I know the game is balanced for 3-5, but I have 6 coming over. I think maybe the hardest villian/enviroment combo on advanced might work ok. A problem bigger than balance would be player boredom. The first 4 players to take a turn would prolly kill all minions and leave the last 2 with very little to do. What do you guys think about maybe having the villian take a turn after every 3 players?
Every time the idea of a 6 player game is brought up, I always answer the same: Play 2 3 player games. Boredom will be less, balance is better, and even just the base game comes with enough heroes/villains/environments to do it. I realize it may split the social group into 2 smaller groups, but if you play (for instance) at opposite ends of a large table, everyone can still chat, and you can rotate teams between games. I've played 6 player games before.....trust me, 2x3 is better.
Yeah with six two (H)=3 games are better, and faster.
It does work somewhat with IL, but the game isn't really balanced even then.
I have a smallish hexagon shaped table, so i don't think it work out. Has anyone actually tried it to know how terrible it is?
What would you guys think of having 2 villains in a 6 player game? That would be kina like having two 3 player games except you could still target any villian/hero. Maybe that would get too fiddly.
If everyone thinks these ideas stink, maybe I'll just do 7 wonders and infiltration.
I've done 6 players before and it has been a good time and didn't seem totally unbalanced. 2 3 player games is good, but 6 can be fun too. I reccomend Advanced Mode though. Maybe try The Ennead in Tomb of Anubis on Advanced?
Anyway you slice it, you are looking at a decently house-ruled varient to make those ideas work, especially doubling up on Villains.
As much as I hate to say it, maybe shelfing Sentinels for a game more accomidating for 6 people is the best way to go. Especially if its their first time trying out Sentinels, anything outside of official formats would be doing them and yourself a disservice imo.
I've played Iron Legacy vs. the Freedom Six, it was brutal but didn't seem utterly broken, the game actually turned out pretty epic. And here on this forum we also tried a weird PVP 3-player game, that didn't go so well but you could try it out again, for a weird and crazy time (just be careful of your hero selection, some heroes are more dysfunctional than others in this mode).
Here's an idea I haven't tested: with your hexagonal table, put the Environment in the middle and a Villain on each side, then have two different H=3 games, but they use the same Environment play each round (if one group finishes their round before the other they might have to wait). So it's two simultaneous brawls, but both sides can take pot-shots at the T-Rex or Kraken if need be. Each villain affects only the three heroes on their side of the table, but any Environment card which says "all heroes" affects all six.
I think some of my friends tried a variant where there were two villians, but the heroes could switch who was fighting which villian in between rounds. I don't know whether it worked or not, though.
I've had 6 people. We go with 5 heroes and I ran the Villain and Environs.
Another idea would be to have the most experienced player (you?) just run the villain & environment & kind of oversee while 5 play heroes. I've done this before also.
I did a 7 player game recently because we just got Vengenace and everyone wanted to try it out, so we decided against splitting into multiple games.
We used 4 Vengeance villains and one normal villain (with H = 3). You could probably do the same for a 6 player game with just dropping one of the Vengenace villains.
It was a long game, but turned out to be okay. Since the villains were doing stuff more often, player boredom didn't come up. The down side is that once the Vengeance villains were down, finishing off the normal villain was really easy. A possible fix to that might be to increase H by one when a Vengeance villain dies. That plus the Vengeneance villain incap effects might keep it challenging though the whole game.
We did once, against Advanced Miss Information.
Big. Mistake.
This would be more effective if you got any sort of choice more often. Perhaps allowing the villain/environment player to choose their card plays from a (very small, like 2 or 3 cards) hand instead of just playing the top card of the deck.
It isn't about adding home rules.
Since it's a game I believe we can all agree that it is about fun. Sometimes houserules add to the fun, I don't believe they should be systematicly discouraged, but then again why fix what is not broken. I've tried splitting my sentinels set in two separate 5 men game and it did work fine exept my dice pool and other print up accessories were strechted thin…
In such an occasion I would personnaly play villain and environnement and let the other players have the shining spot but then again I'm a sentinel addict that plays an average of around 10 games a week. If not playing two three man game on the same table can be an interesting alternative.
Playing with 6 players is automatically a house rule, since the game was only designed with 3-5 in mind. After that, it's mearly a matter of degree.
(I understand what you mean though. After a certain point house rules start turning the game into a different game. Which can be equally fun, but it isn't quite the same as house ruling to balance a 6 player game.)
I had posted my 6 v. 2 variant on some other thread a while back... but I can't find it now.
My group and I play this variant pretty often when we want an epic 6 player game. It isn't 100% foolproof, but it works well, although it does make the games longer.
We have been developing specific scenarios with customized rules (specific villain pairings and environments with specific win/lose conditions) that are more fun with the 6-vs-2 variant than the vanilla setup (for that I would tend to agree that two 3-player games works better).
I think the first two scenarios are almost ready for publishing so I'll be posting those within the next week (hopefully). I have about 6 others in the works (somewhere between concept and playtesting)
SotM6v2_0.pdf (202 KB)
SotM6v2 Markers_0.pdf (228 KB)
Did a 6 player game against Ambuscade. The initial onslaught was pretty brutal almost killing Bunker in 1 turn, but after his devices were gone he didnt last long. Wouldnt really reccomend it becomes some villains can get pretty ridiculous numbers with 6 heroes on the field.
I've often run the villain and environment while five other people actually play. It's less fun than playing a hero, but it's more fun than not playing Sentinels at all.
Plus I play a lot online so it's be selfish of me to insist that one of my friends miss out when they don't get to play very much at all. I'm happy to take one for the team, and I can still join in with planning and discussions of what to do throughout the game.
The game's not balanced for 6 so it might not be as good an experience like that.
I recommend choosing the friend you like the least and picking a fight with them so they leave. Problem solved.
OMG the pain.
Yeah, the six-player thing was more of an experiment…and my friends always loved to randomise, so we wound up with that villain.
Would you believe they don't like to play anymore… 
They actually might have enjoyed SotM more if they bothered to learn the playstyles, find heroes they like, figured out what made for a decent challenge and didn't just want to randomise the whole time. Oh well…
I've done multiple games with 8 heroes. Villan hits that use the H-mechanic are very, very powerful. We've even lost one or two games even with all the extra hero-damage. The main downside to 5+ games are how long each round goes, so players can get board.
You do run into some issues with some villans. Like Iron Legacy needing to put out ongoings equal to the number of heroes. I don't remember exactly how many ongoing he has so he may not have enough. You do run out of infections with Plague Rat. We've done him twice with 7+. Once we did that when one person a second person got a copy as well, even though we didn't have a second physical copy. So this way eventually everyone had one. The other time we just based his flip on if all infections were played on a player, even though we had some players not infected.
But other than that, they're actually very do-able. The H-mechanic really does a good job of balancing for both 5+ games and 2 player games.
Actually it does a terrible job for 2-player games because a lot of instances are H-2. And raising some instances to 6 can go pear-shaped, although it might be workable.
The instances of H-2 can be a bit too easy for some two-hero teamups, but makes it possible for others, so it balances. Could it be better? Sure, but it works decent enough. And yeah, some hits, especially H+2 get very scary very quickly, but it works due to the large number of heroes. Just be prepared that some heroes are going to get incappacitated.
Remember even if you're doing 2 heroes, H is still minimum 3.
Not quite. H is minimum 3, but so is the number of heroes. If you're playing with two heroes, there's no reason not to set H=2, since what you're doing is unsupported by the rules either way.
A lot of villains don't even function at H=2 so if you want to play at 2, it is strongly suggested to make H=3 so the game is playable. Chris has even supported this idea, iirc.
While playing 2 heroes if you set to 4 that gives the numbers that were in the original edition before was introduced in the Enhanced Edition.
I like a challenge.
I know the game isn't balanced for only 2 heroes. Neither is it balanced for 5+ heroes. But it does work. Do H-2 effects get stopped with only 2 heroes, yes. But I assure you, this is a good thing. Sure, for some two-heroes match-ups it makes the villan a push-over. But it makes it so any two-hero match-up is viable. And no villian is completely stopped with H=2.
And again, feel free to play how you like. I'm just providing my experiences in H=2 and H=5+ games.
Two hero matchups with H=3 are also viable, though more difficult than playing with 3 heroes, of course.
There's just too many villains that stop doing anything except dealing very small amounts of damage with the occasional one shots to make H=2 interesting to play most of the time.
My younger cousin and I crushed a bunch of villains with 2 heroes and (H)=2. Some were alright, most were laughable, some cards would come out and you could ignore them because tey dealt everyone 0 damage, or destroyed 0 cards.
I like this idea. I'll let you know how badly I get smacked (or how narrowly I win).
my group has played many 6 player games... with 6 players you have a lot of options... but you also take a lot of damage...
6 players against the Dreamer is tough... really tough.
When we play 6 players we always play "Advanced" mode... and they does make the game a lot more balanced.
We have lost a bunch... especially when we randomly choose our heroes.
This is exactly we what do. I do villainous threats, posturing and monolguing too.