Sentinels of the Multiverse - 6/20 hours

I've now played all of the hero decks, against Baron Blade, in the Megalopolis environment. So far, all of the individual heroes have been fun and unique, but it only occurred to me in retrospect that "alphabetical by name" was probably not a good way to divide up the teams.

For example, the group I had with both Nightmist and the Scholar had a lot of redundant card-drawing and not nearly enough damage output, which led to my defeat at the hands of Baron Blade. The most humiliating part of the defeat is that I forgot he had a second form, and for a brief moment, I thought I managed to win anyway. (I got revenge in  a rematch, because he is the easiest of the villains, but it still is not a combo that I'm eager to repeat).

One of my groups had four equipment-dependent characters. Baron Blade's deck has a card that gives you a choice between destroying your equipment or taking damage based on the amount of equipment in play. He drew it right as I was getting my team set up. I decided to make the tough call and take the damage. I beat on him for awhile, and then he drew it again. That was a satisfying victory, because it really did come down to the last draw. Three of my four characters were down by the end of it.

I was worried that going the systematic route was going to be needlessly repetitive, but I'm starting to think that's not a very serious concern. The inherent randomness of the card-drawing mechanics can make even two games with an identical setup feel different, and even with the same villain and environment, the different super hero teams felt really different. So it seems likely to me that games with the same hero team and environment, but different villains, should feel similarly diverse.

At the very least, it will be interesting to see if the hero team or the villain has a greater effect on the course of the game.

(For those of you familiar with Sentinels of the Multiverse, the lineup I was thinking of going with is

The Argent Adept
Expatriette
Legacy
The Wraith

I'm still only eyeballing the character powers, but these four look like they've got a decent amount of damage and party synergy).