Batman Miniature Game: Gotham's tiny reckoning

I won't lie to you, the Batman Miniature Game by Knight Models is not an easy game to get into if you're a North American gamer. The publisher is based in Spain, and has a reputation for being difficult to work with, so you don't see it on many store shelves, or even in many US-based online stores. On top of that, the game is currently in its third edition, with some pretty drastic rules changes between editions, and the game's introductory set is frequently out of print and usually pretty expensive, and the current version of the game relies on the use of a smartphone app that is buggy and incomplete. Now pile on the usual barriers to entry for tabletop miniatures games such as the time it takes to assemble and paint the miniatures and terrain, and it starts to seem like the bridges into Gotham City are barricaded, just as they were in 2012 Batman film The Dark Knight Rises.

The game's rulebook can be downloaded for free from their website, as can all of the cards you need to play (which will also allow you to bypass the aforementioned app), so as long as you have a robust printer and are able to get your hands on some miniatures and terrain, you can play the game, but it's an awful lot of DIY work in this age of self-contained, pre-packaged games like Conan or Mythic Battles: Pantheon.

But, once you get past all that, there is a really interesting game here.

Like most games of this type, each player assembles a force of 7-10 characters. In this case each team consists of a hero, a sidekick, a handful of henchmen such as thugs or policemen, and possibly one or two free agents to round everything out. Forces are generally limited to a particular faction, so Batman can't team up with the Joker, but there are a few neutral characters such as Catwoman who can join anyone's team.

The game is played out over 4 rounds, which doesn't seem like much, but there is quite a bit each character can do on their turn, so the time goes by quickly and the game usually feels finished by the end of round four. At the start of each round, each player chooses four of their characters to assign Audacity markers to. Characters without those markers will only get one action during the round (usually either a move or an attack), but those with Audacity will get three actions: one move, one attack, and one special action, which usually represents a character's unique ability, such as Batman using his grappling hook or Harley Quinn distracting her opponents with clownish antics.

The real meat of the game, and the thing that makes it more than just the usual slugfest, is the Objectives system, enacted in the game by Objective cards in a player's hand, and Suspect tokens on the board. Each player starts the game with a deck of 20 cards which form their objective deck. These cards are what adds story elements to the game, representing goals and maneuvers such as gathering evidence, stealing loot, taking or rescuing hostages, or (especially in the Joker's case) generally causing chaos.

Objective cards frequently interact with Suspect tokens, which represent civilians, loot, bombs, or anything that needs to have a physical presence on the board. During their turn a character can forego an attack to instead interact with a Suspect token, either placing one on the board, removing one of the opponent's, or moving them into strategic positions.

Objective cards are also the way each player scores points in the game, often making combat with the other player's miniatures secondary to fulfilling the conditions a card might call for. A lot of miniatures games have tried to add card-based mechanisms as a way to spice things up, but this is the most integrated and interesting system I've ever seen. The cards are an integral part of the game rather than a tacked-on extra.

My only major complaint about the game (other than how difficult to find and expensive the miniatures are) is that characters tend to have far too many special abilities. This might seem obvious for a super hero game, but I often find it difficult to keep track of the large number of game effects and when they're supposed to resolve, and sometimes trying to figure out how different abilities interact with each other can lead to some head-scratching moments.

While it is pretty complicated and tends to take a long time to play (we've had games go on for five or more hours), the game really does feel like a Batman story unfolding on the table.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) I'm marking it down a point due to the fairly unreasonable barriers to entry, but the game play itself is a solid 4 out of 5.

• Batman Miniature Game official website
• Batman Miniature Game on BoardGameGeek (not very active)
• Batman Miniature Game Facebook group

How I learned to stop worrying and love the DC Comics Deck Building Game

The first time I tried the DC Comics Deck Building Game was at a game convention in 2013, and I didn't really like it all that much. I thought it was overly simple and not very interesting.

This was about a year and a half after DC Comics launched the "New 52," a complete reboot of all their comic book titles. I had been an avid DC Comics reader since the 1980s, but I didn't really care for the changes they made to their characters and storylines with the New 52, so I wasn't really very happy with DC at all, and my dissatisfaction was probably leaking through and interfering with my enjoyment of the game.

A friend reintroduced me to the game in January of this year, and this time I enjoyed it quite a bit. Maybe it was the fact that I was playing it with friends instead of convention demo staff, or maybe my irritation with DC Comics had subsided. Maybe it's just that I got to play as my favorite DC character (Superman). In any case, I did like the game enough to pick up a copy of the base game and the Heroes Unite and  Forever Evil expansions.

I still think it's a simple game, but I don't see that as a negative. As deck building games go, this one is about as easy to play as it gets: Each player chooses a hero with a unique game ability to play, and starts with a deck of basic Punch and Weakness cards. The main deck is shuffled, and five cards are played out, which represent heroic allies, villainous opponents, equipment, and super powers, all of which are bought by playing cards from your hand for their power value (just like any deck building game). The object of the game is to use the cards in your hand to buy better cards for your deck.

Additionally, there is a stack of super-villains, each of which must be defeated, again by playing cards from your hand. The super-villains tend to cost a lot more power than cards from the deck, and as each new super-villain card is revealed, it attacks all the players with a negative game effect. I particularly like the super-villain stack idea, as it gives the players something to work towards (building up higher-power cards to defeat the super-villain) and it gives the game a time limit, as the game ends when the last super-villain is defeated.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) Not a complex game by any means, but it's great for casual play with non-gamers, or as a light warm-up before settling in for something more involved.

• DC Comics Deck Building Game official website
• DC Comics Deck Building Game on BoardGameGeek

With great power comes increasing complexity...

Heroclix is a tabletop miniatures game of superhero combat. It evolved from Mage Knight, using that game's ingenious click-dial and a simplified version of its rules, eliminating its tape measure guided movement and randomly placed terrain in favor of maps with printed terrain and a grid for movement.

One of the major selling points of both Mage Knight and Heroclix was that they were much simpler than the more involved fantasy miniatures games such as Warhammer, with each figure's game information printed right on the base (color-coded and read with the aid of a simple reference card), which could be clicked down to keep track of damage and changes to the character's abilities over the course of the game.

What really set Heroclix apart from Mage Knight was the fact that it featured recognizable characters, first from the Marvel Comics universe, with DC Comics following soon after. Finally, players could answer age-old questions like "who would win in a fight between Superman and the Hulk?"

Hundreds of collectible figures were released, with frequent new versions of popular characters such as Spider-Man, Wolverine and Batman, and a brief foray into the world of independent comics brought more obscure characters such as Hellboy, Judge Dredd, and even the cast of the City of Heroes online computer game to the table.

Heroclix is a great game. It's fast paced, and has a lot of strategic depth. There are a lot of tactical decisions to make during a game, and games are seldom predictable due to the random element of rolling dice when your figure makes an attack. The collectible aspect of the game is a turn-off for some: figures are released in random booster packs, with rare figures usually being more powerful. But for others, collecting the figures is half the fun. Most of the fun for me is pitting different groups of heroes against each other, such as Marvel's Nextwave (from the comic by Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen) vs. the Avengers from the recent movie.

Even though it is one of my favorite games, I don't play Heroclix very often. While it started out as a refreshingly simple game, over the years it has gotten gradually more complicated, as the game's designers struggle to add new elements in order to keep longtime players interested, a phenomenon known in the world of collectible gaming as "power creep." Because of that it has become difficult to teach, and its current complexity makes it difficult to pick up and play every once in a while, much like any collectible game.

Many local game stores offer weekly tournaments, where players can get together and play in structured events, but that offers its own set of challenges. In order to stay competitive, tournament players need to keep up with the most recent figures released for the game, and there is just too much new product coming out on a regular basis. The only way to really enjoy Heroclix at the store tournament level is to focus on it to the exclusion of all else, and quite honestly I just haven't got the financial resources or attention span to do that.

I don't keep up with the game any more, but it still catches my eye when I see a new Heroclix product at the game store. The game's publisher has released figures from Lord of the Rings and even spaceships from Star Trek that use the same rules but are closed off from the more high-powered superheroes of the regular Heroclix universe (with Star Trek it is a question of scale as much as anything else). They've also started releasing fixed sets of figures with no randomness or rarity, and every once in a while I'll pick one of those up and convince my wife or one of our friends to spend the afternoon playing.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) Heroclix is a very immersive game that drives me to distraction. It would rate a 5 if not for two major barriers to playing regularly: somewhat overly complex rules, and a flood of product that is impossible to keep up with.

• Heroclix official website
• Heroclix online community at HCRealms.com
• Heroclix on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: February 2, 2014