Sentinels of the Multiverse: Shattered Timelines
Expansion Overview
At is simplest, Shattered Timelines introduces 2 new heroes, 4 new villains and 2 new Environments. But this third expansion offers a game play experience for Sentinels of the Multiverse unlike any you have yet experienced. Or will experience in the past or an alternate future, or a parallel universe… Wait .. wha? Yes, time can drive you nuts. But Shattered Timelines will give you a co-op experience you will always forget, or never remember? Uh… let’s let the cards speak for themselves…
Heroes
Chrono-Ranger: After Sheriff Jim Brooks fell through a time portal, was saved from monsters by a sentient computer in the future, he was given a choice: time hop around into the past find monsters and take them down before they overrun the world in the future. Accepting his role as the Chrono-Ranger, he has a bounty on all the worst villains out there.
The Chrono-Ranger’s deck concentrates on targeting in play villains and other legal targets with bounty cards, which offers game play advantages like increased damage or healing for Chrono-ranger as well as other heroes. He also has some sweet equipment like the Masadah: a cool alien handgun that does damage based on the number of Bounty cars in play, and his trusty hat which allows him to play and extra card per turn. The deck is very well built and balanced, and appeals to that Indiana Jones meets Firefly fan in all of us.
Omnitron-X: Omnitron, that super intelligent computer villain that has taken on the Freedom Five many times, has realized in a distant future that the key to his numerous defeats must be humanoid’s empathy and compassion. In order to understand this, Omnitron built a humanoid form constructed around an empathy component. Upon activation, the 10th Omnitron form realized the error of its misguided ways and dedicated itself to preserve mankind.
Omnitron-X’s powers are derived from his vast array of equipment, which offer him both offensive and defensive powers. But beware some are easily destroyed when “Om-X” takes damage. Perhaps one of the best Hero powers in the game as well: able to look at the top card of ANY deck and either trash it or put it into play. This gives “Om –X” a place in any hero group – weeding out harmful Villains and Environments defensively and helping his companions or himself by going for the card that may save the day. Lastly, being a computer after all, he can use the card “Rest”, to shuffle his discard into his deck, basically re-powering his entire deck strategy.
Villains
The Dreamer: Vanessa Long, a.k.a. the Visionary went back in time to save her self and when Vanessa was indeed born she was a normal child. Then at age 6, young Vanessa’s clairvoyant powers manifested themselves and left the small child in a coma. Her tortured nightmares now have become real and challenge the Heroes to defeat these mental manifestations without harming their colleague of the past!
What makes The Dreamer’s deck dangerous is its relentless an unpredictable projections that come you: grotesque arachnoids, demons and even the tooth fairy! There is also dark version of the hero Legacy that will seem very familiar all too soon. Besides the direct damage from nightmares and such there is an interesting twist. If the Dreamer is reduced to 0 hit points, the Heroes lose the game. That’s right, you don’t win by defeating the villain. Instead, Heroes can only win by destroying her projections. The Dreamer only has 6 HP, so choose an environment carefully. Heroes can also choose to take damage for The Dreamer just to save the past form of their future ally. Very cool concept and very challenging as well.
La Capitán: 500 years in the past, Maria Helena was a stowaway on a Spanish Galley that fell into a temporal rift . She and the ship both were inexorable altered in the time distortion and renamed her self La Capitán! Now she sails through time on “La Paradoja Magnifica” (the Magnificent Paradox) with a diverse crew gathered from the past and the future in search of adventure and riches.
Maria is a bold Villain, her ship starts in play and allows her to essentially play two Villain cards a turn; pouring her crew out to face the heroes. It also allows her to refresh her Villain deck at the start of every turn – making “La Paradoja Magnifica” a tempting target, but watch out. Maria wont hesitate using the “Temporal Thief” card, to steal the heroes cards and stow them away, increasing her power, she will even capture the defeated heroes, taking their incapacitated abilities away from the remaining heroes. Yeah, she is one pesky time pirate.
The Kismet: The Adhin family felt blessed with good luck thanks to a special talisman. Then a young Gabrielle Adhin touched the Talisman and suddenly could read and understand infinite branching realities! Her quantum awareness honed her psychic abilities but not her mental stability. Now she uses the Talisman to alter consequences in her favor as well as against others, playing a dangerous game with fortune and misfortune.
Kismet thrives on chaos and using her Jinxes and Lucky cards , she can really do some damage. Jinxes of course hurt the heroes, but the Lucky cards provide and interesting deck twist. Some card interactions require Kismet to rely flipping the top card of her deck requiring it to be a Lucky card. So Kismet is always playing with the odds – in this case 33% – of getting Lucky. Her indestructible Talisman also starts in play with Kismet but of reduced to 0 HP actually flips and turns lucky for the Heroes! It’s all too, too chaotic. She is an unpredictable, manic, and a difficult Villain to face.
Iron Legacy: The result of an alternate timeline tragedy, when Baron Blade killed his daughter, the man who would be Legacy donned armor and turned his sights to world domination – silencing all who oppose his rule. All the power and fortitude of the worlds greatest hero channeled into complete and utter world domination. He will stop at nothing until the entire world shakes under his iron fist. Simple as that.
Iron Legacy is simply one of the toughest Villains created for the game. Beginning with the fact that he has multiple nemeses. Namely, Tachyon, Absolute Zero, Tempest, The Wraith, Unity and Bunker. He immediately gets H ongoing cards in play from his villain deck…oh things like “Superhuman Redirection”, and other protective cards. He cannot be hurt by Environment damage and 60% of his deck is “One-shot” cards. He has no lackeys coming into play to distract you, no funny devices or equipment. At the end for each of his turns, just to make his point, he deals each Hero 3 Damage. He also has some indestructible Galvanized armor. He is in your face, non-stop, relentless. So… have fun with that.
Environments
Time Cataclysm: What you have here is time gone wild. Time anomalies, appearing out of nowhere: dinosaurs, typhoons, Block agents, brain sucking tendrils, and yes, even a surprise shopping trip. This Environment’s effects are as varied as time itself resulting in utter chronological chaos!
The Block: Where to the super villains go when hey are defeated? The Block, the only extra dimensional maximum-security prison capable of holding the Multiverse’s most powerful villains. But it looks like the place is not as secure as we thought! Prison riots and escaped Inmates are wreaking havoc. Luckily there are Agents on hand and Warden Hoefle to mop them up. Watch out for Time-Crazed prisoners and one big bad inmate named Char. Its time to secure the Block!
Final Thoughts
By now, many Sentinels fans may have found their favorite Hero, faced many Villains in several environments and feel pretty confident. If trouble comes knocking, they are able to answer the door, kick butt and take names. But no comic book based game would be complete without the ever changing, always puzzling, and paradox producing elements of time travel.
What Christopher Badell, Adam Rebottaro, and Paul Bender have done is taken several time-related themes: future selves, alternate realities, quantum universes and turned them into one of the most entertaining and challenging Sentinels sets to date. As you can see from some of the unique mechanics presented above, the set offers a game play challenge that is supported by great art, a continually congruent and compelling story-line and imaginative and enjoyable archetypal characters that will you rethinking your favorite Hero. All this without adding ANY new rules sets to learn. All of this temporal chaos fits neatly into the current existing rules set, and fits neatly into the character story lines. One would think these guys are running their own comic book company. Guess what…they are.
Sentinels of the Multiverse continues to be a solid and enjoyable game experience, streamlined, and compelling with a full back-story of characters to support the action. If you have not yet played this game, do so. What more can be said?
One side note: If you were fortunate enough to Kickstart Shattered Timelines, then you received a bounty of stretch goal promos that, quite frankly are another expansion all in and of itself. A huge congratulations to Greater than Games for an amazing Kickstarter experience, frequent and professional communication, immediate shipping, great game component quality and more promo cards than you can shake a time infused hockey stick at. Sometimes it’s not just about the game, it’s about he folks that make them.
With Shattered Timelines, the best super-hero card game on the market is that much better.
User Reviews (6)
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The idea to break into the SotM universe and begin screwing around with timelines is a classic comic theme and is well executed by the GTG team in their third expansion. The game adds the Chrono Ranger character that was first teased in the Rook City expansion as the nemesis of Plague Rat as well as alternate timeline versions of Legacy (Iron Legacy), The Visionary (The Dreamer) and the villain Omnitron (as the hero Omnitron-X). Quick blow-by-blow on the characters:
Chrono Ranger
Adds a new type of card in “bounties” which are ongoing cards that can boost damage to the characters they are placed next to or provide health or cards for Chrono Ranger. His strength lies in the ability take multiple “shots” at the villian card per turn – many of his one shot cards give the player the ability to deal “1 damage” to a non-hero target (the same effect as Chrono Ranger’s base power). His weapon cards can be helpful but the best way to optimize Chrono Ranger is to get out multiple bounties ASAP. He has relatively few cards that affect the game outside of dealing damage – he has a grenade that can destroy an ongoing or environment card – but he is mostly in your party to boost and deal damage multiple times per turn.
Omnitron-X
Has possibly the best base power in the game, the ability to look at the top card of any deck and play it instantly. Chains very well (almost feels like cheating) with Chrono Ranger’s deck. Most of his abilities are equipment cards that trigger at the start of his turn and his deck also offers many chaining opportunities. It is not uncommon for Omnitron-X to play 3-4 cards/powers per turn. It does feel like cheating when you play him against villains that only deal 1-2 types of damage as his plating cards all but ensure he will remain at optimal health. We played him against the Chairman and defeated him handily as most of the Operative’s damage was directed at Omnitron-X, who was able to ignore it.
La Capitan
She operates with a quick-churn deck that pulls out crew (powerful henchmen) at an alarming rate unless you are able to quickly kill her ship. The crew all boost each other and her “Temporal Thief” card turns her and her crew nigh invulnerable. Recommended that you use characters that can deal multiple types of damage each turn against her – extremely useful for when she goes into her flipped mode. Love the variance on the crew – time traveling amazons, ninjas, vikings and world war I flying aces!
The Dreamer
The only time we’ve played The Dreamer was with Fanatic and “End of Days” sped up the game significantly. The Dreamer is unique in that she is a villain that you are trying NOT to damage and that can cause issues if you are playing a hero with halo damage capabilities. Be warned that if you randomize your hero deck choices, you may wind up with a hero or two sitting on their hands all game (looking at you Tempest)
I have yet to play Iron Legacy or Kismet. The environment decks add some nice spice: The Block is a fairly benign deck and depending on which card you flip in the early going, it can be a non-factor as inmates keep killing off guards before they can do any damage. The theme is nice, however, and it adds to the SotM universe nicely. The Time Cataclysm adds 15 almost random cards from previous environment decks and can create some fun situations when you are facing down both a rogue stegosaurus and a BLOCK guard at the same time!
Overall, the theme is very well executed, the new heroes add incredibly powerful boosts to your party and as always, replay value is through the roof!
Let me start off first by saying that I am by no means an expert but I do own and have played all previous expansion to this game about a billion time. The newest expansion to this popular game series has thrown some crazy cool stuff in to the mix, and here is my opinion on that new stuff.
Heroes
Chrono-Ranger:
PROS – Wow! This guy can easy do 14+ damage in one turn. Again wow! Not since Ra has a hero been able to deal this much damage reliable, I mean like every game. His overall theme is based around doing several instances of small damage and increasing them through his Bounty card. These cards are put on a target and give Chrono-Ranger, and sometime other players, bonuses against that target. Chrono-Ranger is also able to frequently retrieve cards from his trash and or search them out in his desk.
CONS – Now after reviewing all his card he is unable to do anything other then damage, so he can not mess with Ongoing or Environment cards.
IMO – Chrono-Ranger is a little over powered it seems and I suggest only playing him in 3 player games (which seem harder) and or against Villains on Advanced mode.
Omnitron-X:
PROS – This hero feels a lot like his Villain counterpart, which is really cool. His overall theme revolves around having cards in play that allow him to play more cards or draw more cards at the beginning and end of his turn. He also has arguably the best base power (the one on his character card) in the entire game. This power allows one player to look at the top card of their deck and either put it into play or put it into the trash.
CONS – If during one turn Omnitron-X takes 5 or more damage most of his cards are destroyed. This is buffered by the fact that he has 3 cards that reduce damage of multiple times (such as melee, projectile and toxic) by 2.
IMO – Omnitron-X turn take almost as much time as The Argent Adept and is perhaps as powerful. Although it is true he loses most of his stuff if he takes a 5 damage hit, he rarely does so.
Villains
The Dreamer: Very interesting Villain who causes you to lose if you reduce her to 0 hits. She makes heroes such as Tempest who deal a lot of AOE damage rethink their play style. Overall a really cool addition to the game.
La Capitán: A time pirate who steals your stuff, its as simple as that. She is a mix between Citizen Dawn and Warlord Voss. Her minions/crew are good, her ship is awesome and she indeed takes your cards and put them under her character card. Instead of taking damage she simply loses a card from her stash and ignores the damage. She is a powerful villain and her advanced mode is crazy difficult.
The Kismet: Interesting villain who comes with a talisman. Basically she messes with the players until they deal enough damage to her talisman, thus flipping it and stealing it from her. She then hurts the players until she does enough damage to the talisman and steals it back. Its kinda like a game of hot potato/toss with her.
Iron Legacy: Wow… first game he beat us by the top of turn 3. He did 22 damage to me before I was able to play a card! Move over Citizen Dawn, move over The Corporation, we got a new hardest villain in the game. Games against this guy tend to be over quick. Bring your “A” game with this guy, trust me.
Environments
Time Cataclysm: Very interesting environment kinda similar to Dystopia in the previous set. Full of random creatures and people from across time.
The Block: A space prison full of guards and prisoners. Guards hurt the prisoners and everything else, prisoners hurt the guards and the players.
Now there is more new stuff to review but I will get to that later. For now I hope my review help you out.
Overview
SotM: Shattered Timelines introduces “time travel” to this awesomely thematic superhero game. One of the main heroes and one of the main villains are actual time travelers. The rest of the characters except one are from other timelines, and one new environment is all about a “time cataclysm”. If ever there was a theme that makes comic book hero stories exciting, it has always been time travel!
Pros
Further enhances the same elements of the base game.
Adds more variety
Cons
Can’t think of any beyond what’s in the base game.
Gameplay
I won’t go into details of how the game is played, since this an expansion and it doesn’t alter the game.
Heroes
Chrono-Ranger: a time traveling hero from the wild west, and probably the coolest looking hero so far. He doesn’t start out doing a lot of damage, but as you start putting bounty cards out, he starts spreading the hurt around. He has pretty sweet arsenal, once you get it into play.
Omnitron-X: The 10th incarnation of evil Omnitron turned good. This robot can really dish out some punishment not so much in his damage capability, but that fact that you can start “chaining” multiple card combo plays that can make you dizzy. He also has some cool defensive capabilities as well.
Villians
Iron Legacy: One word: Brutal! If you don’t take him out quick, he will pound on everyone! He has a lot of ongoing cards that compound his damage capability and protect him from other types of damage. Making him extremely difficult to take down if you let him get all his cards out. He already starts out with ongoing cards equal to the number of heroes in play.
Dreamer: This villain provides an interesting twist. You’re not supposed to kill her or you lose the game. Since she is really a young version of Visionary the hero, you’re actually trying to save her from herself.
Kismet: She is all about annoying you with her “luck” and psychic damage. She has a lot of card denial plays and annoying damage effects that activate when heroes perform their actions.
La Capitan: A time travelling pirate that wreaks havoc on your team with her henchman and time-travel ship. You’ve got to take out her ship fast, or you’re in a world of hurt as it brings out extra card and refreshes the trash pile back into her deck.
Environments
Time Cataclysm: Introduces all kinds of “time anomalies” to the game that can wreck havoc on friend and foe. The most brutal may be the “Crushing Hallway” which deals four damage to everything and destroys all hero ongoing cards.
The Block: Brings the super villain “prison riot” theme to the game. There are various super villain inmates running around causing trouble with agents trying to stop them. The agents aren’t necessarily friendly to you as well.
Conclusion
Overall, this expansion really shines through in the time travel theme. It adds plenty more variety to the game with it’s new characters and environment. This expansion just really takes the base game and makes it even more fantastic.
If you like Sentinels of the Multiverse, this is a must have expansion.
This expansion really threw the game for a loop. I think I realize now that in the Multiverse anything can happen. My favorite hero in the game is now a bad guy in this alternate timeline. He is tough as the dickens too!
The Villain Omnitron has created a good self in the future which travels back in time to defeat himself. Doesn’t that cause a paradox? Still a lot of fun to match up the good Omnitron of the future with the current bad Omnitron.
Good variety in this set!
INTRO
Shattered Timelines is an expansion that features time travel and alternate timelines. It includes 2 new heroes, 4 villains and 2 environments.
The New Decks
Chrono Ranger-My favorite hero so far (simply because he’s a time-traveling Cowboy). He’s an aggressive character because his damage stacks as the game goes on. Part of this is because of his bounty cards, which he can play on a target to get bonuses on that target.
OmnitronX- He’s a more support hero, providing shields for the group. His base ability, which allows for the team to play their top deck, is very useful. He’s kinda a glass canon though, because his equipment is pretty fragile.
The Dreamer- She’s not really a villain, but the scary illusions that surround her are! In order to win, you must defeat the nightmares while not harming the dreamer. This is a super creative villain; the best deck in the expansion.
Kismet- A really annoying villain. She has no minions, and instead relies on ongoing effects to win. Jinx cards curse a player and tempt them to attack their fellow teammates to get rid of the jinx. She manipulates the environment so that it continually works in her favor.
La Capitan- Pretty much a villain with a bunch of villains, putting a lot of HP on the board to deal with.
The Block- An environment in which inmates have escaped and guards are trying to keep control of the vicinity.
Time Cataclysm- A party ball of cards that relate to other environments.
Verdict
There’s nothing in this expansion that jumps out as “WOW! that’s a new level of SotM I’ve never seen before,” with the possible exception of The Dreamer. Then again, I doubt anyone who has purchased this expansion will say: “WOW! What a waste of cash this thing was.” This expansion will probably have a bigger impact on your SotM experience if you get it before the other two expansions.
I love Sentinels of the Multiverse! This expansion adds just the right amount of new gameplay mechanisms to keep this game fresh, and constantly to our table every time we play board games. To the >G Games team, I thank you for the great game!
As a side note, this expansion has really tough villans, so be aware of that when picking your heroes that you want to play with.
If you backed this expansion as a kickstarter, there are even more options to choose from when picking heroes, villans, and environments.
This is one of the games that I use to introduce people to board games.