If you haven’t played Batman Chronicles, and are considering the second season kickstarter, check out might review on the game. If you have the game, but are struggling to win with one side or the other, check out my thoughts below.

I have slightly favoured the focus here on the heroes (as I find that harder when you first play a level) but as the villain you will want to stop these behaviours;

During the Game:

Critical Path; The critical path for each mission is the journey that your heroes must go on across the map to achieve the goals. Reaching the safe, the computer, getting to the villain – you are going to need to chase these objectives and sometimes in a specific order. You will often have to split your characters up to achieve the critical path without using all your cubes for movement! Think about this from the first turn, because this is a time limited game and only this path is a real option. The villain will block this area with as much as he can – a few villains in key check points to make you spend cubes to fight or move through. The villain can win without throwing a punch if he just holds you up.

Critical Skills; Picking the heroes at the start is critical to whether this mission will be easy or difficult. If you don’t take a dexterous character and have a bomb to disarm – you are going to struggle. Also, if only one character can realistically do the job – the villain will focus on that hero. Defend that hero from the mobs that will try to slow them or kill them – that hero is essential to your strategy and needs protection and good planning.

Critical Fights; There are critical fights during the game – you will need the right characters, plenty of energy and potentially some re-rolls to make this happen. These are the fights against the big villains or rooms full of thugs. However, critical fights are few and far between. Don’t spend every turn throwing down one small thug only to have achieved very little by the end of 6-7 turns and needing to rest a lot!

Overkill; Watch out for that big moment in the game where your key fighter faces down against the head of the villains. This is the moment you have saved the equipment for, the energy for re-rolls. When you have this, or a critical fight, you will want to enough energy cubes to max out your fight possibility. Overkill on an opponent is better than being one dice short. Re-rolls help but realistically if all the dice fall in the middle of their variance it can be very difficult to re-roll higher. Get as many dice out there at the start of the roll and then see where you go from there.

Something to Defend; Either the hero or the villain will need to defend during the off turn. They will need energy cubes to hold off the damage. Yes losing fatigue is frustrating but for the villain losing pieces can be critical and for the hero the permanent loss of that energy can be game changing.

Rest Once; During most missions I have found that the hero will seek to rest once. More than that and you will simply struggle to get to where you need. The first move is more efficient and often the first actions are more critical. Lot’s of small moves and recharges are better than a large turn and then a rest.

Use Key Items; Items are there for a reason. Hold back the big attack item for when you need it, or keep a device back for the challenge. These items though should be used, so if you are in the penultimate turn and they haven’t done anything – perhaps you need to rethink the critical path. Beware, items on the map can be decoys though!

Plan B; I think it’s hard on some levels to have a plan B. Sometimes its sending one hero back to cover the mistakes from another – unlikely to be effective enough to save the day. However, the most effective plan B can be throwing weapons. Yes they aren’t as good as your main attack stat, but it can mean that a hero who did their job can clear a space for a hero still en route for their mission. Don’t rely on one hero to do it all – the long range weapons (and optional items for these) can be a lifesaver in a game.

Re Roll – Marginal vs Critical; So back to my point above. If you are trying to turn a 1 into a 2 (but not a zero!) then this is often unlikely on the die. Perhaps its even as unlikely as turning the black dice from a zero to a 4. However, if you are going to go for the re-rolls I would always go for the critical re-rolls over the marginal. Landing one more punch your opponent could block is not going to be as important as dropping the four extra hits that seal the villains fate. Save your energy for re-rolls that can’t be counter or will be critical

Good Luck!