Hectarion

I managed to pick up this expansion and the base game at PAX Prime recently and I’ve been loving it ever since.

The expansion, much like Rook City, comes with 4 new villains, 2 new environments and 2 new heroes. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

The four new villains are all around a medium difficulty. On the new enhanced edition scale, these villains are all around the 2-3 (out of a current maximum of four) range. The villains all have cool mechanics that make them fun to battle against. For example, Akash’Bhuta starts off with a whopping 200 HP but produces minions that reduce her HP when they are defeated. In addition, she has is one of the first villains to truly integrate with the environment deck. Depending on her side, you’ll be playing extra villain cards or environment cards when the other decks (villain or environment) cards are removed.

The others, Apostate, Gloomweaver, and the Ennead are all different and challenging in their own rights. I won’t post any spoilers about them, but they each have their own set of unique challenges (Apostate, who should be a bit easier, wiped us in 4 rounds!)

The environments included in this set are all well done. The Tomb of Anubis feels like a journey through an ancient pyramid, complete with traps, rewards and terrors. The Realm of Discord feels like a trippy alternate dimension where the very laws of physics are challenged. Both environments actually have a few cards to benefit players which always makes the environments fun and dynamic.

Lastly, the heroes. The heroes in this set are both quite difficult to play with (which affects this expansion’s easy to learn rating). The Argent Adept is a support character who can do a large variety of tasks if set up right. He has a very low ability to do direct damage but has healing powers, the ability to increase or decrease targets damage, etc. He’s a very thematic character as well and is a blast to play. Be warned though as he’s currently the hero with the lowest starting HP which puts him at risk quite often in the game.

Nightmist is the second new hero and has an interesting magic ability. Each of her cards have a special “magic” number which is used to calculate the strength of some of her powers. For example, she can discard a card to regain X HP where X is the magic number on that card. Nightmist also can output a steady stream of damage to the opponent but typically at the cost of damage to herself and the team. In a recent game, I did 7 damage to all enemy targets on the first turn but at the cost of 3 damage to all of the heroes. She’s very fun to use and I’ve only started to delve into how to use her character to its fullest potential.

Overall, I really enjoy this expansion. For me, the villains are the stars of this show with an excellent arrangement of different, unique villain with interesting mechanics. They each play differently and feel great thematically.

If you’re currently a Sentinels of the Multiverse fan, get this set for the villains and environments alone. While the heroes may be more difficult to use (use Absolute Zero as your comparison point for difficulty), they are well done and useful additions.