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.