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Well, part of their idea for accessibility is that you can play a more straightforward game by just using the rules on the boxout at the side.

Which means, the new Nightwing has pretty much 0 special rules.

I don't think it's a too strong argument against the game, myself. For example, X-Wing is one the most accessible miniatures games I know, yet you still end up with literally dozens of additional special rules being played and needed to learn. The only difference is each special rule is on a different, easily lost, card.

I was disappointed they kept light sources being measure from the center of a base. That's just stupid. Also that they didn't specify that Medic makes you recover from KO. They imply it does, because they tell you what happens when you do, but don't just outright say it. Wish they had added at least Safes, but also Bat Signal and Joker Gas Objectives to the book. At least one missing Trait (Self Discipline). Wish theyd have let you walk over KO models, but at least jumping is easier now.

Overall I like it though. Really streamlines most of the movement in the game. The new Ivy Plants are cool. The Sirens have weird potential as Ivy Crew 2.0.

 Kamsm8 wrote:
Rules seem good for the most part, but I'm still pissed they didn't update the rules for Recovery and its interaction with Autorepair/Medic.

They actually did, it's under the Medic rule rather than Recovery. You don't get to activate or allocate tokens to a model that's been revived by Medic that turn

 AduroT wrote:
Also that they didn't specify that Medic makes you recover from KO. They imply it does, because they tell you what happens when you do, but don't just outright say it.

Rygnan wrote:They actually did, it's under the Medic rule rather than Recovery. You don't get to activate or allocate tokens to a model that's been revived by Medic that turn

And that's stupid. And hardly a clarification. Why tuck a core aspect of your game - that you're not longer KO'd when you fall below Wound Markers = Endurance -
away in a special rule you need to backwards engineer to understand? Just state that in either the Damage section (where KO is introduced) or the Recovery section (where removing KO is explained). I literally JUST brought this up on the FB page and they didn't seem to understand that this was something that could've easily been clarified with a sentence but wasn't.

Furthermore, it complicates the matter because neither Medic nor Autorepair had that sentence last edition and yet people played them the same way. Now, only medic has that sentence, meaning Autorepair (such as on Riddlerbots) won't recover you.

Hopefully with this being a PDF they can fix stuff like that better.

 Compel wrote:
Well, part of their idea for accessibility is that you can play a more straightforward game by just using the rules on the boxout at the side.

Which means, the new Nightwing has pretty much 0 special rules.

I don't think it's a too strong argument against the game, myself. For example, X-Wing is one the most accessible miniatures games I know, yet you still end up with literally dozens of additional special rules being played and needed to learn. The only difference is each special rule is on a different, easily lost, card.

X-Wing is probably equally complex in terms of volume of rules, but its still far more accessible to only have the rules for the models you're playing than to have to memorize keywords and look them each up whenever you need to know the specifics. There's almost no information of value on the cards; not even costs to use or any categorization to know which section of the book you need to go to find it. The advantage is that it lets them change things pretty freely, but in terms of accessibility, its a giant brick wall players have to be willing to push past to put up with the game.

 LunarSol wrote:
X-Wing is probably equally complex in terms of volume of rules, but its still far more accessible to only have the rules for the models you're playing than to have to memorize keywords and look them each up whenever you need to know the specifics. There's almost no information of value on the cards; not even costs to use or any categorization to know which section of the book you need to go to find it. The advantage is that it lets them change things pretty freely, but in terms of accessibility, its a giant brick wall players have to be willing to push past to put up with the game.

Serious question follows...

Do you think Knight Models should have gone the 8th Edition route with with bespoke rules, the X-Wing (and many others) of having special ability cards...or maybe just ditch a lot of the special rules. I mean Nightwing as 9 special abilities and some Henchmen have 2-4.

To be honest, I think the current approach is fine (especially now there's a mostly up-to-date, searchable digital option rather than having stuff spread over 3 books and a wiki). I find the majority of special rules in BMG do a lot to add flavour which is essential in a game based on such rich IP and have always helped characters major and minor feel nice and unique; to take away that flavour and uniqueness would take a way a big chunk of what BMG is.

It's certainly not a beginner's game, but I don't think it's pretending to be; I'd hazard that only a very small portion of the KM audience are entirely new to wargaming, so the chances are the people they're aiming at are plenty experienced with quite fiddly rulesets.

I'd be against the piling on of rules if they didn't add any depth or character (a problem I think the Marvel game suffered from a bit, not played the DC version to see how much that's changed yet), but so long as it's done for a purpose I'm not against complexity and the new Compendium is a nice step forward (so long as next month's releases don't introduce half a dozen new rules that aren't in there! )

At this point, the thing holding me back from jumping back into BMG is the quality of the resin, some of the sculpts look a little soft and a few of the faces in particular seem to be suffering a bit (compare the new Harley to the Arkham or SS ones, might just be the scuplt but her face seems a lot less expressive and sharply defined). Love the new (old!) prices, appreciate the direction the rules have gone in, but I'm not willing to go for any of the new minis until I've seen some reviews out there.

 Paradigm wrote:
At this point, the thing holding me back from jumping back into BMG is the quality of the resin, some of the sculpts look a little soft and a few of the faces in particular seem to be suffering a bit (compare the new Harley to the Arkham or SS ones, might just be the scuplt but her face seems a lot less expressive and sharply defined). Love the new (old!) prices, appreciate the direction the rules have gone in, but I'm not willing to go for any of the new minis until I've seen some reviews out there.

OK, that seems weird since many tend to believe that resin holds better detail than white metal. And in KM's case there has been some dodgy white metal pushed out. Ironically it's the model you single out that actually has me interested in the new resins. I will agree though that some of the new minis like the cops that accompany the worlds greatest detective seem uninspiring. That said the only thing stoping me from trying out new new rules is someone to play with... :(

Resin certainly can hold detail as well as if not better than metal, just see Anvil Industry, Kromlech, Mierce ect. However, it can also be flat and lack sharpness, edging more into boardgame pieces type territory and given that as you say, KM have been iffy in the past regarding cast quality, I'm just not immediately willing to take a chance with it. There's just too much of a spectrum with resin to go in blind, I think. It's such a nebulous term referring to dozens of different casting materials with wildly varying properties (to be fair, the same can be said of plastic in the wargaming business, it ranges from ultra-crisp GW to soft, shoddy early Mantic stuff).

The cops are a good example actually; It may be the sculpt or the paintjob rather than the cast, but a lot of the edges that should be nice and sharp (corners of pouches, edges of guns, creases in uniforms, grilles on the helmets) look a little under-detailed compared to what KM have put out in the past (decent cast willing). Like I say, it could be any number of things (more cartoony paintjob, deliberately less detailed and thus less daunting to paint sculpts, something with the pictures themselves) but I can't help compare them to some of KM's older similar minis and find they don't quite look as crisp.

The other thing that's bugging me is that the seeming reluctance to go with more than about 2 pieces per mini has led to some very flat, 2D poses that may or may not be a result of switching to resin. For instance, guns/arms pressed into chests, a lot of minis being posed with arms out to the side rather than forward or backward. It's a difficult line for KM to walk as assembling their stuff can and has been a pain at times, but in general I'll take more parts if it means I'm not dealing with arms melded into torsos along their entire length like it appears the Sword Guy in the Bane set has, for example (it's a bit of a pet peeve of mine! )

That said, if the minis get into the wild and reviews are generally positive then I'm all in, as there are some really fantastic models there if the material holds up. It means getting Yet More Joker Goons which I already have plenty of, but the Asylum Joker is one of the best minis they've ever put out!

Where you find those rules in the book is actually all fairly strait forward. There's the three sections, traits in black are in the traits section. Traits in red are special attacks. Traits on weapons are under the weapon special rules. Everything is alphabetical inside those three areas of the book.


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Also, careful criticizing the quality of their casts. That's what got me banned from the Arkham City Limits Facebook page.

 AduroT wrote:
Also, careful criticizing the quality of their casts. That's what got me banned from the Arkham City Limits Facebook page.

And quite rightly, too. Frankly, I think you should feel thankful your weren't p[publicly flogged.

 Paradigm wrote:
To be honest, I think the current approach is fine (especially now there's a mostly up-to-date, searchable digital option rather than having stuff spread over 3 books and a wiki).
At this point, the thing holding me back from jumping back into BMG is the quality of the resin, some of the sculpts look a little soft and a few of the faces in particular seem to be suffering a bit (compare the new Harley to the Arkham or SS ones, might just be the scuplt but her face seems a lot less expressive and sharply defined). Love the new (old!) prices, appreciate the direction the rules have gone in, but I'm not willing to go for any of the new minis until I've seen some reviews out there.

Well unlike their competition that when GW went to finecrap they initially said it was to save us money. We later learned that it was to not only save them money which they never passed on the savings, they made finecrap even more expensive then the metal models.

Knight models despite their serious distribution problems in the USA, they found they were having a problem with the cost of metal models so they raised their prices. That didn't work so they found a cheaper alternative and immediately passed on the savings. Definately nice to see.

Further when I heard about 2nd edition i cringed at having to buy yet another rule book to use my models. And low and behold they didnt just put out the basic rules but they put out the whole rulebook... for FREE....

So i decided that I would go all in and once they were available to preorder in the USA preordered the lot. It is nice to see a miniature company actually focusing on miniatures rather then the publication company that GW has turned into.

Yeah, so far the second edition has been an improvement. They didn't fix all the rules I would have liked them too, but they did fix some stuff and streamline some stuff a bit. The free PDF is super helpful, especially as I've been moving to all digital Rule books, and being free is a surprise bonus. The lowered cost for resin stuff is nice. What I've seen of the Grodd minis makes me think they won't be amazing quality, but at least not terrible initially. Will have to see if they can not ruin their molds like they did with their metals. I've got a set of the Sirens in preorder at the FLGS.

The price reduction has pushed me over the edge into starting.

A while ago I asked here about starting with Poison Ivy, but the list of stuff I needed easily hit $150au. Ivy starter ($58au), Cat Woman/Harley ($50au) or Swamp Thing ($42), box of Blackgate Prisoners ($58au). It was just a bit too expensive.

The new Gothan City Sirens box bundles $110 of that into a $35 box (Ivy starter (minus 1 plant), Cat Woman, Harley Quinn) for nearly 2/3 price drop, and almost halves the price of another (Blackgate Prisoners).

What started as over $150au to start became $75 to start, under half. I'm even going to be supportive and buy Ivys metal set early (because I like that Ivy sculpt and for more plants), and it's STILL cheaper.

This is what should happen when you move to a cheaper material.

I don't like the new Ivy model myself and plan to keep using the non-vidja game one. The other two gals are nice, but I'm likely to use the Bombshell Harley limited model. The plants I definitely want. Note the new plants appear to be uniques vs the old ones you could field three each of.

Chairman Aeon wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
X-Wing is probably equally complex in terms of volume of rules, but its still far more accessible to only have the rules for the models you're playing than to have to memorize keywords and look them each up whenever you need to know the specifics. There's almost no information of value on the cards; not even costs to use or any categorization to know which section of the book you need to go to find it. The advantage is that it lets them change things pretty freely, but in terms of accessibility, its a giant brick wall players have to be willing to push past to put up with the game.

Serious question follows...

Do you think Knight Models should have gone the 8th Edition route with with bespoke rules, the X-Wing (and many others) of having special ability cards...or maybe just ditch a lot of the special rules. I mean Nightwing as 9 special abilities and some Henchmen have 2-4.

Without redoing the 1st edition cards I don't think there's a lot of options. Personally, I think the digital apps are the way to go but without them, but most of it is simply use of card real estate. I mean, regardless of edition, they don't use the backs of the cards for anything, and having rules there would be a huge improvement. Even making a separate document for each faction would be an option, though hiring options are broad enough it probably wouldn't have huge savings.

Mostly though, its a matter of mapping out your whole design and looking for redundancy and opportunity for streamlining. For example, Nightwing has 3 rules that are all descriptively similar (Acrobatics, Combat Flip, Jump Up!). Is there a better way of doing that? Is each rule truly necessary or could they be combined somehow? Could the book only contain common keywords shared across multiple models and leave the rarer stuff to the back of the cards? The DC version does a good job limiting the book lookups to pretty straightforwards concepts like Resistance, Flying, and the like.

I don't think there's a perfect answer; I'm just disappointed more work wasn't put in to cleaning up the rules. My experience with teaching the game has largely been seeing people overwhelmed with figuring out how a model works and I'm sad to see that looks to still be a problem going forward.


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 AduroT wrote:
Where you find those rules in the book is actually all fairly strait forward. There's the three sections, traits in black are in the traits section. Traits in red are special attacks. Traits on weapons are under the weapon special rules. Everything is alphabetical inside those three areas of the book.

I could have sworn I ran into a Special Attack on a card at one point that wasn't in red, but I might have simply confused it with a Trait that had an activation cost.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and another thing. I can assume the answer, but does it say anywhere how models like Gordon work in terms of Rank? Is he always a Sidekick now? I would assume so, but I didn't see it specifically mentioned anywhere under the merged faction.

Oh man, I forgot to look at that. Would mess with my typical Law plan if he's not a Leader anymore.

 AduroT wrote:
Oh man, I forgot to look at that. Would mess with my typical Law plan if he's not a Leader anymore.

You and anyone else wanting to play cops without a costumed vigilante...

Does it change that much over a second sidekick?

 LunarSol wrote:
Does it change that much over a second sidekick?

He wouldn't have Inspire, pretty huge for Gordon since he wants to be in the middle of his cop henchmen anyways.

Just had my first game of second. Damn, it's fast. Combination of set movement and navigable rules. 1hr 40mins, done.

Got my first game set up next week. Someone told me titan bane is even more of a beast.

Yeah, he's scary. Tried Contraband - not sold. Too random, titan is better. Sewers were less teleporty than expected.

Finally bought the Ivy and Slave Plants set. I've heard some horror stories about the quality of Knights casts, but these are pretty good. Can't wait to do some painting.

Did the plant actually have both shoulder sockets? All three of mine had one shoulder socket missing/filled in.

the Second edition rules have been met with a resounding "meh" with my small group. Our biggest complaint is the amount of page flipping you have to do in a game of BMG...This version doesn't fix that at all.
Plus the rules still have wonky English and bad editing.
Won't see much play in our neck of the woods (Boston area)

 AduroT wrote:
Did the plant actually have both shoulder sockets? All three of mine had one shoulder socket missing/filled in.

Left side socket was filled in a bit. I just trimmed down the nub and I'm using liquid putty to fill in the gaps.

Wayland games shows the new coloured resins (we've seen batman already but I don't recall the others)

John Constantine enters the fray.