The Gifted- A Carnevale Faction

 

My friend Graham recently (well a couple of months ago) finished painting a new Carnevale faction for me. This figures were well beyond my painting ability and as you can see Graham has done a brilliant job. This is my 4th faction and although I play the game seldomly, they are all beautiful figures. 

Most of the characters if not all are based on the Commedia dell'arte, an Italian form of theatre. 

The Mask Maker

Brighella

Harlequin

Il Dottore

Pantaleone

Il Capitano

Justice and Fate

Columbina

Some New Figures for Alternate History Games

The Dreams in the Witch House

Next up are some figures to add to the Alternate History games I play. I have really tried to limit this but I have had a lot of fun with these games and they are quite popular in Montreal. Aside from the games represented below, I also play Pulp Alley but we will see some figures for this game in my next post.

Two Hired Guns for Dracula's America. These are both North Star figures and they painted up quite nicely. Unfortunately I can not use them in my present posse but they were there so I painted them. On the left is a Skinwalker Archanist and on the right is a Carpathian Guard.

I can us this figure now for my Rashaar Gang in Carnevale. The Karcharos is a Hero in this gang. I have left it with gloss varnish as he is a water creature. 

Finally up are two figures from my Devil in the Wilderness game, I have not had much success in introducing this game in Montreal. It was locally developed and I think it is quite interesting and a lot of fun, but there are some gaps in the rules that require further development. I am told this will happen but I am not so sure.  More about the game here. I am a Lovecraft fan so I could not resist these 2 figures from Dreams in the Witch House: Keziah Mason and her familiar Brown Jenkin.

Carnevale

Two Sundays ago, I got together with Antoine who I have been playing Carnevale with for about a year. He introduced me to two of his friends Paul and Nic. They were great people to game with and we had a 4 player game. There were 2 factions of Rashaar (myself and Nic), a Vatican faction (Paul) and Antoine's Guild faction.

The Acquisition scenario came from the main rulebook with each of us having 75 points. Points were awarded for Agendas and there were 2 Objectives on the board. Some photos follow.

It was a closely fought game with Antoine winning. It was a lot of fun and I will look forward to the next game.

Carnevale-Street Fight

The week before last myself and Antoine finally go together for another game of Carnevale. Personal circumstances had forced me to cancel some previously scheduled games so I was happy to finally get together. We decided to play at the Abyss as it is about half way between where we both live. I decided to play my Rashaar for this game, Antoine stuck with The Guild. 

The Rashaar are quite different than the Strigoi which I previously played. They have no shooting ability but have a very interesting ability where they consume the mindless in their gang to replenish their life points. Thus you see 4 slaves in my gang!

We played The Street Fight scenario, quite simple the attacker has to move across a 2x4' area of Venice, points for how many characters make it and points to the defender for how many attackers he kills. The usual Agendas are in play, but are not replenished. We dice off and I won and decided to play in defence.

The Table

Another terrific table by Antoine with just one cardboard building in use.

The Finish Line for The Guild

The Game

I was unsure how to start but felt it would be prudent to keep a slave close to each main character to be consumed as needed. Most of the Rashaar operate better in the water than on land.

Antoine puts 2 of his characters in a gondola to speed them along.

Lots of action here, with the Rasher attacking the characters in the gondola, they have also launched an attack along their right flank (foreground). 

I was quite successful in thwarting both the attack by canal and by land but.....

....Two of The Guild managed to escape. When we tallied the points the defenders had a solid victory.!

This was another fun game, I am still learning the mechanics but am improving and Antoine kindly always points out tactics to me which I miss along the way. I will keep at this game, as I quite enjoy it. I especially like the Rashaar gang, they were a lot of fun to play. And I may just add another character!

Carnevale-Acquisition

 

Finally I have caught up, with a report from a week ago when myself and Antoine got together at my place for our second game of Carnevale. We decided again to play a scenario from the main rule book, called Acquisition. We both had 75 Ducat factions.

Strigoi

Blood Crone

Common Strigoi

Romani

Strigoi Priest

Nosferatu

Thrall

The Guild

Capodecina 

Recruiter 

Barber 

Pilferer 

2 Citizens

I did not take a lot of photos, but here are 3.

Terrain overview, I started in the lower right with Antoine starting in the upper left.

Most of the action centred on this bridge as well as the adjacent canal

This was an interesting melee.

It was another fun game, Antoine definitely had to coach me along again but maybe a little less. The Agendas certainly add a nice element to the game. I liked also that we could capture objectives and move away with them to try to protect them from the opposing faction. There is still a lot to learn, especially all the spell combinations. My faction seemed to have some synergy and I was lucky to win the game 5-3 points. Hopefully our next game might not be too far into the future.

Carnevale

In 2017, I bought into the Carnevale kickstarter from TTCombat. From what I understand, TTCombat had just bought the rules that had been released some years earlier from the company who had launched them. They revamped the rules, added a lot of figures and developed a lot of terrain and then launched the Kickstarter.

At the time, I painted some of the figures and sort of forgot about the whole thing aside from pulling out some of the mdf terrain and using it for Pulp Alley. I recently noted that one of the Facebook members of Soirée Peinture was posting some photos of the Carnevale figures, I decided to investigate and found out that it was Antoine, one of the members of our newly founded Montreal Historical Wargaming Club. After a brief discussion we decided to get together for a game two weeks ago at the Abyss.

Gangs

The Guild (Antoine)

Capodecina

Baroni

Recruiter

Gondolier

Citizen w/dog

Gondola

Strigoi (John)

Blood Crone

Strigoi Priest

2 Romani

2 Nosferatu 

Gondola

The Game

We played The Guild scenario from the main rulebook, this is an Attacker/Defender Setup. Points were gained for eliminating your opponent's characters as well capturing objectives. Here are some photos of the game, it was a while ago so I do not remember all the details. It was close!

I had a lot of fun with this game, and will definitely look forward to our next game. I have already painted 2 new figures for my Strigoi gang, I also have a Rashaar gang which I am sure will see the light of day soon enough. Thanks to Antoine for introducing me to the game and having thoroughly reviewing the ruleset before our game.

Carnevale

 

Two or three years ago, I backed a Kickstarter from TTCombat for the miniatures game Carnevale. They delivered a couple of months ago and I felt that they would be a good choice as a focus for this year's challenge. To be honest, it was more the terrain aspect of the kickstarter that got my attention rather than the figures, although they looked pretty cool. The backstory for the game can be seen in the following video.

I have been to Venice many times but I will always remember my first visit about 20 years ago in February during the Festival of Carnevale. It was a particularly cool and foggy year and at night the image of the festival goers flitting about in the dark is still with me. It has never been the same since.

They are resin figures, the first I have dealt with and I find the detail is not as to my liking. They were a nightmare to assemble, very fragile and I broke a couple of them....just not a lot of fun. I think I have around 25-35 figures, it was difficult to know where to start. I have 4 factions, 2 Antagonists, 1 Protagonist and 1 Mecenary.

STRIGOI

I decided to go with the Strigoi first as they looked the easiest to paint. Character information for the following figures can be found here as well as the faction cost.

A Strigoi Priest and 2 Nosferatu

Varcolae

Two Romani and a Blood Crone

Well, I am somewhat pleased with the painting, they did not come out exactly as planned and as usual I am having all kinds of trouble with the photography.

RASHAAR

These are the Rashaar, a ancient and subterranean race that inhabit the canals of Venice. These, like the Strigoi, are the antagonists in the game. I actually enjoyed painting them as I was able to try some new techniques. The Stats for these characters can be found here.

The Magi-Rashaar

One of the leaders of the Cult

Human Slaves of the Cult

I snapped the feet off the woman slave, so I changed the base slightly to make it look as is she was rising from the canals of Venice. Not sure how successful, I have been.

The Raadru with 2 lesser Ugdru

I tried the Zenithal Priming technique. I used an airbrush to prime black, overspraying with gray and then white. This was followed by Citadel Glazes and Washes. I liked how it worked. 

THE GUILD

These are The Guild, the citizens of Venice, who are I would suppose the protagonists in the game. Character descriptions and stats can be found here.

Capodecina-A Leader

Fishermen-The Heros

The Gondilier- A Henchmen

Citizens-Henchwomen

Citizens-Henchmen

Pucinella

I found 4 more figures which belong to the above factions and 6 more from The Gifted faction, so 10 to go!