Last week I got an opportunity to play the new Batman: Gotham City Chronicles game. I'll give you an overview of the gameplay experience and my thoughts about this newest miniatures board game, set in the DC universe. Batman: Gotham City Chronicles At the most recent game night at my friend Troy's house, we got the chance to play the new scenario/mission driven Batman game designed for 2-4 players. In this gameplay two of the four of us hadn't played before. Troy went over the basics of the rules and got us underway relatively quickly. The scenario we played was one in which Harley Quinn is the primary villain. She has strategically placed multiple explosive jack-in-the-boxes around the map. The heroes goal is to disarm four out of the five within six rounds of play. I'm sure each mission probably differs in difficulty and length. This one worked out really well for our group. The game is played with one player who controls the villains and henchmen, while each of the other players choose from available superheroes. In our game the heroes were Batman, Blue Bird, and Huntress. I selected and got to play as Huntress. The game ebbed and flowed from round to round. In some cases the heroes made headway and did much damage and in other rounds the villains took their toll on the heroes. The game went right down to the sixth round of play. Harley's henchmen did serious damage to Huntress and Bluebird who were the best at disarming the bombs. It was up to the Dark Knight, now. If Batman couldn't disarm the fourth explosive jack-in-the-box, the heroes would be defeated. Luckily, the dice rolls went exceedingly well, thus disarming the explosive and handing defeat to Harley Quinn and company. It was truly a fun and exciting concluding round. Overview and Thoughts
I had hoped this game would be fun and not just another exploitation of a great intellectual property (IP). Thank goodness it in fact was a lot of fun. Even with just one play under my belt, I can see that the foundation upon which this game is built is solid. The mechanics and gameplay are sound and the quality of components is very nice. Starting with theme and components. The artwork and DC comics theme are terrific! From the box art to the player mats and game boards. All are nicely illustrated and have a cohesive feel. I was impressed, in particular, by the player mats/consoles. Each player card sits in a "console" of sorts which allows for energy cubes to be distributed where necessary in recessed spaces and which corresponds to the specific abilities of each hero. The villains console is a large plastic console with a "river" feature across the bottom. This plastic console unit is well thought out and seems to be a terrific way to keep all the villains and henchmen organized. The miniatures are well sculpted into various action poses. Fun to look at and pose on the field of battle. Really nicely done. The gameplay mechanics and scenarios. One of my favorite things about playing this game was the way it used the energy cubes for action selection. The more your hero tried to do, the more energy was expended and thus potentially less energy available in the following round. Based on prior game-play past experience, Troy made a minor house-rule to modify/remove the "resting" action. Being my first play, the modification felt perfectly balanced. Energy cubes moved from your available energy reserves to a used area and then finally to an injury/damage section. each round a portion of the energy could be regained. A very nice way to manage the action availability. There are several icons representing different abilities. These could be somewhat cryptic, however we had available to us player aids that can be found online that fans have created. These player aids were specific to each hero and allowed us to use for simple reference... very helpful and highly recommended. The Villain management system had a clever "river" system. This system made those henchmen more affordable to activate the further to the left they were. Once activated the card moved to the end of the line adjusting the river values to activate. This system was nicely developed and the plastic console unit facilitated the process quite well. The length of the game was probably around two hours, which considering having two new players, is pretty good. The game length felt right. I enjoyed the scenario we played and though I didn't get to see any of the others I would assume that they are similarly well balanced and fun to play. If you're a fan of "Ameritrash" style games... rolling dice, combat, and adventure, and you enjoy the DC universe, then Batman: Gotham City Chronicles should be one for you to try or buy. If you'd like to read more about this game on Board Game Geek, click here. Got more to add to the conversation?... leave your comments below. Keep watching for more gaming posts on King's GameNight and... Game on!
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This week our crew played Arkham Horror (2nd edition). It was a large group of seven of us playing this classic Fantasy Flight cooperative game. I provide an overview of the game, our experience, as well as other thoughts. Nikki and Jeff were kind enough to bring over their Arkham Horror game for us to play. This is one of the few games that can accommodate up to 8 players. Fantasy Flight released a new version of Arkham Horror (3rd Edition) in 2018 which is built to handle up to 6 players. From what I understand, they did a major overhaul of the game streamlining to make a bit shorter and changing several mechanisms. Some still prefer the second edition. This post will cover only the second edition. Game Overview The theme of the game is based on the typical H.P. Lovecraft Cthulhu mythos. The Ancient Ones are awakening and monsters and cultists are roaming the city of Arkham. During set up an Ancient One is chosen. Players each choose a character from a large variety. The investigators follow paths through streets and buildings throughout Arkham and occasionally get pulled through gates to Other Worlds while gathering supplies and weapons to battle the impending threat. Gates allow monsters to enter the game and closing/sealing gates is the primary way to stop the Ancient One from awakening. Each round is played by progressing through five phases:
GameNight Experience and Thoughts
Once the gang arrived and all got settled, we each selected characters and Nikki went over the basics of the game. It was decided to tackle the intricacies and nuances as we played. There are a lot of pieces and parts to deal with in the game. There were a lot of questions initially. Once we got through a couple of rounds of play, it started to sink in for everyone. The game was a bit slow with seven players. There was a little down-time between plays, but actually not too bad considering the player count. We had a lot of bad dice rolls early on which caused issues. Clues do help a bit to mitigate the effects of dice rolls, as they provided an extra die when spent. The Ancient One we ended up drawing to play against was Azethoth. Should he awaken, he would automatically win without a final battle. We would have to close all gates or seal six to win. Unfortunately the GamNight group was unable to win this one. After more than four hours of game time... a fifth gate appeared which triggered the Ancient One awakening and thus Azethoth destroyed the world. If you're a fan of the Cthulhu mythos and enjoy cooperative adventure games, then you'll find this one satisfying. I enjoyed it both times I've played. I like cooperative adventure games. Collecting items and making successful dice rolls can be fun. You can cheer on your teammates as they make attacks against monsters, etc. There are a few nitpicks that come to mind. First of all and primarily, is game length. This game can take a long time to play. It seems that more players adds to the time as you might expect. Contributing to that is the number of pieces, cards, tokens etc... which made it a bit fiddly. The skill marker oval tokens used to indicate each investigators skill ratings slide around and are frustrating at times. The rules, though generally straight forward, did require some review and clarifications. All-in-all this game provides for a good time... Just make sure to carve out 3+ hours to play it. I believe that some of the concerns could easily be addressed through frequent play of the game. Once everyone gets a few plays under their belt, gameplay should speed up. If you'd like to read more about Arkham Horror (2nd Edition) click on this link to the BGG page. If you've played any version of Arkham Horror and would like to share your thoughts, please post in the comments section. Send your messages to me using the contact page. Until next time... Game on! |
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