Designer: Frederic Henry (Batman: Gotham City Chronicles, Conan, Timeline: Inventions)

Artists: Sandra H. Archer, Arnaud Boudoiron (Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood of Venice, Bloodborne: The Board Game), June Chung, Georges Clarenko (Batman: Gotham City Chronicles, Conan, The Others), David Demaret (Batman: Gotham City Chronicles, Claustrophobia 1643, Mythic Battles: Pantheon), David Finch (Batman: Gotham City Chronicles), Anthony Jean, Jae Lee, Alex Maleev, Aragorn Marks (Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood of Venice, Bloodborne: The Board Game, Mythic Battles: Pantheon), Tomeu Morey, Milan Nikolic (Claustrophobia 1643), Edgar Ramos (Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood of Venice, Bloodborne: The Board Game), Stephanie Roux, Edgar Skomorovski, Irek Zielinski (Reich Busters: Project Vril, Claustrophobia 1643)

Publisher: Monolith (Batman: Gotham City Chronicles, Conan, Mythic Battles: Pantheon)

Genre/Mechanisms: action/movement programing, action allowance system, area movement, dice rolling, miniatures, partnerships, variable phase order, variable player powers

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, Batman: Gotham City Chronicles – Season 2 is already fully-funded.  In fact, pledges currently total 2.5x the initial funding goal.

Player Count: 2-5

Solo Mode: no

Complexity: medium-heavy

Risk: low

What It’s About: More stuff for Batman: Gotham City Chronicles at a hefty price tag, focusing on Versus content.

How It Works: Batman: Gotham City Chronicles is both a miniatures skirmish game, and a series of scenarios featuring a huge variety of heroes and villains, different scenario goals, and an action point allowance system for both heroes and villains. Heroes (when not in Versus mode) function individually, using their stamina cubes to take various actions each round. Villains are controlled in a larger board called “The River” where points are allowed to activate different villain characters each round, with their price dependent on where they sit in the villains’ queue. Season 2 adds in 9 more missions to Season 1’s 42 missions, 10 more Versus missions to Season 1’s 8 missions, adds 3 new expansions, 5th player supports, a Maps pack, and 3 new sets of miniatures beyond what comes with the new expansions.

Comparisons: DC Universe Miniature Game hits the miniatures skirmish itch more than the puzzle-y gameplay with multiple missions/scenarios. I’ve heard good things about Batman: The Animated Series – Gotham City Under Siege, including that it features tighter gameplay and a better designed game at its core, but of course Gotham City Under Seige doesn’t feature the wide array of miniatures or wide array of missions that Gotham City Chronicles does. And for similar styled gameplay, Monolith’s Conan and Claustrophobia 1643 both feature an action allowance point system for the heroes and the river of antagonists to be activated from round to round. 

What Should I Pledge?:
$146 Base Game Core Boxes: both of the two base game core boxes from Season 1.
$317 All-In Season 2: all of the new Season 2 content: Suicide Squad expansion, League of the Assassins expansion, Batman Inc. expansion, 5th player support, new board: GCPD station/sewers, Poison Ivy New 52 pack, Batman Ivy New 52 pack, Prof Pyg Gang pack, all of the Picking Zone packs, Red Hood miniature.
$331 All-In Season 1: in addition to the two base came core boxes, this also includes: Wayne Manor expansion, Arkham Asylum expansion, Versus expansion, Batmobile add-on, dice pack, and The Narrow Chronicles campaign pack.
$648 All-In Season 1 & Season 2: all of the stuff.

Add-Ons:
Everything listed above can be bought piecemeal as add-ons in the Pledge Manager.

KS Exclusives:
Because of the size and scope of the game, Batman: Gotham City Chronicles will not be available at retail. In that sense, the entire game is a KS Exclusive. Additionally, while the various products in the line will be available from Monolith directly in the future, everything will cost almost 30% more than it does through the Kickstarter now.

All-In Total: In the continental U.S., you’re looking at $648 for the All-In Season 1 & Season 2 plus shipping, which is likely to be somewhere between $35 and $100, for an estimate total of $723. If you want to go smaller, you could just elect to pledge the $331 All-In Season 1, plus about $50 in shipping for an estimate total of $381. And the lightest pledge out there, the $146 Base Game Core Boxes will add about $34 shipping for an estimated total of $180. Depending on how deep you want to go down this particular rabbit hole, there’s a pledge for you.

Batman: Gotham City Chronicles – Season 2 completes its Kickstarter on Tuesday, June 18th and tentatively ships in May 2020.