Sentinels of the Multiverse

Sentinels of the Multiverse is, according to the creators, "the World's Greatest Cooperative, Comic-Book Based, Fixed-Deck Card Game." Fortunately, it is also a badass card game on its own merits.

Born when Christopher Badell got tired of every damn superhero game being either a lame exercise in "my childhood icon could beat up your childhood icon" or another damn Parker Bros. reskin, in Sentinels you play a group of superheroes (scientifically, the correct plural is a "crossover") working to fight a villain in a place.

From such simple things spring great ones.

Every hero plays completely differently, every villain has a different ballgame for wrecking your shit, and every environment has different effects on the ongoing struggle. And the lore is actually pretty amazing for the kind of thing that can be easily skipped, both because there's a few strong creative forces undergirding all of it and because it doesn't have to make everything the same forever. Hell, the art's pretty good too.

Notably, "promo" versions of different heroes with alternate powers but using the same decks are available.

Anatomy of a Turn

The villain goes first, playing the top card from its deck, then resolving all effects. This usually takes a good deal longer than it sounds.

The heroes take turns going in a set order. Each one may play a card from their hand, use a power, and draw a card in that order. If they don't play a card or use a power, they may draw two. Sometimes it's really that simple. Sometimes (lookin' at you Omnitron-X), this takes for-bloody ever.

Every hero has one "base" power printed on their card, and most can put other cards into play that let them use other powers.

The environment goes last, plays a card, and resolves all effects.

Repeat until the heroes or the villain get a victory, usually but not always by smashing the other into paste.

There are no limits on hand size, and when you run out of deck you just shuffle your trash and flip it over.

Notably, the villain and environment turns are completely automated, so you don't need someone to play them. In practice, however, both can get pretty lengthy and complex, so it's not uncommon to have a kind of quasi-Gamemaster run these turns for you. Additionally, the game supports between three and five heroes, with the villains scaling to match them, though players can choose to run multiple heroes. You can even play all by yourself if you're desperately, desperately lonely, and/or bought the digital version.

A "dead" hero isn't out of the game. On his or her turn, they can use an "incapacitated action" to help out the team from the bench.

Heroes

The good guys. You need 3-5 of them to play a game. Most have "variant" forms, representing versions of themselves from alternate dimensions and timelines, or just the same person changed slightly after Advancing the Storyline. They use the same decks, but have different amounts of base hitpoints and different starting powers. They (theoretically) aren't stronger or weaker than their normal versions, just different.

• Absolute Zero

Style-wise, he's kind of like Mr. Freeze, though personality and backstory-wise, he's got more in common with the later Ant-man. A depressed janitor who had the bad luck to work at Pike Cryogenics, Ryan Frost got mutated in an explosion that left his body temperature hovering around absolute zero. Now he's got to work as a superhero for the government to pay off the cost of the special thermodynamic suit that's keeping him alive. He is, at the start of the story, the latest member of the Freedom Five, and the unstable loose cannon of the gang.

He's got a well-earned reputation as one of the most complex heroes in the game, and it's obvious why just looking at his character card: his base power involves punching himself in the balls with a fist made of either ice or fire, and many of his cards do the same. What makes him tick is his equipment, which can make ice heal him and fire damage to him deal ice damage to enemies. Understandably, this puts him in something of a bind against equipment-wrecking assholes and means he may accidentally self-destruct if his player isn't good at math, but, fortunately, a quarter of his deck involves either replacing lost equipment or boosting/mitigating the effect of damaging himself. And that's not counting how nice damage boosts are on him. Not for the faint of heart or the inexperienced, but can hit harder than almost any hero in the game in the right hands or with the right support.

Variants

• Elemental Wrath: From the Iron Legacy timeline, where he was one of the few survivors of the titular tyrant's rampage, and holed up as his powers mutated. He's got a much-more straightforward base power: punching something else in the balls with two cold damage. While this makes him much less versatile and high-reward than his predecessor without lots of build-up, it also means he's just as online from square one as, say, Ra.

• Termi-Nation: After fighting the tech-absorbing villain Chokepoint, Zero's going in with a lot less suit. His base power boosts all damage he deals and receives by two, which makes him incredibly fragile but amazingly deadly. Handle with care. If you have trouble keeping regular Zero from self-destructing...

• The Argent Adept

...Well, he's a superhero bard. The latest heir to the title of "Virtuoso of the Void," Anthony Drake learned that he was destined to fight the avatar of elemental chaos, Akash'bhuta, when he handled an ancient musical instrument. Unfortunately, Akash'bhuta had managed to delay the process of passing down the musical knowledge of ages to him by killing the last Virtuoso and smashing his fiddle before he could find Anthony, and he's working to make up for lost time. The superhero team known as the Prime Wardens was originally formed to help him defeat her and compensate for his green-ness.

The Argent Adept is also a really complex hero to play, though not because he's in danger of self-destructing like Zero. Rather, his deck has three major components: music cards (subdivided Rhythm, Harmony, and Melody) that each have Perform and Accompany components (his base power only activates a single Perform component), musical instruments that each activate two of those sub-components for different types of music card, and, of course, search cards to help get what he wants into play. If you haven't got a good head for all these kinds of things, he's really tough get to do what you want him to, but done right he'll turn his team into an unstoppable hurricane via combo-buffing.

Variants

• Prime Wardens: Considering the team formed to help him, he'd better be a member. His new power lets him play the card on the bottom of his deck and use an Accompany text, which is... well, it's pretty nice, even if Accompany components tend to be less-direct than Perform ones.

• Kvothe Six String: ...Well, the character of the Argent Adept was originally developed as a direct reference to The King-Killer Chronicles, and Rothfuss turned out to be a big fan. His new power reveals the top cards of two decks, putting one into play and the other into the trash. Most useful when villains don't want cards in the trash, obviously, but still really good for set-up-heavy heroes. Unfortunately, this also means he can't activate his music without instruments anymore, making him very draw-dependent compared to his counterparts.

• Bunker

The current generation of a line of metal-suited military heroes going back to the second World War, and the game's attempt at aping War Machine. A former mechanic's kid from Vegas, Lt. Tyler Vance was a decorated combat vet who was given the chance to be the next incarnation of Bunker. He became the second member of the Freedom Five, and Legacy's strong right hand in running them.

Bunker is one of the first equipment-heavy superheroes in the game, and it shows. He can equip self-repair systems, armor plating, and a variety of powerful heavy weapons, but his unique mechanic involves shifting between three Modes: Recharge mode, in which he gives up every other part of his turn to draw three cards (including the bonus for not playing or using powers) while taking less damage, Upgrade mode, in which he forgoes using powers to get more equipment on the field at once, and Turret mode, in which BUDDABUDDABUDDABUDDABUDDABUDDABUDDA. (...Ahem, in which he gets an extra power and deals extra damage but can't draw or play cards.) While these extra modes give him a unique feel, they also give him terrible turn economy, though he's still very powerful. No other equipment-heavy hero shares Bunker's toughness and ability to get extra cards. Speaking of which, his base power lets him draw a card, and one of his other cards lets him draw every time a villain card goes in the trash.

Variants

• G.I. Bunker: The black WWII incarnation of Bunker, who got offered the job because it was deemed too dangerous for a white guy, and took it because it was his one shot at promotion. He went on to kick much Nazi ass alongside his era's Legacy, fistfighting tanks and pushing the power armor to the limit, before going out in a blaze of glory trying to kill Hitler while soloing an entire fortress full of Wehrmacht troops. His unique power, Panzer-Buster, picks an enemy and makes all damage dealt to them irreducible. Obviously, how good this is depends on how much DR is on the field, but when you do need it, it's golden.

• Engine of War: Bunker was one of the casualties when Iron Legacy slaughtered the Freedom Five in his timeline. However, his former nemesis, Fright Train, was driven to repentance by his death, and joined the new Freedom Six wearing a hollowed-out, jury-rigged version of the Bunker suit. (Also, making the War Machine copy black again.) His new power discards a mode card to destroy an ongoing, something the original couldn't do at all and a priceless trick against Iron Legacy. Not a bad way to give up the bloated hand full of modes you weren't going to use soon.

• Termi-Nation: The current Bunker riding in a mech after his old suit got Chokepoint'd. He can destroy one of his own ongoing or equipment card to give himself what a whole new turn's worth of actions, which can be positively badass if you know what you're doing.

• Captain Cosmic

Like Green Lantern, only dressed like Firestorm. Hugh Lowsley was a British lawyer and amateur stargazer. Granted the power to create golden light constructs in the same cosmic event that transformed his brother into the mad supervillain Infinitor, he took up the mantle of Captain Cosmic to protect the Earth from high-level threats.

Captain Cosmic is a support-heavy hero that runs on constructs. He gives them to his friends as buffs, he uses them as living shields, he repairs them when they're going out, and, when they're finally destroyed, he can immediately use their energies to retaliate against enemies. Alternatively, he can destroy them to deal heavy one-off damage. The rest of his deck involves getting them into play, with his base power letting him play or put in hand the top card of his deck.

Variant

• Prime Warden: Hilariously, he technically joined the Prime Wardens before he was released as a hero in the gameline. His new power lets him draw or play a card every time a construct his destroyed for the rest of the turn. It needs quite a bit more forethought and set-up than his original, but is potentially much more powerful.

• Chrono-Ranger

Jim Brooks is a time-displaced Wild West sheriff, who landed in the Final Wasteland, a nasty future where various cryptids had rendered humanity extinct. And then one of those damn rat-man varmits made off with his arm. Upon meeting and befriending a sapient robot factory called Con, who outfitted him with a futuristic arsenal, a new, mechanical arm, and a time machine in the shape of a badge, the newly-christened Chrono-Ranger set out to kill 'em all before they could become strong enough to bring their timeline about. In the meanwhile, he claims bounties on other criminals across space and time.

Chrono-Ranger shoots all the bullets. Almost all of his non-equipment cards, as an additional effect, involve shooting one target for one projectile damage, just like his base power. His major unique mechanic involves posting various "bounties" on different targets, offering him benefits while they're in play and after targets are destroyed. Combine that with his arsenal of future-guns and his hat, and he'd be a solid plinker. However, what makes him go from decent to crazy is the "Hunter and Hunted" card, which causes him to deal and take an additional point of damage for every bounty currently in play. Obviously, he suddenly becomes very fragile and a one-man hurricane of destruction simultaneously. Very high-risk, high-reward, but sweet as hell when it works.

Variant

• The Best of Times: After a mishap with his time-badge left him stranded in a temporal anomaly, Jim got rescued by an older, more-grounded La Capitan. After fixing him up, she asked only one thing in return: to help prevent the mistakes of her youth. His power lets him pick a target and make all his bounties affect them too. Amazing for stacking cards on the boss and still making one of their minions vulnerable, and because Chrono can pump out a fair amount of damage even without using a power, it's a good way to fry a troublesome minion without having to get set up again later.

• Expatriette

Amanda Cohen was the daughter of Citizen Dawn, the leader of a Magneto-esque cult of superhuman-supremacists. When she turned out not to have powers, the good Citizen murdered her father for his "failure" and burned out her eye before she could fight her way out. Fortunately, a lifetime in that environment had given her a knack for survival, and, despite her only superpower being "firearm," she became a vigilante crimefighter in the mean streets of Rook City, eventually joining the broader superhuman community as Expatriette.

Her deck is built on a solid foundation of guns and ammunition. The former let her shoot them off as powers, the latter can be loaded into the former to give them additional effects. The rest of her deck mostly either gets them into play from her deck and trash or lets her shoot more of them off. Fittingly, her base power lets her immediately play a card. This means that while she's unlikely to spike as high as some of the other equipment-heavy superheroes, she's also going to come online practically right away while they're still putting their gear together. She also offers a few great utility cards, in the form of a damage-dealing, ongoing/Environment destroying one-shot rocket launcher, a damage-soaking flak jacket, and the ability to immediately shoot any arriving enemies in the face.

Variant

• Dark Watch: After Mr. Fixer disappeared, Expatriette, Setback, and Nightmist formed the Dark Watch to help keep things in Rook City under control. Expat was and is the brains of the bunch, using her tactical expertise and natural leadership skills to keep the group on-task and infiltrate Setback's pants. Not necessarily in that order. Her new power, Aim, increases all damage she deals until the end of her next turn by one. In short, this means sacrificing some of the original Expatriette's signature lack of setup time for greater potential payoff after putting together a good next turn.

• Fanatic

Helena was hit by a car in Lima while playing in the street. She was six years old. She went into a coma, had no memories when she woke up, and no one came to the hospital looking for her. Raised by nuns, she began to receive visions of the afterlife, manifesting holy powers and growing huge white wings. Naturally, she took this to be a sign from on high, and left the convent to begin a one-woman crusade against evil.

Fanatic is primarily a damage-dealer and debuffer, with a few healing effects. Her base power, for example, hits someone twice, once with radiant damage, once with melee. However, many of her cards also involve hurting herself or discarding cards to add effects, though fortunately she's rather tough and has some good equipment to help keep her from self-destructing. Most infamously, she can play a card called "End of Days" to completely wipe everything but relics and character cards off the board. (Hilariously, this is probably least effective against her nemesis, though he also can't destroy hers with his similar card.)

Variants

• Redeemer: After first encountering Apostate, who claimed to have created her for his own purposes, Helena had a crisis of faith, eventually emerging from three straight days of meditation more determined to destroy him than ever. Her new power causes her to regain a hitpoint and draw a card, useful for recovering after a long turn of burning the candle down for extra damage and effects.

• Prime Warden: After a few years of superheroics, Helena has finally become a balanced, temperate person. Which is good, considering the enemy of the Prime Wardens is a primal embodiment of elemental rage. Her new power causes her to deal herself a point of damage, then play the top card of her deck and let someone else use a power. Fittingly, this makes her a great team player, but it also puts her at risk of self-destructing, so tread lightly.

• Guise

Their version of Ambush Bug, though all the kids today will probably think of Deadpool instead. A one-time tabloid reporter who got squished under a falling piano. Fortunately, for him at least, the pavement he got smeared all over had been the site of a battle with Wager Master, and its raw improbability soaked into him, transforming him into a shapeshifting glory-hound of a superhero, whose cards break the fourth wall and require things like high-fiving other players.

Unfortunately for Deadpool's massive fanbase, Guise is another tricky hero. His deck's basic themes are miming other people's stuff and setting up huge combo chains with his many one-round ongoing support cards. His base power, which causes him to draw or play a card then deal one target one melee damage, helps him capitalize on both. A good Guise is a useful and potent force-multiplier, doing things like doubling up Legacy's tanking for a turn, or giving the party another source of Ra'splosions. A bad Guise is a selfish parasite, stealing other people's shit and barely letting anyone else get a turn in edgewise. Hopefully, you're not going to play him like the latter.

Variant

• Santa Guise: ...Yeah. Anyway, if the original Guise's power really let him use his own miming tricks and combos, Santa Guise has gifts for everyone. His new power either causes each hero to put the top card of their deck onto the field face down or for one hero to flip all their cards upright and act as if they'd just been played. While this means Guise himself isn't going to be quite as potent, it really helps the rest of his team, which, in the long run, can help him too. Just try not to accidentally flip End of Days on everyone...

• Haka

A Maori chief who discovered he was immortal after one of his people challenged him for leadership and slit his throat, only for him to return the next day. He crushed the challenger, but was exiled from his people as a freak. Aata Wakarewarewa wandered the world for many years, before becoming both a superhero and a substitute teacher. Amusingly, he's not really that much like the Hulk.

While he can be a great damage dealer, Haka is a surprisingly flexible character. He has mechanics that let him buff himself with various war-dances that discard cards to juice him up, both tanks and heals well, fucks minion-heavy villains up the ass when he Rampages or Ground Pounds, can use Savage Mana to eat enemies and keep them out of the villain trash, and can fill up a hand pretty quick. That said, his base power is still punching people in the face.

Variants

• The Eternal Haka: Turns out the Final Wasteland doesn't see all humanity extinct. Aata, being immortal, survived as the guardian of the last library in the world, keeping the last record of humanity's past alive and occasionally obliterating any monsters stupid enough to try going after him for a thousand years. With the time-space rifts opening thanks to the Shattered Timeline event, he sees an opportunity to ensure others have a brighter future. His new power lets him draw a card, then to choose to discard a Haka card to draw two more. While this means he now needs his other cards to deal damage, it makes him really, really good at filling his hand.

• Prime Warden: Same ol', same ol'. His new power lets him play a card and, if it is a Haka, to apply its benefits to a different character. Naturally, this makes him a great team player.

• K.N.Y.F.E.

A sexy Scottish ex-Marine who developed energy-blade powers while working in the extradimensional prison known as the Block, Paige Huntly then got a sweet power-suit and went to work as a black ops agent. However, she left F.I.L.T.E.R. to become a superhero when her bosses proved unwilling to help investigate the onset of an eventual temporal calamity.

K.N.Y.F.E. is a straight-up damage dealer, pumping out mixtures of melee and energy damage, with a base power that does one of each. In addition to equipment cards to boost this, she has a lot of "one-and-done" ongoings that are destroyed after dealing heavy damage, plus others to help her get more cards in play. Her biggest weakness is an extreme lack of card-draw, which, combined with the many extra plays she also gets, burns through her hand fast with no in-deck way to replace it. Additionally, several of her more powerful cards hurt her, her teammates, or both.

• Rogue Agent: K.N.Y.F.E. going "stealthy" after figuring out a bit of what's to come. Her new power involves picking a card from the bottom of a deck and putting it into play, which is primarily interesting because fewer cards affect it compared to the top. However, it also means that she loses her primary means of dealing damage, so buyer beware!

• Legacy

Like Captain America mixed with Superman. Paul Parsons is the latest in a long line of American superheroes dating back to the Revolution, each generation inheriting all of the last ones' powers and mutating a new one. The current one's contribution is his indestructible skin, while his daughter has laser vision. An all-around good guy and the founder of the Freedom Five.

Though a few of his cards do deal respectable damage, Legacy is a leader whose primary role is support. He can buff and, to a limited degree, heal his teammates, help them draw cards. His base power is the coveted "Galvanize," which gives all the other good guys a damage boost until the start of his next turn. He's also amazing at tanking damage, with cards that make him immune to a damage type of his choice, able to tank hits for other characters, and to damage himself in exchange for shutting down the bad guys for a round.

Variants

• America's Greatest Legacy: The WWII Legacy, killed by Baron Blade but drawn into the modern day temporarily by time shenanigans. Amusingly, can still use the cards that rely on his son's invincible skin even though his contribution was super-senses. His base power lets one hero heal a hitpoint and use a power, focusing on the other half of Legacy's support game while letting a number of other heroes really shine.

• America's Newest Legacy: Paul's daughter Pauline Parsons, who became a superheroine after her father died fighting Baron Blade on Mars Then Iron Legacy punched time-space in the dick and changed history. She eventually decided to go by "Beacon" so as not to confuse everyone. Anyway, her new power involves blasting a sucka with her eye-beams for three energy damage, the highest damage base power in the game, giving her a lot more punch than a normal Legacy, but making her more-dependent on her hand to provide support.

• Mr. Fixer

A blind, nearly hundred-year-old mechanic, Harry Robert "H.R. Slim" Walker was a kung fu blaxsploitation superhero known as "Black Fist" for most of the 70's, until some scum killed the kids he was teaching martial arts for standing up for themselves. Disheartened, he hung up his afro, put on his baseball cap, and adopted a new mantra: "Don't fight back." Unfortunately, his old nemeses are on the rise, and he's finding that not fighting back won't protect him anymore.

Mr. Fixer is a hero who sacrifices raw power for versatility: his deck includes both tool and style cards, and he can only have one of each in play. They add effects to his base power, which normally deals a piddly one melee damage. Properly augmented, however, that one damage is some combination of irreducible, causing other attacks to be irreducible, causing foes to deal one less damage, hitting every bad guy at once, auto-killing anything left at 2 hitpoints or less, throwing a tire iron, et cetera. He also has some support cards that help him get more cards, pull cards out of everyone's trash, prevent all enemies from dealing damage for a turn at the cost of the rest of his, and a few cards that let him punch twice or turn him into a mini-Chrono-Ranger by boosting all damage he deals and takes for a turn.

Variants

• Dark Watch: Fighting the good fight in a battle with the Operative, Mr. Fixer perished. However, his old nemesis Zhu Long used vile rites to restore him to life as a mindless soldier under his control. NightMist managed to reconnect his mind to his body and restore his sanity, but the experience left him one angry motherfucker. His new power, which explicitly works everywhere his old power would, deals three damage instead of one, but at a cost: it automatically destroys one hero ongoing or equipment card in play. This power can be used for good (destroying Bloody Knuckles before it can deal him extra damage, for instance), but it makes getting his tool and style cards a bitch to get out at the same time. Still, it's very powerful, and if you friends have shit they didn't care about anyway, go nuts.

• The Naturalist

Michael Conteh was once a crooked Nigerian oil baron, before nature's curse transformed him into a series of animals to punish him. Regaining his human shape and mind with the help of the Argent Adept, he was a changed man. When his old company refused to let him resume control and take them in a more-responsible direction, he took up the mantle of the Naturalist, a shapeshifting Animal Man-type eco-superhero out to protect the planet from both obvious threats like alien warlords out to wreck the place and subtler decay like pollution and misuse. Or, to be less kind, Furry Captain Planet.

The Naturalist is perhaps the only hero in the game who can challenge, even surpass, Tempest in terms of sheer versatility. His main unique mechanic involves his shapeshifting between three animal forms, mostly as the result of playing the appropriate form cards. Fortunately, his base power lets him scour his deck or trash for the one you want, so there's not a ton of difficulties there. He can have only one in play at a time, but the one he's activated adds effects to virtually all of his other cards. In general, Gazelle offers utility in the form of card draw, Ongoing hate, and self-healing, Rhino tanks and prevents environment damage, and Crocodile kills the shit out of things. While there's some frustration inherent in figuring out how all the pieces fit together, he's not as complex as, say, the Argent Adept. He just requires a bit of forethought and understanding to get the most use out of him.

Variant

• The Hunted Naturalist: Pursued by Ambuscade and the Slaughterhouse, Michael Conteh is forced to push his powers to the limit. However, he is losing control of them as well, and if he slips too hard, a terrible fate awaits him: irreversible transformation into an Otherkin. (10/10 best horror story) His new base power lets him pick an animal icon, activate card effects as if he's got the appropriate Form card in play until the end of his next turn, then draw or play a card. This new power seems, on the surface, more formidable than the old one, and it is... potentially. If you've got the devil's own luck, it means he could potentially have two animal forms at once, a massive power spike... but there's only one of each form card in his forty-card deck, and once they're in the trash there's no getting 'em back. And you don't get the other benefits of maintaining a form, like the Crocodile's damage boost, unless the card in question is in play. The Hunted Naturalist offers great power, but at the cost of the old Naturalist's reliable performance. Be careful!

• NightMist

Occult private eye Faye Diamond, looking for what happened to her grandfather Joe in Arkham, MA seventy years ago, accidentally mis-fired the "Mists of R'lyeh" spell, leaving her with a body that shifts back and forth between mist and corporeality. After years of training her magical skill, she was recruited by Tachyon to aid the Freedom Five in defeating the entity responsible for her grandfather's disappearance: Gloomweaver, now attempting to intrude on the physical universe.

NightMist is a powerful hero, but a bit tricky to use. Her base power damages her in order to draw cards, and most of her abilities require either damaging herself or discarding cards. Fortunately, she has both a great deal of self-healing and the ability to reflect the first damage she takes each turn at another target, with the right equipment of course. Her unique mechanic is an "occult rating" on each of her cards, distinct from its other qualities (two of the same cards might have different occult ratings), that fuels her spells. Depending on the spell, it might heal her, deal damage to enemies, or even weirder stuff. Add to that some solid deck control for a difficult-but-not-unusable character.

Variant

• Darkwatch: Seeking power, NightMist found herself drawn out of the physical universe, transformed into a being of pure magic, pure energy... and surrounded by hungry predators of the astral plane. For years, centuries, her mystic strength waxing mightily, she fought these creatures, ultimately destroying countless hundreds of them as she claimed, and used, a jagged portal back to Earth... only to arrive a few days after she'd left. Derp. Anyway, that's how she knew how to resurrect Mr. Fixer. Her new power lets her view and rearrange the top of her deck, useful primarily to set up one of her spells with the right cards, though it also means giving up her primary ability to restock her hand and reflect damage.

• Omnitron-X

After years of getting the shit kicked out of him by heroes, Omnitron-IX decided that his next incarnation needed to be as human as possible, so as to assimilate the strengths of the meatbags that kept kicking his ass. It worked... kind of. See, by giving Omnitron-X empathy and a conscience, it ensured the resulting creation would be horrified by the things it had done. Time-porting back to the past, it joined the heroes in containing its past self and other threats to the world.

Omnitron-X is a complex hero, but not a difficult one. He has a lot of moving parts, imitating his villainous predecessor, including various kinds of Plating cards that reduce different kinds of damage, different kinds of components that take effect at the start of his turn, healing his team, damaging enemies, and putting cards in play, and equipment cards that give him new powers to use. From there, his one-shots let him play more cards and take more turns by abusing time-travel, or blow up his carefully-crafted mountain of gear to deal huge damage to all enemies. He's a powerful, versatile hero, and his base power, picking the top card of any deck and choosing whether to put it in play or trash it, is good for all manner of different things. However, his biggest weakness is that any of his cards with the "component" keyword are destroyed if he ever takes more than five damage in a turn.

Variant

• Omnitron-U: After heroically detonating itself to prevent the original Omnitron from achieving a singularity, Unity, always the robot's best friend, rebuilt it... mostly. This scrapped-together Omnitron's new base power first causes any of its equipment destroyed before the end of its next turn to deal two fire damage to one target, then lets it either play a card or pull a piece of equipment from its trash to its hand. While this lacks some of the power and versatility of its previous power, it simultaneously means it will effectively never run out of defensive blast ammo, makes cards like Singularity a lot more tempting, and makes for a great final "screw you" if the villain gets out an equipment-wrecker or manages to deal enough damage to destroy all his components.

• Parse

A Australian aborigine with Asperger's, Kim Howell was one of the technicians analyzing the original Omnitron's data core when the cosmic event that created Omnitron II struck. However, even as it re-created the self-aware robotic menace, it empowered her own mind, giving her a super-human ability to process and analyze data. This manifested most obviously in her newfound ability to precisely target weakpoints with pinpoint accuracy using her bow. However, it was for her improved intelligence and deductive abilities that the Freedom Five contacted her to help them unmask the nefarious saboteur Miss Information.

Parse does two things and does them both extremely well: she deals projectile damage herself while buffing and supporting her team. Her base power, for instance, just shoots a guy for two projectile. However, many of her other ongoings either help her allies deal extra damage while circumventing damage reduction, or help get more cards in hand and into play. Her major weakness is that she has rather low health and no defense.

• Ra

Dr. Blake Washington, Jr., world-famous adventurer archaeologist, unearthed the ancient tomb of Ra. Upon taking up the scepter within, he became the latest incarnation of the ancient warrior Ra, receiving the memories and powers of countless previous bearers of the staff. Now aware that the gods of ancient Egypt were actually bearers of even older, more-advanced powers, he resealed the pyramid, and prepared to make war on the enemies of humankind to defend the world from evil. While he's an arrogant douche, he's also fundamentally well-intentioned, cooperating with the other heroes in spite of his gruff loner personality.

Ra is probably the simplest pick-up-and-play hero in the game. He blasts the shit out of things with fire. Sometimes, it takes the form of blasting many smaller things, sometimes he blasts one big thing really hard, sometimes he counter-attacks when struck, but from his one-shots to his ongoings to his base, they're all fire related. Some of his cards instead increase his overall damage, such as his staff, which he can, if something's immune to fire, throw at bad guys. Fitting his description above, though, he does little to support his team beyond blasting bad guys. The most that can be said is that one card gives all fire damage a +1 buff and makes all heroes deal fire damage while another can, by eating a power, make everyone immune to fire. He's still pretty effective, but if you want to do just about anything more subtle than murder-blasting the badguys to death as hard as you can, don't bother.

Variant

• Horus of Two Horizons: When the Ennead first appeared on the scene, Ra went out to try to 1 vs. 9 them. It went about as well as it would if you actually attempt it in the cardgame. Shattered in body and mind, Ra wandered out into the desert for years as the Ennead continued their rampage, before finally emerging, changed, from obscurity for round two, this time with the other heroes. His new power allows him to draw three cards and discard two, trading a ready source of fire damage for better hand control. And it's not as if the rest of his deck lacks for ways to blast people with fire.

• The Scholar

John is a lazy old coot who just so happens to be the nigh-immortal bearer of the Philosopher's Stone and one of the most powerful alchemists in existence. He occasionally rouses himself to help the other heroes actually do things whenever his comfortable existence is threatened.

The Scholar's base power involves healing himself, and the other cards in his deck frequently either do the same or let him draw cards. He needs to draw all he can, as his main gimmick involves stacking cards that transmute his "mortal form" into various elemental substances, to let him soak damage, boost the amount of hitpoints he heals by each turn, and damaging enemies for the same amount as he heals... assuming he can discard a card for each of them in play at the start of his turn to keep them in play. He's also got a decent amount of support in there too, helping other players draw cards, play cards, and occasionally tanking, blasting, or neutering specific enemies for one round.

Variant

• Scholar of the Infinite: After communing with the Void, John sees what's coming in the final expansion, and it ain't pretty. It's enough to finally get him off his ass. His new power damages himself and a target of his choice an amount equal to the number of cards he's discarded since the end of his last turn plus one. While this obviously makes him a whole lot less tanky in terms of regeneration, it makes him plenty more blasty, especially given the huge amounts of damage reduction he can give himself will actually fuel this power by destroying cards.

• The Sentinels

A team of weaker superheroes consisting of the Idealist, a psychic pre-teen, Dr. Medico, her adoptive energy-charged doctor father, Mainstay, his super-strong, super-tough college roommate, and Writhe, the shadow-suited reformed criminal they busted once. That's the short version, anyway. Not that much like the Fantastic Four... though there are obvious similarities.

The Sentinels are unique in that they actually have *four* character cards, plus a fifth that explains how they interact with the game's mechanics. So expect to be hit by all effects that target the hero with the most cards in play for a start. Each has a different power, and each has about half the health of a normal hero, so expect to *also* be hit by every effect that targets the hero with the lowest HP. However, their value comes from a mixture of teamwork and unique abilities. One ongoing, for instance, lets a Sentinel use a power whenever another sentinel does damage, while their Signature cards each boost them in various ways: turning all of Dr. Medico's damage into healing, for instance, or giving another player a free card draw each turn. And, of course, there're the things they can do that no other hero can, most importantly with Dr. Medico reviving incapacitated Sentinels or other heroes.

They have four basic powers: Dr. Medico heals one hero target for 3 HP, Mainstay reduces all damage taken by the Sentinels by 1 until the start of his next turn, the Idealist blasts someone with psychic damage, and Writhe can remove the bottom card from a deck and either plop it on top or mill it into the trash. Also, the OblivAeon event resulted in them getting charged-up powers, so each of them got their own decks as individual heroes in the Void Guard standalone.

Variant

• The Adamant Sentinels: Eventually, the Southwest Sentinels got some government funding and ended up working in Fort Adamant. Many civilized and respectful debates have been had on the subject of whether or not one can mix-and-match the Adamant Sentinels with their original-recipe counterparts, but the digital card game has come down quite firmly on the side of "yes."

• Setback

Pete Riske was a frequently-fired blackjack dealer with a chipper outlook and terrible luck, who signed up for a series of medical experiments by some guy named Baron Blade. The tests did... nasty things to the other subjects, but made him really buff... even as they turned his awful luck into really swingy luck. "Escaping" from the facility because the front door was coincidentally unlocked one night, he found that, while disaster followed him everywhere he went, the occasional gem of bizarre good fortune did too, as when Bunker suddenly fell out of the sky to save him from Baron Blade's pursuit. So, by becoming a superhero in his own right, he wanted to make sure some of that bad luck hit bad people.

Setback is a very risk-reward-centric hero, via his unique mechanic: an Unlucky "pool." His innate power, Risk, adds a point to the pool and causes him to play the top card of his deck. Most of his cards interact with his pool in some way, either adding to it or letting him spend points from it for positive effects. In this way, he can heal, tank, support, and deal damage in either single-target or AoE flavors... but many of his cards also hinder or hurt himself and his allies, and a few cause him to dramatically self-destruct if the pool is too high. Still, while he will always be one of the most random-factor-dependent heroes in the game, a good Setback player can still elevate him with skillful play and good awareness of the cards on the board.

Variant

• Dark Watch: If Expatriette is the brains of the Dark Watch, Setback is the heart. He's really come a long way from the semi-annoying hanger-on to the superhero community to beloved for his upbeat optimism, respected for his unwavering determination, and dating one of the most heavily-armed women in the world. His variant power, Mitigate, drains a point from his pool and reduces the next damage that would hit one of his friends by two. While, as its name would imply, this power is always potentially useful and much less risky than Mitigate, it also leaves him without his primary means of refilling his pool and can potentially mean an ally will soak the wrong hit.

• Sky-Scraper

Portja Kir-Pro was a member of a rogue Thorathian cell attempting to liberate her people from the tyranny of Grand Warlord Voss, using her mutant size-shifting abilities to make her both a matchless, miniscule spy and an army-smashing giant juggernaut as the situation demanded. However, she was kidnapped by the interplanetary bloodsport mogul Kaargra Warfang and enslaved to fight in her arena for years, before she helped stage a breakout when the heroes of Earth were drawn within.

Sky-Scraper's unique mechanic involves her size: she has three hero cards, each of which has a different power, that she morphs between depending on which of her one-shot cards she last played. Similarly, her deck offers three different styles of play. While small, she focuses on using her equipment cards to debuff enemies and shift the playing field in her team's favor, with a base power that lets her play two of them at once and draw more to her hand from her trash. While large, she smashes up bad guys with damage while inflicting occasional collateral damage on her fellow heroes, and has a base power that hits everyone but her allies for 2 damage, then hits her allies for zero. This matters because damage buffs apply to that zero. Her "normal" size functions as a kind of transition state between the two, where she draws cards, picks up spent links, and regroups for future turns. Amusingly, each of her sizes also has unique "incapacitated" powers.

• Tachyon

A one-woman scientific revolution and self-proclaimed "badass of science," Dr. Meredith Stinson has helped boost her world into an age of comic book technology thanks to the super-speed she gained from an experimental mishap with tachyons. In between using her powers to make her a really good scientist, Dr. Stinson helps keep the world safe as the hero Tachyon and a member of the Freedom Five. Think a mixture of Reed Richards and the Flash.

Fittingly, Tachyon is all about speed. Many of her cards help her play or draw extra cards, and the ones that don't typically deal damage. However, she also has two kinds of cards: "Burst" cards, and cards that get stronger the more Burst cards are in her trash. This is why her base power lets her look at the top card of her deck and choose whether or not to discard it: to help her get charged up faster. She make a very effective damage dealer and, with the right cards, a semi-effective tank, as some of her cards also prevent, redirect, or mitigate damage.

Variants

• Team Leader Tachyon: With the greater part of the world's heroes and most of the Freedom Five dead or maimed at the hands of Iron Legacy, Tachyon assumes the mantle of the new leader as she creates the Freedom Six to oppose him in her timeline. Her base power lets everyone draw a card, and is often seen as one of the bigger examples of "power creep" in the game, as it is a better version of a couple different powers. To add insult to injury, she also has more health.

• The Super Scientific Tachyon: Tachyon "off the clock," working as a scientist. Her new power, Experiment, chooses a deck, looks at the two bottom cards, and puts them into play if they share a "keyword" (like One-Shot, Limited, Equipment, etc.), but otherwise discards them. The mechanics of how to best use this are... complex, but if nothing else it works really well on both her and Legacy.

• Tempest

A combination of Aquaman and Martian Manhunter, M'kk Dall'ton (who mostly goes by "Mick Dalton" among the people of Earth) is a chieftain and diplomat among his people. Leading a group of refugees ahead of the conquering armies of Grand Warlord Voss as the evil warrior took Vognild Prime, his shuttle crashlanded on Earth. There, armed with his powerful alien biology (featuring both invulnerability, the ability to breath underwater and talk to fish, and fucking weather control), he, following a few initial misunderstandings, began to help his people integrate into Earth culture to prepare for the tyrant's arrival.

Tempest does a lot of things. His primary specialization is AoE damage, coming armed with what was, for a long time, the only "hit all non-hero targets" base power in the game, and is still the only one with no strings attached to it and a few of his other powers offering similar multi-target attacks. From there, he has a strong, if not completely focused, ongoing game. He has a bit of support, with Cleansing Downpour still being widely-regarded as the best group-healing power the heroes have, some card-draw, a few powerful pieces of equipment that hit the highest-health villain target (typically the main villain) harder, and even some defensive cards. There's not a team comp in the game that's damaged by the inclusion of a well-played Tempest.

Variants

• Freedom Six: Having had his incapacitated artwork brought to uncomfortable life by Iron Legacy, this alternate-timeline version of Tempest has joined one of the last superhero teams left for revenge. His new power destroys one of his ongoing or equipment cards to let him draw three more. Not terrible, per se, particularly if one of his teammates tossed him a free power and he needs to charge up in a hurry, but definitely much less general-use than his original.

• Prime Wardens: After overseeing the integration of the Maerynian race into human society and the defeat of Grand Warlord Voss, M'kk has become a beloved and respected hero throughout the world. And, with the Freedom Five not wanting to change their name to add a sixth member, he was a natural choice to join the nascent Prime Wardens. His new power lets him immediately put up to three cards into play, taking three points of lightning damage from the environment per card. With his strong ongoing game and multitude of ways to get some DR or healing and mitigate that problem, this power is amazing for Tempest early-to-mid game, even if the potential to self-destruct is high, particularly against enemies with lots of equipment or ongoing destruction.

• Unity

A clever Israeli teenager with technopathic powers, Devra Thalia Caspit seemed like a shoe-in to be a new great scientist. Unfortunately, she had trouble making friends and flunked out of three different colleges in a row because she was lazy, easily bored with the material, and spent all her time making cute robots out of other people's stuff instead of doing coursework. However, when Dr. Stinson put out a request for a new intern, she ended up getting picked. While the two bicker and fight over explosions in the lab, Devra has taken well to the world of comic-book science and become a sort of unofficial sixth member of the Freedom Five as Unity.

Unity's deck revolves around golems. Whether they're the powerful, Limited copies of the Freedom Five or cheap, buffable dinosaurs and wasps, a Unity that's gotten into a good groove can quickly snowball into an unstoppable force. Unfortunately, said golems are a pain to get into play, since she can't put them down during her Play phase. Outside of out-of-phase card playing, she has to use special effects, like her base power, to get them on the field. And those that do are usually either one-shots (Construction Pylon), or require some kind of price. Her base power, for instance, cannibalizes an Equipment card on the field, destroying it, to create a new golem. It's not unusable (indeed, her deck has cards like Scrap Metal tailor-made for re-purposing into golems), but it definitely makes her very vulnerable to swings of fortune, since not drawing the cards she needs can quickly lead to a hand full of golems that can't be played.

Variants

• Freedom Six: What, Unity survived Iron Legacy's rampage? Actually, no. But her greatest creation did: a golem of herself, imbued with all of her powers, and wearing Mr. Fixit's hat. She thinks of herself as the original, and no one's in a position to argue. Her modified base power causes her to deal herself four damage to put a golem into play. While this obviously means she's not going to be caught in a position where she can't play anything like the original and doesn't have to cannibalize her stuff to put golems out, it makes her very prone to blowing up, especially in a damage buff heavy team, meaning that, like the original, you might wanna avoid using this unless you have to.

• Termi-Nation: What, you thought the technopath wasn't going to get in on the action while they're tracking down an evil version of herself? Her power lets her destroy a golem in play, pull one out of her trash into play, and draw a card. While this leaves her totally reliant on her deck to put out golems in the first place, it works very well for recycling golems back once you've lost one you wanted, combos well with stuff that goes off when her golems are destroyed, like Volatile Parts or Bee Bot, and means she's got better card draw anyway.

• The Visionary

Like if Professor X and Jean Grey combined into one bald-but-feminine lady. (Also, you know, Moondragon, but no one's going to get that reference.) The Visionary hails from a dark future where China conquered America after a protracted nuclear war. The only surviving result of scientific experiments with Compound PSY-200 on volunteering Chinese couples, Vanessa Long lost both her parents and was raised by the American government before its eventual collapse. She hurled herself back in time to try to prevent her future from coming to pass, principally the superhuman criminal activity that left the government crippled and unable to respond.

The Visionary is the reigning queen of deck control. Many of her cards all let her peek ahead into different decks and cherry-pick what they want to find there, while others, including her base power, let her help other heroes draw what they want or pull lost cards from their trash. She can also empty villain and environment trash piles by having them shuffled into their decks, which is incredibly useful when it matters. (Baron Blade and the Chairman both come to mind.) She also has a respectable number of ways to blast bad guys with psychic damage, and one of the best buff/debuff cards in the game, Twist the Ether, along with her "stasis card," Telekinetic Cocoon, that makes her unable to play cards or use powers but also makes her immune to all damage. A bit complex, but endlessly useful.

Variant

• Dark Visionary: What, you thought that a mashup of Professor X and Jean Grey wouldn't have a secret evil side? While her original power only to look at the top two cards of a hero deck, putting one into the hero's hand and the other into the trash, her new power lets her look at the top of any deck, and put one card on top and the other on the bottom. Obviously, this lets act to control more decks at once during her turn, even if it seems a bit redundant given her deck's other cards with similar functions.

• The Wraith

...Yeah, she's basically Batman, only Jewish, female, willing to kill, and with a dead boyfriend instead of dead parents. Naturally, Maia Montgomery is also the last member of the Freedom Five, using her vast wealth to help keep things smooth for them.

So, being Batman, the Wraith has a ton of equipment for any situation. Whether she's using smoke bombs to make enemies hit other targets and deal less damage, peeking ahead into the villain deck to manipulate what they've got available, or just throwing a huge array of projectiles at her enemies, the Wraith has a huge array of tools at her disposal. She combines them with a decent set of passive buff equipment, cards that let her quickly go through her deck for the tools she needs or just draw lots of cards, a bit of self-healing, and a base power that gives her temporary DR against the next hit she takes to get set up and keep herself alive doing it. A very self-sufficient and versatile hero against nearly any opponent.

Variants

• Rook City: Otherwise known as "We can't give her a Dark Watch variant! She's in the Freedom Five!", this variant represents her working as a detective on her home turf. Her new base power lets her peek at the next Environment card and choose whether to play or discard it. It's something her original version can't do at all and adds to her versatility, even if it's not quite as straightforwardly powerful.

• Price of Freedom: Blinded and maimed by Iron Legacy, but armed with the Operative's old weapons, Maia has slain both her and the Chairman, before assuming control of their organization to further her battle with the tyrant. Her new power whops two different targets for one melee damage each. Not terrible, even if both of the others outclass her a bit.