Marvel United: X-Men, 7 Wonders Duel, Sleeping Gods, and Star Trek Panic
It had been awhile since I'd gotten any games in, but I finally got to set aside some time for something other than illness! Several weekends ago, the plan was to get five of us together to get to some higher player count games. Unfortunately, due to circumstances outside our control, it just ended up being me and my buddy Roger. So there were a bunch of games that we had to sweep off the table and back into the closet. But we still spent the day gaming and got to some really fun and exciting stuff, including two games I'd not played before!
I left the choice for our opening game to Roger, since he normally prioritizes games that other people want to play rather than the ones he's been wanting to get to. He'll deny it, but he'll also be lying, so don't believe him - he almost always prioritizes games other folks want to get to. Anyway! He had the first choice and decided we should finally get around to X-Men United. Roger got a deal on this game awhile back and we'd both heard good things, but sort of weren't in a rush. Then Roger watched a "Best Co-Op Games" Dice Tower video and X-Men United kinda shot to the top of his own list of games we needed to play. I won't be spoiling anything else here, but I'll say that the Dice Tower video is a terrific one and worth watching all the way through. Give it a click!
Marvel United: X-Men: 
X-Men United is a co-op card game that is extremely beginner-friendly while still featuring enough depth to be fun for experienced gamers. Basically, pick your favorite X-Man, choose or randomly select a villain, and get to work laying that villain out and saving the day! The iconography in the game is extremely intuitive and makes gameplay move fairly quickly. We decided to play against Juggernaut for our first game. Roger chose Beast and I went with Storm. While the core game doesn't feature my favorite X-Men (Iceman and Nightcrawler), I've always been a fan of Storm, whether in the cartoons or while playing X-Men video games. We ended up sort of inadvertantly working toward all three goals concurrently so we weren't really at risk of triggering his "rush" so that he's going after every two hero turns instead of every three. It was an accident, as we were just trying to economize our turns, but it ended up working out really well for us! We also finished freeing the Xavier Institute and Genosha locations fairly quickly, so being able to "heal" up to 3 cards and rescue 1 civilian at those locations starting early in the game was pretty useful to us.
As we were playing, we were talking about how the timeline idea (laying out the cards as they're played in order) is kind of cool and thoughtful, but can easily get in the way of play if cards aren't sort of layered over one another. We talked about how it was kind of comic-like to lay out the story that way and also shared that we were pretty sure there were other characters (either hero or villain) who could interact with the cards in the timeline. It just so happened Storm and Beast weren't those characters. Shortly after having this conversation, realized something. In fact, here is the exact note I took while were playing: "sooooo, we're dumb and weren't playing correctly." People often make mistakes with rules during the first time playing a game. As experienced gamers, the mistakes we make are often decently minor and don't have huge impacts on what we *would've* done had we realized we were playing wrong. However, in this case, it changed the entire complexion of the game: we were starting to run out of cards and it felt like it was still early in the game. Our assessment was correct. And we were running out of cards relatively early in the game's course because we were only using the actions at the bottom of our own cards instead of stacking with the previous hero card played.
Not great, Bob. Not. Great.
We won at the last possible moment, despite handicapping ourselves. Using Weapon X Facility's ability to snag so many punch tokens is the only thing that made it possible, since one Power of Cyttorak card was still in play, preventing one damage each time we hit Juggernaut.
X-Men United: We had so much fun with this game the first time around that we decided to play again! The right way, this time! We played against Sabretooth, with Roger playing as Jean Grey and myself playing as Professor X. It felt like a sort of easy win, despite how hard Sabretooth was coming after us. Once he was vulnerable (we cleared off Threats and Thugs in back-to-back turns), we were able to slam him down really quickly. He managed to knock me out early in the game and Jean was slightly on the ropes after getting BAMmed!, but we kinda had him where we wanted him by the time we beat him on the 13th card in the timeline. There are ways to adjust the difficulty of the game and I'm certain we'll do that the next time we play. I think things just broke our way in this game after we got off to a rough start. Sabretooth's targeted attacks can make life really difficult, but it also made it a bit easier for us to have the non-Hunted character circumvent Sabretooth's efforts. Despite this round of the game feeling a bit easy, it was still satisfying and fun, and it was still a challenge to anticipate and avoid Sabretooth so he didn't just tear through us.
7 Wonders Duel:
It had been forever since I'd played 7 Wonders and I know that it's kind of fallen out of favor with some folks for a variety of reasons, but I'd also heard that 7 Wonders Duel apparently addressed a lot of the problems people had with 7 Wonders and makes for an excellent game. I wasn't really in a rush to get to it, but I was aware of it. As it turns out, I really like the game! It's fairly quick and feels decently intuitive. Some of that is being able to reach back to my knowledge of 7 Wonders, but some of it is just strong game design. The objectives and ways to reach them are pretty straight-forward, so most time spent thinking in this game is about strategy and best options rather than "how do I do this or that?" It makes a difference in the time spent playing the game as well as how energy is expended. I recently got my prototype back to the table with some friends (which I'll write up in another post!), but some of the time spent sorting through play was navigating the poorly designed player aids to figure out what players could do in the middle of their turn. That's time poorly spent during a game. I feel similarly when I spend too much time trying to "math out" a situation during a game. Some analysis is great! But gamers frequently refer to "analysis paralysis," and we can absolutely hit that during a game in which I'm trying to "math out" multiple ways to reach a destination. At some point, it really just becomes Dullsville for the other players, and the puzzle isn't even all that much fun for the player trying to figure it out.
Anyway, 7 Wonders Duel misses out on all of that, because with only two players, a lot of the ramifications of our actions are really pretty clear. The exception is what cards one will flip up for their opponent to possibly poach. But since that's chance, the only thing to debate in that case is: do I reveal any new cards or make a move that doesn't reveal any new cards? I like the depth of the game without running into any of the bloat they could have included. I probably leaned a little too heavily into aiming for a military victory and when Roger was able to fight back, it left me at a bit of a disadvantage with him choosing to go first in rounds two and three. Roger won by 10 points by the end. I totally overestimated how hard and fast I could go at military cards. Roger wasn't prioritizing it early, so I felt like either he'd be on his back foot in trying to fight back or he'd ignore military cards and hope he had enough points without contesting it. Instead, he had built enough of a machine that he could pick up the better military cards later and push back my advances on the military track without having to exert too much effort. Looking back, I think I needed to do a better job of "taking what the game gave me." 7 Wonders Duel doesn't feel like a game players can "bend to their will;" much like Five Tribes, trying to make something happen usually results not only in sub-optimal turns, but also in setting up much bigger turns for the players who are absolutely willing to go with the flow instead of fighting it. 7 Wonders Duel offers options, but also requires adaptation. I really like this incarnation of the game and I can see why it's so popular. Looking forward to getting this one to the table again!
Sleeping Gods:
Honestly, based on the day we had planned, this is a game I never really should have packed up and brought with me. It's a campaign game and kind of fiddly to setup and to start without knowledge of how the game works. I remembered so little of it from the little that I played solo that it took awhile to get going. I've wanted to get it back to the table for awhile, but honestly, major props to Roger for even thinking to select it, because I literally spent the entire setup apologizing in my head for not being better prepared to set up or play this game despite my choice to bring it. I know I'm not the only one who does this, even with other experienced gamers around the table: if it's our game, it feels like our responsibility to know it well enough to efficiently set it up and teach it. We're usually overthinking it, but that doesn't necessarily teach us not to overthink it. Anyway, I finally got it set up and the two of us got going.
I want to start by saying that I like the game. I think it's a cool design, I really enjoy traveling in the Atlas book and exploring the world through the Narrative book. But I'll also say that I haven't played video games in quite some time. I bring that up because I know there are a lot of video games out there that are about exploration moreso than any particular goals or "beating the game." Sleeping Gods feels a lot like what I think those probably are: games that are more interested in exploration and discovery than in optimizing exploration (such as in T.I.M.E. Stories). And since I haven't played really anything in the way of those former games, this one was a bit tough for me to wrap my head around. It felt as though we just had to happen upon the "right" places to start on different quests. We'd land in a place and upon exploring it, we'd learn we needed certain keywords in order to really learn more about the place. The direction in which we chose to go didn't lead to much in the way of combat and the tests felt like they were more about avoiding pain than gathering rewards, which was a bit frustrating. All of this is to say that I was reminded a bit of Scythe:
Bear with me! I promise this isn't me drawing a false equivalency between two wildly different games!
I should specify: this experience with Sleeping Gods reminded me a bit of my own experience with Scythe. To this day, I've only played Scythe once and I didn't enjoy it. But I am also convinced that I need to play the game again because I believe I sabotaged myself by walking in while carrying misguided expectations. I saw the board, the art, the pieces (particularly the mechs) and decided what the gameplay must be like without having learned the game. Even after learning the game, I still retained this notion that I should bend all my energies toward building myself a mech who could help me get a combat advantage (and therefore, a territory advantage) over other players. Naturally, I lost by a lot. But that wasn't what left a sour taste in my mouth; it was that I thought I was playing one game and it turned out I was playing another.
While Sleeping Gods wasn't leaving a sour taste in my mouth in that same way, it only occurred to me later that the very thing I was finding frustrating was the point of the game. It's not a campaign game centered on solving the puzzle, defeating the foes, and winning the overall story (like Descent, Imperial Assault, Gloomhaven, T.I.M.E. Stories and the other campaign games I've played) - it's about exploring and discovering the world and the joy and fascination that comes with those two activities. There are absolutely puzzles to solve and foes to defeat in this world! And there's the overarching goal of seeking totems in this world so the crew of the Manticore can return home. So all of these things are there. But that's not all this game is about and so it was a bit tough to wrap my head around that as Roger and I traveled from location to location, just trying not to screw ourselves over. We did two combat encounters and while I really dig the combat system, man, there are some tough encounters there. We almost blew our second one. And honestly, we were so directionless that we probably moved on from some sectors on the atlas too early while we stayed in others for too long, trying to explore everything before leaving. All of that said, we had fun and we're looking forward to picking up where we left off. For me personally, I'm planning on walking into our next session of this game with a very different expectation of gameplay to see how that affects my choices and how I feel about them.
Star Trek Panic:
Honestly, this doesn't even do it justice, because you can't really see the super cool shield stands!
After we picked a decent stopping point for Sleeping Gods, Roger left the last game of the evening to me, so I pulled Star Trek Panic out of the pile. We hadn't played it in a long time, and both of us are always happy to get it to the table. Basically, Star Trek Panic is a spinoff of Castle Panic, a semi-co-op game that requires players to defend a castle from goblins, trolls, and other foes who attack from all directions, laying siege to said castle. It's a semi-co-op because while players do work together to defend the castle, they also poach each others' kills whenever possible so they have the highest score at the end of the game. That semi-co-op element isn't part of Star Trek Panic's DNA, as it is fully co-op and features a cool model of the Enterprise (complete with shields!) at the center of the board as it is assaulted by threats from all sides. We chose to play with 5 missions (the maximum length of the game). I chose to be Uhura and Roger was Spock. We took some pretty heavy fire early on and it hurt that we were only one card short of the Alien Encounter mission when we failed it and lost all progress on it. We also drew into 3 straight missions that messed with our Maneuvering to open the game, which severely limited our options and left us at the mercy of whatever Phaser cards we happened to draw into. (What that sentence means is we were unable to change the heading of the Enterprise and so if we didn't draw Phaser cards that happened to allow us to hit targets where they were, there wasn't anything we could do about it - if we drew rear Phaser cards but enemies were flanking us, we couldn't turn the ship to put them in the rear and shoot them down) 
The ship was ON FIRE, but we couldn't turn the damn thing so enemies would hit the shields instead of the hull!
At the end of the game, we got insanely lucky: one of the Enemy chits we drew into was a comet. Comets basically appear in a sector, then travel in a straight line, destroying everything in its path. The comet came and left, all before the Romulan Bird-of-Prey that we needed to complete our fifth and final mission. Roger managed to roll two 6s - had the comet gone second, the Bird-of-Prey would have appeared first, and then the comet would've come streaking through and destroyed the ship before we could capture it. The missions we completed are below and in order:- The Enemy Within - Transporter accident splits crew member into their good and evil halves.
- Charlie X - A psychic teenage passenger takes over the Enterprise.
- Outpost Defense - Destroy an Orion Raider before it kills the Starfleet outpost.
- The Naked Time - The crew catches a virus that makes them lose control.
- The Enterprise Incident - Must acquire a cloaking device from the Romulans.
Overall, it was an excellent night of gaming! We missed out on some titles we had planned on playing when our player count was anywhere from 3-5, but basically everything I played (aside from ST Panic) was either fairly (Sleeping Gods) or completely (7 Wonders Duel, Marvel United) new to me! And even with ST Panic, I think this was only the third or so time I've played it, and that's over a pretty decent stretch of time. All of these are titles I look forward to seeing on the table again, so all in all, it was a fun and productive night!
X-Men United is a co-op card game that is extremely beginner-friendly while still featuring enough depth to be fun for experienced gamers. Basically, pick your favorite X-Man, choose or randomly select a villain, and get to work laying that villain out and saving the day! The iconography in the game is extremely intuitive and makes gameplay move fairly quickly. We decided to play against Juggernaut for our first game. Roger chose Beast and I went with Storm. While the core game doesn't feature my favorite X-Men (Iceman and Nightcrawler), I've always been a fan of Storm, whether in the cartoons or while playing X-Men video games. We ended up sort of inadvertantly working toward all three goals concurrently so we weren't really at risk of triggering his "rush" so that he's going after every two hero turns instead of every three. It was an accident, as we were just trying to economize our turns, but it ended up working out really well for us! We also finished freeing the Xavier Institute and Genosha locations fairly quickly, so being able to "heal" up to 3 cards and rescue 1 civilian at those locations starting early in the game was pretty useful to us.
Not great, Bob. Not. Great.
We won at the last possible moment, despite handicapping ourselves. Using Weapon X Facility's ability to snag so many punch tokens is the only thing that made it possible, since one Power of Cyttorak card was still in play, preventing one damage each time we hit Juggernaut.
It had been forever since I'd played 7 Wonders and I know that it's kind of fallen out of favor with some folks for a variety of reasons, but I'd also heard that 7 Wonders Duel apparently addressed a lot of the problems people had with 7 Wonders and makes for an excellent game. I wasn't really in a rush to get to it, but I was aware of it. As it turns out, I really like the game! It's fairly quick and feels decently intuitive. Some of that is being able to reach back to my knowledge of 7 Wonders, but some of it is just strong game design. The objectives and ways to reach them are pretty straight-forward, so most time spent thinking in this game is about strategy and best options rather than "how do I do this or that?" It makes a difference in the time spent playing the game as well as how energy is expended. I recently got my prototype back to the table with some friends (which I'll write up in another post!), but some of the time spent sorting through play was navigating the poorly designed player aids to figure out what players could do in the middle of their turn. That's time poorly spent during a game. I feel similarly when I spend too much time trying to "math out" a situation during a game. Some analysis is great! But gamers frequently refer to "analysis paralysis," and we can absolutely hit that during a game in which I'm trying to "math out" multiple ways to reach a destination. At some point, it really just becomes Dullsville for the other players, and the puzzle isn't even all that much fun for the player trying to figure it out.
Honestly, based on the day we had planned, this is a game I never really should have packed up and brought with me. It's a campaign game and kind of fiddly to setup and to start without knowledge of how the game works. I remembered so little of it from the little that I played solo that it took awhile to get going. I've wanted to get it back to the table for awhile, but honestly, major props to Roger for even thinking to select it, because I literally spent the entire setup apologizing in my head for not being better prepared to set up or play this game despite my choice to bring it. I know I'm not the only one who does this, even with other experienced gamers around the table: if it's our game, it feels like our responsibility to know it well enough to efficiently set it up and teach it. We're usually overthinking it, but that doesn't necessarily teach us not to overthink it. Anyway, I finally got it set up and the two of us got going.
Bear with me! I promise this isn't me drawing a false equivalency between two wildly different games!
Honestly, this doesn't even do it justice, because you can't really see the super cool shield stands!
After we picked a decent stopping point for Sleeping Gods, Roger left the last game of the evening to me, so I pulled Star Trek Panic out of the pile. We hadn't played it in a long time, and both of us are always happy to get it to the table. Basically, Star Trek Panic is a spinoff of Castle Panic, a semi-co-op game that requires players to defend a castle from goblins, trolls, and other foes who attack from all directions, laying siege to said castle. It's a semi-co-op because while players do work together to defend the castle, they also poach each others' kills whenever possible so they have the highest score at the end of the game. That semi-co-op element isn't part of Star Trek Panic's DNA, as it is fully co-op and features a cool model of the Enterprise (complete with shields!) at the center of the board as it is assaulted by threats from all sides. We chose to play with 5 missions (the maximum length of the game). I chose to be Uhura and Roger was Spock. We took some pretty heavy fire early on and it hurt that we were only one card short of the Alien Encounter mission when we failed it and lost all progress on it. We also drew into 3 straight missions that messed with our Maneuvering to open the game, which severely limited our options and left us at the mercy of whatever Phaser cards we happened to draw into. (What that sentence means is we were unable to change the heading of the Enterprise and so if we didn't draw Phaser cards that happened to allow us to hit targets where they were, there wasn't anything we could do about it - if we drew rear Phaser cards but enemies were flanking us, we couldn't turn the ship to put them in the rear and shoot them down)
The ship was ON FIRE, but we couldn't turn the damn thing so enemies would hit the shields instead of the hull!
- The Enemy Within - Transporter accident splits crew member into their good and evil halves.
- Charlie X - A psychic teenage passenger takes over the Enterprise.
- Outpost Defense - Destroy an Orion Raider before it kills the Starfleet outpost.
- The Naked Time - The crew catches a virus that makes them lose control.
- The Enterprise Incident - Must acquire a cloaking device from the Romulans.
Overall, it was an excellent night of gaming! We missed out on some titles we had planned on playing when our player count was anywhere from 3-5, but basically everything I played (aside from ST Panic) was either fairly (Sleeping Gods) or completely (7 Wonders Duel, Marvel United) new to me! And even with ST Panic, I think this was only the third or so time I've played it, and that's over a pretty decent stretch of time. All of these are titles I look forward to seeing on the table again, so all in all, it was a fun and productive night!
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