My impromptu painting session culminated in another Batman Miniature Game earlier last week. I kept the same crew as last time and my friend swapped out Comissioner Gordon for the SWAT Alpha member that I just painted up and Agent Ron.
I still had the last map set up so we decided to keep it and switch scenarios. This time we chose the Skirmish scenario which only cares about killing opponent figures. You still have objectives but the scenario doesn’t favor them any more than normal.
Per the scenario rules, we set up on opposite sides of the board. I ended up placing my easy objectives close to the right side of the board (loot and riddle objectives) and my ammo crate in the center just outside of the central lamp post.
There are some nice synergies with Joker and his henchmen if they are close enough as he can burn a few special counters and almost double his henchmen’s movement. With that done, Joker ran over and picked up some of my loot. Agent Ron went sewer diving and came up over on my side but hidden behind a building.
With Eyeball Man’s excessive movement now, he ran out to my first riddle objective and promptly failed.
Fat Cop ran back to his board edge knowing all to well what happens when Eyeball Man is too close. I ran Panda Man out to the middle to make a play for the other objectives next round.
The round ends with Batman cautiously moving in and Alpha aggressively pushing into the center, getting just shy of the lucrative ammo crate but is within 8″ of Eyeball Man (triggering his “shooter” ability to ignore Ping! rolls). Being so close to the ammo crate, Alpha isn’t worried about running out of ammo so he pops off a round at Eyeball Man only to whiff and roll a 1.
I score one VP for Joker’s loot objective and the first round of scoring is complete.
I get to lead off the second round and decide to have Panda Man open up on Alpha. I can’t leave Alpha there as he is too deadly next to that ammo crate and a bit of a tank with a bulletproof vest. If I can get two hits off, I can take Alpha down. I end up with all three shots hitting but due to the intervening tree cover, Alpha negates two of them with his Ping! roll and comes away with some nasty wounds but still up.
Alpha responds in kind and unloads on Panda Man. He also lands all 3 shots, ignoring Ping! but I luck out and he whiffs one of the damage rolls. It still hurts and Panda Man is down to one wound remaining.
Eyeball Man then sprays five shots at Alpha but bad rolls on my part only get one wound in I need two to drop him. I do get a match on my collateral die so it knocks Alpha down. Eyeball Man then swings over to my ammo crate to reload and control that objective.
Batman swoops in only to go for one of his riddle objectives and detectives his maxing the points. We ended up grabbing the wrong cheat sheet so didn’t award the right VPs for these objectives so Batman ends up short changed with 3 VPs instead of 4.
Joker moves in to finish off Alpha but whiffs.
Fat Cop and Agent Ron hover around the back waiting to see if they should engage or cower. Agent Ron does take the opportunity to grab his cash loot (GCPD never did pay enough).
The round ends with 6 VPs for me (Panda Man was able to score off my second riddle token) and 7 VPs for Batman.
Alpha stands back up but rolls horribly and only gets a few scratches on Eyeball Man. Joker then goes and obliterates Alpha. With no cover to stop me and some good rolls, I finally removed that thorn. I then decide to go for a pretty risky move.
I know Batman is going to go next and will swing over to Eyeball Man and beat him down. This always happens and with Panda almost gone, I don’t think I can afford to lose Eyeball Man without even taking a turn. So my gambit is to run Joker up to be bait for Batman’s beat down. I should survive and have a good shot at going first next round to retreat. To guarantee that Batman goes after me, I use Joker’s intimidate skill to negate Batman from using any special counters (so no Batclawing over to Eyeball Man and taking him out).
Hahaha! It worked!
Shit.
Batman doesn’t knock me out but does bring me close and now Fat Cop smells blood in the water. Lucky for me, his tubby ass fails to damage me further even though I’m prone and getting double teamed.
Eyeball Man gets to prove that the gambit was worth it. He does ok and gets in a few wounds on Fat Cop.
Agent Ron can’t let Fat Cop show him up so he comes around the corner and lands a shot in on Eyeball Man.
After this crazy round I’m back up with 11 VPs to Batman’s 8.
Unfortunately, Joker fails to recover any stun markers inbetween rounds and I lose out on the critical initiative round. I load up everything Joker has on defense and hope it’s enough to survive.
Batman starts and tries to pummel Joker down. His rolls are pretty bad and my defense rolls are pretty good but Joker falls by the slimmest of margins with only one hit landing damage. That one hit is enough to to knock him out. Due to a weird and dumb rules interaction, Joker doesn’t get removed when Batman tries to arrest him so we move on (we’ll later decide that the RAW doesn’t make sense and will rule that Survivor doesn’t stop Arrest).
Time for Stan the Man to save the day. If I take out Fat Cop, not only does continue my routine slaying of the poor slob, but there won’t be anyone to arrest Joker and there might still be a chance for Joker wake up and slither into the sewer grate nearby.
Eyeball Man shoots and scores 4 hits on Fat Cop. There is cover but averages should see him negate only half of the hits and even if I whiff the damage rolls, it’ll still be lights out for Fat Cop. Instead, Stan proves incompetent and my friend negates ALL my hits with an epic Ping! roll. Stupid lamppost!
Fat Cop can’t believe his own luck and happily slams the cuffs on the Joker (showing Batman how to get it done) for the arrest of a lifetime.
The next round just see things completely fall apart. Agent Ron drops his loot to run in and beat down Eyeball Man with a quick follow up arrest.
Batman easily runs down Panda Man.
Whoops his ass and arrests him too.
The game ends with a crushingly complete rout of my crew. Final score:
Joker crew: 14 VPs
Brave and the Bold: 27 VPs
Pretty interesting game all around. The Ping! rolls destroyed me and really showcased how I need to take more care in my positioning. My gambit ended up failing but it was interesting to try out. Even though we likely messed up the ruling when Batman tried to arrest Joker, it ended up making for the better story with Fat Cop finally coming out on top, over the Joker no less. I learned recently that there is a Knight Models tournament promo card floating around that is the promotion of Fat Cop to Sgt. Winslow. That seems all too fitting for the events of this game so I honor of his epic victory, I will now respectfully refer to him as Winslow, or sergeant Winslow depending on which card is in play.