Organized Crime is made up of the crime bosses who own the streets of Gotham. They are a collection of criminal crews that operate within Gotham city. As part of the Gotham Underground. The members of Organized Crime share a common organizational structure and code of conduct. Each group of them claims sovereignty over a territory in which they operate their rackets.
Characters like Carmine Falcone, Black Mask, etc. they are leaders with traits that greatly modify the functioning of the crew. They have cheap henchmen, but these henchmen usually have weapons that can do quite a lot of damage.
“You can’t have organized crime without law and order” Falcone
The special rule of the crew is the Black Market. To take advantage of the Black Market Equipment, there are some rules that you can acquire during the game. To get them, you must complete the objectives that have an associated value of Black Money.
To get the exclusive equipment, you will simply have to put the cards with an equivalent Black Money added value, in another pile where you can remember that you have spent it (since they will still be considered scored cards). These equipment will allow you to adapt to the needs of the game.
You will be able to create lists with a large number of miniatures, this rule and the lowest cost of the crew's henchman, allowing you to also include a Free Agent that gives you what is missing from your list.
The Deck
Recovering the Juice is the only Organized Crime card at the moment that you'll need to remember is played in Raise The Plan Phase. Simply choose a model that you think might survive this round, and Reveal a Suspect with it. The resource for new players may seem strange, but it has many uses. The first one is that a character with Henchman who is inspired, even without moving, could place 2 Suspects, one in contact and one in contact with another friendly model in order to respect the minimum distance between Suspects.
The target Paying Tribute card can be tricky to score, because it asks you that when you Reveal an enemy Suspect, you mark that model, and later, place a Suspect within 4” of your Boss. Normally the enemy Suspects are not usually close to your Boss, so you will have to do it in two different rounds. Unless, you use the resource of the previous card, with an inspired model, using his Tactical Action to Reveal a distant enemy Suspect, and then, thanks to the resource, and being Inspired, place a Suspect by putting it in contact with the Boss himself, instantly scoring this card.
Its resource is designed to increase the survival of the Boss (key point of your crew). If you remove up to 4 close friendly Suspects, you can give your Boss a few defensive markers, or remove up to the same amount of damage from him.
When playing cards like Pinched Mobster, you have to keep in mind not to place the Event marker too close to many enemy models that have yet to be activated, as then it will be very easy for the opponent to take the marker away from you and prevent you from scoring the card. It will be much easier for you to score this type of card if you carry the models two by two, and you activate them little by little, to always have one available to try to get the marker to your deployment area as quickly as possible.
Its Resource at certain times can be crucial, since recovering mafia models without a KO roll, which do not usually have a very high Endurance value, is always life insurance.
The previous card rewarded us knowing how to place our models and then being faster than the rival in moving the marker, and Spring Cleaning is based on removing enemy models like Casualty (few crews receive points for removing models) and then Reveal a couple of you Suspect that the rival will try to place as difficult as possible to access but close to the enemy model. The trick is to try to take down models that are as close to your crew as possible, so you can access Suspects quickly.
This Resource helps score cards like this, because it allows you to move enemy Suspects, or directly cards like Pinched Mobster by moving the event marker. The Organized Crime deck is full of cards that are scored in a similar way, so use this resource wisely!
Now let’s talk about two totally different cards, Message Job and Killing the Rat. Message Job is a pretty direct card, simply remove an enemy model as Casualty. Killing the Rat, on the other hand, is a card that forces you to place more models than the rival, close to the marker, force the opponent not to use that marker to remove it or you will score the card (the Court of Owls, for example, will have a hard time, because they usually need to remove their own suspects). The Resources on both cards are meant to help score their respective cards. If you have another of the same card in hand, inflicting a -1 to an enemy's Defense will help removes enemy models from the game, while dealing the damage to a nearby friendly model instead of the target has even more uses, such as being well placed, using an ally that is out of range needed to score Killing the Rat, keeping allies close to the marker in play, or protecting a vital model in your crew.
The Models
You will have everything you need to take on rivals and score your objective cards if you have a leader like Black Mask. He is a character based on direct aggression to the rival, and as such he has some of the most devastating weapons. He is very accurate and does a lot of damage with a melee weapon.
“I want this man dead and when I say dead I mean dead, seriously dead. I mean beating broken… his head mounted on my wall kinda dead!” Black Mask
Although he is less lethal, he will allow you to discard the objective cards that annoy you the most. Thanks to the Steal rules, with his trait No Mercy!!! which the critical hits of all your Henchmen will deal additional Wound damage, and Mob, which allows you to make an attack with another friendly model, you will be able to score cards such as Message Job and Spring Cleaning, while with Order you will be able to place more Suspects with your models, (this card is perfect for scoring Paying Tribute, for example). The Interrogation trait will allow you to do even more damage to the opponent's hand, since if when attacking with Black Mask, the opponent fails a Willpower roll, you will remove an additional card.
Alexandra Kosov could join him. She is one of his loyal Lieutenants. She has a powerful trait that reduces her Funding value to 0 when she is selected alongside Black Mask. This trait will allow your nearby henchmen to perform an additional Manipulate action whenever they are close to her (for example, we can score Recovering the Juice with her). Plus, she's terrifyingly lethal with a ranged attack (perfect for scoring cards to remove enemy models from the game), and she has some more benefits for the crew, like Leadership, and perks to setting up the crew, like Smuggler.
“You will pay for you’ve done!” Alexandra Kosov
As we have explained at the beginning of the article, Organized Crime is a crew that allows you to easily add and play with Free Agents since their henchmen are quite cheap. Including a Free Agent like Victor Zsasz will be very useful. Scoring the cards to remove models like Casualty having Victor Zsasz is really simple, and, in addition, he will serve to control the opponent henchmen, because he is a very tough rival for them. Besides, you can place him wherever you want due to his powerful Shadowed Nightmare trait, so hiding from him is very difficult. Remember that the more models fall against him, the more powerful he becomes with his Death Marks and The Murderer trait.
“Someone lost the hordes of Arkham —all your most dangerous prey— which means someone has it in for you…” Victor Zsasz
The Henchmen that could be included in this crew could be models like The Fixer, a very interesting support for the crew. Since The Fixer has some interesting attacks (more opponent's cards discarded for you!) she's a master at inflicting the Enervating effect, which will help you protect your models because enemy attackers lose power, and she'll also know how to deal with them, since that if they will not be losing defensive capacity. In addition, she has the same Interrogation trait as Black Mask, but she is a Master Torturer, who in exchange for not being removed as Casualty or causing KO to enemies, will be able to move any 1 marker on the game 6”. Besides, you can move Sewer markers where you need them, or Killing the Rat and Spring Cleaning markers to score those cards.
Black Mask Thug 2 will be a model with great ranged support. He is a powerful weapon, and is very cheap. If the rival doesn’t protect his models, this model will take care of them from a safe distance.
“That’s the power of fear!” Falcone
Black Mask Thug 5 has two very powerful traits that complement each other. Computer Intrusion will make it possible for you to move up to 2 Suspects nearby, making it easy to score any cards that need to interact with them as a target, and with Handyman granting an extra Manipulate action, after interacting with them.
“There’s nothing more dangerous than an honest man” Maroni
We finished with the crew with Black Mask Thug 4 and Black Mask Thug 6, two melee Henchmen with effective weapons that will serve you both to attack rivals, and to place and reveal Suspects.
One of the characteristics of the Black Mask’s crew is that almost all of its members have the Mobster trait, remember that, and take advantage of it. Try to look for fights where you have numerical superiority, and use the Mob trait of our Boss to add even more models to the same target.
In future articles we will show other options about this crew and how to play them. Until we have new articles about Organized Crime, play with this amazing crew and defeat your opponents with their dirty game!