Thinking about playing games in the dark streets of Gotham City with crews of street thugs, cops, villians, heroes and all of their companions is brilliant fun! When you think about Batman grappling to a rooftop to only later drop off with his cape billowing out behind him to then start throwing punches into a group of thugs is a thing of movies and the comic books. That is, until you get started with Batman Miniature Game by Knight Models.
Playing out your favorite street fights, like most miniature games, is going to require more than just the miniatures. You are going to need a number of things to be able to play this game. We’ll take a look at all of the tokens, components, dice, terrain, and more that you will need to play a game.
The Rules and Cards Needed
Going in, there is number of basic things that you need. Hopefully, if you are looking at getting into this game, some of these thoughts will help you out. First, let’s look at the minimum of stuff that you need to get started with your first learning games.
- Models to build your crew with
- Tape Measure
- Dice (the 6 sided buggers you have everywhere)
- Tokens/Markers or something like that (more on this in a touch)
- The rules (downloadable for free right now from the Knight Models website!!!)
- Objective Card Deck for your Crew
- Sewer/lamp posts/objective markers
- Terrain
On the surface, some of that doesn’t seem like a big deal. Models, tape measures (now that the game is measured in inches, this is easy), and dice are all things we have if we have played miniature games before.
Let’s Talk About Models
Models are a curious one because there are a number of models available. Knight Models produces a number of crew starters, one for each faction at least. These starters, or BatBoxes, are a complete 350 reputation crew in a box so that you can buy it and have all of the models. These are an excellent way to start collecting your crew.
WiscoDice Crew Starting Guides
Rules and Cards
With Batman Miniatures Game Third Edition, there are a number of cards that are now required on top of the rules. Knight Models makes this easy to obtain by going to their website’s Downloads section. You need to scroll near the bottom to the BMG Third Edition section. Clicking on that you will find a Dropbox folder chuck full with not just the rules, but all of the other content you will want.
Included in the Dropbox folder are files that you can use to print off the card decks for objectives. You will need an objective deck of 20 cards to play the game. There are some of the card packs available for purchase from Knight Models and these will be included in updated BatBoxes.
Character cards will be included with the blister packs you purchase. However, if needed, you can go to the Knight Models website and look at the product listing for each model. Below the pricing information will be a Download Content section where you can view image files of the cards and print them out yourself.
Tokens Galore!
If you bought the Back to Gotham 2 Player starter set for third edition then you have all of the tokens you could possibly need. Indeed, there are actually enough tokens (cards too) to split the set evenly with another player. If you didn’t, then it’s good to have a good idea of what tokens you are going to need.
Every crew will need eight suspect markers. Suspect markers are 22mm round tokens. I had to do some digging around the Internet, but I found that Impact Miniatures actually makes 22mm bases that are perfect for this.
Damage and Ammo Tokens
In addition, you need a way to track damage. There are two types: stun and blood. Litko makes a ton of great markers that you could use. For damage markers I have seen players use dice as well. Using dice that are not D6 would work. Especially if you are consistent with using different colors. You will also want something to track ammo. I recommend the Litko ammo tokens personally!
Condition Tokens
You will want to track conditions as well, though I don’t feel you need markers for these. Sleeve your character cards and then you can write on them with either a wet erase or dry erase marker when you have a condition. There are great markers out there for this that have erasers on them.
Number Counters
Occasionally, and a lot with Riddler crews, there will be game effects that require you to place a number counter. These counters typically have a way to increment up or down. I just use a D10 or D12 for these.
Sewer and Lamppost markers
For every game you will need at least 2 30mm sewer markers and 2 30mm lamppost markers. These are used in the initial game set up. You could easily use spare bases to mark these, but I really like the token pack by 4Ground. After all this is a miniature game and having that additional third dimension just looks cooler. Not to mention, those are pre-painted so no extra work there. You do have to mount the lampposts to a 30mm base, but overall it’s a pretty basic hobby project.
Scenery and Terrain
This game plays best with quite a bit of terrain. Since the game plays on a 3×3 foot board, you don’t need as much terrain as say an Infinity table, but what I find is that you want 4-5 buildings with some varying height. For your early games, there are some really cool print and play terrain that you can print on thick card stock or glue onto the outside of a foam-core frame. There are a number of MDF terrain buildings out there and I own 6 or 7 different buildings from TT Combat and 4Ground as well.
Then you want to focus on scatter terrain. Fences, barricades, concrete blocks, trash bins, dumpsters and other items that will break up some line of sight, make your city look more realistic, and give you some more options. Some of these can be pretty easy to put together and there is a bunch of tutorials out there. As well, remember what I said about this being pretty close to “O Gauge”, well that means you can look at model railroad supplies for that scale to add in things like stop lights, signs, and even buildings if you wanted! Finish the table off with billboards and you have a pretty complete table. However, if you have streets, you might want to add a few parked cars on the streets. I find that you can find some really cool deals on vehicles that are about 1/48th scale at toy stores. If you want that specialized vehicle, always check out that model railroad store for something in “O Gauge” scale. Nearly anything you want is made out there which makes creating interesting battlefields really easy.
I want to know more
Well, check out our review of Batman Miniature Game 3rd Edition!
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