction and Corrupted Effigy. Of course he already has Condemnation in play...

Had to break for the night (kids need to take showers and such), but so far we are getting our butts whipped. I will say I like how the tomb interacts with Apostate's deck, relics and all.

Very nearly killed Apostate yesterday - had destroyed all relics and just smashed him down to 4hp and were ready for the final round when the lucky bastard got a Profane Summons and brought out his last remaining two relics (the Tome and the Orb). Fortunately we managed to smash through them (and him) without any major hassle, but he bought himself an extra couple of rounds with that one card play :P.

When you run through the villain deck don't you shuffle the trash back in? Which would mean he would get 4 relics. 

BTW he killed us. Really the environment helped by always killing Unity's bots..,

When you are "revealing" cards, no you do not shuffle the trash back into the deck. You only shuffle the trash back in when you have to A) Draw a card from the deck or B) Discard the top card of a deck. If you are just revealing and there are no more cards to "reveal", the effect stops.

He wouldn't have got four Relics from a single Profane Summons in our game because he pulls out H-1 relics I think - two, anyway, because we only play with three heroes :). I think that in this particular case, it happened that there were only two Relics left (unless I'm forgetting one), but I'm pretty sure the Orb and the Tome were the only two left after we'd previously nuked all the others.

In that same game we had something fairly amusing happen - we were playing in the Realm of Discord and Imbued Vitality came out. I jokingly suggested that it would be funny if Apostate were to now play an Apocalypse 'cause we'd be able to destroy it by beating it up. And guess what he played next, and what we did to it? :D Even better - imbued Vitality went away on the next environment turn because another Distortion came out :).

Of note, this is contrary to how deck-building games work (since most of the games which contain as many cards in one box are deck-building, and several of these are superhero-themed, it's worth pointing out the distinction).

I maintain that the Chairman in Final Wasteland is the crown jewel of Sentinels games.  Bob and weave until the environment deck eats every single one of the Charimans goons.  Hilarity ensues.

A current challenge we've got going: How many villains can you remove from the game? That is, fight them in the Final Wasteland, get Unforgiving Wasteland out, and have the environment get the final blow. Of course, The Chairman is immune.

We fought the Ennead in a Google game recently, and the first two of them went down to the Final Wasteland. And while we could have won the game conventionally from that point, we decided it'd be funny to get all of the ones in play removed as well.

It lead to an interesting number-crunching exercise of hitting things exactly enough and manipulating our own HP to lead to that particular event taking place, and it was good fun.

We deliberately chose to fight the Matriarch in the Final Wasteland not long after Shattered Timelines came out, just so we could see if we could get all her stuff destroyed. And omg it was amazing - first environment card was a Horrid Skunk Ape. Second was Unforgiving Wasteland (third and fourth were the Library and Con's Bunker...in that order, I think...after that I think creatures started coming out but I think there were only a couple of rounds left in the game by that point anyway). So every round, the Ape ate whatever birds Lilian had put out (and the "remove from game instead of destroy" thing meant we took no damage for it doing so). We made sure it got the Mask as well, and both Cohorts. By the end of the game Lilian's deck consisted of her one-shots and one Carrion Field. And Lilian herself, of course, who got rather severaly mashed into a pulp by us heroes :D.

If only you could get out Imbued Vitality and Unforgiving Wasteland in the same game, then have the environment take out the Chairman before he flips.

he's not an ongoing card, though...

So, if Shu is among the initial Ennead members, do you just scoop and try again?

Also, on this subject, I'm not clear on the rule of Environment nemeses.  Is Anubis a nemesis to the Ennead as well, or just to Ra?

Nemesis get bonus to all nemesis targets other than themselves, the Ennead get bonus againt each other too.

I just got to the section that states this in Spiff's document, and was going to delete my question.  Oh well, thank you for answering anyway.

(I will be interested in seeing how the Sentinels handle this.  If they're meant as a Fantastic Four analogue, they really should get a bonus to damage each other, considering how well Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm get along.)

No, that's from a game we played where at the end everyone was dead but Bunker and Haka.  Then Shu came out.  The major conciet of the challenge is that there is no actual combination of charecters that can only do those two types of damage.  Their are teams that have extremely limited ways of doing other types.  The challenge is in trying to utilize alternative means of doing damage to Shu or out lasting him.  If at the start he comes out we'll play it all the way through.  He doesn't often come out early though.  We don't shuffle Recklessly.  We play recklessly though.

I remember that game. It was sad because we were so close to winning.

It sounds super interesting. May have to try this soon, if I can convince a group of people it will be "fun." :-P

I see what you did there.  That game was harsh…

Omni cannon and savage mana would work.

The usefulness of Savage Mana would be sort of dependent on the environment you were fighting in, since that'd be the only source of "edible" targets for Haka versus the Ennead - if he killed one of the Ennead they'd only flip.

There is Haka of Battle to boost Savage Mana's damage up enough to destroy Shu.

Ah, true. Good point :).

Nielezebub and I were fighting to stay alive till we got them. We didn’t.

I'm posting it here now, since there is only a very slim chance we'll have this fight in my storyline game:

Omnitron (normal)

in

The Block.

Special Rules:

All Devices gain the keyword Agent.

All Agents gain the keyword Device.

For extra challenge make the components harder to destroy.

It is nasty and fun, I came up with it for my story fight, where a Baron Blade manipulated Timeline has Omnitron running a rip-off of the Block as a center to experiment on Super powered people.

Pretty cool idea, but it'd be even better if you shuffled all the Citizens from Dawn's deck into the environment deck and treated them as Inmates.

Funny you should mention that, I was thinking of starting another living campaign, and the first part would be Dawn recruiting peiple from the vlock. Whenever you draw an inmate, you would put itin the trash, and instead reveal cards from Dawn’s dexk until a target is put into play.

Haka of battle. Just dump a big hand and hit them with that.

Akash’Bhuta (preferably on advanced, but whatever) in the final wasteland. Pick the best team you can think of and proceed to be utterly destroyed. Usually she’s kind of a pushover, but man, with so many environment targets o_o

I can see how that could be pretty nasty...plus add in the fact that if Unforgiving Wasteland comes out, any limbs destroyed by the environment won't cause Akash'Bhuta to hit herself so she'll take even longer to kill :P.

You, sir, are brilliant.

Not to mention Punish the Weak!

Just an idea that I had:  I know there's a link somewhere in here that maps the Sentinels Comic History, but you could try and find a team where all flavor text hero & villain come from the same comic issue and then you could recreate the battle from that comic issue.  If an environment is referenced in the flavor text, use that.  I'm sure there are at least a few combinations out there.

Beat down Gloomweaver before the third artifact comes out so that you have to protect him till it does so you can break all his toys. And then feel like a real jerk.

I will always remember Reckless taking a big sigh before saying, "Quickly, everyone! We must protect Gloomweaver from the Velociraptors."

It was something I never thought I would ever have to say.  It's funny how some Sentinels games can go!

So here's a challenge. Play the Mars Base, and everytime an environment card is played, try to think of a quote from Total Recall (Arnold Schwarzenager version) that can relate to what's going on.

I like all-relic games. Play against Apostate in the Ruins of Anubis. Go with Ra, Nightmist, and Fanatic. See how things not affecting relics will change gameplay. They're kinda fun.

Arathorn