Boom! Just like that I’m pulled back into Gotham and the world of the Batman. It’s been over a year since I’ve touched any Batman related models, mostly down to not enough opponents in the area, but I’ve been keeping up with the releases and keeping an eye on what Knight Models are up to with the property. I was pleasantly surprised when they announced a two player starter box, based off of the Suicide Squad movie, but knew I needed to get ahold of one and see if I thought it was any good.
I’ve been keeping up with Knight Models since fairly early days. The days when all they had available for learning the rules was a badly translated PDF rulebook and the one main thing you notice with a product like the Suicide Squad Box Game is how far they have come in such a short amount of time. The shiny, sumptuous box this game comes wrapped up in is a beauty. Never before have I been this impressed by the box of a game. The artwork is on point perfectly blending the movie characters into a comic book variation of themselves and the logos and text are all presented in that slightly cooky Suicide Squad way. Everything is bright and bold, but more importantly strong. This box is a solid beast. Take a look for yourself…
Even the interior carries this asthetic making for an awesome whole. Inside is all the gibbons needed to play. The poppet card buildings, tokens, rulebook and character cards are all stored above a strip of foam and a pink plastic tray for all the miniatures…
This box looks amazing and you can really see it standing out on your games shops shelves.
So let’s take a look at some of the exciting things that come in the box. The first of those that I couldn’t wait to get stuck into was the buildings. Printed onto nice thick card these come in their frames alongside the tokens…
I eagerly popped out the buildings and after a relatively stress free 15-20 mins I had some wonderful buildings ready to go…
Honestly I like some MDF, more realistic looking, buildings myself but these are a stellar addition to the game for an easy to build and cheap way of gaining a great looking table. They are absolutely chock full of Batman character. Little details like riddle markers, Harvey Dents campaign office and Batman and Wonder Woman posters to name a few, litter the buildings. Each section is double sided meaning you create a completely different building just by swapping them, but in another stroke of genius, you can also stack them to create larger buildings. Once built they were also surprisingly strong. These will definitely hold your model or a whole gang with no issues.
Overall I’m really impressed with these buildings and am hopeful that Knight Models will embrace them and hopefully release bigger and bette variations.
The next item on the list is probably the most vital for beginners, the rulebook. This is a soft back version that is slightly smaller than it’s hardback counterpart. Like the rest of the set it’s heavily Suicide Squad themed, although the cover is the only part that is lifted directly from he movie the rest is the same comic art style as the cover of the box.
It contains an overview of the rules needed to play the game, but does not go quite as in depth as the main rulebook nor does it include any of the information included in the Flash and Arrow book other than how to build a Suicide Squad team. This is not a bad thing and fairly par for the course when it comes to a starter box. This will keep you going for a fair wee while but once you start getting into other gangs or characters you will need to pick up the full rulebook.
One of the things it does contain that the main rulebook does not is a themed mini campaign to play with the included miniatures. It’s nice to see new scenarios to play the game being featured in all the books coming out.
Finally let’s take a look at the other gubbons and tokens that are included in the box.
The box game give’s you a set of take the lead counters for each faction, objective counters for each player, 4 dice, a set of 4 sewers and 4 lampposts and a mysterious reputation points chit. All of these are made from the same card as the buildings so are the same great quality and definitely a fantastic starting point for the plethora of tokens you need for the game. The lamppost markers are a bit of a nuisance. They won’t stand if just stuck into the card base that comes with them, but will stand when you add a 30mm base underneath them, but if this was the intention it would have been good to include enough bases in the box. Still better to have them than not though.
The dice are very nice, but when you’re playing can take a wee while to get used to and decipher. It’s amazing how used you are to seeing the dots presented in a specific way and how easily a little difference can throw you off.
Last bu not least is the miniatures and their character cards…
As you can see the back of the cards omit the usual image of the model and have instead gone for something a bit different. Each of the Suicide Squad members has symbol based on the look of that character and the Joker gang just has the same symbols the Joker himself. Harley has her own symbol and since she can be in both gangs her colour is a mix. The stats side of the card is the same as any other BMG character card, filled with the same artwork and awesome rules.
The miniatures themselves are nice but I will start off by saying I’ve never been a fan of the movie models in the range anyway. Each one does a fantastic job of capturing the essence of the movie character and they really do look like them, especially the Joker. There is the usual light amount of flash and the biggest problem that I’ve had with Knight models mini’s, really small joins. I really don’t like the insanely thin join point on the miniatures that is impossible to pin, but it is something I’ve come to expect. I’ll have a bit more of an in depth look at the miniatures once I have a go at building and painting them, hence just the Knight Models pictures for now.
I also managed to get one of the pre-order Batfleck miniatures, yay! This is one of the movie miniatures I can get behind as I really like what they’ve done with Batman in the DC movie universe and this miniature perfectly embodies that version of the character.
Overall I’m really impressed with this box. The production values are at the top end of the scale across the board meaning you get exactly what you pay for if not more. I hope it sells well considering that the movie it ties into didn’t do very well for itself (I loved it), and draws in a whole new bunch of people into this fantastic game!
DeathWatch Studios 