Greetings, Sentinels fans! I'm Blue-Haired Protagonist, a long-time SotM fan who just joined the GTG forum. I recently started a Sentinels-centric fan blog with my friend Dark Crusader called Sentinels of the Bloggerverse, and I wanted to share my analysis of how to pick out the right hero and build a good team with the SotM community by linking to my article.
I created a Hero Playstyles Chart depicting the abilities of each hero released prior to OblivAeon (to be added later). Because the chart exceeds the size limitations of uploading it directly to this forum, I've put it on my Google Drive so I can share it with any Sentinels fan who would like to see what each hero has to offer at-a-glance.
In full disclaimer, Sentinels of the Bloggerverse does not claim association with Greater Than Games, LLC, nor claim rights to any of the character artwork used in our articles or visual chart creations. We aren't selling anything, either. We're just avid fans eager to discuss our favorite cooperative card game with other great fans.
I'd like to thank Christopher, Adam, and Paul for creating the BEST superhero-themed game EVER (Move over, "Overpower") and for welcoming the discussion of their wonderful creation. I hope they and fans like me enjoy the analysis I worked so hard on in my article.
Blue-Haired Protagonist, co-author of the Sentinels of the Multiverse fan blog, https://sentinelsofthebloggerverse.blogspot.com
Favorite Sentinels: Absolute Zero, Guise, The Sentinels
Welcome to the forums! :D
Thank you! BHP and I look forward to discussing Sentinels and sharing our blog with you guys! ^_^
Dark Crusader, co-author of the Sentinels of the Multiverse fan blog, https://sentinelsofthebloggerverse.blogspot.com
Favorite Sentinels: Legacy, Team Leader Tachyon, Action Hero Stuntman
Thank you for the warm welcome, TakeWalker. We're excited to be here. We've already looked around a little bit and got involved in some hero discussions for La Comodora and Lifeline. A lot of the guides people put up here or on Steam are pretty great, but you can bet we'll add our own perspectives eventually.
Blue-Haired Protagonist, co-author of the Sentinels of the Multiverse fan blog, https://sentinelsofthebloggerverse.blogspot.com
Favorite Sentinels: Absolute Zero, Guise, The Sentinels
Welcome to the forums! Excellent chart, I really like the way you organized it!
Welcome to the forums!
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
-Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant"
Thank you so much! I worked really hard on the chart. I was hoping to create something useful to any SotM fan and have a visual people could share on social media. OblivAeon released on Steam as I was still working on it, and I needed to get my article done THIS week, so I left those new heroes off of it, but I'll retcon them in Guise-style eventually. I need to play them more first, though.
Blue-Haired Protagonist, co-author of the Sentinels of the Multiverse fan blog, https://sentinelsofthebloggerverse.blogspot.com
Favorite Sentinels: Absolute Zero, Guise, The Sentinels
Interesting chart! No sub types for damage dealers? I think there can be a bit of a difference from someone like Harpy or Tacyhon who are generally good at hitting a lot for small damage compared to someone who deals big hits for more damage, but less frequently.
Nice site and chart! I appreciated your descriptions of the heroes that included both who they are as a character as well as how they play in a thematic, natural way.
I think Legacy should have the Medic subtype on there somewhere, since he can heal the team with Motivational Charge. It's kind of amazing he's only a complexity 1 with all the roles he can fill.
Are you only considering the base character card for the chart and ignoring variants? Because some variant powers would change the abilities available to a hero. For example, standard Bunker isn't an Ongoing Buster, but Freedom Six Bunker certainly is.
I also posted this comment on your site in case that's helpful for driving up traffic or whatever.
Thank you, FearLord! You bring up a good point, and originally I had considered making Bruiser sub-types, but didn't consider it important enough to distinguish hitting single-target or groups at the time. Your idea is more about how they deal damage rather than the number of targets, so it's definitely worth considering.
Thank you for your kind words and especially for commenting on the blog itself, rjc917! You are our first commenter, and it definitely helps the SEO :)
You're completely right about Legacy. Looking back, I even mention his hurt-to-heal ability, and there's Inspiring Presence on top of that. Really no good reason to not include it, so I'll have to add it when I retcon in the OblivAeon crew.
As for the variants, you're right again. I made this chart just thinking about the original versions of each hero, especially because the variants often change the emphasis of the character entirely... Visionary supports with a Card Draw power while Dark Visionary focuses on Field Control, etc. But the variants are important enough to get their own chart, so that's something I can work on in the future. Thank you for your great ideas!
Blue-Haired Protagonist, co-author of the Sentinels of the Multiverse fan blog, https://sentinelsofthebloggerverse.blogspot.com
Favorite Sentinels: Absolute Zero, Guise, The Sentinels
Interesting presentation in that chart. Good job putting it all together!
Something it illustrates really well (maybe unintentionally?) is how heroes don't usually have just one role that they slot into. An easy example is how Wraith can be either a huge damage-dealer or a formidable deck-controller (or a compromise), but your chart really brings out how many other roles and sub-roles each character has!
1) Welcome to the forum. Hope you guys enjoy yourselves here. :)
2) The chart is very nice, good for a quick glance. If I could suggest anything, I'd say maybe consider making the Post-OblivAeon version in a more viewer friendly poster shape, so not as much scrolling is involved?
Thanks! I definitely wanted to showcase that almost every hero is at least somewhat versatile.
Definitely enjoying my time here. So far, everybody's been welcoming and fun.
Thank you for your suggestion! Did you have a particular layout in mind? I used an infographic-creation site, and it keeps extending the graphic downwards. I considered manually editing in MS Paint and splitting the graphic in half, then putting the second half -next to- the other to limit vertical scrolling. Would that work better? I'm trying to be considerate of mobile viewers too, hopefully that would still work well for them.
Blue-Haired Protagonist, co-author of the Sentinels of the Multiverse fan blog, https://sentinelsofthebloggerverse.blogspot.com
Favorite Sentinels: Absolute Zero, Guise, The Sentinels
If you were just providing this for regular pc users I would suggest something more in the catagory of a 'landscape' poster format.
http://tinyurl.com/yxpd34u6
But you also want to provide for mobile support, so I suppose your 'side-by-side' idea would be best for them.
This is really interesting -- thanks for sharing! Very glad to have you contributing to the community. :-D
For me, I would want to print this and have copies in my box set to show new players, which is impossible with this layout. That's just me, though. Cutting it in half and moving those side-by-side would help with this significantly. (Landscape would also work for this, though.)
Looks like there's a graphics error along the left side near the top, from just above Haka to just below Ra?
Oh, and you have a mistake on Guise's complexity... ;-)
Have a better one!
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
That's a good idea. I think because the blog is vertical by nature, leaving it in the long vertical format on there is fine. But there's no reason I can't/won't make more PC-friendly with a landscape style. (Blogger is also super stupid in its image limitations. I had to upload each piece of the chart separately and just leave them adjacent to one another to avoid the image shrinking for IDK why.)
Thank you for saying my chart is a good contribution to the community. That makes me feel great :)
I'd like to redo it in a superior format so that you and other players would put it to practical use. As such, I'd like to ask what format you think would be ideal. Halving it? Landscape?
The graphics error has to be from the infographic site. I noticed it before but didn't know what to do with it, I didn't put it there. I think that slide didn't mesh 100% with the formatting tool, must be slightly out-of-bounds to create that little mark. It isn't actually on my image file. I'll have to move it around I guess.
Could you tell me where I can find Guise's official complexity? I followed the image I found (attached) saying he's a 2. I play as him a lot, but I don't own the physical version of Villains of the Multiverse so I don't have the rulebook to check.
Blue-Haired Protagonist, co-author of the Sentinels of the Multiverse fan blog, https://sentinelsofthebloggerverse.blogspot.com
Favorite Sentinels: Absolute Zero, Guise, The Sentinels
Landscape would, as Phantom5613 mentioned, work for PCs and still be printable, so you wouldn't have to do too many versions.
That was really just a joke (hence the ";-)" afterwards :-), as on the back of his packaging he's used a red marker to add "5/9" after the 2, making his complexity "2-5/9". (Guise's wiki entry shows this under the Statistics tab.) You didn't do anything wrong. :-D
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
I tried to do something similar on Steam once, but the visual component is a *huge* improvement over what I had done (which got super wordy super fast).
One critical way that I think about a character's role on a team that you might think about adding to the chart is whether the character is a Transformer, a Spender, or both. Transformers take some resource (e.g. card draw, power uses, card plays) and turn it into either a different resource (Argent Adept's Inventive Prep can often turns power uses into multiple card plays for other characters, Team Leader Tachyon turns a power use into card draw for everyone) or more of the same (Dr Medico's Healing Surge - Second Opinion - Experimental Medicine turns a power use for Medico into power uses for everyone else). Spenders are characters who can really benefit from being able to play powers or cards off-turn (The Naturalist, Guise, Stuntman, The Sentinels). Knowing what resources a character wants to receive and what they can give out is pretty core to my team-building. (On that note, it also makes me terribad at Oblivaeon, since your team is so much more fragile in a game where a hero might be killed T1 with no recourse.)
Thank you all for your useful feedback. Haven't replied lately as I've been busy (editing Dark Crusader's posts, among other things).
I'm not sure if the infographic site I used can do Landscape format for free users, but if not, I can just put it together a la copy-pasta in MS Paint. It's going to be awhile before I update, though. We have so many hero, villain, and environment articles to write, and we need more time playing the OblivAeon converts before I add them to the chart. I'll announce when the new chart is done, though, and link it here.
Blue-Haired Protagonist, co-author of the Sentinels of the Multiverse fan blog, https://sentinelsofthebloggerverse.blogspot.com
Favorite Sentinels: Absolute Zero, Guise, The Sentinels