Nananananananana.....

BATMAN!!

One of half a dozen possible Batmans (Batmen?) from the BMG.

Unusually for the denizens of this blog, someone (Pooch) talked me into playing Knight Models Batman. Pooch collected a Joker crew and so, while in a city with a decent game store or two a couple of years back, I picked up a few bits. We played some games and my small Brave and thre Bold crew went down in a screaming heap. I needed more options.

ARROW'D! 

Tank Engine, and a profoundly cheap sale at an online store, got me the bits I needed and one I particularly wanted. More cops, more SWAT and Hawk Girl, the sassiest of superheroes, especially when it comes to mocking the hell out of Bats.

Bad Cop, Good Cop

GCPD Detective and Lt Brandon

GCPD Beat Cops

How do I like BMG? Very much. I mostly prefer the heroes in the MCU, but there are a few gems in the DCU. Hawk Girl, Green Arrow, Huntress and others who aren’t quite so painfully moralistic or serious in their portrayals. So playing a Batman crew was actually an option. The fact that I can chop and change my Boss and Sidekick mix from a choice of Batman, Green Arrow and Jim Gordon (and Arsenal as well) and then fill out the crew with the GCPD is really sweet. If I focus on the GCPD, I can look to Huntress, Hawkgirl or either of the Arrows to fill out the force with the superhero goodness it needs to be sweet.

Two of the Three Birds of Prey

The game involves allocating your actions and prepping your turn before following it through which makes for a really interesting tactical challenge - making the most of your resources is a known challenge.

It has some neat little features, very fitting with the Batman vibe - the game is always played at night, so guns don’t dominate (and a good thing too as they fricking hurt), the heroes are generally trying NOT to kill people and the winning of the game is about achieving objectives - like turning on the Batsignal or solving Riddler puzzles - alongside taking out the foes who are preventing this.

What don’t I like? Only the layout of the rulebooks, their lack of an index and the occasional obvious gap in the rules (can you move out of combat?) However, you can download them for free so that definitely helps.

Overall, it’s a sweet game and, now that the SWAT cops are painted, it is all on.

Next time:
Pictures and a recap of my first game of Dracula's America with McBeth and Tank. It was great  fun, with some interesting strategic depth and, without giving too much away, let's just say McBeth will do well while we're mostly rolling D6s.