Benvenuti a Venezia!

So this happened...

As mentioned in my last post, my normally steely resolve has slipped and I've bought into a new game system: Carnevale by TTCombat.

I bought the bigger of the two starter boxes, which came rammed with rulebooks, counters, dice, two gangs, reversible tiles to represent canals, a bunch of cardboard terrain and even a freakin' gondola!

I also bought some resin bases, along with four mdf bridges because the 2D cardboard ones look weird.

This is the first of three 'stretto' which I bought along with a more fancy 'Ringhiera' bridge. I've only painted one so far as that's all that's needed for early scenarios, and I also wanted to get on with painting the miniatures.

I've not painted MDF for a while, so it took a bit of time puzzling out how I was going to approach it. I've gone for a brighter, more cartoon style (outlining the paving slabs) as that seems to be where I'm at my most comfortable these days, as opposed to dark and grimy.

I'm actually quite happy with the almost patchwork design I went for on the slabs. So much so that in my head this shall be forever know as St Elmer's Bridge.

I'll go for a slightly different design for each Stretto bridge to prevent things being too uniform.

In the spirit of making some progress, I started with the slaves from the Rashaar gang, poor beaten and brainwashed folk who will willingly submit to all kinds of horrors (let's not dwell on that). In game this means they will feed themselves to fish monsters as a sort of mobile medi-kit.

Although the painting was fairly easy, I've discovered that TTCombat miniatures, despite being somewhat cool, take a fair bit of prep. Cleaning up resin is fairly easy, although I always find I miss a bit, but I also came across a bit of a mold release issue, despite washing them in warm soapy water. 

However, my traumatic experiences with War World Scenics terrain has taught me that a spray coat of matt varnish can work wonders to help tackle this issue. 

In terms of painting, I've kept these models fairly simple, as there's not much to do in terms of decision making. I've gone with Rashaar themed bright green rags and avoided adding any gore to wounds. What they represent in game (and the real world) is, when you stop to think about it, pretty awful (to be fair, the setting is fantasy horror). Also, some of the design choices were already a touch problematic for my usual tastes, therefore I personally felt more comfortable avoiding too much gritty realism.

Finally, whilst I was waiting for my package to arrive, I set about cobbling together a small piece of terrain to add a bit of ornamentation to my version of Venice.

The Jason (of Argonauts fame) miniature was a Salute promo miniature from some years back which I'd been planning to turn into a statue at some point anyway.

Admittedly, that is a just a cotton reel he's stood on, but to my eyes, it works well enough and it kept me occupied for the interminable couple of days (first world problems) I had to wait.

Unfortunately, this purchase has propelled me back into breaking even territory, however, I'm fairly well motivated to get my Carnevale miniatures painted and played with fairly quickly, so I'm not overly worried about the numbers right now.

Acquired: 48

Painted: 49