Monolith’s new Batman board game will soon hit Kickstarter, and fans are finally starting to get an idea of how the game will actually play.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Monolith teamed up with The Beasts of War to deliver a new video preview of the game’s Adventure Mode, and we’ve rounded up some of the most important details. This portion of the game will be fully cooperative, allowing fans to command a plethora of heroes from the Batman universe, but there are several mechanics that will be used by every character across the board.
Each character comes with their own character sheet, which fits into the player board and features all of their special abilities. The board itself actually features several universal mechanics, and that starts with the 3 areas at the bottom of each board. Players will distribute their energy cubes (used to take actions) in either the Action, Recuperation, or Wounds area, depending on the situation.
The action area holds your available cubes to spend, while the recuperation area holds the ones you’ve used in previous turns. The wounds signify attacks and penalties, but these can be recuperated by essentially passing your turn. This also happens when your wound area is completely full. You won’t die but will need to pass turns until you have enough Cubes in your action are to do something.
Players have 5 actions available to them, which break into Melee attacks, Ranged attacks, Manipulation, Thought, and Movement. Most of these are pretty self-explanatory, and you’ll be able to spend a certain amount of cubes to attack the enemy. Thought and Manipulation relate to solving scenarios or manipulating things in your surroundings. like defusing a bomb.
You also have two extra slots called Defense and Reward, which are not considered actions. The Defense slot allows you to bolster your defense in any given situation, allowing you to roll extra dice against an attack (as long as you have the cubes to do so). The Rewards slot has not been explained yet.
Gameplay is not split up into turns like you might assume. Instead, any hero can go at any time, and working together will be of the utmost importance when attacking enemies and the major villains. You can move, attack, get out of the way for another hero to do the same and then jump right back into the thick of it, provided you have the energy to spend. For melee, you just have to be in the same area (defined by white lines) and for ranged you will need line of sight, though green lines on the board show you when range is still possible with an obstacle in the way.
Character size is also important, as certain larger characters will cause a hindrance to your dice rolls. This does not apply to hero characters, however.
You will also need to be aware of how much you are carrying, as movement is tied to an encumbrance rating. It just means you can’t have Batman literally carrying the kitchen sink and still move all over the map. Each character will have an equipment number at the top of their board (represented with a utility belt symbol) which will dictate how many items you can carry before the mission starts. You will also be able to pick which items you carry into the scenario (grab that Shark Repellent!)
For instance, Batman has a utility belt rating of 4, so he can choose 4 weapons or items to carry into battle. Batman also has extra skills like hacking, detective, and defuse bomb, and every character will have a unique mix of abilities like these too.
The villains will operate in a slightly different way, and get their own board to keep track of. The Villain Command Board is made of full plastic like the Hero Boards and features the spot for a major villain and a section for their thugs, called the River. Each thug in this section has its own defense, abilities, and weapons, and you will spend energy cubes in a similar fashion as the heroes to activate their skills. You can also buy extra defense just like the heroes, but Villains can only be activated two times per turn.
The game will also feature a versus mode, but we’ll get the lowdown on that later. In the meantime, you can check out some of the other characters available in the game here, and make sure to check out the Kickstarter when it launches on February 27th.
