Details on the Logistics of Shipping and More!
over 6 years ago – Wed, Nov 08, 2017 at 12:01:48 AM

Greetings and hello, fair readers!

Hope everything is going well for all of you out there in internet-land!

Just a couple of things to go over today: how we’re doing the shipping for OblivAeon and all the related stuff, and then the upcoming convention!

Stuff about Shipping

Let’s break it down!

Turns out, we’re printing a TON of stuff for this campaign. Fortunately, we’ve already shipped all of you the 5th Anniversary Foil Hero Collection, but we still have the Ultimate Collector’s Case, the Foil Oversized Villain Collection, Benchmark, Stuntman, Void Guard, and don’t forget OblivAeon itself! And, of course, a veritable pile of promo hero character cards. This is a lot of things - more things than we’ve ever made at one time in our history as a game company! Also, this is a HUGE order. There are well over 10,000 (that’s TEN THOUSAND! More than a hundred hundreds!) orders, between you fantastic Kickstarter backers, the slacker-backers who joined in on BackerKit, and folks who pre-ordered directly from our website. So, what I’m saying here is that we’re producing more things simultaneously and then printing more things simultaneously than ever before. But! We’ve got plans on how to make everything work.

The biggest challenge is the size of everything. So, we’re not using the standard method of doing things: shipping us all of each thing individually and then after we receive all of it we pack cases full of 1 of each things (in the case of most typical orders) to ship out to all of you. Nope! Not doing that. Instead, we’re having the individual orders prepacked in China, and then those cases shipped to us. This means, whenever we receive a cargo container from China, we’ll be able to unload each case, open them up to verify the correct contents and packing security, slap shipping labels on them, and send them right out to you! Much faster. Also more expensive, but, as they say, time is money. In this case, it’s worth the extra cost to get OblivAeon and Friends to you as efficiently as possible.

Speaking of cargo containers, let’s talk about how many of those we’re going to get. Spoilers: it’s a lot. Each cargo container can hold a bit over 2000 orders that don’t contain the Ultimate Collector’s Case, or just shy of 1000 orders that contain the Ultimate Collector’s Case. Yeah.

A quick interjection: in most mass shipping situations like this, non-US orders tend to get the short end of the stick. International shipping certainly costs more than domestic shipping, but it also takes longer and is a more complicated process, so it tends to be done last. But we’re not content with our international supports being treated poorly! No, indeed! We’ve partnered with Spiral Galaxy Games in the UK to get this shipment out to the whole world in a timely fashion.

The reason I went off on that tangent is to explain where all the cargo containers are going. Most of them are coming to us, but first, we’ll be sending one to Spiral Galaxy Games full of everything they need to send out the UK and non-North America orders. Then, the rest of the cargo containers will be coming to us. First, we’ll get one cargo container of non-Ultimate Collector’s Case orders. Just one. Then, we’ll have at least 10 more containers with the Ultimate Collector’s Case orders. All the cargo containers that are coming the the GTG HQ are for US and Canada orders. As we receive them, we’ll unpack them, verify the contents of each package, label them, and send them out to you.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “How are you going to choose what order to send them to us? Will it be alphabetical by first name? By last name? By middle initial?!” None of the above! We will be organizing our shipping labels and shipping out the cases as we unload the cargo containers in order of your backer number. Those who backed OblivAeon first will get their games first. We’ll use this method for all of the Kickstarter backers, and keep using the chronological method for those who jumped in late on either BackerKit or by ordering from the GTG website. We figure that’s the most fair method - first come, first served.

So, the big thing that can delay this process is how long the cargo containers take 1) to be packed up in China, 2) to make their way across the ocean and then across the country, and 3) to be unloaded and labeled and shipped by out by us. Step 3 we’re feeling very good about. We used a similar method for shipping out Lazer Ryderz, Spirit Island, and Exoplanets recently, and it went very smoothly. Also, our warehouse is more organized and better staffed than ever with the addition of our newly acquired Inventory Manager Matt. Between Matt and Jodie, they’ve got the warehouse in great shape, and the OblivAeon ship out will be an “all hands on deck” situation with pretty much everyone at GTG chipping in on getting your orders to you.

The first two hurdles (time to pack in China and time in transit) are not a thing that we can control. We can make estimations: given our history with cargo containers, we expect a container to take roughly a month from the time it leaves the port in Shanghai to the time it arrives at our warehouse in St. Louis. So, the real question is, how fast will they get packed up and out the door? We want to receive multiple cargo containers a week to make this final shipping process take under two months, ideally. However, it’s just as likely that we will receive one cargo container a week, or even one every other week. We’re putting a lot of pressure on our factories in China right now about this very thing, hoping to nail down and even accelerate this timeline as much as possible.

So, now you know all that we know on how the shipping will go! As soon as I have any additional info or confirmations - including when things finish printing and start the shipping process - I’ll share them here with you. But it’s good to have the light at the end of the tunnel, right? Whew!

PAX Unplugged

In about a week and a half (oh geeze oh geeze oh geeze) we’ll be at PAX Unplugged!

We have a really notable presence at this first entirely tabletop gaming focused PAX! You can find us in Booth #1103 and Room #203B. We've got lots of great games to show off there, including more previews of OblivAeon and the Sentinel Comics Roleplaying Game. Here’s a map!

If you’re at the show or even just in the Philly area, come on by! There are tickets still available for most days of the show, and we’re going to have a lot to show off there!

That’s all for now!

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m going to keep doing updates on the first Tuesday of every month. However! Whenever I have additional news or updates about anything relating to the OblivAeon production process, I’ll certainly pop in to let you know. It’s important to me that you folks are as in the loop as possible.

Until then, keep on saving the Multiverse! See you soon, one way or another!

-Christopher

Update Month, Part 5!
over 6 years ago – Tue, Oct 31, 2017 at 11:31:24 PM

The final update of Update Month!

Hello and welcome, friends! It is good to talk to you again.

Now, sure, this is the last update of Update Month, but do not despair! Next week, there will be another update, as it will be the first Tuesday of a month! This train is going to keep on rolling! (Obligatory Fright Train joke.)

Today’s update is a bit of a grab bag. I’ve gone through and curated questions from the previous updates, since I’ve been largely ignoring them throughout Update Month for the sake of getting through the content that I needed to cover each week. So, today is the FAQ update! Then, I’ll talk a bit about how you can be involved in the future of Sentinel Comics, and then finish up by talking about a few other currently ongoing Kickstarters, which I haven’t done in a while! So! Let’s get right into it!

♫Reading Letters To You...♪

In order to keep this section from being too ridiculously long, I’m keeping this to just questions asked in the comments of the previous updates in Update Month. That means I’m ignoring the general comments section. It’s not that I don’t love you folks. There are only so many hours in the day, turns out.

So, without further ado!

Questions from Update #1

• We begin with a question from David, who writes, “WHEN ARE WE GETTING THIS GAME?”

A valid question! Glad we’re covering this right off the bat here. We want to get your this game as soon as possible. I have been not giving definite timelines because I don’t have them yet. I will let you all know when the games are on boats and heading this way, as it is at that point that we will know enough to speak with some amount of timeline confidence. Bear with us!

• Next, Bear asks (in a roundabout way) if we will be making the tokens that come with the Collector’s Case available separately from the case? Perhaps on the GTG webstore?

Nope! Those tokens are unique to the Ultimate Collector’s Case.

• The next question is from John, who asks, “Will there be Ankh tokens?”

I don’t know what you want Ankhs for, but next month features a holiday you might be interested in: ThAnkhsgiving!

• Allison asks, “I've moved since putting in my shipping address. Where will I need to go to change it to the right address?”

This is a question we get quite often! You can just log back into the BackerKit and change your address! If you have any difficult with that, let us know.

• Nathaniel asks, “Why aren't the hero variants listed under their complexity chart?” and “Also the Scion list does not show the Nemesis icons. Is there a reason for this?”

I answer the first one in Update #2, but the second one is fair. Each of the Scions have different Nemesis icons on the two sides of their cards, and many of them have multiple Nemesis icons. As a result, the chart would either have to have a TON of space for Nemesis icons, or not include Nemesis icons. You can see what direction we ultimately took.

Speaking of Update #2, let’s move on to questions from that one!

Questions from Update #2

• Eric wants to know what’s going on. He writes, “So wait...this still isn’t at the printer?”

The printer has the files, but we’re going back and forth on proofs! We are searching everything for errors, typos, and any potential printing issues. Thing is, there’s a lot to go through. The first print run of OblivAeon is going to be massive, and it’s the one that’s going out to all of you. We really don’t want to let you down. So, the project is currently in what’s called “pre-production”. Though some of it has already moved from pre-production to production! Just not all of it. That’s where we are!

• Jarrah writes, “In that rule sheet it mentions Writhe. Is that right, or should it be Wraith?"

Both are correct! The hero from the Sentinels of the Multiverse core game who uses stealth and gadgets to fight crime is known as The Wraith. The member of the Southwest Sentinels that bonded with a shadowcloak invention and who later gains cosmic power from an OblivAeon shard is known as Writhe. Totally different people! Admittedly similar names.

Brian wants to know how to set up The Harpy at the start of a game.

She sets up the same way any other hero does… plus her 5 tokens! Each token has a side with a magic symbol and a side with a bird symbol. She starts slightly more in control of her magic, but she could let go and let the birds do their thing with little provocation. Three of the tokens start “arcane” side up, and two of them start “avian” side up. But then they get changed frequently by her cards and powers!

Here’s what those tokens look like:

• Luke notes that some of the villain difficulties have shifted from their original printed values. He asks, “Has that come from player feedback or further play testing?”

Both! Well, not really playtesting, as that’s a thing that you do in preparation of releasing a game, but over the years of playing the game, some villains that I originally thought a certain difficult turned out to be slightly different, and so the chart has been updated!

Questions from Update #3

• Evan asks the ever-present question: “I may have missed something but when is the expected shipping/delivery date?”

Best guess? Early next year. But, as mentioned earlier, it really depends on so many variables that we’re not wanting to commit to anything until we have more concrete info. Next week’s update will go over those variables.

• Paul asks, “Any word on how many pages the comic will be?”

The word is fourteen! (For printing purposes, it’s a 16 page booklet, but you probably don’t count the front and back cover as “pages”.) The idea is that you read the comic, and then play the OblivAeon event game to see how it all turns out!

• Grimwold is concerned that there are 10 Scions and 5 Shield cards. He asks about the 5 Scions not listed on the Shields, “Why don't they deserve a shield?”

Five of the Scions line up with specific Shields, but the other five are Scions that I don’t want coming out at the start of game in the First Battle Zone. Not to worry! They all have a chance to show up over the course of a game.

• Kevin writes, “So this may be more for a letters page episode but I'll ask anyways. Since your guys names are on the comic but it is published by sentinel comics. Are you and Adam writers/artists in the publishing universe as well or does this comic not exist in the publishing universe.”

Adam and I do exist in the Sentinel Comics publishing universe. However, the extent of how we exist has not yet been revealed! Layers upon layers of meta here.

• Will thinks he’s got me! “Yes, Christopher, you ARE missing a deck back. Or does [REDACTED] not get one, hm?”

None of the Scions have their own decks! There is a Scion deck that all the Scions share, and the back for that deck has already been shown. You can’t catch me that easily!

• Stephen writes, “you mentioned when the campaign was running that the comic you would make was going to be Freedom Five Annual #30. This doesn't look like that issue. Any particular reason for the change?”

Ultimately, we realized that Freedom Five Annual #30 told the canon of the event, rather than setting up the event. While that canon is certainly of interest to everyone, the comic that comes with this product needs to set up the event and get the players/readers ready to face OblivAeon, and that’s what the One-Shot comic that we made for this does!

• Steve asks, “Other than Oblivaeon, which expansion back was your favorite?”

That’s tough. Maybe Wrath of the Cosmos? I really like how that one turned out. But I do love all of them.

• Adam Butler asks, “How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?”

...I don’t have time to explain.

Questions from Update #4

• After seeing all the layout of the OblivAeon game, Glenn asks, “Are there any thoughts to making a playmat for all of this?”

Possibly! Is there demand? We certainly have various playmat plans in the works...

• Kevin writes, “So I see mention of replacing environments from the game. How many environments will be in this reserve?”

At the start of the game, you select 5 environments, shuffle them, and set them aside. If you ever run out of environments, the Multiverse has been destroyed. Everything ends. Game over.

• Joshua asks, “The Scion Reserve card indicates that Olivaeon takes his turn, and then all the heroes take theirs, and then there are separate villain and environment turns for each Battle Zone, correct?”

Yup! Do all that, rinse & repeat!

• Grimwold’s got a few questions! “As I read the rules, when I got an incapped hero, I get another one to replace it ... every time?”

That’s correct! That is, until you run out of hero character cards because all of them are incapacitated in hero play areas. Though you’ll lose the game for other reasons before then.

• More Grimwold: “If I play in Magmaria and I got a crystal shuffled in my deck. Do I search the deck to remove it?”

Yup, gotta remove anything from an environment that is being destroyed from the game entirely! Fortunately, you can search your deck without looking at the card fronts, as the cardback will be clearly different.

• And the last of the Grimwold questions: “When an environment deck is removed, what happens to Akash'thrya cards in it?”

They go to her trash!

Steve asks, “Oblivaeon booklet? Are they not individual cards?”

Ah-ha! I was hoping someone would ask this! Time for a reveal!

OblivAeon has three phases, whereas most villains have two phases. With a two-phase villain, you can flip a card to change those phases. But to represent OblivAeon’s phases, we turned OblivAeon into a booklet! The front of the booklet has OblivAeon’s setup, and then each two-page spread acts as OblivAeon’s character card. OblivAeon is bigger than any villain you’ve ever faced before!

• Chris asks how the Battle Zone cards work. I’ll just toss one here:

• Ben asks, “How about hero variants? Since only the hero card sticks around, would there be any problem with, say, swapping Luminary for Heroic Luminary?”

Totally fine, so long as no one else is already playing Luminary!

• Darrell wants more info. “Could I ask maybe next update that you go over some of the rules for the Battle Zones?”

I can do that!

Here are some snippets from the rulebook:

Heroes, their players, their play areas, and all of the cards in their play area are in the same battle zone as their marker. Unless stated otherwise, cards and effects in a battle zone cannot affect or be affected by anything in the other battle zone.

The OblivAeon deck, the Scion deck, and the Aeon-Men deck all count as villain decks. The Scion Reserve is not a villain deck. If a hero is in a battle zone with OblivAeon, they can affect the OblivAeon villain deck and trash. If a hero is in a battle zone with a Scion, they can affect the Scion villain deck and trash. If a hero is in a battle zone with any Aeon Men, they can affect the Aeon-Men villain deck and trash. Environment cards can only affect the OblivAeon deck, the Scion deck, and/or the Aeon-Men deck if a target associated with one of those decks is in the battle zone with that environment.

Mission cards in a hero play area can only affect cards and targets in the battle zone that hero is in. Only players with heroes in that battle zone can pay objective costs, interact with mission cards, or receive rewards.

Indestructible cards may be moved from one Battle Zone to the other.

(H) is the number of hero play areas at the start of the game, not the number of heroes in a Battle Zone.

Heroes may be moved between Battle Zones more than once per turn.

Hope that helps!

• Stephen asks, “why does Darkmind have the Dark Watch sans Nightmist as her nemeses instead of the Visionary?”

Because the other side of her Scion card is the Nemesis of The Visionary! Er, spoilers!

• Various people have questions about what happens if an Environment’s Game Over condition is triggered.

Fortunately, the game already has rules about Environments getting destroyed. If a Environment triggers its Game Over condition, follow the Environment destruction rules unique to the OblivAeon event. So, in other words, don’t let that happen!

• Andy is concerned. He writes, “Does the OblivAeon card *actually* have an “Advanced” rules condition on the bottom!?! Do we really need a way to make this scenario even harder!?!”

Indeed. Not only does OblivAeon have “Advanced” rules, so do all of the Scions. And yes, there will be a Challenge Mode as well. Though, I cannot share it here, as it actually has story spoilers in it…

Whew! This is the part of the update that definitely took the longest. Hope it was worth it!

Join the future of Sentinel Comics!

You’ve probably heard of our podcast “The Letters Page”. Last Thursday, we posted an “Editor’s Note” episode. Our Editor’s Note episodes are for picking up the pieces, filling in the gaps, and talking about upcoming schedules and such. In last Thursday’s Editor’s Note, just after the Questions section, we announced an event called Cosmic Contest. I don’t want to give away too much, but there’s an opportunity explained in that Editor’s Note for you to take part in the contest. And the winning entry in the contest can become part of the future of Sentinel Comics! Anyway, we explain everything in the Editor’s Note. Check it out!

Other Kickstarters

There are a bunch of great Kickstarts going on right now! I highly recommend checking these four out!

The Dice Hate Me branch of Greater Than Games is currently Kickstarting Legends of Sleepy Hollow, which is a fantastic co-op adventure game.

 I love the game, the story is amazing, and the art and design of the entire thing is brilliant. I highly recommend this game.

The fine folks at 9th Level Games are putting out a wonderful anthology of RPGs, called the Tragedies of Middle School!

 Everything about this campaign is exciting. I love the aesthetic, the games all look great, and the impressive pile of names working on all the games is just mind-blowing. Personally, I backed this campaign day one.

This next one isn’t a game, but it could still bring a lot of joy to many people’s lives! Storm, of the band Paul and Storm, is Kickstarting an album of joyful and fantastic music called Sidecar Astronauts!

 I’ve heard a lot of the songs going into this album, and I can safely say that this is my jam! Also, there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes storytelling going on between the music, the art, and all of the ideas behind what Storm is working on here. And if you like the storytelling style behind Sentinels of the Multiverse, you’ll appreciate the way Storm is approaching his stories here.

This last Kickstarter isn’t out yet - it starts tomorrow! The beautiful people at Handelabra - the company behind the Sentinels of the Multiverse video game - are bringing another great tabletop game to the digital world!

 One Deck Dungeon is a blast of a game from Asmadi Games, and I am excited to see it move to devices of all sorts! I know I’ll be watching Kickstarter tomorrow to see this project go live.

So many great things from so many great people!

Farewell to Update Month

It’s been great spending this month talking to you. I hope you’ve all enjoyed this as much as I have. We will always have the memory of this time together. But for now, it is time to look to the future. So, with that in mind, I bid you all farewell for now.

See you next week!

-Christopher

Update Month, Part 4!
over 6 years ago – Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 01:14:25 AM

Hi hi, don’t worry, I’m here!

Sorry for getting this to you so late today - we’ve been proofing cards and rulebook print files and I wanted to make sure the things I was going to post here were correct before showing it to all of you! Thanks everyone for being so patient with me.

So, without further ado, let’s talk OblivAeon game mechanics!

How to setup an OblivAeon game

I’ve dropped lots of hints here about what to expect in the OblivAeon encounter across these updates, but now I’m going to get much more granular. As a result, the first thing we need to talk about is how to setup the table itself. Rather than talk through that, step by step, I’ll let the rulebook do the talking:

 

Lots going on here! You can see the two different battle zones the game happens across, as well as just how many moving parts there are on the table. Fortunately, the compartmentalization of the two battle zones really helps keep the overhead down, while adding tension even when you’re not right there with OblivAeon.

Stuff heroes do in an OblivAeon game

So, what all are you doing in this game? Is it just “punch OblivAeon until it falls over?” Not hardly! That’s a good way to let the Multiverse explode!

At the start of each hero turn, that hero has some options. Let’s check out the Hero Reminder Cards for info on that:

As you can see, at the start of each turn, you can choose to move from one battle zone to another. You’ll need to protect both environments from OblivAeon!

Then, you have options. The first few options on that list are all Mission related. Heroes will NEED to complete Objectives and obtain Rewards if they hope to have any chance of taking on OblivAeon and saving the Multiverse. Fortunately, there are plenty of Missions to go around, and the rewards are extremely powerful.

The last couple options deal with what happens when things go wrong. Spoilers: heroes WILL get incapacitated in the OblivAeon fight. However, OblivAeon is the only villain in which total hero incapacitation is not a villain victory condition! If your hero gets incapacitated, flip them over, remove their cards from the game, stash the rewards that hero earned under their (now incapacitated) hero character card, and grab a new hero from the box! At the end of the current turn, that hero will come into play (in whichever battle zone you choose), and you’re still in the fight! OblivAeon is going to take numerous teams working together to take down. This is the ultimate Sentinels of the Multiverse challenge.

Stuff OblivAeon does in an OblivAeon game

Besides the terrible elements we’ve already seen - giant piles of HP, terrible Scions in both battle zones, endless waves of Aeon Men - OblivAeon also has a countdown to the Inevitable Destruction of the Multiverse!

You add Devastation tokens to the pool in the middle of the card when various bad things happen in the game. You also move the Countdown token along the track at the bottom of the card as OblivAeon’s turns go by. You DON’T want the Countdown token to reach the end of the track.

Oh, and since the Inevitable Destruction card mentioned the Scion Reserve card:

The top card of the Scion Reserve both hides the order of upcoming Scions and also provides a handy remind of various rules, such as the turn order of an OblivAeon game, and what happens when OblivAeon destroys an environment. Certainly nothing good.

Yikes! Scared yet? I sure am!

Hero Card Backs

Still more hero card backs! The first two are pretty much exactly what you might expect from mini-expansions, as they all have the same general look:

Good good... However, these four are unique! While Void Guard is sort of a mini-expansion, they’re also something special, and much more content than a mini-expansion. Thus, their own card backs:

And with that, you’ve seen all the deck backs!

Next week is the last Tuesday of Update Month!

But never fear! There will still be an update the first Tuesday of November. We’ll keep doing updates the first Tuesday of each month at the very least until you all have OblivAeon in hand. And as soon as I have more definite shipping information, I’ll get it to you right away!

See you next week!

-Christopher

Update Month, part 3!
over 6 years ago – Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 01:08:19 AM

Hello hello! What a day!

So many things going on this very fine day!

This morning, we posted another episode to The Letters Page podcast (as we do every Tuesday morning), launched a Kickstarter that I’m not working on at all (which we do NOT do every Tuesday morning), and now I’m here writing this update!

Just a quick note since I mentioned another Kickstarter - it’s not a project that Adam or I have any part in. Other folks are making the stuff happen with that project. If people want more info, I’ll happily talk more about it next week, but my focus is entirely on OblivAeon. Don’t worry about anything else!

So, let’s get into all the exciting things we’re covering this week!

Shield Cards

At the beginning of the OblivAeon fight, you encounter the first form of OblivAeon, and it’s awful. Summoning Scions, dispatching Aeon Men into both battle zones (as the game is played across two environments simultaneously), and working towards the destruction of all reality. OblivAeon mostly ignores the heroes at this point, and it can easily afford to do so, what with 10,000 HP.

WHAT.

10,000?

THERE’S NO WAY THAT CAN BE RIGHT!

But guess what… it is right. And awful.

Even worse, it’s not like you can even begin to chip away at that ridiculous pile of HP, thanks to these:

Each game of OblivAeon starts with a randomly selected Shield Card in play, which brings with it a particular Scion, prevents all damage to OblivAeon, and brings other nasty surprises. There are 5 different Shield Cards, each with their own unique mechanics, so they’ll always keep you guessing.

I did warn you that OblivAeon was awful.

But who’s doing anything about it?

The OblivAeon Comic Book

The heroes that you know and love are doing everything they can about OblivAeon! Want a preview of what’s going on there?

Now, I don’t want to give away too much, but I do want to show off how great this comic book is looking. Adam has really outdone himself with the art. But! If you don’t want to read any of the comic book before you get it in your hands, skip the next few images...

All three of these images are clickable if you want to embiggen them.  

 

 

 

 TO BE CONTINUED!

I hope you’re as excited about this as we are. Because we’re REALLY excited!

Hero Card Backs

I did say we’d have hero deck backs this week! And sure enough:

Next week, there will be OTHER hero deck backs! And that should be all of the deck backs. Right? Am I missing anyone?

Looking forward to the next update!

I will be talking a LOT about the mechanics of OblivAeon next week. Possibly more showing than talking. Don’t get too excited by the word “showing” there - I’m not going to make a video for you in the next week or something like that. I’m no good at the A/V stuff. I just make games. Anyway! More on that next week. Keep being awesome, everyone!

See you next week!

-Christopher

Update Month, Part 2!
over 6 years ago – Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 12:29:37 AM

Hello, friends!

It’s been so long since we talked! How have you all been? Had a decent week? I hope so!

We’ve been rocking and rolling over here. I had a fun meeting last week with Adam (artist of all things Sentinels Comics) about all the final little art and graphic design touches to make sure we were both 100% on the same page with what was going to the printer. This week, (either today or tomorrow!) I’ll be having another meeting with Jenn (Creative Director of GTG and graphic design badass) about making sure those graphic design and layout decisions make sense to people that aren’t just Adam and I. It’s all the little stuff at the end that has to trickle through the pipe to get everything approved and off to the races! Looking forward to showing that stuff off to you in the next couple weeks. But for now, here’s the exciting stuff I CAN show you!

Aeon Men!

The minions of OblivAeon! These orange-armored foes have been part of the Multiverse since the beginning, first appearing on a card in The Visionary’s deck, and then again on one of The Argent Adept’s cards!

Just a couple pieces of Sentinels history there.

Last week, you got to see their deck back. Now, check out their card fronts! Gaze upon the might and majesty of the Aeon Men who will join the fray against the heroes! (Also, enjoy the hints as to the OblivAeon scenario!)

Can you handle them? Certainly! However, they are made of OblivAeon’s own energy - beware if OblivAeon reclaims that energy!

Void Guard vs. The Sentinels?

A topic that comes up with great regularity in the comments here is how the hero-team-in-one-deck The Sentinels will interact with members of Void Guard, as they share not only names but also identities! They’re the same people! Er, sorry if that’s spoilers for anyone.

Well, rather than type out an explanation here, I’ll just post the rules sheet that comes packaged with the Void Guard expansion:

Easy! Right?

Let me know if that doesn’t make sense - I’m happy to explain further, if need be.

Hero Variant Complexities

In last week’s update, I showed off the Complexity Booklet that comes with the Ultimate Collector’s Case. As I had guessed might happen, there were a lot of questions about this page:

Mainly, why aren’t there alternate complexity numbers for variants of each of those hero cards? We’ve officially released variant complexity ratings in the Sentinels of the Multiverse video game and on the Sentinels Sidekick app (both by the wonderful folks at Handelabra), so why not put them in the Ultimate Collector’s Case chart?

It’s true that we originally released those complexity numbers, but over time, I have been convinced that they’re not only unnecessary, but actually incorrect. This came from a series of lengthy conversations I had with folks here at GTG, our official playtesters, and many other folks who play a lot of Sentinels of the Multiverse. To break it down: Absolute Zero is a complexity 3 hero. Yes, his different variants do change his STRATEGY, and alter his gameplay, but do they make him a notably more or less complex hero? No. The complexity of a hero is tied up much more in their deck than just their innate power. The most convincing point, in my opinion, is that if any hero deck had been published with one of their variant powers as their core innate power instead, would that change their complexity rating? Ultimately, no. All of these heroes have a complexity rating based on what’s going on in their deck, regardless of their innate power.

Now, wait. What about the villains complexity page?

On this page, we see variants of Baron Blade, Omnitron, Spite, GloomWeaver, Infinitor, and Kismet! Why are these variants listed in the difficulty chart when the hero variants aren’t listed in the complexity chart?

Unlike a hero’s character card, villain character cards provide the engine by which that villain operates. Villain variants can provide alternate victory conditions, additional attacks and card plays, and further mechanical wrinkles. As a result, each villain variant is much more difficult than the base version of that villain.

Hope that helps!

More Card Backs

As promised, here are another four deck backs!

Lots of cool art there!

Between this week and last week, you’ve seen all of the environment deck backs and all of the OblivAeon scenario deck backs (the OblivAeon deck, the Scion deck, and the Aeon Men deck - the Mission deck doesn’t have a specific deck back as each of those cards have a unique Objective and Reward side)... but you haven’t seen any of the hero deck backs! We’ll have to fix that soon.

Until next time!

Many more exciting things on the horizon! Keep on saving the Multiverse, folks.

See you next week!

-Christopher