This past Monday the Gotham City Police responded to a threat to the city from the infamous character known as Bane and members of his group of mercenaries. The vigilante known as Batman was also involved. The detailed report of this encounter follows below.
Game Setup
This was a regular pickup game on the bi-monthly Batman Miniatures Game night at Noble Knight Games. I brought the Soldiers of Fortune crew against fellow WiscoDice host Matt’s Batman crew. It was a standard game at 350 reputation and $1500 funding. The encounter and event were randomly drawn which is what we regularly do for pickup games. We faced off in a Vanguard encounter which is the setup in opposite corners with one model able to be 4″ out of the zone. The event was In The Spotlight which shifts street lamps during the game and also makes them unable to be destroyed.
Crew Lists
Here are both of our crews’ lists for the game:
Brian – Soldiers of Fortune
- Bane (Dark Knight Rises)
- Bird
- Barsad
- Mercenary 1
- Mercenary 2
- Stealth Op
- Cuchillo
- Clover
Matt – Batman
- Batman
- Sgt. Harvey Bullock
- GCPD Detective
- Officer Merkel
- GCPD Cop 1
- GCPD Cop 2
- Lerida
- Agent 3
This is my first play with half the models in my crew and about my 5th game using Soldiers of Fortune. I had played a couple of games previously with Bane DKR and mercs with Catwoman and some prisoners. I wanted to get practice with my theoretical list for the Long Halloween tournament coming up without eternal models. I have been trying to play with only fully painted models but I’m behind on painting.
My idea in this crew is to maximize models with the Tough Guy trait which should aid with scoring many of the Soldiers of Fortune objectives. Bird is also a fairly decent sidekick, being able to be inspired himself, grant some extra movement via Military Tradition, and has an Objective card. I’m a little rusty in this game after not playing for about a month. This was the most challenging game I have played with my Soldiers of Fortune crew so far.
Objective Deck
My objective deck is exclusively the Soldier of Fortune cards with Bane’s and Bird’s cards. I am still getting a feel of the deck but so far can’t think of anything I want to swap for generics. Generally, the deck has seemed pretty strong if I remember the things I should be doing. We did not use the new beta test rules for additional cards.
Matt’s crew is mostly from the Back to Gotham box, with a few substitutions. Here he doesn’t have Gordon but has Lerida and another cop. Matt seems to like the firepower Lerida brings (very effective in this game) and also has an additional model in the crew.
Matt’s objective deck is a mix of Batman and generic cards. I don’t know it exactly but some cards might be named later on. He seems to be pretty effective with it lately.
Alright, with all that out of the way let’s get to the action!
Deployment
We both set up our crews very similarly for the start of the game. We placed all of our models right at the leading edge of our zones with the Bosses in the middle. With the Vanguard encounter, we both placed our main ranged model 4” forward out of the zone. Matt won initiative and his chosen zone had a nice large building with a flat roof in the zone. This gave Lerida a dominating view over most of the gaming area.
There was a small building occupying a lot of my zone but it had a sign blocking most of the forward view from the roof; I opted to put Barsad on top of a car which he could easily get down from and hopefully have decent sight. I utilized Undercover on Stealth Op in order to get a chance to get to the center of the table or near Matt’s models quicker. This was my best bet for scoring points in the first round since our deployment zones were so far apart. Matt’s crew has two hidden deployments which saw Bullock and GCPD Detective each placed in the other two open corners.
Round 1
The first turn of the game didn’t see a lot of action or points scoring. Matt had the initiative and shifted a light closer to my zone. We made a mistake in the first round because I destroyed the lamp post which was not allowed by the event. We put it back when we realized the mistake at the beginning of turn 2 and this unfortunately left my crew very exposed.
I didn’t have great cards for scoring in the first round of this game like Global Offensive or Invasion, even though I redrew most of my starting hand. I moved my crew toward the center of the board and closer to Matt’s models trying to set up better cards later. I also placed some suspects and utilized some Hardpoint objective cards as resources to gain a couple of venom doses and cycle cards. Meanwhile, Matt moved his models forward similarly and placed suspects, including one in each corner of the table.
By the end of the turn, we only managed to score a couple of objectives each. Matt was able to play a Snitch and I tried to sacrifice Clover by sending him through a nearby sewer to stop it from scoring. Unfortunately, Matt had activations remaining and knocked Clover out with Batman before the end of the round. He at least had to use the Batclaw to do it which would slow Bat’s next turn.
Stealth Op was my only model close enough to the center of the table and scored Free-For-All. I was lucky to get the Osito card and got it out by Officer Merkel, who was fairly alone on the side of the board, but would give Bane some extra speed. In phase 4 Matt was able to score one Flanking objective from his detectives. End of the round the score was about 5:6.
Round 2
Now the action started to heat up and one big unfortunate thing happened. I won the initiative this round after a tie-roll. I moved one lamp post away from my crew but Matt was able to move another close to Bane. This left Bane exposed to Lerida who was now at the edge of the roof. The World’s Greatest Detective trait forced me to move Merc 2 first instead of Bane.
Merc 2 was able to score a Black Ops objective, since our models were now much closer. Next, Matt took the shot with Lerida who was now at the edge of the roof. After an amazing roll of three 6’s and a Red Dot reroll to a 5, Bane took four hits and became a Casualty! Matt even had the Back to Gotham card in his hand to score. Had I been thinking I could have utilized the Ground War resource in my hand to at least grant him cover to guarantee not become a Casualty. More so, I could have positioned him out of sight on the other side of the bus if I remembered a light could move. Bird took over as my crew’s Boss but this definitely had me on the back foot now.
The action continued for the rest of the turn and we were both able to score some objectives. Bird was able to utilize Military Tradition again to advance a few of my models. This allowed Barsad to get Bullock in his sights. The cover Bullock had didn’t overcome Barsad’s Precise Aim and he fell casualty, which was slight payback for losing Bane.
I was able to get a Domination card out in Phase 1 and Stealth Op pulled it back towards the middle of the table, helping me score it. Matt unveiled some loot this round and arrested Clover who had remained KO.B atman was able to KO Merc 2 and with They Won’t See Me Coming card also revealed one of my suspects. Merc 2 was then arrested by GCPD Cop 2.
I placed a drone marker with Cyber Attack this round and also scored a Search & Destroy card. Matt moved the GCPD Detective out of a sewer near my starting zone. End of the turn, I scored Free-For-All and a Ground War with the large building Lerida was on. We had both scored more cards this turn but Matt pulled away a bit and the score was about 12:19.
Round 3
The action continued and I was able to score some more points this turn. Matt won initiative and started off Phase 1 with a Die Hard on Cop 1, who was towards the back of the board. I also got out another Domination on Agent 3, which put the marker pretty close to me. I passed a World’s Greatest Detective roll finally on Barsad.
We both mostly spent the round positioning and laying suspects. This round I also got a couple of Invasion cards which scored fairly easily. Matt was spread out so I could place them near his already activated models. Batman KO’d Cuchillo, who wasn’t able to get any blocks to score a Hardpoint and was then arrested.
I also scored another Black Ops and a Search & Destroy objective cards. I was also able to score Cyber Attack on a couple of Matt’s suspects that he couldn’t even get to. I intended to move Barsad through a sewer to take out Cop 1 who had Loot and Die Hard. I didn’t end up moving Bird in range to get him the needed Inspire, but still set him up for the next turn.
Utilizing the Search & Destroy resource gave Merc 1 movement range to get to Officer Merkel carrying Osito. Merc 2 with the Venom Dose plus markers from Kill Them earlier in the game easily took out Merkel to drop Osito. Matt scored a few objectives by revealing my suspects, like Comb Through Everything and Following The Clues. End of the turn our scores were both near 25-27 or so.
Round 4
The action slowed down a bit to finish out the last turn since we were both running low on models. I got out another Invasion and placed it near Batman in the center, where it stayed for the turn. Matt won initiative again and I again failed a World’s Greatest Detective roll.
Matt was able to secure Cop 1 with Loot behind a building safe from Barsad. Merc 2 was able to secure Osito which I think is the first time I’ve scored it. Stealth Op was able to take out GCPD Detective who got a little too close revealing suspects. Batman decided to go for setting up an arrest on Stealth Op instead of going after Merc 2 with Osito. I was hoping to get a Hardpoint from it at least but couldn’t roll any 5s.
Unfortunately for Matt, I had a Ground War card to use as a resource, since I wasn’t scoring them once Stealth Op was KO’d. This moved him just out of range of Lerida who would have followed up to arrest him. I wasn’t able to score Free-For-All once Stealth Op went KO but Barsad kept me scoring Invasion.
That’s a Game!
End of the turn the final score ended up 30:35! A pretty close game. Summing up the game I think we both would have liked scoring more in round one but just didn’t get the cards needed in our hands.
I definitely made the worst out of the lamp-moving event by poorly moving some models. This is the first game where I faced as powerful of a model as Batman, but I think the damage done was minimum. In hindsight, I should have thought more about sewers and also using the Black Ops resource to move better on the first turn for scoring. I also shouldn’t have sent Clover. since I knew Batman still had to go and would just lose him without preventing the Snitch score.
I’m still feeling out my crew build and this game gave me some things to think about. I really missed having hidden, like my previous crew list with High Security and more Undercover to get close early. This is one of the furthest deployment encounters though. I think I just need to be more experienced with how to mitigate it in play. Bird did well in supporting and, although his objective card could be tricky to score, it does have a good resource.
While my Tough Guy plan didn’t give me a huge advantage in this game I think it is still a good idea. I just didn’t draw the Global Offensive cards early. It still did help with Ground War, Invasions, and Free-For-All. I’ve only used DKR Bane so far but I really like that he is a more points-effective Boss than the big Bane.
I’m excited to get more games with and finish painting more models for the crew. I mean to continue with regular and better battle reports Check back soon to see how they do next time!
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