Batman Miniatures Game- My Thoughts

Hi everyone, continuing the posts detailing my general thoughts on various games I play I thought I'd put up something talking about the main one for me- Batman. I am a huge DC Comics fan and as such BMG grabbed me a long time ago, and I love the gameplay of it as well as it has evolved through editions.

The gameplay of Batman is something I really enjoy, because it isn't entirely based around fighting your opponent and has a lot of objective based play to it, especially in 3rd edition. Each crew assembles a deck of 20 cards, and it is only through achieving these cards in game that they score points so a player must build their deck towards what their crew is hoping to achieve. At this point there are currently a lot of crews without specific cards that are stuck with a generic deck, although each month brings new releases and more decks for crews so things are being pushed into the 3rd edition standard. This standard is also very good in that it adds a huge amount of theme and varied objectives into different crews, and each crew have very different game plans for how they want to score points which is something I like a lot. Players also assemble a deck of 4 plots which are more overarching objectives that give you things to achieve in game in order to gain a greater bonus (mainly in free actions). There are possible cases where players will have objective cards stuck behind plots they can't fully score which can be a bad time, but a skilled player will use what they can to mitigate this and to put lower-scoring cards behind the plot where possible (or just build their plots to be easily achievable as early as possible).

Batman and Crew

The second level of variance that I really like in BMG is the event and deployment decks, which are smaller but add dimensions to the game. The event deck is similar to Warcry's twist deck, adding small extra things to the scenario you have to play around (heavy rain restricting shooting or a fire burning through the streets) while the deployment deck is as simple as it sounds but with some cards adding more extra little tweaks to the game. The combination of these adds tons of variety and a lot of tactical depth to how you play around these which I find really great.

Model activations are based around 2 systems- audacity and effort. All models get a single action each turn to choose from movement, tactical action (attack or manipulating, which tends to be things that will score you points) or special action (anything that isn't one of the above). Audacity gives you all 3 at once, but you are only limited to 4 models with an audacity marker at any time so higher model count crews will have to make do with less actions on some models. There are ways to boost this up through traits giving additional actions, but audacity allocation at the start of every turn is an important part of the game because of the limited nature of what you can perform. Effort is a system based around damaging yourself to reach greater effects on certain actions, and is based around the stun damage mechanic. Effort lets you take a stun damage to do things like add extra dice to your melee attacks, take away from your opponent or even in some cases dodge ranged attacks coming at you. BMG has 2 kinds of damage, stun (which knocks you out once you fill your willpower stat) and blood/injury (which kills you once you cap out your endurance). Both affect the effort rule in different ways as blood reduces the amount you can effort as it accumulates (starts at 3 effort per activation, but it goes down for every 3 blood on you) and stun simply stops you using effort because you get closer and closer to being KO the more you do it. As such effort is a careful thing to manage, especially against crews that do primarily stun, and is something you need to work around but also keep track of.

Combat is pretty simple in how it works, and is based around both the attack and defence stats (duh). In melee the attacker rolls dice equal to their attack stat, with the defender's defence being what they need for each dice to hit (so defence 4 is a 4+ to hit). Then the defender will roll their defence stat in dice needing to beat the attacker's attack stat and each success they make will cancel a single hit of the attacker. Any remaining attacks deal damage equal to the damage of the attackers weapon or a single stun damage on regular unarmed attacks (which some traits will affect- Batman punches harder than a thug after all). You also get a strength dice which is an unblockable hit, needing your strength score to damage or on a 6 achieves a crit, which will normally knock down an opponent but can have special effects ranging from extra damage and effects to straight up instant killing the opponent.

The League of Assassins

Shooting in BMG is something that is very strong, mainly because it can never be blocked like melee can, but also greatly controlled. If you can get your full amount of shots off in a turn and land hits the target will probably die, but movement and cover will reduce your rate of fire in ways that mean you will not be shooting that much (often just 1 or 2 dice if at all). Stronger shooters like Deadshot or snipers will have ways to get around these, but with a steep cost or lower amount of shots so they are quite literally hit or miss. Guns are also restricted by having limited ammo throughout a game, so on average you will only be shooting half the time and can't keep blasting away all game.

The game demands a somewhat higher level of terrain than most, both in terms of amount and in size, but that is also something to admire because it leads to some really good looking tables. Bigger buildings add a 3d level to the game and enable rooftops and fire escapes as another dimension of movement, while various bits of scatter terrain like bins, cars and barriers are easy enough to move around while still providing cover from guns and a way to keep yourself safe on the way to where you need to go.

Overall BMG 3rd edition is a really solid game that has improved from what has come before in a big way in my opinion. The move away from static objectives and towards the deck-based game leads to a lot of variance and tactics and completely removes the "sit on my objectives and not interact with the opponent" that 2nd edition often became which is a really healthy move for the game. It is definitely my favourite game for a lot of reasons, but mainly because I find the play style fun and because it is a quick game to get set up and finished.