Carnevale is quickly becoming one of my preferred tabletop skirmish games, dripping with flavour and incentivising some really cool terrain layouts that I've been enjoying getting into a lot. I've owned models for the game for a few years now, but with the new MyMiniFactory Tribe a few friends have also gotten in and I've gotten a lot of terrain printed for the game, so we can play properly the past few weeks. You may have seen in my recent Trench Crusade Battle Report all the Venetian terrain I've been working on, as it works for that game as well and I've been getting a lot of use out of it.
The first thing I've come to notice about Carnevale is how unique it is, partly in terms of flavour and partly in terms of gameplay. The vibes of the game in terms of how it represents Venice really feels perfect, as the table itself is balanced around land, rooftops and the canals. Some factions favour the water, with extra speed and immunity to being drowned, while some hate getting wet (the armour of the Vatican knights in particular is a real liability in water, but a massive strength on land) and the ability to throw someone with a gun into a canal to stop them shooting is a really nice alternative to killing them outright. Other factions however much prefer being on the rooftops, with rooftop traversal being far easier for these factions and extra bonuses for attacking from above. All of this combined means immersive tables is best, and there's so many ways you can put things together in ways that are really cool and thematic. The focus on terrain is something that although it was the biggest barrier for entry on my part for a while (I was working on my table for a few months before it actually got put together and played on) once you have a core of terrain it's really easy to play around with and modify with a couple of other pieces to make something awesome.
The scenarios in Carnevale and how they work is also quite interesting, as unlike most games you don't write a list until after you know the scenario you're playing. This is somewhat similar to Malifaux, which I've played for a decade now and I've posted quite a lot about, but with the difference you don't know what your opponent is playing on paper (although in practice you often do based on the nature of people's collections). This lets a player with a bigger collection tailor their list to any given scenario, so you can't end up locking yourself out by taking things that can't climb rooftops when all the objectives are up there for example, or things that can't move far in water with water based objectives. This is a clever way to make sure players can both tailor to the scenario in ways that will benefit them, but also in a way that means someone doesn't accidentally show up with a list that is favoured in a scenario where there opponent is screwed because they built a different list type. The other thing with scenarios I really like about Carnevale is the linked campaign system, with most campaigns involving a series of 5 scenarios following on from each other. These campaigns don't actually care who wins the first 4 scenarios which stops someone from running away with a campaign early on, but the result of one game does affect the next one, giving the winner a slight bonus in the next scenario. This is similar to the campaign system from Fallout Wasteland Warfare, another game that I've really loved the scenario system from.
I've really delved deep into the Rashaar as my faction of choice, as one of the things I tend to gravitate towards in miniatures is fish cultists and sea monsters, something Rashaar have in spades. I love the mix of alien monsters from another dimension with their cultists and I've collected quite a bit for the faction already. I'm tossing up between Patricians, Guild and Doctors at the moment for a 2nd faction but I can't settle on something I really love as much as Rashaar
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