Last night marked a successful game night at the office, wherein four of us joined forces for two games of Sentinels of the Multiverse, my favorite comic book superhero themed card game. (There is at least one other that is decidedly not my favorite.) All three of my coworkers—two of them pictured, one hiding—were new to the game, so I once again had the pleasure of introducing friends to a game that I love.

I am always nervous, when teaching a new game to friends, that they will just get bored and check out, not have fun, or find a reason to leave early to feed their cat or whatever. This is especially true if these friends are not gamer friends of mine, and one of my coworkers falls in that category. Fortunately, all of them had fun, and everyone got pretty into the flavor and mechanics of the game.

We set up our first game to be relatively easy, fighting the simplest villain, Baron Blade. I played as Legacy, who is not very exciting to play as but great to have at the table as a solid support role, but I forgot about the nemesis mechanic. I think I barely dealt any damage the entire game anyway.

The second round we went up against Grand Warlord Voss, who is supposed to be much harder, and there were some tight moments in the game. After remembering how his deck tended to play, we all decided it was best if one of us played as Tempest. One of my coworkers had just played him in our first game, and she wanted to try The Wraith this time around, so I picked up Tempest and dropped Legacy. This time, I did not forget about the nemesis mechanic, which made my awesome amounts of damage that much more satisfying when they also pinged Voss.

This is a good game for less serious gamers, but still lots of fun for heavy ones. The basic rules aren’t too complicated, but the game builds as more cards hit the table. The rulebook comes with suggestions about the difficulty of each villain, and how hard it is to play as each hero, so you can pick everything to appeal to less or more experienced players as you wish. But the rulebook comes too with bios for each of the heros and villains, and has great allusions in the cards to the stories and world behind the game.

I’ve written about this game before, and would be remiss not to thank Cari and Mason again for giving it to me! I’ve even since gotten one of the expansions.

Normally we play D&D on Wednesday nights—indeed, two of my coworkers joining me for Sentinels are in my office D&D group—but we had to cancel because some of my players wanted to watch people try to put a ball through metal rings ten feet in the air. Apparently there is a tournament going on to see who can put it through the rings best, and one of two geographically proximal teams had a contest in this tournament.

But I am glad every now and then to play something other than D&D, much as I enjoy it. So many games, so little time.