Gotham at the club

A couple of months back, Bruce introduced me to this game called Tribal ($10 on wargames vault) designed for skirmish gaming among low-tech cultures. The key thing about it is no dice: it is card driven. I was skeptical but it was a hoot to play and Bruce morphed it slightly to do so Three Musketeers. 

My thought about the combat system (which is basically a five-part card game) was that this would work for superheroes. So I brought a small game out to the club to try last week. Andy and Taylor (above) played the heroes while Terry and Richard played the villains.

The scenario was that Gotham was on the edge of chaos and tapes demonstrating the mayor's corruption had been hidden on the board. The heroes had to find them and carry them to the police station (where they would get "lost" in the evidence room) while the baddies wanted to take them to the TV station to boost Penguin's bid for the mayor's chair.

The first two turns saw movement onto the board and rules questions. Back Lightening soon found the tapes and now the Bat Family had to hustle them to the police station.

I found some thematic cards online so each side had an appropriate deck. Below, the bad guys are starting to form a ring around the cop shop (brick building on left) while someone's crotch looms over Gotham.

Scenic building shot because the table looked pretty decent.

Here come the cops! Taylor moved up his melee-coppers to run interference for Black Lightening. In the background. Katana poses on the top of the TV station.

The cops were met by some thugs and had a rumble by the school bus.

The cops beat the goons pretty handily and also inflated a lot of damage on Bane (who is actually Deathstroke but I couldn't recall that when I was writing the rosters).

Batman and Penguin move up to join the fight. Bats eventually disposed of most of the opposition.

On the other side of the board, the shooting coppers and Katana move up to put some pressure on the shooting villains while Bats ducks into the alley to attack Poison Ivy.

To my surprise, everyone took to the top of the building for a showdown.

Katana dispatched Poison Ivy, a flowing a badly wounded Back Lightening to make a break for the police station.

Meanwhile, Bats cleaned up the rest of the goons. A fairly convincing win for the heroes and the mayor remains in power. Who knew Bats was for the 1%?

Overall, the rules worked out. A lot was determined by the cards and we forgot to add in some of the special abilities at the beginning. I was happy I managed to get everything on one QRS including rosters and scenario goals. I need to run down one question about shooting. Thanks to everyone who played!