Monday 22 April 2019

Dark Knight Rises 2 player set part 2- Bane and League of Shadows

Welcome back everyone to part 2 of my overview of the Dark Knight Rises 2 player set. As we've already covered Brave and the Bold in the last post, this will be finishing up the set with the Bane half, also usable in League of Shadows (or in Talia's case, only usable in League). I have some very mixed opinions about these models depending on which crew they're in, but without further ado let's get into it!

The Bane henchmen from the set, these guys are in general really good. They bring some slightly different options to Bane crews, some of which are very welcome, and have a lot to like. 
Offensive
Each Mercenary brings its own different kind of weapon, and each has great uses in how it operates. 
Barsad and his Assault Rifle should be somewhat self explanatory, it's a big gun with big damage, and with Precise Aim and possible Night Vision in Bane crews he can be an early threat to anything on the table. 
Mercenary 1 is the first Bane model to have an Axe, something mostly seen in Joker crews, but here it is a weapon to be greatly feared and respected. With Venom, something he can take in Bane or League, he gets rerolls to both hit and wound for a turn at 3+ strength, all but guaranteeing he will cut down most things he hits. He is only attack 3, and thus easy to block, but he is a very reliable melee killer that will easily slot into any Bane crew. 
Mercenary 2 is of debatable use, being the second model to come with an automatic pistol in Bane (and both being standard). For 2 rep over Clover (and $50 less- important with Venom Lab) he gains +1 strength and replaces Rapid Fire with Reinforced Gloves and Mercenary, so he occupies a similar but subtly different role in the crew. While Clover puts out more shots he is scrambling for ammo crates once he runs out, while Mercenary 2 can just start swinging his fists and having decent chances at KOing models. He's not a bad choice to put Venom on, but not that good either, although he does do wonders with Handcuffs instead of a piece like Cuchillo, and it facilitates a more aggressive Arrest piece . 
Defensive
They have Bane stats. Defence 3 endurance 5 with a Bulletproof Vest, just like almost every other henchmen in the crew, and that's about all to say. 
Overall
Like most Bane models, these guys are very straightforward. Veteran for a little bit of counter reallocation is great, but otherwise they don't have much in the way of special tricks to play around with. 
They work very well in Bane for reasons I have already discussed, but their biggest weakness in a League crew is how inflexible they are from being locked into a specific leader option in Bane. While they are great with him, they can't truly capitalise on some of the other tricks in League crews by sheer virtue of Bane being the leader now, and access to some of those other options comes at a hefty investment. Rebirth Talia and Cheshire for example, are both pushing the rep costs of the crew much higher, and Ra's is just not allowed at all (although it makes sense for theme reasons)
As an alternate option to taking the Batman Tumbler, the one in the box can also be used as an upgrade card for any of the models with the Mercenary trait inside (so all the henchmen). It has the same strength, movement and defence changes as the Batman one, but gains 2 extra endurance to compensate for not being able to swap it with the Batpod. Defensively this means it is immune to being one-shotted by a lucky Carbine unlike the Batman one, but is still very scared of any Sniper Rifles on the table as they can straight up delete it with lucky crits. In comparison to the BatB version it also loses the jump ability while being more expensive in both rep and funding, although it's guns get a huge bonus in doing blood damage instead of purely stun still with unlimited ammo. The machine guns become obscene when attacking henchmen (and at a higher RoF4, something I missed in my last post on the BatB Tumbler) and the rocket launchers can clear out chaff very easily, while it doesn't lose the ability to charge if it needs to get through a combat situation. 
Unfortunately though, the Tumbler isn't really a great pick competitively for a few reasons, the largest being it doesn't have a great model to pilot it and it's super expensive. Mercenary 2 is ok as a driver but he is still not using his pistol to do so, while the only standard Mercenary without a funding cost is far, far better off getting stuck into combat with his axe, something he can't do without tossing the upgrade. As a means of getting to combat and getting some early shots off it might be ok, but that is still very costly when they could be buying almost 3 extra models for that price (and higher endurance total, thus more likely to even make combat)

Someone who had a previous eternal card that still saw a lot of play in that format, DKR Bane pushes out that old card with being almost a complete upgrade in every way. Compared to the old version, he gains Close Combat Master, an extra point of willpower and Born in the Darkness while losing Brutal and only costing 1 point more, which is a huge benefit to Bane crews, but in League he is no longer a sidekick, instead being leader only. This isn't a bad thing, however, as it compensates his massive improvement with a higher VP gain for an opponent when he is KO or casualty. 
Offensive
What's not to be said, the guy is a combat monster. Rerolls to hit, attack 5 with combo, double stun at 3+ strength, he can quite easily punch out most threats himself. What he also does, however, is facilitate combat henchmen and turn them into their own massive threats, having the double-tap of Kill Them and Inspire to give models 2 free counters every turn until he dies, which is a great threat to make an opponent deal with on top of his already impressive melee.
Bane's True Love is important to note, as it can put him at attack 6 and willpower 9 which is a huge gain, but it only applies in a League crew and not Bane, while also requiring an expensive (or garbage as we'll see below) Talia to have already died. Currently as written it also doesn't actually work as there is no model in the game listed as just "Talia", rather there is only "Talia al Ghul". It's an easy house rule and should always be accepted, but it needs a fix from KM because it's their mistake, and a mistake that's carried over from the original DKR Bane.
Defensive
Defence 4 is decent, especially at endurance 8, and he has a few traits that help him out defensively. Desensitised means he is always at his maximum amount of counters, Runaway makes him immune to Arrest and his unique trait Born in the Darkness gives him a few nice bonuses. Immunity to Sneak Attack is situational but always nice, meaning he can block anything but Speedsters provided he has the counters, and also gains a +1 to block when he isn't illuminated which is a nice little 12% increase in his likelihood to block all but attack 2.
Just for the sake of completeness, these combined means he is the hardest piece of all to deal with in straight 2 player box games, as the BatB side has little to no blood damage, he is immune to Arrest and can't be Sneak Attacked by Batman, while blocking everything on the opponent's side on a 3+ or better. New players may possibly find him a little bit too powerful for regular starter games (as he is also very newb friendly in general) and this should be considered for demo game purposes as well as simply introducing new people to the box set.
Overall
He packs Strategist which is helpful for the obvious extra strategy point, but otherwise he again has no real special tricks. He's a key piece in combat, but that's his only place.


Quite easily the worst model in the box rules-wise, Talia is unfortunately just not that great in any role, and massively held back by being League of Assassins only.
Offensive
There really isn't much to speak of, attack 4 and strength 4+ is good, but she only ever does a single blood in a crew where double damage is on every single other model available in standard. Sneak Attack helps her out a little bit in not being able to block her attacks, but she will only ever do great work when teamed up with another model.
Defensive
For her rep she is actually pretty great defensively at defence 4 and endurance 6, and Charm makes her a real pain to deal with using henchmen. A couple of good guns will down her very quickly, as will a dedicated melee leader (and there's a good chance most regular beater FA/sidekicks will too), but she's too expensive to just be put down to objective duty. Archie proved that a pure annoyance sidekick can work, but in Talia's case she is too much jack of all trades, master of none to be worth much thought.
Overall
Willpower 7 is quite good for her cost and lets her do a decent amount (although none of it is especially great) and she has a couple of other ways of assisting her crew in Millionaire and Scheming. Scheming isn't very relevant if you have a good plan of what you're doing and can get a good idea of your opponent's moves, and Millionaire would be far more useful in a Bane crew than it is in League, simply because they don't have all that many equipment options that are great takes, often meaning you'll be spending leftover funding just for the sake of it. She enables a merc focused list in League better, but at the same time she would have far more of a place if she was League/Bane like the rest of the box, competing with Bird for the sidekick slot.

3 comments:

  1. Hi, what how would you recomend to create a 350 points League/Bane crew based on this set?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've built a couple different versions, but I like Bane, Talia, Damien, and then your pick of henchmen to fill in the gaps (usually making good use of Barsad and the Axe model).

    ReplyDelete
  3. There isn't much to say, attack 4 and strength 4+ are good, but she only ever does a single blood in a crew where every other model available in standard does double damage. Sneak Attack helps her a little by preventing her attacks from being blocked, but she will only ever do great work when teamed up with another model. Regards, Bane Coat

    ReplyDelete