Matakishi's Tea House
A simple little site...
Superheroes
Many of my ostensibly separate projects seem to merge together in a world that is mostly like ours but populated by various pop culture characters and settings. Recently I've found myself finding reasons to include various personalities, both good and evil, from more fantastic sources and insert them into otherwise perfectly sensible modern or near future settings. Among these wandering adventurers have even appeared some superheroes. Originally I started with Batman, an ordinary man with a bit of a chip on his shoulder that could conceivably happen and a few similar heroes for Weird War II but, as often happens, my interest grew and weirder people arrived on the painting table.
I've decided to collect all the superheroes here, links will point you to their particular settings as we go on.
Luke Cage (a Clix figure) will be defending the ghetto in my Drug Wars setting. The Freakish Four will, having been changed irrevocably by Cosmic Rays whilst in orbit, probably emerge from their crashed capsule in my Invasion of the Saucer People game and Superman will almost surely stay on the shelf as he's a bit of a game winner if he shows up anywhere.
The Freakish Four are available from Black Hat Miniatures. Superman was a limited edition from What The?! Miniatures.
A clix Hulk and a Superfigs civilian to represent Dr. Banner in his 'walking the Earth' role.
I've decided to collect all the superheroes here, links will point you to their particular settings as we go on.
Luke Cage (a Clix figure) will be defending the ghetto in my Drug Wars setting. The Freakish Four will, having been changed irrevocably by Cosmic Rays whilst in orbit, probably emerge from their crashed capsule in my Invasion of the Saucer People game and Superman will almost surely stay on the shelf as he's a bit of a game winner if he shows up anywhere.
The Freakish Four are available from Black Hat Miniatures. Superman was a limited edition from What The?! Miniatures.
A clix Hulk and a Superfigs civilian to represent Dr. Banner in his 'walking the Earth' role.
Batman in Crossfire
The Batman has a vast arsenal of weapons and tactics with which to overcome his adversaries. Detailing each of them would require too much work for a fast moving Crossfire game so I have abstracted everything into general Crossfire terms for ease of use. If you want to add specific rules for a favourite gadget you are, of course, free to do so; none of this is in anyway official or endorsed by either Crossfire or DC Warner etc.
Trying to shoot the Batman
Because of his costume, athleticism, frightening aspect, speed and so on the Batman is always considered to be 'in cover' from both direct and indirect fire so any enemy shooting at him loses a firing die even if the Batman model is standing in the open right next to them (he's even scarier close up).
The Batman invokes fear in his enemies so any enemy stand that wishes to shoot at him must make a rally roll as if they were pinned, nearby leaders etc may help with this as normal. An enemy stand that is actually pinned and passes this roll doesn't lose its pinned status, it just gains the ability to shoot at the Batman for that action.
Passing the roll lets the stand shoot, failing means it goes to 'no fire' if it was attempting a reaction shot. If a stand belonging to the phasing player fails then the initiative swaps as usual.
Indirect fire weapons may fire as normal at the batman so long as he is not in their direct LOS. If the operating crew can see the Batman they must pass the rally roll before they can fire. Forward Observers may call down fire as normal.
The Batman ignores 'pinned' results and these count as a miss for purposes of determining 'no fire'.
The Batman's weapons
All Bat vehicles are armoured and therefore immune to small arms fire (except possibly a Batbike but I don't have one of them). The actual armour values and firepower of any Bat vehicles I leave up to you. Here are the one I use, feel free to disregard them:
21st century Batmobile:
Armour: 3 but may deploy shields if unmoving for armour 5
Weapons: Linked chain guns: 4 dice against infantry forward firing only. Guided missiles ACC +2 PEN +2. (limited ammo for these, usually only 2 per game).
21st Century Batwing:
Armour: 2
Same weapons as the Batmobile but with 4-6 missiles depending on the scenario.
WWII Battank
Armour: 4
30cal MG forward firing only.
50cal HMG in turret.
The Batman himself has 4 dice for ranged combat and may effectively engage armoured vehicles at range if he needs to. I allow suitably armed infantry to shoot vehicles the same way they shoot at infantry with corresponding pins, suppresses and kills for 1, 2 or 3 successful hits. If you need to work out ACC and PEN values for the Batman be my guest.
In Close Combat the Batman receives +4 to his roll. He is never surprised. Enemies wishing to actually fight the Batman must rally as if they were pinned in order to join in once they are in base contact with him; as with shooting, leaders present may help with this.
Enemies who fail this roll will be ineffective in the following combat so will not roll dice or add to dice rolls in any way but will still count as being present at the end. They will, therefore, be counted as casualties and be removed if the Batman wins or be restored to full effectiveness if their comrades defeat him (unlikely).
Other abilities:
Moving:
The Batman may scale a vertical surface as a separate move action. He may cross gaps and obstacles such as barbed wire, security fences or spaces between building roofs with ease and never becomes hung up on wire or entangled.
Bats
Each initiative the Batman may attempt to summon bats to aid him. Each stand of bats may be placed anywhere in his LOS and acts as smoke, dissipating at the beginning of his next initiative.
Failing to summon bats does not lose the Batman the initiative.
Bat summoning roll:
| D6 Roll | Result |
| 1 | Fail, no bats |
| 2,3 | 1 stand of bats |
| 4,5 | 2 stands of bats |
| 6 | 3 stands of bats |
Batman is a repainted Clicky figure, the bats are from Reaper miniatures.
The Caped Crusader uses a modified German Sd.Kfz 231 Achtrad (from BEF Miniatures) as his wartime Batmobile. He can also summon bats which appear in thick clouds that act as smoke and to enemy lines of sight.
