Carnevale: Game 2

Garret and I managed to align our complicated schedules to get another game in on his wonderful venice table. This time we used the two gangs/forces that hadn't been played yet: the physicians (run the asylums and use the lunatics as 'batteries' to cast spells do superhuman things, and the ....ummmm......nobles (can't remember the name). They seem to table moderately competent fighters across the board with a few standouts.

The objective of the scenario was to hold some VP points at the end of the game (within 3 inches) while trying to finish off our 'agenda' cards (a random deck of strange actions to do). The objectives made anyone near them shoot and fight better (giving an extra reroll on one of the handful of dice you throw for most actions). It made fights in the proximity just that much more lethal. More pics after the jump....




One of the heavy hitters of the physicians is a fast moving tentacled monster coming out of an asylum patient. It's fast and agile and hits hard......turns out it isn't super tough though.




An atmospheric shot of the nobles moving up to seize an objective, and guarding one of the  two obvious approaches to their side of the table. One of the nice things about Carnevale is that they have embraced an over the top jumping/climbing paradigm where it's often fast to jump. So You really do get to take advantage of the various terrain gubbins and levels and a misstep in layout doesn't hobble a scenario with choke points. The downside is jumping means more rolls with slows things down a bit. (more rolls means more slow by definition for me).

 The physicians (myself) were aggressive and advanced to bring the battle to the nobles. They queued up behind the building just over the bridge (near the boat) and prepared to rush the noble leader. The horrible mutant building hopped to attack another objective. Shortly thereafter everything would fall apart.

One the other flank, an adventuring noble uses his spell to teleport forward and start beating my mooks to death. This battle was a struggle that lasted till the end of the game.

Down below one of my expensive characters, the doctor of cannon, is getting a beat down. He was attempting to cannon the enemy to death as they approached with his spirit gun but wasn't able to dish out enough damage. He *definitely* needed more close combat support than I left him. Alas. 

The turning point of the game. The leader of the phyicians rushes forward getting ready to lay spell death on the nobles who are a bit too clustered up. Closely supported from behind by his tank of a bodyguard and one of the lunatic mana batteries. I should have put the bodyguard in front, but this would have inhibited some of his spells.

A loss of initiative at the top of the turn, followed by an aggressive counter charge by the noble leader resulted in my leader going down fast. The tank couldn't dish out damage fast enough, and losing iniative AGAIN the following turn (helped by the loss of my leader) he was downed before he could ice the enemy leader. Losses tend to steam roll as you have less figs to activate and dish out damage.

I was fairly thoroughly tabled by the end of 6 turns. Looking back there were a few points were a 1 or 2 point swing in damage output really could have made a difference. The game is speeding up a bit as we get a better sense of it, but we are probably still flailing a bit with figuring out tactics. We played about 2.5 hours with the standard amount of kibbitzing throughout. We also started late and went later so cognitively we may have been running slow as well.