Carnevale: Out with the Old

Whilst I haven't yet received my Blood on the Water update book for Carnevale, TT Combat have released the updated basic rules for free and also and also updated the gang builder with the new points cost and stats. This means you can play the game with the new base rules, just not with the new advanced rules.

As I'd managed to print out and laminate the new cards and we had the new rules we decided to play using them this week. One thing TT Combat also released was a changelog document so you could easily see which rules had been updated, this is really useful and I wish more rules makers would do the same when moving between editions.

I wanted to have a quick look at how the factions have changed (or not) and The Guild seem like a good one to start with as they have changed a fair bit.

This can be best illustrated by looking at the old and new Capodecina cards. Specifically if we look at the Union rule we can see this encourages Guild models to group up together so they can boost their attack stat. This would seem to encourage a 'Death Star' approach of multiple models all in base to base contact to maximise offensive output. 

Capo 2.0

With the new card the Union rule is gone and Rise Up instead gives all Trade keyword models the Companion (Trade) ability. In v2.0 Companion (X) wasn't the most useful ability as it only meant a model took the Mind value of the model it was a companion of, this has changed in v2.2

Capo 2.2

As we can see below the new Companion (X) rule retains that feature but also adds Will Point replenishment into the mix. Will Points are used to casting spells but more often for adding extra dice to any test your model is making. So if you want to roll more attack dice or make that daring leap more of a certainty you can spend up to 2 Will Points in any test to add 1 dice per Will Point. 

In v2 of the rules replenishing Will Points was  limited to only a few models mostly via spells, with the change to Companion (X) that becomes much more common. With The Guild having many Trade models in the faction it makes them the Companion faction and by extension the Will Point regeneration faction, as long as you play the Capodecina. It is worth noting they have some models that have the Companion (X) ability by default, but the Capodecina helps widen the pool.

v2.0

Pretty much every model in the game has received a tweak of one sort or another so bigger than others. If we take the Fisherman as an example for The Guild we can see some minor changes have been made.

Protection values have gone down pretty much across all models so combat should be shorter and more deadly than before. One big change for the Fisherman is the loss of the Trade keyword so it won't be benefitting from the regenerating Will Points but it does start with one extra. I suspect most Guild players would rather have the regen and in fact a new unique magic item has been added to allow players to give a model that rule.

v2.2

For the game itself we played Keep the Peace which is one of the few 'kill' scenarios which has a neat twist in that Henchmen who die aren't worth any VP's and can be placed back at the table edge the turn after they die. Instead VP's are awarded for leaders (3 VP's) and Heroes (1 VP) and the completion of Agendas (1 VP each).

The Rashaar Karcharos was the only Hero to die after I got tempted into a swim-charge against the advancing gondola. The shark-man took a good bite out of the Gondolier but then came under assault from a Fisherman and all the ranged attacks The Guild could bring to bear and despite making a sharp retreat it died.

The Guild also completed two of their three Agendas pretty early on with the Rashaar taking longer to complete two of theirs and as night was drawing in and with no prospect of a Guild hero being killed the game was concluded with a Guild win.

Hopefully it won't be much longer before the new book arrives so we can have a look at the new optional advanced rules, I also ordered a few of the new models so that should offer some new leaders and possibly different play-styles to the gangs I already have.