Hello and welcome to this week’s board game blog! Today we are going to take a look at Batman Love Letter by Seiji Kanai, AEG (Alderac Entertainment Group), and Cryptozoic Entertainment.
This is a competitive player elimination game for 2-4 players. You will play a card on your turn trying to knock out the other players. Let’s take a look at the cards in the game.
The cards are numbered from 1 to 8 and each have different abilities. The Joker (#8, and only 1 in the deck) is the high card. If you discard him (or are forced to discard him) you are out of the round.
Harley Quinn (#7, and only 1 in the deck) doesn’t have any special abilities. Except if you have the #5 or #6 in your hand you must discard her.
Two-Face (#6, and only 1 in the deck) will let you trade hands with another player. Poison Ivy (#5, and has 2 in the deck) will let you make another player discard their card and draw another. You can use this ability on yourself.
Robin (#4, and has 2 in the deck) will give you protection from other players card abilities until your next turn. Bane (#3, and has 2 in the deck) will let you secretly compare cards with another player. The one with the lower card is out for the round.
Catwoman (#2, and has 2 in the deck) will let you look at another players card. And finally, Batman (#1, and has 5 in the deck) will let you name any card other than Batman and pick a player. If they have that card they are knocked out for the round.
However, Batman has an extra ability. If you name one of the villains (not Robin) and the chosen player has it not only are they knocked out for the round, but you immediately gain 1 point. Points are the bat symbol tokens pictured above.
If the deck runs out and you have not knocked out the other player(s) then you each reveal your hand. The player with the highest numbered card wins the round and 1 point. So if you happen to use Batman’s ability very well you may potentially earn a number of points very quickly.
Teaching people to play this game is very quick and easy. Each player is dealt a card. On their turn they draw a card and chooses one of their two cards to play in front of them. Whichever card you play is the
cards ability you take for the turn.
Play continues until there is only one player remaining or highest number at the end. First to 7 points wins!
That’s it! The game retails for $10.99 and is out now. There are two different versions available, boxed (pictured above which comes with the 16 cards, 4 reference cards, rules, and bat tokens) and bagged (pictured below, which comes with everything in the boxed edition, plus a handy embroidered bag!). Both are the same price. You can check it out here: AEG: Love Letter: Batman
I give it 8 shark repellent sprays out of 8. Until next time keep playing games. We’ll see you at the same bat time, same bat channel.
-Trevor L. Cooper is an avid board gamer. When he is not gaming he can be found at Zia Comics, home of all things awesome.
Buy your own copy here
