The Batman Who Laughs is the second game we’ve played in the Rising system, after we played SpongeBob Squarepants: Plankton Rising previously. This system seems to have been based around having a large villain statue, which is used in gameplay, to try and defeat the player through hero-cards, threat trackers and a twist on zonal control. There was lots of dice rolling, tons of enemies, and some recruitment.
The Batman Who Laughs has players working together, trying to defeat the Joker, who is sitting on a massive board, attacking or empowering those who appear around him. Each player gets to pick a starting hero, which has a different ability and set of dice they start with. In the middle of the table, there is also a board, which is like a tracker, showcasing different threats that can happen to the players, unlocking worse effects as time goes on.
But, we are getting ahead of ourselves. When setting up the table in The Batman Who Laughs, you set up the Joker on his hill. This hill is then surrounded by cards, from each hero-pack’s, including those who are not currently in play, as well as enemies who are looking to slowly destroy you. Your individual hero token is moved between the three sections on this hill, allowing you to interact with the three cards in each of the three sections on your turn. Each of these cards are DC heroes, or are villains who will work alongside the Joker if he turns to that section on a turn.
The different cards each have different information on them. Every one has an effect which is, in the case of villains, an attack if triggered by the Joker, or, if it’s a hero or villain, is the combination of dice you need to spend on your turn to recruit or fight them.
Before you get to interact with the characters, however, you need to roll two big dice that decide where the Joker is, and another that gives his threat tracker some points, possibly revealing a new issue that you may have to deal with. The movement dice decides if he attacks as well, as that will tell you if the pain tracker is active for the round. If the Joker is facing in the segment that a hero is currently in, he attacks that hero including the player if they are there. If there are any enemies inside the area the Joker is looking at, it activates them.
The joker can win by either getting too powerful before you’ve defeated them, showcased by the threat tracker, or by killing off a bunch of heroes that have yet to be recruited. On your turn, you will roll and spend dice, trying to keep everyone healed up, and possibly do some attacking or recruiting. We found that recruiting was quite easy, with everyone quickly getting a few heroes on their team, but once we hit the halfway point of the game, with so many different enemies on the table, we were being attacked left and right.
In The Batman Who Laughs, it became clear we needed to unlock the rest of the threat board, and start directly trying to attack the Joker himself, who doesn’t have many life points! The thing is, you cannot actually attack him until you have cleared all the cards before them, which is a slow process. You can actually slow it down if you want to get more recruits to ensure that in the limited time you will have to defeat him (as he can become too powerful) you knock him out. When it comes to defeating enemies, if you manage it then you get bonus tokens that can count as a dice roll side, which I saved for our final attack. Of course there’s a big risk that if you build up an army of heroes on your team they’ll take brutal damage from the Joker should he attack your camp, a couple of turns of this and the defeated-hero count starts filling up quickly.
The Batman Who Laughs is a really fun entry into the Rising series, with a great Joker model that could easily sit on a desk or in a display. Enemies do suddenly feel overwhelming in the game, which is something that I feel does not always happen in board games. I liked the variety of heroes, and remembering how they all work on each turn to actually use them was something that we had to constantly get used to!
You can find The Batman Who Laughs on Amazon.
