Batman Miniature Game second edition announced

Knight Models has announced a second edition of the Batman Miniature game to be released in September. As well, they have announced that they will be moving to colored resin figures. The older metal figures are still supposed to be compatible, as would the Flash/Arrow expansion and Arkham Knights campaign books.

A lot of the metal figures have been moved into their Legends area, which means that they don’t make them as often and will become harder to get.

Since I haven’t gotten too deep into getting the gangs, I’m okay with this. I was waiting to get the Arkham Knights Campaign book to see if there was any figures/affiliations to focus on first. I will get the figures that work for both the BMG and DCU. Now that they have made convenient sets to collect them. A lot of the gangs did not appeal to me.

With the new edition, they are changing some of the affiliations of the crewss that are in the system. They have joined the Batman/Green Arrow/Law Forces into the Brave and the Bold. They have done away with the Wonderland Gang affiliation – which only had 4 figures anyways. They have changed the Poison Ivy crew to Gotham Sirens. I already had Suicide Squad and Joker squads, thanks to the boxed set, and the entire Watchmen set. I was interested in getting more figures to round out the Batman/Green Arrow before. I was interested in the Law Forces and the Bane crew, and was thinking about the Poison Ivy, and Organized Crime crews. Because they were smaller sets, I was also thinking about the Court of Owls, Wonderland Gang, and even the League of Shadows.

Since the resin is supposed to be cheaper than the metals, even though I prefer working with metals, I’m cautiously okay with this as well. It really depends on the quality of the resins. Unfortunately, they are not quite a big enough company yet to be able to afford plastic figures, which I like best.

They are also changing from Metric to Imperial measurements. This doesn’t affect me either way. I still find myself thinking in inches by default, but metric is so much easier to do calculations.

They are changing the design of the cards again. But they had already done this a few times. The Watchmen cards don't match the current style and the new format is different again. But they have been really good about having the updated stat cards on their website.

GenCon or GenCan't?

I was at GenCon in 1992 for the GenCon/Origins and the 25th anniversary. Back then, it was in Milwaukee, at MECCA. I was there the next year in 1993 when Magic was released. We were there when Wizards of the Coast bought TSR in 1997 and after Hasbro bought WOTC. We were there in 1998 when they left MECCA (we saved a brick from the demolition site) and when the new WOTC castle replaced the old TSR castle (we saved a piece of the old castle too). We were there when Cardhalla first debuted in 1999 as a sometime people did with the discarded Magic cards left lying around before it became a big thing.
I went almost every year in that period, except the year my sister scheduled her wedding on GenCon Saturday.

When GenCon made the move to Indianapolis in 2003, we did not go and we have not been since. A logistical combination of a second child, a poor exchange on the dollar, the extra distance, and not having the knowledge of the downtown in the new city all factored in against us.


This year is the 50th anniversary of GenCon. It has been sold out for a while. One of the friends that we had gone with is making the trip this year with his son. We are still not going.

Shan and I talked about it, but the logistics still work against us. While our kids are old enough to leave behind and our dollar is doing better, the travel, new city, and having to book time off for it in advance work against us. Plus, the uncertainty of hotels, and even how quickly the memberships sold out would have made this one tricky.

It might be sour grapes, but I’m not even sure how much I would enjoy it anymore. I would still try to get in a Diplomacy game, and check in with the Highlander CCG crowd. I would spend a lot of time in the Dealers Room, looking at the new products, trying to find a few old items (like Jean Grey), and looking for some familiar faces – like GW/AoG Dave Frank, and TSR Brian Mitchel. I believe I would find the crowds overwhelming. Plus, not knowing the area, not likely to get a hotel near the convention, and the travel would all be challenging.
Most of the designers can now be reached online. A lot of the new games I can wait and buy locally or online. A lot of the older items I ‘could’ buy online, if I was willing to pay those rates. Even the promos aren’t as big a draw anymore. I’ve done without so many of the Heroclix promos now that I have passed beyond filling them. A lot of the other promos, I would still have the ability to buy online albeit at an inflated price.

That said, I do have my friend looking for a Bat-Mite promo for me this year, if he gets a chance.
I’m sure I would enjoy it if I was there. I really can’t see us making it down though, unless finances change significantly, like lottery-scale.

DC Universe - new collections for old BMG figs

Knight Models has started repackaging some of their older BMG figures with the Universe cards as well. Luckily, I hadn’t bought them yet so I will be able to take advantage of this. They had created a bunch of cards for the figures that you were able to print off yourself in the PDF of the rules.

The first two they released were the Justice League and the Secret Society of Supervillains. The Justice League contains Flash, Green Arrow, and Hawkman. The Secret Society contains Black Manta, Killer Frost, and Professor Zoom. In putting together the new sets they updated a few of the cards.

They just released the remaining three sets that they had preorders for - Birds of Prey, Suicide Squad, and Teen Titans. We had speculated which figures that they would contain. We were right about the Teen Titans in guessing that it would contain Cyborg, Kid Flash, and Starfire.

We thought that the Birds of Prey would contain Batgirl, Black Canary, and Hawkgirl but they substituted Huntress for Batgirl even though Huntress did not yet have a card.

The Suicide Squad was a bit of a mix. We thought it could have Deadshot, Harley Quinn, and the Joker. Alternatively, it could have contained Deadshot, Deathstroke, and Joker, leaving Harley to add to Ivy and a Catwoman for a Gotham Sirens. These were based on the figures that already had cards listed. I had hoped that it could possibly include the comic sculpt of Boomerang (which did not have a card yet, but I really prefer this figure to the one from the movie).
In the end, they only used the Deadshot figure which had previously had a card, and added the comic figures of Katanna and Captain Boomerang, both of which did not have cards.

This is great as I don’t have any of those figures yet. I had only started filling in these figures with Ravager, and Lobo. It would also save me the trouble of printing the cards.

From the cards, that would leave Batgirl, Ravager, Deathstroke, Harley Quinn, Joker, Lobo, Poison Ivy, and Ra’s Al Ghul as the last regular-sized figures and Bane, Clayface, Solomon Grundy, and Swamp Thing as larger figures. A League of Assassins set could still be made from Ravager, Deathstroke, and Ra’s Al Ghul. Gothem Sirens could also be made with Batgirl, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy.

Figure Painting Total - July 2017

I picked up the Kill Team and DCU Trinity on our trip to Thunder Bay. The other few I picked up online.

BM – The Dynamic Duo – 2
BM/DCU – Lobo – 1
BM/DCU – Ravager – 1
DCU – Trinity – 3
GW – Kill Team – Space Marines – 10
GW – Kill Team – Tau Fire – 10
GW – Kill Team – Tau drones – 2
GW – Kill Team – Tau gun emplacement – 1
MU – Emma Frost – 1


July figures bought - 31, figures painted – 0

Running total 2017 – figures bought 106, figures painted 0