A homicidal artist, an agent of chaos, the Clown Prince of Crime is the embodiment of everything Batman fight against…and everything he fears.
The Clown Prince of Crime and his crew of lunatics have been terrorizing Gotham City with no apparent plan, they only seek to cause devastating chaos in the city. These wild attacks make the Joker the most dangerous villain in the game.
The Deck
His Objective deck represents this attitude with his cards, because these cards will be able to be scored thanks to friendly models and enemies ones, even those cards that produce damage and effects! So, we could say that the strong point of the Joker crew and their Objectives is that you can always complete your objectives (and usually much faster than the others players) while, if you wish, you can also dedicate yourself to limiting the opponent's skill to score their own cards.
This produces a unique style of play, which does not make you think about applying other mechanics in the game, although you should be aware that many of the Joker's cards require you and your opponent to discard an objective card from your hand. Use this requisite to your advantage, as you will be making this discard with 3 Objective cards in hand, while your opponent will have to discard a card with 4 in hand which will cause even more chaos!
Your main objective cards are; Let Them In On The Joke, that to score it you only need to have an enemy and place a Suspect nearby, in addition to its resource, being able to reduce Numeric Counters, it is very useful to score cards like Bite The Dust! because they depend on being at the right time near models to explode on! Remember that you can always throw them on your own models to ensure points.
“All it takes is a little push!” The Joker
Its Resource also cycles your deck and allows you to reclaim used cards as resources, so feel free to use them.
To score It Doesn't Look Fresh you must place Suspects in hard to reach places, or place them like a trap near the enemy, forcing the enemy have to make a difficult decision. You can also score the objective, or poison their models which will make it easier for you to deal with them later. Its resource is perfect precisely to make sure that the models that already have Poison suffer its damage, so the opponent will lose one of his models in a totally disconcerting way for him!
So Long: It's Been a Gas! It is a curious objective, which you can score in two ways, one way is when an opponent reveals one of your Suspects, and the other one when you Reveal one of theirs. In both cases, the player who performed the Reveal will have to choose an ally and place a Suspect on contact with it, and this model will suffer the Enervating (2) effect, so it will be very easy to deal with it.
The resource of this card is the one that allows you to place the famous Gas Canister. For a randomly determined number of activations, all models that are within 4” of the marker at any time during their activation will suffer the Poison effect. Use this resource in the heart of the opponent crew to try to quickly poison all of their models, and increase the value of the effect. The higher the value of the effect, the more chance there is that they will take damage from it. They can even double the damage they take from it.
“Why so serious?” The Joker
Psychopaths is an objective card that gets double advantage. If the opponent does not place Suspects and is dedicated to trying to eliminate your models, you will score the card (and it is one of the cards that gives the most points in your deck), if opponent does not do it, you can take the opportunity to use your actions to hit your opponent, or directly play quietly exposing your models knowing that your opponent will not want to attack them.
The resource is one of the most powerful to increase the damage capacity of your crew, since, for example, you could "accidentally" (just the opposite of what the Joker would want, right?) damage one of your models with Bite The Dust! Scoring the card in the meantime, to gain two attack counters.
The Models
As options to lead a Joker crew you have many options at your disposal, but since you have to choose one, we could start with the magnificent Joker and his large 60mm base that will help you have a wide inspire radius, necessary to spread your Suspects and transform them into dangerous markers for the opponent, like Bite The Dust! or It Doesn't Look Fresh.
“Not clown— Joker” The Joker
The Kaos Agent trait is very useful for new players as well as veterans, who grants the Trickster trait to all your henchmen. This trait allows you to keep the Audacity markers and then, during the round, place them where you need them most, or even steal them from other friendly models that have not used it yet (as you will have to remember that other models you include in The crew don't have that trait, like Harley Quinn for example, and you'll need to put the counter on her at the start of the turn to be able to use all of her actions). This Joker model in particular is focused on making enemy models worse, with a great set of traits that serve this purpose, such as not allowing the use of special actions or producing the Enervating effect that serves both to protect you and to make it easier to eliminate enemy models.
It also has a trait to power up your models with Kill Them! which will add attack dice to your henchman, with which you can more easily score Psychopaths or the Scheming trait to be able to move 1 Suspect marker at the end of each round.
In this case, the perfect companion for the Joker could be Harley Quinn in her Sidekick version.
With her in the game, you have a perfect model to keep hurting enemy models with traits like Distract or Discourage. In addition to being able to attack all the models near her with her mallet thanks to her 360% Strike trait.
Harley Quinn is a very fast and agile model so she will be able to jump over elements of the scenario without any impediment, and you will be able to place Suspects where the opponent does not expect them, or knock down any enemy with her mallet and then finish him off with any other model from your crew. This will help you score goals easily.
“Okay, Mr. J!” Harley Quinn
Within the crew of villains that could accompany the Joker, a very interesting choice is Mad Hatter. First, because it gives you a +1 to the Take The Lead roll. This can be crucial in many of the rounds. In addition, it is a model that, even if it is a Free Agent, will always be able to place or reveal Suspect thanks to his Handyman trait (even if it does not have Audacity), it is also quite difficult to damage by models that are not combat specialists or great characters ( by the combination of Charm, Dodge, and Small) but be careful, as when he starts to take damage, he won't be able to put much effort into his Weak trait soon and you'll have to hide more from him.
“Lucky, Lucky people HEE HEE!” Mad Hatter
He will also be able to help score a wide variety of the crew's cards as we have already seen for its ease of placing Suspect, or scoring Psychopaths for his powerful ranged weapon. The main reason you need to add him to your crew, though, is his Mind Control Device trait, which allows you to control enemy models from a safe distance (Friendly reminder: Enter the maximum distance between the Mad Hatter and the chosen Suspect, and the objective can exist up to 13”!). With this mind control, you could place Suspect to score Let Them In On The Joke (since during mind control, that model is considered one of your models) or attack its own allies to score Psychopaths!
To accompany all these characters, cheap meat is needed (I mean loyal fans!), a very interesting option is to add all the Henchmen from the kit that accompanies the chosen Harley Quinn. All these henchmen will give you an adequate number of models in play to be able to place Suspects and attack the opponents.
The Thug 6 should be close to the Joker to protect him from attacks thanks to his Bodyguard. If you need someone to deal with the tough guys in the game, Thug 3 is capable of taking them down if, for example, you use the Psychopaths resource and the joker's Kill Them trait on him. The rest of the Thugs will need to be close to the Joker to be inspired to place/reveal Suspects as free actions and take advantage of their weapons at the right times.
That’s all. Now is your turn. Play your with the wildest crew in BMG and gain control of Gotham City by creating chaos! In the next articles we will show other Joker options and how to play them so that you know all the details of the wildest crew of Batman Miniature Game.