Designer: Christopher Badell, Paul Bender, Alex Franklin, Bryan Graham, and Adam Rebottaro
Publisher: Greater Than Games, LLC
Date Released: 2013

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: Shattered Timelines is the third 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:
Shattered Timelines adds a couple of strong heroes to the Sentinels canon. Omnitron X tends to get overpowered. It has a lot of global effects and can negate damage of every type (plating cards). Chrono-Ranger takes a little longer to set up, but he too can get overpowered once he gets going, and he offers a little bit of everything. A little specialization would help set Chrono-Ranger apart. After we picked up this expansion, everyone gravitated to one of these two heroes, so that’s a good sign that the heroes have a lot of firepower, but the game’s balance may be skewed.

You also get an interesting mix of villains in Shattered Timelines. La Capitan and Kismet are forgettable, but that may be due to the fact that Iron Legacy and The Dreamer get introduced in this expansion, too. The Dreamer introduces a new game mechanic in that you don’t want to take her down. She’s an eight-year-old girl whose dreams become a reality. The only problem is that she’s having a nightmare. This changes the flow of combat just enough to keep the game fresh. And then there’s Iron Legacy, who doesn’t look like much at first with his relatively low HP, but don’t let that fool you. He packs a huge punch early in the game, and you’ll have to play for a comeback.

Time Cataclysm and The Block are a great addition to Sentinels of the Multiverse gameplay, too. Time Cataclysm is one of the most even handed environments to date. I’ve both won and lost because of it. The Block feels like a secondary battle takes place – between prison inmates and prison guard – and the heroes and villains on this environment are in the crossfire.

Shattered Timelines is better than Rook City but doesn’t quite live up to Infernal Relics.

Verdict: Shattered Timelines shakes up Sentinels of the Multiverse gameplay to earn a spot as the second best expansion to date—just behind Infernal Relics.