TDG: Enemies of Gotham City

0:04 Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the discriminating gamer. 16 sodium atoms walk into a bar followed by Batman. Ladies and gentlemen, today we're going to go ahead and take a look at Enemies of Gotham City from Upper Deck.

1:11 Heat. Heat. In Enemies of Gotham City from Upper Deck, two to six players take on the roles of various villains in the Batman universe as they attempt to burn the city down, seow chaos, and collect the most victory points. All right, ladies and gentlemen, this is an area control game set in the Batman universe. Now, as I say, there's all sorts of things you're going to be doing in this game. You're going to be playing cards. You're going to be setting buildings and bridges on fire. You're going to be moving around the city. And critically, you're trying to collect these victory points, these infamy points with that every villain wants. So, I'm not going to get too much into the weeds. I'm going to tell you the basics of gameplay and then tell you my thoughts. The game board is a map of Gotham City. You've got uptown, Midtown, uh downtown, and then a few other little locations. In higher games with higher player counts, you're actually going to add like, you know, Midtown, West, and East. You're going to add kind of more areas on the board. You don't need that for the basic basic lower count game. Uh but you're going to go ahead. You're going to set them up. You're going to draw cards that randomly tell you how to put buildings up in these locations. You're not going to put all the locations where you can't put buildings. It's a double uh dual layered board. So, you kind of put them in. Some of them will remain empty. And then over the course of the game, you may be able to add more buildings as as the game goes forward. You're also going

2:41 to set up the docks, which are made up of power cards. This is kind of a market from where you will buy cards going forward. Uh you also have kind of a black market which is kind of special weapons and things you'll be able to use during the course of the game. You will have a stack deck board you will set adjacent to the main board and that's going to be very important and more on that. And you're going to have also up in the corner a space for event cards, for currency cards and for scoring cards. These are the location cards that will score in every round. So you're going to go ahead. You're going to set all these things up. the event deck. You're going to have to kind of uh make an event deck. You're going to get a certain number of event ones, event twos, and event threes. Create the event deck and set it there. You're going to mix up the currency cards to set them there. And then the location cards, of course, will be there as well.

3:28 Critically, you're also going to assemble the Arkham Asylum cube tower. You're going to place it near the board, and you're going to put some cubes in it. Over the course of the game, you'll put more of your cubes in it. Your cubes are your goons. Each player is going to have their own collection of goons. These are little cubes that they're going to use to help them determine area control. And you're going to be putting a lot of them in the cube tower from time to time. Each player will take their player character card. They will take their character mini. They will also take their henchmen, which they will use on the stack deck card. Uh you will also take your set of power cards in a certain color. You will attach that colored ring to your character mini. You will also take your player's um burn color, right, to show what flames uh so we know who burns what buildings. In the case of Poison Ivy, she doesn't have flames. She actually has uh plants that grow out of buildings. Now, critically, too, you're going to have the Batman card on the board. Now, the Batman card, uh you can either play it in kind of the easier mode or the more difficult mode, but that's essentially going to kind of say what happens when Batman comes out on the board, what he does, what effect he has on the game. At the beginning of every round, players are going to draw the event card and resolve the event card. Very often, the event card is going to say where Batman or maybe some of his buddies go, Batgirl, Robin, Commissioner Gordon, where they go on the board and kind of what they do in conjunction with the Batman card. So, you're going to set them there, but there may be other conditions about scoring that come out with that event card at that time as well. You're going

5:00 to draw the currency card. The currency card is going to tell all the villains how they're going to make money that turn. It may be that that turn you can make money um taking a currency action based on the number of buildings that are in fire in your location or based on the number of bridges that are on fire or the number of buildings there are. There's all sorts of different things that can affect how currency how you're going to make currency in that round. Finally, you're going to draw the scoring card. This is another location card. You're going to place that there and that's going to show at the end of the round. That is the district. That is the area you're going to score for that turn. Next, you're going to have the preparation phase. During the preparation phase, each player is going to take their henchman figure and they're going to place it on the stacked deck. And where you place it on the stacked deck is going to be important because it's going to let you take a very specific and special action right at that moment. But it will also determine turn order for the round. Now, with the stack deck card, I believe you're playing like two to three characters, you just use the side that just has the four different spaces. If you're playing with the uh four more players, you flip it over so that each location has two spaces and everybody can take advantage uh up to two people can take advantage of each of them. Now, the first place you go to lets you uh buy a card from the black market. So, if you have the money, you can buy a card there. And these cards let you usually they're weapons or items that give you special advantages over the course of the game. Next, you can actually put three of your goons, three of your cubes into Arkham Asylum, into the tower. Uh, so you put them in the bottom of the tower there. They stay there until the

6:31 time is right. Next, you can set a fire to a building on the board. And finally, you can uh buy a power card from the docks. Now, you go ahead and depending on, as I say, the order in which you have taken these actions, uh that is going to be the turn order for the course of the round. Now, during the action phase, there are a number of things you can do, and you can do them all in any order, provided that you know you're you're capable of doing them. Uh, the first thing you can do is movement. You can essentially move your character up to two spaces. Now, you got to be careful because when you move into a space where another villain already exists, you have to pay them uh a dollar. I believe you have to pay them for the right to enter that space. But if somebody comes into your spaces, then you get money, so it works out. But that is something you need to be aware of. Uh if you can't pay the money, you may be penalized in other ways, but critically uh you are moving to locations where you think it is more advantageous to be. Next, you can play a power card. Now, everybody has power cards in their color at the beginning of the game, and you will be getting more cards over the course of the game. And you can play one of these cards, and they let you do all sorts of things.

7:37 They let you add goons. They let you burn buildings. Uh they let you play dirty tricks on other players. There's all sorts of things you can do, but you can just play one of those power cards per turn. You can take the gain income action. So again, you've got a currency card that will tell you exactly how you are going to gain currency, how much currency you're going to gain depending on the area you are in. So you can go ahead and grab that much money from the supply. Next, you can use a weapon. So if you have a weapon card that you got from the black market, you can use its special ability at that time as well. Finally, on your turn, you've got to buy a power card from the docks. Now, these cards, uh, I think the first one's always free if I remember, and then they get progressively more expensive, and then when you purchase one, of course, they slide, but they don't refill until the end of the, uh, round. But you go ahead, you buy a power card, and you add that to your deck. And that may be one more trick you can play later on in the game. I believe your hand size is a total of 10 cards. Now, what you're trying to do during the action phase is essentially put yourself in a more advantageous position for scoring. You can see the scoring guard coming up, but other people may have turns. So, you want to get to a certain place. Your figure there is going to be worth a lot for scoring. Your cubes will be worth something for scoring. And so, you want to be in these places, but you also want to cover your bets and make sure other locations are covered as well as best you can. Uh, so you're you're using these cards and you're kind of manipulating the board to kind of suit your agenda. Now, after everyone is gone, you have the Arkham phase. So essentially, you take all of the goons

9:08 in the tray for Arkham and you put them down. Now, some of these will get stuck inside the tower, so you're out of luck. But any that come out back to the bottom of the tray then can be placed by their owners in turn order around the board. So you can again try to go for put them either where you want to score that round or if you think that's not attainable, maybe build up a powerhouse somewhere else that you hope will score later. But critically, all of the goons you place must go in the same district. Next, you have the scoring phase. You're going to look at what district is scoring. Now, critically, if Batman is in that district, scoring doesn't take place. He's not going to let that crap fly. So, in that case, kind of everybody's out of luck. But if Batman is not there and you are in that location, then you can go ahead and um hopefully score it. Now, each of the districts has kind of a score marker. It says person in first place, person in second place, person in third place will score. Uh, so you go ahead and you look and see who's got the most control.

10:07 Control is determined by, again, if you have your figure there, that's worth five control. Each of your goons is worth one control. Now, the fires you set aren't worth control at all until the final round. But critically, you need to add up all of the control you have. And whoever has the most, as I say, is going to score the most victory points, second and third place as well. Now ties I think it's divided between them but you go ahead and you figure out who has done the scoring and you move yourself up on the infamy track. Now you play five complete game rounds and on the sixth round as you would draw the uh event card uh you go ahead you do a final scoring phase where again you you can include things like the fires that you've set and you then figure out who has the most infamy points and whoever does wins. Enemies of Gotham City. We'll get back to the review in just a moment. I want to take a minute to ask you to check out my other channel that is Cody Carlson PhD where we talk about history books on history, military history. I even post some of my uh lectures for my classes on there. Please check that out. Please subscribe to that channel. And now back to the review.

11:12 All right, ladies and gentlemen, there's there's more going on here. Um, like I say, Batman when he comes out, he can knock out some of your goons. Uh, like I said, there's different specific tricks that some of the villains have, like like I say, for instance, Poison Ivy has the plants that do funky things there. Uh, and there's there's again different player powers based on your characters and and different characters have kind of, you know, a toughness rating. Are they easy to play? Are they moderate to play? Are they harder to play? Uh, so there's a lot of different things like that going on in the game. Okay, so first of all, this game [clears throat] really reminds me of two other games. And the first one that it reminds me of largely because of of the theme is Gotham City strategy game. Now, this came out, I want to say 2013 or so. This was a Whiz Kids game where again, you're playing the villains of Batman City. You're trying to get money. You're trying to to to do all other sorts of other nefarious schemes and then Batman comes out and beats you up sometimes. And it's it's a fun game.

12:08 I really enjoyed a Gotham City strategy game. And on the surface, this looks a lot like it. Despite some of these superficial similarities though, the Batman comes out and causes problems and you're the villains collecting money and and enacting schemes. The game play is very different here. It's it feels like a very different game. That one feels uh I mean I hesitate to say it feels more euroy, but it kind of does. This one feels pretty euroy, too. But but that one more so, I think. But the second game this one reminds me of, and frankly a lot it reminds me of a lot is El Grande. Now, El Grande is a game that has been around since the 1990s. I just played it for the first time a year or two ago. I guess it was a couple years ago, and I really liked it. I I had never played it before. I'd heard people talk about it, and I thought it sounded like a lot of fun, and I was really excited to finally get it to the table, and it was a blast. Really enjoyed El Grande. It was It was a fantastic game.

13:04 Well, we played uh we played this game the other night and well, I should point out too with El Grande, you've got the you've got the cube tower in El Grande and you got the cube tower here. It's not a it's not just a reskin of El Grande. There are important differences in this game, but it's very similar. If you like El Grande, I think this this game will be up your alley. Now, the game itself is um pretty interesting on a lot of levels. It's area control. I always like area control and certainly I love the Batman theme. It's the animated series here. Artwork is beautiful. Minis are good-looking. Uh, and really, honestly, this is a game that just has an incredibly high production standard. It's a big game box. It's a huge game box. And you've got these, you know, this dual layer board.

13:50 You've got the, you know, indentations for the buildings. You've each got the fire that you're going to put there. You got minis. I mean, this is a game that there's a lot of love in. We got a lot of different cards here. A lot of different cards that give you a lot of different possibilities in the game between the power cards and the uh uh black market cards, location cards, events, currency. So, there's a lot of replayability here in the game. the game really fundamentally it's an area control game but one of the major ideas going on here is take that you are playing cards to screw with everybody to get ahead in certain ways and I got to tell you I thought it was incredible fun. I really like mean games like this and I had a blast with Enemies of Gotham City. It to me was just incredibly fun. uh trying to to get in those locations and trying to screw over the other guys. It's so tense when you have the Arkham phase and you're you know you try to invest in that. You try to put guys in there because you want them to come out because you want them for that final push before scoring each round.

15:05 And it's scary and it's tense when you your goal you're like, "Oh, I hope mine come out. I hope come out." Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. But it's it's it it's a lot of fun. So, I really really enjoyed Enemies of Gotham City. Uh, it was just for me it was a lot of fun. Uh, some of my friends I I think they all liked it. They didn't like it as much as I did. I think Ry had some issues with it. I don't think Ry was the biggest fan of it. Um, I think he liked it, but but he didn't like it like the way I liked it. Uh, I just had a blast with it. Now, having said all that, I do have an issue here, and that is you've got this great box and this great production, and you've got a ton of minis in here that are just beautiful. But there's stuff here in the core box that you cannot play with unless you buy the expansion, as is my understanding. If I'm wrong, please please collect correct me, but you've actually got like the minis in here for like Manbat, and I think they've got the Riddler in here, right?

16:01 And a few others. And yet you have to buy kind of the expansion pack in order to activate them. And my guess is it was because the the production on this was not inexpensive. They wanted to find a way to incorporate that stuff, but they realized it would be probably, you know, too the price point would be too high just to put everything in there. So they said, "Well, you also can buy this to activate these characters." Um, I'm not a fan of that. I'm not a fan of having content in this that I can't unlock, that I can't use without an expansion. Now, I will say this, the good people at Upper Deck sent me this copy, and you know, we'll see if I can get a copy of the expansion. I'd be more than happy to to review that as well, but that kind of idea doesn't sit particularly well with me. Uh that you've got the content, but you need the expansion to unlock it.

16:53 Uh so that is what it is. Now, my other kind of thing I think you need to be aware of here, and that is this is not an inexpensive game. It is well north of the $100 mark. And as I say, this was a review copy that that Upper Deck sent to me, which I'm very grateful for. And um you know, it's a fun fun game. I'm glad I've got it. But you know, it's one of those things that you got to decide for yourself if it's worth that. Uh, you know, they did a they did a remake of El Grande a few years ago that I've got a copy of and, you know, I think it's about 50 bucks. Now, I'm not saying they're entirely the same game because they're not. And I got to be honest with you here, of the two, I really prefer Enemies of Gotham City, and a lot of that is the theme. A lot of that is the production. Um, but even more than that, I really like the card play. And, you know, El's got some real mean elements that I like. I think they're they're better here. I like the the meanness and the take that that occurs here in Enemies of Gotham City more than I liked in El Grande. And in fact, I've got to make the decision. Am I going to keep El Grande? I don't know. I may hang on to it. I may end up giving it away. I don't know. I'll think about it. But I do love Enemies of Gotham City. It I am keeping it in my collection. I thought it was a fantastic game. On the Cody scale, I'm going to go ahead and give Enemies of Gotham City an eight out of 10. Really like the theme. really like the production. Do have a few caveats there, but honestly, I still like the game

18:25 enough that, you know, I'm happy with it. Thank you once again for joining us today on The Discriminating Gamer. As always, uh I'd ask you to please leave a comment here on YouTube, on Board Game Geek, on Facebook, on X. We love to hear what you have to say. So, please, please, please leave a comment. We ask you to please like this video and subscribe to this channel if you haven't done so. And if you do like what you see here, I would ask you to check out my other channel that is Cody Carlson PhD where we talk about history, books on history, fun things like that. I even post some of my lectures on there. It would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to that channel as well. And ladies and gentlemen, if you do like what you see here on this channel, I would humbly ask you to click on the super thanks button and leave a tip. What do you call Batman when he skips church? Christian Bale.

19:11 on my feet again. AND I DON'T KNOW WHERE I'M GOING. AND I don't know where I've been. Please help me ground. It's a long [screaming] time. I

19:29 I captain.

19:31 Wow.

19:35 Please not don't be the one I

19:37 fight Batman.

19:38 Damn it.

19:38 Batman. Just remove Batman.

19:40 Damn it. Yeah, baby.