History TabletopGame / SentinelsOfTheMultiverse

* TheApocalypseBringsOutTheBestInPeople: [=OblivAeon=]'s invasion brings about at least a HazyFeelTurn for a lot of villians, with [[JerkassGods the Ennead]], [[SuperSupremacist Citizen Dawn]], [[TragicVillain Infinitor]], [[BloodKnight Kaarga]] and [[ArmyOfTheAges La Captina]] all joining the forces of good. The Ennead, Infinitor and La Captina even sacrificing themselves! Subverted with [[AlienInvasion Voss]], who appears to be helping the heroes but is actually just planning to steal [=OblivAeon=]'s power for himself.

* EldritchAbomination: Several. Including but not limited to Gloomweaver (a evil demon who lives in an AcidTripDimension and is trying to escape from that dimension in order to spread despair and misery across the mortal plane), Wager Master (a cosmic entity from before time that's obsessed with playing "games"), and [=OblivAeon=] (the result of two immensely powerful cosmic beings fighting and then one cosmic being swallowing the other, creating a being of pure entropy with a singleminded drive to wipe out the entire multiverse).

* MakeMeWannaShout:

* TheAlcatraz: The Block, a special prison operated by F.I.L.T.E.R. that is located in its own pocket dimension and filled with superpowered criminals.
* AllForNothing: Downplayed. The heroes Visionary and Omnitron-X supposedly travel back in time to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong (saving her younger self from being StrappedToAnOperatingTable for Visionary, and destroying his past selves before they could do too much damage for Omnitron-X). Unfortunately, it turns out that neither of them actually traveled back in time, but instead to another reality (that reality being the timeline the game takes place in also known as the "Prime Timeline") meaning that they didn't change the future at all. On the other hand, they managed to do quite a bit of good in the prime timeline so it wasn't entirely for nothing.
* AllThereInTheManual: There's a rather extensive lore to the game for those who are interested, but it has little effect on the game itself. Most of it can be found in the creators' podcast, The Letters Page.
* AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs: The Freedom Tower environment, which involves the villains raiding the Freedom Five's own headquarters and results in battles in various rooms throughout the building.
* AlternateRealityGame: Had one leading up to the reveal of the [=OblivAeon=] expansion. The game's wiki [[http://sentinelswiki.com/index.php?title=ARG_Event has a summary of it.]]
* AlwaysABiggerFish: Environments often don't discriminate between hero and non-hero targets, and thus can take out villainous cards. The Raging T. Rex attacks the target with the second highest HP, which is usually a Hero target, but later in the game, or against villains like the Ennead, it will do the heroes a favor. Cards like the Kraken's Tentacle or the Raptor Pack will instead target the lowest-HP target, which is usually a minion. With Unforgiving Wasteland (exiles cards from the game) out, you can even get Baron Blade prevented from flipping because a chupacabra ate him.

* {{Stripperiffic}}: Downplayed, but still present because this is a comic book game and that sort of thing's a requirement. Almost none of the women are indecently dressed, but among the heroes, The Wraith's outfit has a cleavage window, the Visionary's various costumes are essentially corsets with a belly-button window, Tachyon's default costume only covers one shoulder, Expatriette [[BareYourMidriff bares her middriff]], and Unity's wearing a very short tank top. Of the men, Haka and Ra are bare-chested. For the most part, the villains avert this, although Ermine does wear an outfit that exposes a fair bit of cleavage, Friction has a bare shoulder in a deliberate mirror of Tachyon and Fright Train's outfit is basically a pair of pants and his mask. Parodied with Guise's Total Beefcake card, which depicts him in a bikini -- which is worn over his normal superhero tights. Which are, in fact, part of his shapeshifted skin. Guise is ''weird''.

%%* FiveManBand: Due to the nature of the game, each game will have a different set of 3-5 heroes, so multiple different versions of this can and will exist, but the Freedom Five (the universe's [[ComicBook/TheAvengers Avengers]] or Franchise/JusticeLeague) fits this to a T.
%%** TheHero: Legacy.
%%** TheLancer: The Wraith.
%%** TheBigGuy: Bunker.
%%** TheSmartGuy: Absolute Zero.
%%** TheChick: Tachyon.
%%** SixthRanger: Unity
%%*** Tempest takes over this role in the Iron Legacy dark future
* FiveManBand: The Prime Wardens fit this pretty well, though like most things in ''Sentinels'' they put a few twists on it.
** TheHero: Argent Adept originally formed the team to fight Akash'Bhuta, and he's often shown in the cards directing support strategically for the rest of the team and other heroes akin to how Legacy leads, as well as sometimes mentoring various heroes.
** TheLancer: Captain Cosmic is frequently shown on his cards leading the actual front line battles, and seems to be more cheerful and emotional compared to Argent's more serious, aloof, and stoic demeanor. In the game he also often serves as a tool-granting support character compared to Argent's buff-granting support.
** TheBigGuy: Haka pretty much lives for diving into battle, and hits like a mountain-sized truck. Though he's also capable of being TheSmartGuy as well, particularly in the Final Wasteland timeline.
** TheSmartGuy: Tempest was a scientist and ambassador before his planet was taken over. Though he's also capable of being TheBigGuy when dishing out his weather attacks, particularly in the Freedom Six timeline.
** TheChick: Fanatic is definitely the moral center of the group, though she's more the stern, upright type of moral center than the compassionate and nurturing type.
** SixthRanger: The team meets up with and helps out Sky-Scraper on her planet while she's fighting on the side of the Thorathian rebels after Voss is defeated. Though she and Tempest originally have a somewhat antagonist relationship (albeit one that's mostly one-sided from Tempest's POV), by the time of ''Tactics'' she's ended up joining the team proper.

!!Tropes represented in ''Sentinels'':

* HotScientist: Tachyon, who's a very attractive woman, and an OmnidisciplinaryScientist.

* DifficultySpike:
** The Rook City expansion. It includes the first two 4-difficulty villains, The Chairman and The Matriarch, its 2-difficulty villains are considered a pain in the ass and a high-speed damage race and it has one of the most punishing environments in the game in Rook City itself. These present much more challenging game scenarios compared to what was available in the base set.
** Certain villains spike up or down sharply depending on how many heroes you have.
*** Gloomweaver, for instance, starts with H zombies, who each do H-2 damage; against a three-hero team, this means the opening turn will see 3 HP of damage, and a high HP character with DR or healing can tank easily. Against a five-hero team, however, that's 15 damage spread to everyone just in the first round. The same applies to his Cursed Acolyte -- against a three-hero team, he does two instances of 1 HP damage to every hero target -- easily soaked by just about any DR effect and rendered powerless by things like Stun Bolt or Twist the Ether -- but against a five-hero team, it's two instances of 3 HP, one of the heaviest mook attacks in the game.
*** The Dreamer is manageable with a three-hero team but, well, a nightmare for a 5 hero team because so many of her effects are based on the number of heroes. She starts with H number of projections out, and needs to have H * 2 number of projections under her on her flipped side to be defeated. In addition to that, when she flips -- and you must go through her flipped side to win -- first destroys H ongoing cards, then each round it plays an extra H-2 cards and deals H-2 damage to all hero targets. Her second worst card -- Violent Nightmares -- reveals cards until she plays H-2 Projections, and the Illusory Demon does H damage. A three-man team will only need to fight three projections at the start, lose three ongoings and defeat six projections on her flipped side to win while Dreamer plays one extra card and does 1 damage across the board per round, while a five-man team will have to fight five and defeat ten, while the Dreamer destroys five ongoings and then plays a whopping ''three'' extra cards per round and does 3 damage to all hero targets. And with that many card plays, it increases A. the chance of the Dreamer reshuffling her trash into her deck, putting the worst cards you thought you were done with back in rotation; B. playing Violent Nightmares and multiplying the number of damaging targets on the field; and C. playing Night Terrors, which does global damage equal to the number of Projections in play plus one. It's not uncommon for Dreamer's first round flipped to do upwards of 10 damage to all hero targets -- and that's This combines for an almost guaranteed loss for the heroes unless the party is extremely well prepared to soak damage -- which they may not be if they had to destroy crucial Ongoings.
*** By contrast, Infinitor's damage is mostly fixed, and with his inherent damage reduction, a smaller team has hard time doing enough damage to take out his constructs before the damage is simply overwhelming, while a larger team has more time and actions available to them before Infinitor's turn pops up again.
*** Simultaneously, Ambuscade is a fair challenge for a smaller team, since he too does mostly fixed damage, and destroying his cloaking device and gadgetry to make him vulnerable and less-deadly is more of a challenge, especially if he takes out some of the team before they get fully set up. But a five-man team of heroes is going to squash him, even if he gets lucky enough to have several cardplays in a row, especially because his is the only villain deck that contains ''no'' mechanisms for destroying hero Equipment or Ongoing cards.
** Villain advanced and challenge modes are also not even remotely equivalent: in particular, Iron Legacy, Progeny and the Ennead are really brutal on Advanced, even by comparison to their usual fights, while Miss Information and Cosmic Omnitron have borderline sadistic Challenge modes, and Ultimate Gloomweaver may be {{Unwinnable}} with the wrong lineup since he's immune to melee and projectile attack and has invincible relics (meanwhile, Challenge Mode Skinwalker Gloomweaver is likely ''easier'' than normal because you get an entire fight worth of setup first).

* PsychicPowers: Visionary, The Dreamer / Muse, and The Idealist use them.

** The Citizens of the Dawn all have distinct appearances, but all share Dawn's emblem somewhere on their outfit, often as an undershirt of some kind beneath their jacket or dress.

** K.N.Y.F.E also has these.

* KilledOffForReal: Multiple characters are killed off, mostly due ro HeroicSacrafice, during the [=OblivAeon=] event and it's made clear that this is a permanent thing. Among the characters killed are...

* ImprobableInfantSurvival: Of the Victim cards in Spite's deck, the young boy and the little girl are specifically mentioned in [[WordOfGod The Letters Page podcast]] as having been saved by the heroes and surviving his storyline.

** Played straight with some villains in the Vengeance/Villains expansions. Villains like Baron Blade, Plague Rat, and Ambuscade who can be fought as a single villain are suddenly less powerful now that they're teamed up with other villains.
*** That being said, each of the recurring villains has a justification for why they are suddenly a lot weaker than their solo versions. Ambuscade is actually an illusion created by Glamour. La Capitan, a time traveller, is a much younger and less experienced version than the heroes are used to fighting. Miss Information and Baron Blade are no longer hiding behind schemes and trickery, but are fighting openly, with some newly-earned powers. (Although, Baron Blade was already a pushover, and the Vengeance version is arguably more dangerous than the original.) Plague Rat was captured, restrained, and experimented on by [=RevoCorp=], so not only has his infectious bite been toned down, but his handlers keep him from being TOO deadly.

* CardboardPrison: Implied. You can beat the supervillains again and again, but they just keep on menacing the world.
** VillainExitStageLeft: At least a few of them just plain escape. Most variants of Baron Blade have managed to escape the heroes after he was defeated. Some, on the other hand, ''don't'' escape. For example, Spite's base form is eventually killed, but resurrected by Gloomweaver into his Agent of Gloom variant.

** Christopher and Adam have stated they want to eventually release a "Definitive Edition," which will see ''all'' the card art updated. Some of these updates will have the art changing to reflect different time periods -- for instance, the art on Legacy's "Danger Sense" card currently shows the current Legacy in the "modern" art style, but in the Definitive Edition will instead have the Golden Age Legacy, in Golden Age art style.

* AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs: The Freedom Tower map, which involves the villains raiding the Freedom Five's own headquarters and results in battles in various rooms throughout the building.

*** Taken UpToEleven when Greazer Clutch and Plague Rat are in a villain team; Greazer punches anyone who attacks his hair, and the Rat has a card that hits all targets and then forces all targets hit to damage themselves. Plague Rat plays the card and hits Greazer's hair, so Greazer decks him, then the hair hits itself, so Greazer hits it, then because he just damaged his hair, he punches ''himself'', then Plague Rat hits Greazer who hits himself ''again''.

* WeaponOfChoice: Quite a few in various forms.
** Ra's Staff of Ra, which also gave him the powers of the sun god.
** Expatriette's twin pistols Pride and Prejudice, her two unique guns -- and they can each hold double the normal amount of ammo, and she can fire them both in a turn.
** Fanatic's Absolution, which heals her when it comes out, and lets her do different damage types. Interestingly, it appears to be broken in her Prime Warden alternate, but she continues to use it.
** While Chrono Ranger carries a variety of high-tech weaponry, his old fashioned [[RevolversAreJustBetter six-gun]] is what he prefers, and he uses it to dish out damage ''constantly'' with nearly every card play.
** Apostate's Condemnation, an EvilCounterpart to Fanatic's sword.

* SelfImposedChallenge: Each Villain card has an "Advanced" setting that tweaks their rules to make things harder on the heroes. Among the effects are increasing the amount of damage villain cards do, reducing how much damage they take, and speeding up the villain's NonStandardGameOver. The game's wiki and the video game also include other challenges, such as immediately setting up Skinwalker Gloomweaver after beating Spite, Agent of Gloom, starting Akash'bhuta with more of her targets out or increasing all the damage The Dreamer takes to the point of being a OneHitKill. Doing both Advanced and Challenge rules in the video game is dubbed [[HarderThanHard Ultimate mode]].