Carnevale: Rashaar Reinforcements

As well as the models that came in the starter set I also purchased some extra models to add some variety to the factions I have. It's always nice to have some choice and because of the low model count involved in the game easy enough to add extra's in. TT Combat do a decent range of single models from the force boxes so for each faction I bought one force box and then a few singles.

Reinforcements Arrive

First up is the Demagogue who is a support Hero who can whip the masses up into a fighting frenzy. With her 2" range on the staff she can sit behind the front line and apply her two buffs to the troops around her. First Strike adds (x) dice onto your attack rolls if you charge into melee and Fear gives a chance to allow you to re-roll all your missed attack rolls in a melee. She isn't very tough though so probably wants to avoid being the target of attacks.

The Rashaar have plenty of monsters available on their roster but they aren't fast on land, the Handler helps out with this issue by boosting that speed. It's interesting to note that the boost isn't limited to being on land so should work in the water as well. For monsters that are already quick in water this should be great. It's worth remembering that your speed for an action is determined by your starting position so a monster in the water next to dry land will move at it's water speed during the action it leaves the water. The model itself was a bit tricky to put together with the back part of the spear needing to be replaced with a bit of paperclip pinned into the models hand. I don't think this model would travel very well to games outside the house.

LAND SHARK!!!

When I explained to Mr T I was gluing some legs onto a shark he was rather confused but the Karcharos is a land shark so needs them to get around.

The Karcharos likes to bite things, and for those things to then die, it's not so great at taking a hit but it does have a decent amount of health and the Rashaar have slaves who can be sacrificed to heal it back up. It does have the common low speed of the Rashaar monsters so only moves 3" on land but it does move 6" in water and if a Handler is around that goes up to 8", which isn't bad at all.

The Enforcer is another human Hero for the Rashaar and looks to be a bulwark you can build your land based forces around. Her standard 4 dice for attack & defence are bolstered by 2 re-rolls for each of these and the command ability can help everyone's defence rolls for a turn. Stun is nice as it makes the enemy easier to hit and wound (by reducing Dexterity & Defence by 1) so your big hitters can be more effective killers.

As well as Hero's I also added some extra Henchmen/women/things. First up are the Advanced Hybrids, more fully Rashaar than the basic Hybrid it's probably best not to speculate how Hybrids are created.

The Advanced Hybrids are quick at 5" move and with the ability to re-roll 2 dice (via Acrobatic) for climbs, jumps, and other parkour moves they should be good on the roof tops of Venice. They aren't terribly tough but can be dangerous on the charge.

Last and probably least are the Urchins, these look to be young Hybrids brought in to fight for the Rashaar. The models are pretty small and delicate and proved a challenge to pin, somehow I managed to get them pinned and painted without snapping any parts off. They are fast but very weak in combat so probably best used to steal objectives and bring them back to a character who can claim them. Being Mindless they cannot gain victory points for holding objectives at the end of a game but they can pick them up and carry them.

So that's all the Rashaar forces completed for the moment, TT Combat are releasing new models before and during the launch of the Blood in the Water supplement and I already have my eye on a Sirena or two. But it will be best to get some games in and experience under our belts before committing to many more models. 

The Whole Gang

Carnevale: The Strigoi

The Strigoi represent the 'children' of Vlad Dracula, who he births by letting them feed from some of his blood, and their servants. His children can also take on the characteristics of the victim's they feed on giving rise to an array of different Strigoi.

In order to add some extra variety into the game I purchased the Strigoi as a third faction so we wouldn't always be playing the same two. They have a different playstyle to the Rashaar and Guild which is characterised by the Vampiric Attack ability. Normally characters have a Will value which can be used to add dice to any roll to increase your chances of success, Will points cannot normally be regenerated. The Strigoi have no Will points but they can instead use Life points as Will points and have the ability to regain these when damaging their opponent. This should lead to a risk/reward playstyle where you need to take a chance with your health to reap the maximum rewards.

The Leader of the gang is a Noble Strigoi who has decent offensive output and looks to be decent at moving around on and up buildings. His command ability increases the amount of healing Vampires get back from their Vampire Attack by 1 health, which could be handy.

The Hero option in this gang is the Reaper, if the Noble is suave and sophisticated then the Reaper is very much at the opposite end of the spectrum. Most units seems to move 4" or less so a 5" move is good and his abilities very much lend themselves to getting stuck into combat and ripping the opponent apart. He doesn't have that many hit-points and with a low Protection he won't be able to take much of a beating in combat unless his Vampiric Attack sustains him.

The Common Strigoi costs 13 ducats which is as much as a Hero in many gangs so they aren't cheap to field but they are a cut above the normal Henchman and again have the heal to help keep them in the fight. The swaggering Vampire lady is my favourite sculpt out of the Strigoi and she looks like she means business.

The Newborn is cheap at only 8 ducats but with a Protection of 1 he isn't going to hang around very long, but he does move 5" so could be useful for getting onto a objective or running across a roof.

Lastly we have a pair of Thralls, apart from being mobile lunch's they also bring a handy ranged option and stun weapon. The 30" range on the crossbow should mean she can pretty much hit anything she can see (or at least try). Stun is an interesting effect in Carnevale as it doesn't make you miss a turn but instead reduces your stats for a turn making you less able to perform climbs and attacks and more likely to be hit and wounded.

That's almost 100 ducats of Strigoi so with the two starter gangs coming in at 100 ducats that's enough models to play with. It would I think also be possible to play a 3 person game as each side takes it in turns to activate one model, that should lead to an interesting game.

Carnevale: First Steps, Leaps, & Falls

This week Mr T and I played through our first two Carnevale games. The starter set comes with a six part introductory campaign for the Rashaar & Guild models which come in the box. These consist of increasing complex scenarios which introduce new game concepts in each battle.
The first scenario is a simple move to the other side of the board with no combat mission, it pits 2 Guild Citizens against a Rashaar Ugdru and Slave. In much the same way as in Deadzone the terrain on the table isn't just to get in the way or provide a bit of a cover against shooting it's something that should be central to your plans and acts as a third player in the game.

Most actions in the game involve rolling on against a target number and then consulting a table to check what the resulting outcome is. We found that once we'd jumped a few times we didn't need to some back to the table very often unless we got a Critical or a Fumble. In the first game we had some gondola posts in the water so the non-aquatic characters could chain jump across the canals. To make a jump you roll a number of dice equal to your Dexterity value (4 for a citizen) and then add up all the Ace's (successes) to see what happens. Each time you make a roll you have one Destiny dice and then the rest of the dice are normal. You use the Destiny dice to determine if a result is a Critical or a Fumble, in order to get a Critical you need to roll 10 on the Destiny dice and get one other Ace, you get a Fumble if you roll 1 on the Destiny dice and get no Ace's.

In our first game Mr T managed a might 8" jump with one of his Citizens who was chain jumping across the canal sending that model zooming across the table.

The second game introduced combat into the mix with The Guild fielding three Citizens, a Gondolier and gondola and the Rashaar fielding two Ugdru and two slaves. I forgot to take a photo of the starting positions but the forces started in opposite corners. The gondola was swiftly propelled by the Gondolier and one Citizen around the canals and was pretty much across the board at the end of turn one.

One Ugdru stayed in the canal to welcome them whilst the other and the slaves moved towards the central piazza. One of the citizens had also scaled a building, leaping / falling into your enemies gives a big negative to the number of dice they role to protect from the attack that follows.

Carnevale has a couple of ways to damage your opponents force with both a direct attack and a drowning action. The Fumble outcome on the Combat table was quite nasty and we both managed to Fumble an attack during the game.

At the start of the second turn my Ugdru swam up to the Gondola and managed to knock the Gondolier out (by causing 3 or more wounds) and then drown him almost to the point of death, when the Gondolier tried to escape he provoked an attack of opportunity and sadly lost his life, first blood to the Rashaar.

The Citizen scampering over the roofs tried to get a better position by leaping between buildings and ended up 1" short on his leap so plummeted down to the ground and took some serious damage whilst the other Citizen and a slave duked it out.

The fight in the piazza was a bit of a slugging match with the superior Citizens wearing down the Slaves whilst taking a few hits in return. Whilst that was going on the third Citizen was being chased by one of the Ugdru who pursued him onto the roof tops.

The Citizen then flung himself off the roof and managed to fall onto the other Ugdru causing five points of damage but suffering four points in the fall.

Once the second Ugdru jumped from the roof into the melee it was all over for the Guild forces as the superior melee ability of the Ugdru swiftly took them out.

All in all we had two good games with both offering some memorable moments via the Critical / Fumble results and the way that you can climb up over and bounce off terrain making movement more than just a case of measuring out a 4" line.

Mr T was impressed with the rules and how quickly we got into them so we plan to play through the rest of the starter scenarios and see how things go with some extra options and abilities thrown into the mix.

Carnevale: The Guild

Continuing from last week in Venice this week we have The Guild. This human faction makes up the other half of the starter box and comprises various criminal types along with the working men and women of the city. If the Rashaar are happiest in the water then The Guild are happiest on the streets or roof-tops of Venice.

The leader included in the starter is the Capodecina who is a masked assassin whose high dexterity and Acrobatic ability means he should be perfectly at home flitting across the roofs of Venice. The rules give a large armour penetration bonus if you manage to leap / fall down onto an opponent so death from above would seem to be his strongest move.

Compared to the Rashaar The Guild lacks any large based monsters but they make up for that with the Fishermen as the hero choice. The Hunter ability gives an attack bonus when fighting models on larger bases so these would be excellent monster hunters. The game doesn't draw a distinction between melee and ranged weapons other than the actual range of the weapon, as long as you are in range you can attack.

Venice is well known for it's canals and I would presume the Guild of Gondoliers would have been pretty powerful in the 1700's and they are represented in game. He was a nice looking weapon but more interestingly the ability to also purchase and then row a gondola, one of which is in the starter. I did break his oar so needed to do some repair work on it which is why it has the sleeve above his hand.

Finally we have the Citizen, these represent shopkeepers and street vendors and other people who would need the 'protection' offered by The Guild. As you'd expect they aren't anything special in the stats department but they do benefit from grouping up and being next to others. I was lucky enough to get an extra Citizen in the box so have two of the men with knobbed clubs.

The Gondola comes in three large sections with a few detail bits to add on all of which went together without much trouble. As the rest of the models in the box are all single piece castings this was pretty much the only gluing I needed to do.

And this is all the resin models that came in the box ready to take the field. The starter came with an introductory mini-campaign so Mr T and myself are going to have a look at that over the next couple of weeks.