Designer: Christopher Badell, Paul Bender, Richard Launius, and Adam Rebottaro
Publisher: Greater Than Games, LLC
Date Released: 2012

Number of Players: 2-5
Age Range: 13 and up
Setup Time: Less than 10 minutes
Play Time: 10-90 minutes

Game Mechanics:
Cooperative Play
Hand Management
Variable Player Powers

Game flow:
Sentinels of the Multiverse: Infernal Relics is the second expansion for the popular comic book themed card game. I won’t go into detail with the base game flow. If you didn’t catch our Sentinels of the Multiverse: Base Game review, you can read it here. In short, Sentinels of the Multiverse is a cooperative card game, where players team up with each other to beat the stuffing out of a super villain—which has a dummy hand similar to Bridge. Now let’s get to the new stuff in this expansion.

Review:
Infernal Relics is a nice departure from the previous Sentinels expansion Rook City and the base game. Like the Rook City heroes, Infernal Relics heroes are highly specialized. But Rook City’s heroes were straightforward one trick ponies, while the Infernal Relics heroes add some nice twists to the gameplay.

NightMist has deadly offensive powers, but this power can be a double-edged sword. She can damage herself and her teammates. Meanwhile, The Argent Adept is the consummate teammate, aiding anyone in need. He does this through buffing, adding card draw, and healing. But if he’s your team’s leading damage dealer, something’s gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Infernal Relics’ environments are breaths of fresh air too. The base game environments ranged from somewhat neutral to leaning toward the heroes, while the Rook City environments punished players. Infernal Relics environments are even handed. Depending on the flow of the game, they can be either beneficial or detrimental to the heroes and villains.

And speaking of villains, we have some interesting deck concepts for them in Infernal Relics. Akash’bhuta has a whopping 200 HP, but don’t be too intimidated—there’s sort of a win condition involved with Bhuta. The Ennead is Sentinels first attempt at a super villain team. If that sounds daunting, that’s because it is. Add GloomWeaver and Apostate to the mix and you get an odd and fun mixture of villains.

Verdict: When I first played Infernal Relics, I didn’t like it, but it grew on me. The heroes are more complex than ever before. The villains and environments have great depth too. Infernal Relics shows that Greater Than Games doesn’t just turn out the same old tired mechanics.