As part of my Christmas shopping I also bought another new game; Carnevale by TT Combat. The models from this have been the main ones on my painting table but I hadn’t played any games yet until this morning.
Rather helpfully as well as the main campaigns the game includes 6 introductory scenarios. Flicking through this I decided to skip the first one which only taught movement rules and went straight to “Conflict” – I wanted to get some of the fighting in.
Setting up was very easy; lay out 4 terrain tiles and put some of the provided cardboard buildings down. Then I also used some of the resin floating barrels, nets and models to allow jumping across the water. I do have some MDF terrain to assemble but this is still in the shrink wrap.
One other nice thing is that this scenario was quite a small table size (2ft x 2ft) meaning I didn’t have to clear much space on my table.
Deployment
There seems to be a tendency in the ruleset to keep things simple and streamlined. Deployment was no exception; the winner chose a zone and set everything up. Then the loser set everything up. No alternate setup where players stop to ponder what the other is up to.
The Guild – The citizens of the city won initiative and set up with a Gondolier and a Citizen on the Gondola. Whilst the other 2 citizens got ready to jump across the canal.
Rashaar – The water monsters and their slaves
Turn 1
The two female citizens jumped gracefully across the canal; without getting their dresses wet whilst the men took the more civilised approach of using the gondolier
Meanwhile the Ugdru swam along the canals to get closer to the action.
Turn 2
Bravely and stupidly the slaves closed with the citizens who started to deal some damage.
But coming from the flanks the Ugdru slithered out of the water and caught the Gondolier by surprise.
Turn 3
The Gondolier disengaged from the Ugdru and helped severely injure a slave. Breaking for freedom the slave rolled a fumble and was brought down.
Turn 4
The remaining slave rolled to disengage and managed to break free from the fight.
Then the Ugdru closed in and tore apart one of the citizens leaving it an even draw,
Conclusion
Well from a game tactics perspective the slaves should have stayed behind the Ugdru as they are as weak as the slaves are as weak as you would expect.
However more interesting was how the game flowed; some cinematic movements with the jumping across canals; frantic disengagements and all quite quickly despite having to check the rules and quick reference card a few times. It’s hard to not compare with Drowned Earth as both focus on moving across terrain and on narrative – quite a contrast to most games. I enjoy both but Carnevale has that slightly more polished feel to it and I can see me focusing on that more.
Next hobby challenge is to finish painting up the models (the ones used were not finished and there is even more in the starter box). Plus I really need to try and getter better lighting for taking photos on my table.
DiceDebris 