So excited I got my physical copy of OblivAeon yesterday.

[Puppy Cat Underfoot]

The box itself lists play time of 90 minutes to 120 minutes, but I think I'll double (maybe even triple) that just for setup, mishap handling, and rules issues. Granted, I'm excited with the idea of having villains turned heroes doing mirror matches. Despite being short, the comic does a great job in setting up the OblivAeon conflict.

[Feral Yoda]

Yeah... i was hoping to have it by Thursday... as i'm leaving for a trip up to Tahoe Friday morning for a cabin weekend of games (including Sentinels). But no such luck for me. Its scheduled for a Saturday delivery now.

[melkathi]

Originally posted by bluedarkyugi:

Originally posted by melkathi:

Question:
I thought that Harpy's magic tome would really be Nightmist's? Was surprised that the card does not have the Relic keyword.

It could be that the Harpy's tome isn't a relic because it's bound to The Harpy, cards with the relic keywords usually tend to items that can pass their power onto anyone who wields them (this is also why the Argent Adept's instruments aren't relics), and have a certain degree of invunerability.

I was under the impression it is the very same book, as the flavour text even has Nightmist saying to Harpy that perhaps one day she will pass the tome on to her own student.

[powerhound_2000]

It’s not the same book. The book in Nightmist’s deck is a different color and has an eye.

[ProfArmitage]

My copy was delivered early this afternoon. With the Variant pack and all of the Cauldron decks, including their variants, I have about an inch to spare in the Hero drawers and about three or four inches in the Villain and Environment drawers.
I guess Sentinels of Earth-Prime isn't going to fit when that eventually comes out.

[Skinker]

I should buy Cauldron finally. I've put it off, but now that I have extra room in the case I feel like I need to put Cauldron in there.

[Feral Yoda]

Is Cauldron any good? I've usually found fan-made decks/cards for games to be either over-complicated or super over-powered cheese... or both.

[ProfArmitage]

The ones my friends and I have used didn't seem too bad. Some of them have mechanics that seem to work best when paired with other Cauldron heroes, so they lose some effectiveness when teamed with standard heroes.
I saw someone describe how powerful the latest Freedom Five hero variants were by saying "Using them, I was finally able to beat Celadroch", a villain from one of the Cauldron sets.

[katewalker]

Yeah, Celadroch is the hardest villain ever, and beating him is incredibly satisfying.

As an outspoken opinion-having person on the Cauldron, I'll say it gets better as it goes. The base game heroes offer a lot of interesting stuff, from Cricket's sonic focus to Malichae's Digimon-style targets. There are some remarkable support heroes -- Echelon and Magnificent Mara are two of my absolute favorites in Cauldron or SOTM -- though sometimes they can feel a little underpowered when going up against their own villains. I believe Cauldron is best when mixed with Sentinels.

Villains, on the other hand, have a tendency to be rough. Phase is easy (and thematically fun), and I tend not to have too much trouble with Menagerie, Anathema or the RAM, but the difficulty ramps way up from there.

Like, okay, if you look at the base Sentinels villains, you'll find lots of cards like Devious Disruption and Sedative Flechettes and Devastating Aurora that people tend to hate. There's a lot less scaling with (H) because it wasn't really a thing when GTG started. They've moved away from that in later expansions, and to good effect.

The Cauldron team, meanwhile, seems to have said, "We need more of that", and that's precisely what you'll find. Lots of (H)+ hits, lots of area damage, lots of high-HP targets, lots of punishing and retaliation. The environments are even worse, in my opinion.

That said, the newest Cauldron expansion, Adrift, which is still being worked, has a TON of exciting, amazing stuff. You've got a hero who can tap cards in a player's hand for support effects. Another hero has a personal timeline card that she shifts up and down to power her abilities. One villain forces you to find clues on the backs of his cards to uncover his identity. In another fight, death is meaningless and the timeline resets every four rounds. The environments have you doing everything from delving a vault for powerful and dangerous relics to swinging a harbor crane at your enemies. :D I'm really excited about Adrift, if you can't tell.

And of course, if you want to search for even more custom stuff, it's all over BoardGameGeek in various states of "has been playtested". The work done by Adelphophage, as well as paulmalchow's Union of Heroes, are some of the best custom Sentinels decks you could hope to find. But the Cauldron will expand your Sentinels tabletop in big ways, so don't feel rushed. :)

[Feral Yoda]

Thanks for the recommendations on Cauldron stuff. That will have to wait for a bit now.... my OblivAeon package just arrived.

[katewalker]

Oh yeah. Even if you don't play Oblivaeon himself, that's enough content to keep you finding fun new stuff for months! I know I will! :D (Eventually...)

[douglasr1.rd]

So, I am not getting a copy of Oblivaeon for a long time (poor college student life...) but I saw an unboxing video and got spoiled on the last scion. Just wow.

Needless to say, I am extremely excited to play it when it comes out.

[Puppy Cat Underfoot]

The local gaming convention has a Games Library Day, usually every second Sunday, and there was a "request" for Oblivaeon. I will fulfill that demand this Sunday, and to make it easier on everyone, I will be running villains and environments without also playing a hero.

I am still using Sentinels of the Multiverse boxes to store my game. Most of the heroes are in the core game box, overflow heroes and tokens are in the Rook City and Infernal Relics box, lone villains are in the Vengeance box, team villains and environments are in the Villains box, and everything left for Oblivaeon is in that box. Which means I'll need some kind of spacer to prevent cards from ending up everywhere.

I will get some kind of divided box so I can store everything in a single location, with a smaller one for storing tokens during play perhaps.

[Feral Yoda]

I'm guessing you don't sleeve your cards. Even before Oblivion i had to use 4 boxes for everything... and they were fairly tightly packed... 2 boxes for Heroes, a Box for the last couple Heroes, and the majority of Villians and tokens, and a box for Overflow Villians, Team Villians and Enviornments.

Now with Oblivion and the box... i switched back from the new thick box-dividers back to thin papery ones, since with sleeves and the thick dividers, the cards are packed so tight, it's difficult to get them out. I don't know what i'm gonna do when SoEP finally gets here. There's not really space left for things (except maybe the thin top drawer).

[Puppy Cat Underfoot]

You are correct, I don't sleeve. I do have sleeves available but they're not the completely clear kind. That's assuming I didn't just throw them away. You remind me of something I need to ask Handleabra as I have been lookin at the SoEP Kickstarter.

Today I showed a friend the cards, comic, and rulebook for Oblivaeon. He made a good point that d20s for the extra HP of allies may be a good idea.

I've used the Oblivaeon specific tokens as a spacer which kind of works, but a good block of foam will do a lot better.

[ProfArmitage]

It seemed to me that the OblivAeon character booklet had the potential to be damaged, or at least suffer significant wear and tear. I scanned the original pages, printed them on cardstock, and then laminated the new cards. Those should last a while.