Every once in a while, there’s just something we have to tell everyone. We have to say that “THIS IS THE BEST FUCKING THING EVER.” Yes, it’s hyperbolic, but sometimes you just want to gush about how much you love something. Nerds love to talk about what they’re into. This is how I indulge that impulse. Welcome to Best Fucking Thing Ever, a regular segment where I talk about something that’s awesome, regardless of its flaws.

I love me some tabletop games. No, not childhood relics like Candy Land, Mouse Trap, or even Monopoly (admittedly a step up from the former). I’m talking about interesting and strategic tabletop games. When it comes to this genre of gaming, I’m most familiar with tabletop RPGs like Dunegons and Dragons and Exalted, but over the past few years I’ve grown to love both board and card games. My friends and I used to play Risk (usually the Middle Earth variety) with moderate frequency before we discovered Settlers of Catan, which became our go-to game for years (especially the Knights and Cities expansion). In college I discovered deck-building games like Dominion, which I really enjoyed but rarely got the chance to play. Most recently I’ve experienced Puerto Rico and Coup, two extremely fun but very different games. The one thing about board and card games that I dislike is that the competition is occasionally stressful. While most of the time they’re fun whether you win or lose, sometimes competition leads to confrontation, even when playing with friends. This begs the question: what kind of strategic tabletop game (that’s not an RPG) can be challenging and fun?

Enter today’s Best Fucking Thing Ever.

Today’s Topic: Sentinels of the Multiverse

Sentinels of the Multiverse is a “cooperative comic book card game” in which players become superheroes that team up to defeat a scheming supervillain. To combat their foes, 3-5 players choose one of the game’s dozens of superhero characters and grab the deck of cards assigned to that hero. Armed with their cards, the players then choose a villain (and their deck) to fight against and an environment (that also has a deck) in which the battle will occur. Play then follows a very simple loop: each player plays a card, uses a power (based on the cards they’ve played), and draws a card. Then the environment and villain do the same, though they just play a card rather than keep a hand (no one is playing them, after all). The objective is for the heroes to lower the villain’s HP to 0, and they lose if they are all brought to 0. Throughout play, the heroes get stronger, but so do the villains and the environment, which can help or hurt the players. What makes the game interesting is that every hero is unique. Some are powerful damage-dealers, some wipe out scores of weaker minions, some empower their allies, and some manipulate the decks of both their fellow heroes and the dastardly villains. With so much variety (and more with each expansion), no comic-book clash is the same.

The variety of heroes, villains, and environments is one reason why Sentinels of the Multiverse is so wonderful. I fell in love with Dominion is because using different decks made every game unique. Similarly, card games like Magic: The Gathering are always entertaining because every MtG player creates decks and plays the game differently. Sentinel’s legion of heroes and villains make for a consistently unique game in a way that is charismatic and enjoyable. It’s always fun to see which heroes are the most effective against a particular villain or which environments become the most devastating under which circumstances. There’s also a hero for every style of play, whether that’s support or healing or tanking or damage-dealing or something else entirely. In fact, some heroes have multiple playstyles, allowing a player to try a variety of roles with a hero they already like. Every game of Sentinels of the Multiverse is different, even if you fight the same villain over and over again or play a single hero in a single way. The randomness of the cards will always make for a different game, no matter how many times you play.

Sentinels of the Multiverse is also amazing because of its brilliant cooperative gameplay. First of all, it’s a relief to avoid competition with friends in a strategic game setting. Sure, competition can be fun, but it can also lead to annoyance and infighting. SotM does not cause these problems because you’re not just playing it together, you’re playing it with each other. This element of SotM makes drawing in new players easy, especially those less interested in the cutthroat nature of most competitive games. Yet this is not the first cooperative strategy game, nor are such games without criticism. In many cooperative games, players tend to find that the game is rather easy or that the only person who really plays is the person who knows the most about the game. The deck randomness and variety in Sentinel of the Multiverse means that the optimal strategy for a given session is never obvious. One card draw might change the entire game, whether it’s a hero discovering a game-winning superpower or a villain suddenly devastating the plans of the superhero squad. In these cases the players must act quickly, intelligently, and contextually, which means experience is not always the most valuable resource. Furthermore, Sentinels of the Multiverse’s villains and environments are designed to challenge the players, even when their heroes are very powerful. When a group believes no villain is a match for them, SotM even provides advanced challenges that can even make the most experienced warriors quake in their boots.

The character and charisma of Sentinels of the Multiverse is what transforms it from an interesting game to an absolute joy. The players are not just a random set of fighters challenging an amorphous evil. They are the World’s Mightiest Superheroes and their long-standing archnemeses. Every hero (and villain) in SotM has a personality and a backstory to compliment their unique combat abilities. Yes, most of them are caricatures of existing superheroes or superhero tropes (Legacy, for example, is Superman and Captain America, while The Wraith is Batman), but that doesn’t make them any less fun to play. Furthermore, when you form a team of players to fight a villain, you automatically construct your own in-game narrative pitting your heroic team against a new evil threat. It’s exactly like acting out a comic book story and is enhanced by the comic-esque flavor text on every card. When you’re winning, you feel mighty. When you’re struggling, you and your heroic companions refocus, intent on defeating the evildoer no matter the cost. When you finally triumph, you relish in your victory as if you personally threw the final punch into the bad guy’s jaw. Few games are so well-crafted as Sentinels of the Multiverse while still leaving so much room for the imagination.

Sentinels of the Multiverse is a game that every board game lover should play. It’s a fun challenge and a wonderful way to experience your superhero fantasies (because who doesn’t have those… right?) When my gaming pals come over (or when I go to a game night), I plan to bring this awesome game every single time. It’s a tabletop experience the likes of which I’ve never had before, which makes it the best fucking thing ever.

All pictures courtesy of the Sentinels of the Multiverse wiki.

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You can read this worshipful post and quite a few others at the N3rd Dimension.