I got my cards a few weeks ago and finally got a chance to sit down and play with two of my daughters (ages 11 &
. They were a little frustrated because it took us so long to get going because I had the rules in hand and was doing everything step by step. That's mostly my thing: in every game I keep the rules on hand to make sure we're playing right until we get the hang of it.
We picked our characters. I was Harry, my 8-year-old was Murphy and my 11-year-old was Billy & Georgia. STORM FRONT was awesome and our cards were laid out in an almost chronological order. One of our rows was just Foes and Obstacles. The other row was Cases and Advantages, with our Range 6 Foe being The Shadow Man. Once we got the hang of things and the feel for what our characters could do, the girls really enjoyed it. Billy & Georgia were our heavy hitters, able to take out Foes left and right. Murphy was invaluable as an investigator for our Cases and as a means for us to draw new cards. My hand for Harry was mostly attacks and overcomes... and I didn't get the chance to investigate until the very end of the game.
My daughters' final verdict: It was fun and we're going to play again!
Also, I'm pretty sure we played on wrong and I want to take another crack at it.
I have a question though: Why is it important to have the characters' turn order randomized? The instructions say hand out the character decks randomly, or if we choose our characters, randomize the seating order. Why does that matter?