First Impressions - Batman the Miniatures Game

So tonight was the first game of the Batman Miniatures Game, by Knight Models.

Not much to explain. Miniatures of the 28mm variety, representing characters and fighters from the Arkham series of games, and of course the Chris Nolan Batman films.

For our game, we used the Joker gang vs GCPD.

Jokers:

Harley Quinn

Ringmaster with Axe

Clown with Pipe

Clown with Shield

Clown with Baseball Bat

GCPD:

Commissioner Gordon

SWAT officer with Shotgun

SWAT officer with automatic rifle

Police officer with nightstick 

The scenery used copious amounts of Terraclips, made by World Works Games and Wyrd miniatures (now unfortunately out of print). What you see here are two sets of Buildings of Malifaux, one of Streets of Malifaux, and bits from Vaults of Ruin, and Dungeon Essentials.

Welcome to Old Town and the old Goatham church.

In the background, the old Falcone restaurant has seen better days.

Gordon checks all the angles.

The Clowns are grabbing the loot, but not before Gordon and the GCPD lay down a hail of gun fire. 

A bat in the hand is worth two in the belfry.

So how does the game run?

The game uses alternating activation, with the person with the least amount of models getting to pass a number of times. Models get a number of Willpower points, that are distributed to action types, which in turn are then spent to move, attack, dodge and block, or perform special actions.

Line of Sight assumes rather long ranges, but relies on models being near light sources.

Now combat, once you have played through it, is rather simple. Roll to hit means rolling above a target Defence value on a D6. Defence requires a roll above the Attack value on a D6. Wounding requires a roll of a D6 to be over the Strength of the attack (more on that later). Damage comes in types, stun and wounds, and doing enough to equal or beat the endurance of the enemy model leads to a KO.

Now what do I have to critique here with the base system, and the, what will be old soon, rulebook. First, models in combat have a Strength value, the lower a better, so that they may wound opponents in combat. But for shooting..... oh for shooting, you will not find the roll to wound in the most likely place in the book. No, you need a 2+ to wound, and we only discovered this when reading about armour types.

The rulebook is hopefully going to be improved with the new edition coming out soon, and I also hope it streamlines some of the rules. The need to roll to hit, roll to block, roll to wound..... yeah.... I got tired of all that back with Warhammer and 40k. I much prefer having to roll less frequently.

Now in fairness the types of wounds at least gives a level of granularity that combined with the Willpower points, means that you have some resource management, much like Warmachine and Hordes. And of course that is no bad thing in a game with very few models and an alternating action sequence.

So hopefully the next game will go faster, and see more use of the terrain. I can see us delving into the sewers and ruins of Old Gotham and Wonder City.


Edit:

A comment on scale. Some people have said, "They are 35mm minis". Well I call bullshit on that.

First off, which figure is the basis for that height. Batman, or Average Joe Thug? Also is that 35mm to the top of the head, or 35mm to the eyes?

For comparison here are Harley Quinn, next to a Warmachine figure (32mm apparently), and a Confrontation figure (28mm from the wiki).

Can you see the issue? Also, note how the Batman figures happily work with the Terraclips terrain, terrain as advertised as working with "25mm to 32mm".

So just what scale is the Batman minis game?

A scale that means it will work fine with most wargaming terrain out on the market for 25mm to 35mm.

That is my answer.

Also on the topics of rules, this site gives a far better overview of the game that the pdf rulebook does https://minimusingofabear.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/soapy-bearbox-batman-the-miniature-game/