Greetings once again, dice slingers, card wizards and tabletop enthusiasts! This week’s Tabletop Tuesday takes us from the 40’s to the 60’s and then all the way to the 22nd century.
To begin, we start with an old favorite of mine – Batman. No, not Christian Bale. Obviously not Clooney or Kilmer, either. Not even Keaton. That’s rights, folks. We’re talking Adam West. The year is 1966 and for 3 seasons Adam West and Burt Ward would don the guises of Batman and Robin (respectively) and face off against a colorful array of the caped crusader’s most conniving criminal counterparts. With Caesar Romero as the Joker, Burgess Meredeith as the Penguin, Vincent Price as Egghead and no less than 3 Catwomen (played by Julie Newmarr, Eartha Kitt and Lee Merriwether), this campy take on the Dark Knight is a far cry from the darker and more violent films of recent memory. I only ever caught episodes in syndication more than 20 years after it had aired, but the show definitely has it’s charms and more than it’s fair share of fans. To that end, WizKids has been releasing teasers for their next line of HeroClix – Batman Classic TV.
Now, the HeroClix site has been abuzz with updates for this expansion for a while now, but it wasn’t until I saw this Joker preview that I got really interested. I’m still waiting on the set as a whole before I can put together any sort of opinion on the new mechanics/abilities/figure options, but the fact that WizKids is reaching way back to the Batman TV Series is pretty exciting. I think there’s a lot of potential here for them to have fun and for players/fans to snag some really great models.
I also think the “Bang! Boom! Zap!” bubbles are a great touch.
Who knows? If this takes off, Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond sets might not be far behind…
As a quick addendum, in other Heroclix News, Wizkids announced the original Enterprise (as in, the one from the show of the same name) would be debuting for Star Trek HeroClix Tactics Series III. They’ll be joining the likes of the Borg and will allow players to conceivably field 3 generations of Enterprises on the battlefield!
Moving away from Clix, there’s been some hot buzz over on Kickstarter lately. Way back in March, Fantasy Flight Games announced that they were handing the reins of their excellent World War II board game series Tide of Iron over to 1A Games. The transition of ownership took place over the summer months and now 1A Games is set to begin distributing the same great game on their own. To that end, they’ve begun a Kickstarter campaign for a new starter set and the Stalingrad expansion. Both the new core box and the expansion will be 100% compatible with the Fantasy Flight original and Stalingrad is set to add more urban maps and an entire Soviet army.
The Tide of Iron franchise offers a rich, deep WWII strategic combat experience with many of the bells & whistles of a full-on miniatures game in a neat, controlled board game package. It also has a ton of top-notch components ranging from variable boards for different scenarios to oodles of detailed plastic infantry and tanks – so, you know, I’m sold.
Tabletop Term of the Week: Board & card games are a substantial investment and protecting them so that they’ll last is always a good idea. There are a great many things you can do to extend the lifespan of your games, but one of the big ones is sleeving your cards. Companies like Ultra Pro, Mayday and Fantasy Flight Games all make plastic sleeves for various different card sizes. Choosing which ones are right for you is largely a matter of preference and you can get them in a myriad of colors or with artwork on the back to suit you. The only downside? Sleeving cards can be expensive. In the end I often have to decide which games are worth sleeving and which ones probably aren’t going to see enough action to warrant worrying about wear and tear.
