Second impressions

So I played my second game of Carnevale today. It was a 250 point game with me playing with Ospendale. I had:
Plague Doctor w. Claws of Mother Hydra and Spiritual Bond
Doctor of the Arsenale w. Cannon of Derangement
3 Madmen
Rhinoceros
Nurse
Warden

I was facing Lemm's Patricians:
Noble
4 Venice City Guard
2 Barnabotti
Syphilitic Noble
Butler
(Lemm may correct me if I remember falsely).

The table consisted of a WWG modular table with a T-shaped canal in the middle and 2 bridges, which meant that 2 quadrants could be accessed (without swimming) from only a single quadrant. The scenario was Unexpected Clash.

Lemm won the iniative and left me a quadrant that was sealed with the canal from all sides and had only a single bridge to access it with.

In his first turn he sent the city guard to secure the bridge, to which I responded by letting the Rhinoceros loose on them, which effectively secures the bridge for me, leaving me rather free to shoot and cast spells with my docs that were now in relative safety. The rhino didn't do much damage, but he managed to jam 2 barnabotti and 4 city guards, which I then managed to destroy in the next two turns using the docs, finishing on the 3rd turn after my Plague Doctor destroyed the opposing Noble with Claws of Mother Hydra - without a single casuality for the docs.

Now... Although I love the setting and the dice pool system, there were some issues that made the game a bit too much of a rock-paper-scissors thing to make it enjoyable.

First, the Patricians. 20 pts for a Venetian guardsman that has a Protection value of 4 and Dexterity 4 (due to the Breastplate). Now... I'd basically need at least Combat 5 and roll well to even cause a single wound to this guy. I tried once to hit this guy with Warden with a normal strike. Combat 4, First Strike (which was negated by his sword's Save(1)) - basically I would need to invest 2 karma to even get a theoretical chance to wound the guy. Rock beats scissors. Pretty good for 20 points.

Now, this can be countered with Spiritual Damage or Flame damage for which I was prepared. Claws of Mother Hydra are ok when used by the rashaar, but employed by a Plague Doctor with 3 madmen means that the doc can pull this spell off 3 times per turn throwing 6d10 each time and drawing the required 12 karma from the madmen, which are rather expendable. With 3 madmen, this can be done in 3 successive turns and given that the spell's effect is squared with each ace (4 successess=4 spiritual damage to 4 different targets) multiple times per turn, is devastating. Paper beats rock. :/

Then there were a couple of rules questions.

I took hold of Lemm's Syphilitic Noble by use of Spiritual Bond. The spell is upkeep-costly, and limits the functions of the Plague Doctor (which is ok, although I can't really justify the double-price for non-Ospendale spellcasters, since the Ospendale docs are the only ones with enough spare karma to keep it going), and when activating the Syphilitic Noble, I used the SN's own karma to boost its attacks, making it next to impossible to break the bond with his karma alone. I strongly suggest that this should be errataed so this wouldn't be possible (we couldn't find a rule that stated this was not allowed).

Also, if a model, who is on his last wound and had a stun counter from the turn previous, fails his morale roll and dies after receiving a wound from the additional stun counter, does this provoke another morale check for fighters who just also had to check for the same reason which lead to the guy dying after the failed morale roll (ie are the two events considered simultaneous)?

There probably was also another one, but I forgot what it was and lost the note where I scribbled it on.

You're still certain of having this much rock-scissors-paper stuff in the game? In my opinion at least, it could use a bit more of graying, as currently there seems to be more emphasis on creating a good list than tactics within the game (although I'd guess this will balance out more in the other scenarios). For instance, making Channel a 1 AP action to drain any available amount of Karma from a single Nexus, would soften a bit the massive magical overpower of the Ospendale Plague Doctors and change a bit how protection works (Lemm suggested a minimum damage of 1).

What I fear is that this kind of mechanics will lessen the amount of variability that the game provides and the canal requirement restricts movement rather badly and after a few games, players lose interest, which is a shame, since I love the basic rules concept, the miniatures and the setting. For instance, against the Patricians, there's no good reason to wield the Warden and no good reason not to take Claws of Mother Hydra and employ it as I had done, and the only ones who can actually inflict any damage to the City Guard in close combat are the Rhinoceros, Crocodile and the Being and even they need rather good rolls before actually killing them.

Then again, perhaps I should just create a single straight canal for our next game, a 3rd bridge, several smaller houses and a s**tload of clutter on the streets for cover.

I do understand that this game is your baby and you certainly have done playtesting, but I fear that there's still a lot of room for improvement.

I've already sent that very e-mail on the 1st of June. Check your inbox. :)

We'll take the advice on the Fountains of Life adventure. That would probably be more interesting to play demo wise. Now if I only had enough inspiration to create 6 jug counters out of Milliputty...

You know... that sounds like an excellent idea. Preferably something that looks like an ancient chinese porcelain vase. It has the double benefit of a) working well as counters and b) providing a metagame gag for the players to "grab the priceless ming vase", which helps to provide an enjoyable experience and make the game rememberable.

Okay, third game down, 170 pts starter box Rashaar vs Lemm's Patricians. The first time I put my frogs out to play.

We played fountains of life and I lost the game 10-13 VP. There were several points to consider in later games, such as: "only put one ugdru-rashaar in water deployment if you have any serious wishes to get them into play at any time of the game", and "'they sleep underwater' -spell is a waste of 18 points if the only rashaar in play is the one casting the spell".

The game went relatively quickly - total game time was probably less than 1h30min, which is a plus, considering this was a "prototype test" for demo purposes. In the end, it also gave ideas for interesting combinations, such as "I have no chance at all of hurting this guard of yours, but if I would push him to the canal, perhaps a Rashaar there would have a better chance of drowning him". Unfortunately that idea came on the 5th turn when there were no Ugdru-Rashaar in the canal waiting.

Now, as for the scenario objectives, I was disappointed in the Fountains of Life scenario. Basically, players would deploy one fountain to each quadrant and 0-2 fountains to a suitable location. Then they will deploy thus that each player has one fighter in contact with that quadrant's fountain and have 1-2 fighters run to secure the fountain(s) in the adjacent quarter.

Given the very quick movement of Carnevale, most likely all the fountains will be secured by the end of round 2, which will most likely be the decisive point in the scenario, as the player with the quickest miniatures has thus gained at least 6 VP (5 for having the majority, and gaining the majority requires having at least 1 vial more than the opponent). And given that models in Carnevale tend to be hard to kill, taking down 3 opponents while keeping your models alive will be very difficult.

I will probably modify the scenario thus in the demo that the model carrying the vial must be alive at the end of the game to gain the VP, and if the model is killed, there's a chance of securing the vial from the corpse. That action would cost 1 AP and a roll of 1d10, requiring 7+ to secure the vial, a failure means that the vial is destroyed for good. Also, that action will trigger an attack of opportunity, if the fighter attempting it is engaged in combat.

That way there's still chance of winning back the scenario which will keep things a bit more interesting and perhaps will prevent the formation of single close combat lump.

Attached are pictures of the table we played on, the one I'm planning on taking to RopeCon. I ditched the WWG buildings and replaced them with Dave Graffam's buildings, which look (in my eyes) a lot nicer and are a lot quicker to put on the table.

Rooftops would work well, but that would basically require a lot of buildings to accomplish well - otherwise there wouldn't be much sense in climbing one (unless an objective was situated there).

There isn't that much in printable buildings available at the moment that would serve the purpose and I'm currently not interested in creating buildings in the more traditional way (due to the amount of work involved in making them - been there, done that). Basically the rooftops would need to have only a low incline and that would more or less mean that I would need to design them myself and that would require even more work - especially as I'm not a graphic designer by trade and certainly am not even aspiring to do so.

You could of course try to convince somebody like Dave Graffam to do venicelike buildings. That's something most likely not done before - as a joint operation with Vesper-On... something similar what Wyrd did with WorldWorksGames.