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As I may have mentioned, my current obsession is the card game Sentinels of the Multiverse. Over the past few months, I've picked up three expansions to the game, built a custom storage box to hold all the cards using supplies from a craft store, and played the game a whole lot.

The appeal of Sentinels is to me similar in many ways to my favorite arcade game: Street Fighter 2. By this, I mean that the game has many characters, each of whom plays very differently and has different strengths and weaknesses. And just as I tried to get good with every single character back when I played Street Fighter, I've now decided to spend time with every hero in Sentinels. I haven't yet done much with Chrono Ranger or Expatriette, and I've never liked Mister Fixer much, but I'll get there in time.

One of the things that makes Sentinels such a great game is the way that various heroes can team up. My friends first discovered this when they had Expatriette's gun loaded with incendiary rounds, and realized that they could triple the damage bonus by firing the gun at Absolute Zero rather than at the villain. This feels a lot like Iron Man bouncing his particle beam off of Captain America's shield. Superhero team-ups are awesome. And I'm constantly discovering new ones in this game.

With this in mind, here are a few of my favorite superhero team-ups in Sentinels of the Multiverse.

• Legacy & Fanatic: Legacy's primary power is to grant everyone else a +1 damage bonus, and he has a card that can up this to +2. Generally, this is a big help. But Fanatic's primary power is to deal 1 melee damage and 1 radiant damage. Since the damage is split this way, each point gets the +1 bonus, turning 2 damage into 4 damage. If he gets the +2 out, she does 6 damage. Very nice.
• Visionary & Absolute Zero: Absolute Zero is a very complex character. Once he's properly set up, cold damage heals him, and fire damage damages him and allows him a free cold attack at the enemy. The Visionary has a card called Twist the Ether which allows her to change the damage type of an attack. She can change it to cold, thus causing the attack to heal Absolute Zero, or else change it to fire damage if he doesn't need the healing, allowing him to bounce the damage back at an enemy. Better yet, while Absolute Zero is doing his thing, if The Visionary is getting hurt, she can put up a Telekinetic Coccoon. While she can't attack or play any cards, she can maintain the Twist the Ether card while the Coccoon is up.
• Visionary & Legacy: Another way The Visionary's Twist the Ether ability can be very useful is when Legacy uses Next Evolution, which allows him to make himself immune to any damage type for one round. This by itself would be good, but when Legacy plays Lead From the Front, he's able to redirect damage done to any other hero to himself. These three cards allow Legacy to make himself immune to (for example) projectile damage. Then, Visionary twists the ether to make all damage done by a single villain into projectile damage. Then, Legacy takes the damage instead of whichever other hero would have been hit. And Legacy is immune to that damage. Boom goes the dynamite.
• Legacy & Absolute Zero: As I'd mentioned before, Legacy can give other heroes up to +2 bonus damage. As it turns out, Absolute Zero makes especially good use of that damage. When he's fully set up, Absolute Zero begins by doing 1 point of fire damage to himself, which becomes 3 points due to the +2 bonus. So he takes 3 fire damage. This allows him to do the same amount of cold damage to an enemy. But instead of doing the 3 damage, you add the +2 again, and he does 5 damage. So essentially, Absolute Zero doubles any damage bonus he gets when attacking this way.
• Ra & Nightmist: Nightmist, an expansion character from Infernal Relics, is one of the game's biggest tanks due to her ability to self-heal. The thing is, Nightmist needs to constantly heal herself, because she's constantly damaging herself. Enter Ra. He has a card that changes all damage done by heroes to fire damage. He has another card that lets him make all heroes immune to fire damage for a round. Guess what? This makes Nightmist unable to hurt herself. Better yet, one of Nightmist's best attacks, Oblivion does a base 1-4 damage to heroes, and 2-8 damage to everyone else. If Ra's making it all fire damage and making the heroes immune, it's the bad guys who feel the burn. I know - bad pun, but I figure nobody is reading this anyway.
• Team Leader Tachyon & Haka: Team Leader Tachyon is a promotional version of the base-game character Tachyon, and she has a different base power: She allows everyone to draw an extra card. This is very nice. And a character like Haka, who functions largely based on the size of his hand, loves it. His primary three cards will allow him to heal, block damage, or do bonus damage based on how many cards he discards, with no limit. Give him a big hand of cards and he hits very hard.
• Unity & Omnitron X: Unity is one of my favorite characters. She functions entirely from building robots. She destroys equipment (anyone's!) and builds it into robots. When she gets a number of raptor bots out, she can do insane amounts of damage - possibly more than any other character in the game. But those bots are fragile, and they can be difficult to get into play. Enter Omnitron X (That's a Roman numeral ten). He's a character from the Shattered Timelines expansion, and his base power is to reveal a card from any deck, and either discard it or put it into play. This allows him to put Unity's bots straight into play without her having to play cards or destroy equipment. Very effective.
• Unity & Fanatic: This last one is a bit quirky, but can be a game-changer. The Fanatic has a card called End of Days that I've often not used because it destroys every card in play. Both the villain's cards and all hero cards. It's always seemed like a desperation tactic more than anything. But I've neglected how many times it would have saved me from a villain like The Chairman or Grand Warlord Voss, who get pretty fearsome when they've got lots of minions out. Here's the thing though: Unity has a bot named Bee Bot. It's a little bot with no attacks and a single ability: when it's destroyed, you can destroy one ongoing or equipment card. Since you get to decide the order in which End of Days affects all cards in play, you can have it affect all villain cards, then destroy bee bot. Then, before the rest of the hero cards are destroyed by End of Days, have Bee Bot destroy the End of Days card, which then cannot take out the hero cards. It almost sounds like cheating, but it's verified as a legitimate tactic on the Sentinels of the Multiverse forums. I've never used it, but I plan to. Can you tell that I'm deep in the weeds on this game? Honestly, I'm really surprised that anyone would have read this far.

So that's the good stuff. My favorite hero team-ups. I'm planning on getting Sentinels of the Multiverse: Vengeance and the upcoming Wrath of the Cosmos expansion at some point. My big problem then will be determining if I need to build a new storage case. Soon, I'm going to need a full suitcase for these cards!