Carenvale: Taking a Dip

Nothing nicer on a boiling hot day than to take a dip in some cooling water. Unless of course that water is home to a couple of Sirena who are out to drown you. I finally got hold of these models at Attack last month and painted them up. I'm not sure they are the best choice and you are unlikely to want to run two but they are great models so I wanted to add them to the collection.

In a faction centred around magic and monsters these ladies tick both those boxes and also have an advantage when trying to make Drown actions. This advantage is hampered by their low Attack score so they probably won't be rolling many dice in a Drown action.

One instance when you could run two Sirena would be if you fielded an all magic wielding force with the henchman slots being filled by Aglaope. TT Combat sell these in a 3 pack so that would be enough to fill out all the henchman slots you'd need, you could add a slave or two as well/instead. So perhaps one for a future purchase.

I also recently got some extra bases so could finally base up my second Harpy for the Strigoi, here she is ready to take to the skies.

And the last bit of painting to show is two more Bardsung models, an Oni with his big sword and one of the the machines from the lost levels.

Short and sweet this week as I need to go lie down in a cool spot!

Deadzone: GCPS Update

Painting and playing have been at a low ebb over the last couple of weeks as I suffered with and then recovered from my first plague infection. I have however worked through some extra options for my GCPS force for Deadzone. One thing the original force lacked was some models for close up work so I decided to add a couple of Riot Troopers to the force. I bought some shields and hammers from Anvil Industries and using some more of the Iron Core models put together a couple of serious looking troopers.

The Riot Troopers carry defender shields which increase their armour value by 1 (up to 2) and also the armour value of any size 1 or 2 models in the same cube by 1. With the general reduction in armour piercing in Deadzone v3, having a armour 2 model means they should be pretty durable. 

They have a useful range 4 gun and the Smash(1) rule means they always get an extra dice in melee (up from the base of 3), that all looks pretty good value for 18 points.

As I had some models left over I also put together some Recruit's which can be used to bulk out an force with cheap models. These recruit's are pretty poor at everything but they don't give your opponent any victory points when killed so can be handy as a throw-away unit.

I also built up a couple of grenade launcher users in case I wanted to drop the mortar at any point. I'm not sure that will happen very often as I really like the model I put together for the mortar team.

With the extra Riot Troopers needing to be incorporated into my Strike Team I went back to have a look at the Ranger based list I had originally drawn up an decided it would be best to replace the rangers with veterans instead. The basic ranger is 3 points more than their veteran counterpart so dropping down allowed me to fit the riot troopers in fairly easily.

In fact it allowed me to go from 12 models up to 13 and reduced the VP value of the team from 27 down to 20. Of course you do lose the ability to aerially deploy all the ranger models and 1 armour but it feels like a fair enough trade to me.

Mr T and I also managed our first game in a fair few weeks, and we opted to play some more Carnevale.

I went with the Rashaar and Mr T branched out into the Strigoi for the first time.

The battle was pretty quick and brutal with Mr T's first introduction into playing the Strigoi being a steep learning curve. They aren't an easy faction to play as you are generally short on command points and need to trade life for extra dice to roll.

The result was a lot of dead vampires as the Cult Enforcer and Demagogue dished out the pain.

I also picked up some new terrain from Warbases, the first of their full colour MDF terrain range. They do three different versions of the set and the option I chose came with 5 ponds in it. Some of them are quite small but the two large ones are good for Kings of War.

The colour printing is good quality and these can be used without any further work than popping them out of the frame. You could add some flock and gloss gel medium to further pimp them up if you wanted.

Carnevale: Dock of the Bay

Along with the release of the Blood on the Water expansion book TT Combat released some new models to go along with the new lore. The first of these that I ordered is the Dock Workers set which gives new leader and henchmen options for The Guild. These are a good addition to a Guild force as whilst they had options for street & rooftop combat they did lack in the water based side of the game.

In the box you get the Harbourmaster, a Fisherman, a Shipwright, and two Mariners.

The Harbourmaster is the Leader model and she is much more tanky than the Capodecina who is the other Guild leader I have. Her command ability to give herself and nearby models Expert Protection (3) which allows you to re-roll up to 3 Protection dice and her native Parry (2) which forces your opponent to re-roll up to 2 Attack dice, means she can weather any storm for several rounds. Her speed in water and a good combination of range and melee weapons mean she will be a force to be reckoned with on the streets (and canals) of Venice.

The other new models in the box are all Henchmen (and women), the first of which is the Shipwright. I only have one other Guild model not on a 30mm base (the card is wrong) so this chap is a bit of a rarity. The larger base will make him better at grappling and drowning opponents so he adds something extra that way. His big selling point is his offensive ability, being able to re-roll 2 Attack dice via Expert Offence and having +2 Damage on his attacks means he can pack a reliable punch. In the game we played last night Mr T cast Blood Lust on the Shipwright that gave him +3 Attack dice, so 6 Attack dice, re-rolling 2 of those and then adding +2 damage on, that hurt!

The Mariners are less exciting than the Shipwright though they do have the Boat Crew rule which means you can crew and use the new boats featured in Blood on the Water. I've not looked at those rules very closely yet but it seemed like the boat can be moved from one spot to another along the canal without needing to pass through the intervening space. I will need to look more closely at those rules.

The last model is an additional Fisherman who I made up with the harpoon gun, I now have three in total, two with the harpoon and one with the spear. As with the others he's a good combatant who thanks to his Hunter special rule likes to take on models on larger bases.

Here's the entire Guild force I now have. Now that I have two leaders we could do a Guild vs Guild fight so that may be coming up very soon.

We also go a game in last night with us playing the Plant the Seeds scenario, This saw VP's awarded for killing opposition Henchmen models and also completing Agendas. The game started with the Baroni and  Karcharos killing each other and the Magi-Rashaar using Baba-Yaga's Kraken's Breath against some tightly packed Guild members.

The Guild managed to complete 2 Agendas and kill a henchman model (lesser Ugdru) and I could have won in the last gasp but I failed to complete a diving Agenda with my Urchin so the Guild ran away worthy winners.

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.