Vegas Showdown is the newest board game from Avalon Hill—a hybrid tile and bidding game in which the players compete to build the best hotel/casino on the strip. It’s a fun game with a lot of cool ideas and smooth, easy rules, but you can’t help but feel that something’s missing. In the end it will leave you wanting more, in both the good and bad meanings of the phrase.

Earlier this summer Fellfrosh, Kije and I decided it would be cool to have another HeroClix Battle Royal, after a few weeks that idea evolved into a themed or story driven battle where instead of random teams that people put together on the fly we had pre-build teams as well as a Heroes vs. Villains structure for play. I got asked to make the Batman and Batman Villain teams for the game and while we never did play it, despite Fell creating some cool new rules for it, I thought I’d post up the teams I made. I have to say that this is a pretty dang good team that could cause some trouble in any situation.

When I design a team I always aim for 2 goals, to make it a theme in some way (which is usually the easier part) and make it not only playable but also competitive in some regards. I try and stay away from going to generic with what is considered the popular easy win teams (like a Telekinesis person and someone with flying and Hyper Sonic Speed) which I think makes for more interesting team builds. This is one of those “interesting” teams. I’ve been trying for a while to come with a good Hush team and this was my first attempt from earlier this summer, it was for our ill fated HeroClix Battle Royale, and after Collateral Damage comes out I think I’ll try again since I didn’t want to use any of that sets figures because they’re not out yet. One thing to remember is that I had to build the team based off of what figures I knew I had access to and not necessarily the ones that might have been the best.

Over the weekend Fellfrosch and I played Axis & Allies Minis. Since all the models are mine, I had made the two teams ahead of time, striving to get them as balanced as possible, and then he randomly selected which he would use. He ended up with Allies, and I got the Axis.