Wednesday 17 June 2015

First Batman game thoughts.


Played my first game of the Knight Models Batman game last night with the good gentlemen Pulp Citizen. It was immensely fun and after pondering the game somewhat today plays in my opinion very much like the cartoons play out with various members being stunned and knocked out. One thing I'm learning is how many diverse enemies Gotham City has as a lot of these villains etc I'd never heard of before until this game came out lol.

It was only a small game I neglected to taking any photos sorry. We played a Plunder Scenario I took all my Penguin Crew (They got quite a bit of extra gear mainly because of Penguin adding on extra cash) vs Black Mask and his crew.
Penguin Crew

Penguin
Titan Blue Penguin
Royal Penguin (Ammo Clip, Nightvision Goggles and Grapple Gun)
Blue Penguin Shield (Titan Does)
Penguin Emperor

Vs

Black Mask Crew 

(Totally forgot what gear PC took as we selected it at the time not beforehand)
Black Mask
Riddler
Goon 02
Prisoner 03
Prisoner 04



What I picked up about the game

The game itself is pretty cool its always set at night time so you characters only have a certain vision range. But whats cool is you randomly roll up a number of lamp posts at the start that give out a 10cm radius of light. If your character is in that radius then the can be seen from anywhere on the board. Also a quantity of  Sewers are randomly rolled for allowing sort of teleporting across the board but there is a 2 turn delay before your character pops up. Grates can be blocked as well.

Activation is determined by first drawing a token unseen from a bag and the colour determining who wins. They then get to choose whether to move one of there crew first or second etc. That person then moves a member of there crew and play reverts to the other player to move one of theres.

Only weird thing (well something new to me) there is a sort of planning phase before you start each turn where you pre allocate your Will tokens across Movement, Special Attack and Defend these allow you to perform various actions at a cost of said token. This is kind of cool as it makes it more tactical so your sort of restricted by your plan as to what you can do. Certain characters such as the Riddler has rules that allow him to adapt to the turns events as they unfold.

I found it interesting that there different damage types stun and blood. Stun you can recover from over time blood you can't. Taking either damage reduces your Will per so many points of damage you've taken effectively causing your characters to be fatigued. Shooting is fairly straight forward.

I quite like the Blink rolls you get when shooting at people. For every piece of terrain between you and your target you get to roll a sort of save to see if its deflected depending on the type of terrain determines what you need to roll. Hand to hand combat is fun as well depending on how you spend you will you can defend and block peoples attacks (rolling dice of course) which is cool as it gives the impression of people scrapping.

Victory conditions can take some getting your head around. You pick 3 objectives each at the start and these are deployed along a central strip of the board. Different types have different rules (Ammo you spend a Special counter to replenish ammo stocks, Titan Cannister a titan does etc) but possession (Base to base contact) of an objective generates you VP points each turn. Now I won the game on VP last night 25-15 I think but this was mainly down to me snagging to of my objectives early on bagging me 5VP a turn for 3-4 turns and then holding up a great number of Black Masks crew with my Titan Blue Penguin. Don't get me wrong this was my first game and it a learning curve as well as PC trying out different elements for his crew that might be being taken to a tournament this weekend. The game seems to be about scoring victory points and you do score VPs for taking down the opposition but not as many as you get for the objectives. I think in bigger games its harder as you can contest objectives more easier as well as defend your own.



I made my own objectives but you can buy official ones which I think you need for the Official Torunaments.


I shall certainly be getting more into the Batman game I think firstly I'll expand the crew up to 300-350 rep and I'm very tempted to start a Law and Order crew.

24 comments:

  1. Good to hear that you enjoyed it. It's a good game. Just one thing, the tournament rules don't insist on official objectives, only the miniatures, so yours are fine...and cool. :)

    Is it too early to ask what you're going to add? Henchmen or Free Agents?

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    1. I chatted a little with PC last night. Possibly Free Agents and perhaps some more henchmen. My thoughts are Mr. Freeze and then Blue Penguin Axe, Ice Penguin and Conqueror Penguin. With Grapplegun and Ammo which weighs in at rep 348 $2000. But i'm tempted to drop mr. Freeze and include the three remaining penguin henchmen.

      Cool I can knock up another loot counter then as Penguins loot counter rule.

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  2. Welcome to the cult of the bat...er game. Yes I meant game.

    The victory point system in the game does take some getting used to. I don't play any other games that have anything similar. In some ways, it feels a little odd that you're not always concentrating on killing your opponents in a comic-related game. On the other hand it makes the game far more tactical.

    We played small in the beginning, starting at 150 and now up to 250. I think we are going to stick in that range for the near term. The first few games we ignored the scenarios and objectives just to get a handle on the movement and combat mechanics.

    Since you already have an experienced player to learn from I'm sure you'll get up to speed way faster than we did. Have fun!

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    1. Thanks yes it does PC is a great tutor :) I think when you watch the cartoons its not so much about killing anyone but putting them in jail if you know what I mean. Obviously that doesn't apply to what everyone wants to do to Batman :)

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  3. It does sound like an interesting set of rules - more that I had given it credit for, to be honest. I'm looking forward to hearing about your further thoughts when you've played a few more games :-) .

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    1. Yes plus there will be other scenarios to try and buy the look of it you can get a lot of choice character wise.

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  4. You have really tempted me with the figures Simon. So, I went looking to buy them and when I googled Knight Models Penguin crew, your blog posts were in the top three results.

    Glad you had fun with the game!

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    1. Lol thats interesting to hear Anne. The figures are lovely and there are some ace Marvel figures to build and paint. I have readthere are some bothersome issues with assembling figures that have slender parts so be warned!

      Some will drive you nuts! The Big Titan Thug I did was a pain in the ass.

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  5. Glad you enjoyed the game mate. As your probably aware I love my penguin crew and run catwoman with mine. She is perfect for the extra vps on loot.

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    1. Cheers I'll have a look forgot about Catwoman would be quite flavoursome as well.

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  6. You keep up these posts Simon and I'll start dusting down my "Knight Models" and setting my "Guild Ball" aside as a result. You keep posting such wonderous thoughts on your games that you make each rule set sound very enticing :-)

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  7. The game sounds rather interesting, and the models look very nice....makes it likely that I may collect a Joker gang in the near future! ;)

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    1. I quite enjoyed it. Shall look forward to seeing your Jokers :)

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  8. It was great to play the game Simon, and i am looking for a rematch soon! :)

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  9. Sounds like a fun game!
    looking forward to see more batman stuff.

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  10. While I did like the old banner I really do prefer this one. It's Fab.

    Having seen a Batman game at the show recently I am intrigued. I do like the idea of villains all fighting each other without superheroes getting involved and it is now something for me to look into.

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    1. Yeah and tbh theres only a handful of models needed despite the cost. If you shop around you can get some good deals to.

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  11. Sounds like a fun game, I would never have thought of bad guys fighting each other, I like the tokens you made they look great

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    1. Well I imagine at the end of the day they all want to either control of Gotham or to destroy it etc.

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  12. The wife has veto'd this one so won't be getting it.... yet, I'll just have to be satisfied with following your games for the moment.

    Nice looking objective markers.

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  13. Glad the game went well. It certainly sounds good fun. Not sure I can deal with fiddly metal models again though. Not after some of those infinity nightmares

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