Batman Miniature Game 3rd Edition Guide

What is Batman Mniniature Game 3rd Edition?

The Batman Miniature Game 3rd Edition, or BMG 3E, is a skirmish wargame by Knight Models, set in the superhero universe of DC Comics. The focus of BMG is street level heroes and villains. like Batman, Two-Face and Harley Quinn. The higher-level superheroes like Superman and Wonder Woman have their own game by Knight Models, the DC Universe Miniature Game. 

You can buy all the Batman Miniature Game products from our Tabletop Sponsor, Firestorm Games.

BMG 3E Guide - Mechanics

In BMG 3E, during each turn, players alternate activating the miniatures from their crews with each miniature performing 1 of the following actions:

• A Movement action (including dynamic movement over scenery)
• A Tactical action (a close-combat or ranged attack, interaction with a suspect marker, or they can travel between sewer markers)
• A Special action (which is required by certain skills and traits)

At the start of each turn, each player gets to place 4 Audacity markers on their crew. A crew member with an Audacity marker gets to complete 1 of each action when they activated as opposed to the single action that the other crew members will get. This allows you to control which crew member will have a big impact each turn.

Attacks and defense are streamlined, with each characters attack and defense characteristic. The attack value is the number of dice rolled to attack, and each roll above the target's defense value is a hit. The target then rolls dice equal to its defense value, and each dice rolling higher than the attack value of the attacker, blocks one of their hits.

A strength dice, of a different color, is also rolled with the attack and if that dice hits, it can’t be blocked by a defense roll. This gives all characters a chance to wound their target, no matter how powerful or heavily armored, giving weak characters a chance to swarm and overwhelm more powerful characters, but also allowing powerful characters more chance to deal more damage to weaker ones.

Most of the complexity of BMG comes from the skills and traits of the characters themselves, working out where they excel and which combination of abilities work well together. Knowing yours and your opponent’s crew and abilities is a key skill.

BMG 3E includes objectives and plot cards, so you can build crews and decks with specific play styles to suit your own style of gaming. It adds another dimension from just trying to take out your opponent's crew. You either need to make sure your crew can achieve its own aim quicker than your opponent, or have a way to deal with your opponent’s different win conditions.

BMG 3E Guide - What do you need to play?

To play BMG 3E you need:

• A copy of the rulebook
• Miniatures to represent your crew (and their character stat cards)
• Several 6-sided dice (ideally all of the same color with 1 of a different color for the strength dice)
• Measuring stick / Tape Measure
• Tokens
• A battlefield (BMG is ideally played on a 3x3 foot space with lots of scenery)
• Plot, Objective, Event and Encounter Cards (which are essentially optional, but BMG 3E is designed to be played with)

All of the above is included in the Back to Gotham Starter Set, which we previewed here and we'll talk about in more details below in the Products section.

If you’re coming from a previous edition of BMG or you don't want to play with either of the crews from Back to Gotham, you can download the rules, compendium and card packs from the Knight Models site here. The only way to get physical copies of the core cards is through the Back to Gotham set and some of these cards will be used regardless of the faction you choose to play.

Starter packs are available in the form of Batboxes for each faction and these are being converted to 3E gradually. We discuss these in more details below in the Products section.

The Encounter and Event cards provide an easy way to generate deployment zones and a random event for games. These are available in the Back to Gotham Starter Set or in the Download Section on the Knight Models site.

BMG 3E Guide - Products

Back to Gotham Starter Set

The Back to Gotham starter set is the perfect way to start playing BMG 3E. It contains:

• 2 crews - Batman and Joker  plus their character cards (both crews are 350 Rep) 
• Joker Funair Scenery Set
• 1 Full Rulebook
• 1 Quick-start Rulebook (Basic rules and 4 onboarding scenarios to get you in)
• 6 Dice
• Measuring Sticks
• Tokens and templates
• 86 Objective Cards
• 16 Plot Cards
• 8 Encounter Cards
• 8 Event Cards

Pitting Batman against Joker is a great introduction to the system, especially with the Joker themed scenery set. All of the cards you need are also included, and you will be able to build up and modify your decks for each of those crews as you add further miniatures later on.

Batboxes

If you don’t want to play either of the crews from the Back to Gotham set, or you just want to try out another crew, Batboxes are designed as a starting point for that crew. Knight Models are regularly releasing 3E updated Batboxes for each faction and at the time of producing this guide, they are available for the League of Assassins and the live-action version of Birds of Prey.

Each Batbox contains a 350 rep crew, along with Objective, Plot and Equipment cards for that crew.

Card Packs

If you already have a Batbox from a previous edition, the Card Packs allow you to convert your faction to 3E. The card packs contain all the Plot and Objective cards from the Batboxes. The only cards from the Batboxes, not included are the equipment cards, for which the details from the equipment cards are available in the Compendium, which is free on the Knight Models site.

Character Boxes / Blister Packs 

If you want to expand your crew, this can be done by adding characters and henchmen with Character Boxes and Blister Packs. These include the miniatures, character cards and any associated Plot and Objective cards.

BMG 3E Guide - Factions

The BMG 3E Factions are:

• Batman
• Birds of Prey
• Joker
• The Court of Owls
• Organized Crime
• Pengiun
• Soldiers of Fortune (Bane)
• Mr Freeze
• Cults
• The Riddlers
• League of Assassins

We're going to be producing indepth guides to each faction, and they will appear beside each faction name above as they become avialable.

The BMG 3E products used to produce this article were provided by Knight Models and Asmodee UK.