Greater than games, untamed: the cooperative publisher that outgrew its own multiverse
Official homepage: https://shop.greaterthangames.com
Board game stores usually sell games. Greater Than Games sells legacies — two of them, built by three friends in a St. Louis game store back room, and now in the middle of a corporate split that will determine whether the brand means superheroes or spirits. Founded in 2011 by Christopher Badell, Adam Rebottaro, and Paul Bender, the company became a pillar of cooperative tabletop design with two very different masterworks: Sentinels of the Multiverse, the comic-book card game whose homegrown superhero universe grew into novels, a role-playing game, and digital adaptations; and Spirit Island, R. Eric Reuss's 2017 anti-colonial strategy game that quietly climbed into Board Game Geek's all-time top tier and became the thinking player's cooperative obsession. The official Shopify store, which powers the company's direct sales with free shipping over a hundred dollars and a perpetually running warehouse sale of up to ninety percent off, is the cleanest window into where the company actually stands today. I went through both legacies, the store, and the split. Here is the store across its dimensions.
Three Friends and a Comic-Book Card Game
The origin is the tabletop dream archetype: three friends design a cooperative card game in which players take comic-book hero decks against villains and environments, fund it modestly in 2011, and watch it become an institution. Sentinels of the Multiverse spent a decade accumulating expansions, miniatures, novels, and a devoted fanbase that treated its invented superheroes — Legacy, Baron Blade, the Ennead — with the seriousness of Marvel's roster. The design philosophy was generosity: cooperative play, solo-capable decks, and content depth that rewarded a hundred sessions.
Spirit Island: The Quiet Masterpiece
The second legacy arrived in 2017 and outshone the first in critical standing. Spirit Island casts players as elemental gods defending an island from colonizing explorers — a thematic inversion of the settler genre that earned it a permanent seat in the hobby's elite rankings and a reputation as the deepest cooperative design in modern tabletop. Its expansion line — Branch & Claw, Jagged Earth — deepened rather than diluted, and its solo community remains one of the most academically devoted in board gaming. If Sentinels built the audience, Spirit Island built the prestige.
The Definitive Edition Playbook
The company modernized its elder statesman in 2021: Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition reimagined the original with new art, refined balance, and consolidated content, funded through the crowdfunding platforms the brand had helped pioneer, and followed with expansions that kept the Multiverse publishing cadence alive. The direct store functioned as the hub — pre-orders, Definitive content, and the accessories and promo material the collector base demanded, all running on a Shopify infrastructure the company has maintained across the catalog's peaks and valleys.
The Shopify Store's Real Job
The storefront's current anatomy tells you what the business has become. The flagship line is Spirit Island and its expansions; around it sits a discounted-products section fed by the famous warehouse sale — clearance events advertised at up to ninety percent off, which long-time customers treat as seasonal rituals. Free shipping kicks in at a hundred dollars, which conveniently prices most Spirit Island bundles just over the line. The store also carries a curated selection of other publishers' titles, functioning as much as a hobbyist boutique as a first-party outlet — a necessity when your own catalog thins between tentpoles.
Splitting the Multiverse
Here is the dimension that defines the store's present moment, announced on the company's own site around Superhero Day 2026: Sentinel Comics — the entire superhero universe the founders invented — will now be licensed and governed by a new holding company, Sentinel Comics Media Holdings, with digital specialist Handelabra preserving its digital adaptations and a new tabletop partner charged with breathing life back into the cardboard Multiverse. The announcement floats comic books, podcasts, streaming, and film ambitions. Translation for the storefront's customers: the Sentinels catalog is transitioning out of first-party control, and the store's future inventory tilts even further toward Spirit Island — a narrower, but arguably purer, shelf.
The Ownership Ledger
What buying here looks like, then. New releases and pre-orders arrive at list price with the hundred-dollar free-shipping threshold shaping basket size. Warehouse sales reward patience with genuine steals on Sentinels back-catalog and older stock — the store's own version of a membership program, except free. International buyers get the standard publisher-direct experience. And the curated third-party shelf means a shipping order can combine a Spirit Island expansion with a competitor's title, an unusual flex for a publisher store.
The Honest Ledger
The critique file is structural rather than scandalous. The perpetual deep clearance suggests a publisher managing a catalog in contraction between flagships rather than one in expansion — warehouse sales are generous to buyers and telling about inventory. The two masterworks share a barrier: both are heavyweight experiences that demand table hours and rules commitment, and the store makes no apologies for it. Product cadence between tentpoles has been uneven across the company's history, and the Sentinel licensing move, while strategically sensible, leaves the store's identity in flux — a Spirit Island boutique with a superhero museum attached, for now. None of this diminishes either legacy; all of it should shape the expectation of what the store is.
Hold the Line
Greater Than Games built two of cooperative tabletop's defining works and is now consolidating around the one with the brighter future, with a Shopify store that serves it well: free shipping thresholds, legendary warehouse sales, and a catalog where Spirit Island and its expansions remain the safest blind purchases in the hobby. Buy Jagged Earth before it follows Sentinels into licensing limbo, catch the warehouse sale when it cycles, and watch the Sentinel Comics handoff for what it reveals — a company choosing depth over sprawl, which has always been how its best games were designed.
