Ah, glorious holidays! Unlike the last time when all I could do was lying on my futon and bemoaning the loss of three extracted teeth (or rather the pain that accompanied that), this time I even have some comfort time for myself! Great thing! I also got around looking into some new games that aroused my interest, reading news, reviews, rules…
As a result, today I’ll update my army wishlist with yet another two games, but I thought I publish those two as a regular blog entry, too. After all, who knows if you would ever stumble upon those if I didn’t…
Let’s go…
Perhaps the newest game on this list, Carnevale is yet another spanish skirmish game, this time set in a warped alternate fantasy of Venice, anno 1795. After some mysterious events that lead to the destruction of most of Middle and Southern Italy (here’s an aeon-old spanish dream of revenge finally coming true!), Venice is a city at the brink of destruction. While the patricians of the city try to (re-)establish (their) order, aquatic monsters ascend to the streets, fighting with the noblemen, with the lunatics from the Hospitale and not the least with the mafia that protects the common people – if they pay up, of course.
So we have a perfect dystopian world! The rules are free to download and almost every month there are new stunning miniatures added to the line. As Jake Thornton points out on his blog, the rules are probably not the most innovative ever made, but they are nice and ok and that’s good enough for me. After all, it’s always the miniatures that count…
How soon will I start this game? I honestly don’t know… probably things like Arena Deathmatch, Freebooters Fate or Némesis will come first, but if they continue producing such stunning miniatures… ah, I don’t know…
As for factions, I will probably take two out of these:
- The Patricians: they are the most stunning line of miniatures in this game, at least to me. Sure, again they are the “Empire” guys I always play in every game, but hey – everyone to his tastes!
- Doctors of the Ospedale: unlike with the Patricians, I can’t say that I like every miniature in this faction. Especially the Madmen are not executed in a way I can savour. And it’s sad that you get the identical Doctor del Arsenal twice in the Faction Box. This one is nice, but hard to convert into a second position… But they get the Rinoceronte! And who wouldn’t like that?
- The Guild: This one is difficult. I love the Capudecime and especially the Pulcinellas, but I strongly dislike miniatures like the Harlot… really don’t know if I should go for them or for the Doctors…
Bushido is a relatively new skirmish game, set in some kind of fantasy Far East (the “Westward Islands”, which, I assume, lie somewhere between Japan and China). According to their backstory, those Islands had been given to the Dragon Clan by the Emperor of Japan (clearly the makers never heard about the Shogunate…) as the new and eternal Prefecture of Ryu, but the Clan had serious problems there from the start, first an neverending rivalry and fight for power with another clan (the Shiho, perhaps a future faction) and recently a tsunami (ok, this is slightly tasteless, probably). Anyway, everywhere on the Isles, there are bad “Ki” (mystical power) users sprawling, so the Ryu (and, as a second “good” faction, the chinese Kung-fu- Ki masters of the temple of Jackie Chan Ro-Kan) have to fight not only for mundane control of the isles, but also for spiritual control, lest all the lands be corrupted…
Originally I paid little attention to this game, as I thought it is just another Martial Arts/Anime-rip off of some sorts… and for sure it is, but they are consistently adding stunning miniatures to their range and their rules – which are available on their website for free (and they also have an online “living rulebook” – now that’s what I like!) seem fairly nice and original to me. I would agree that all this “Ki”-stuff is fairly… inspired by some Martial Arts movies, but then, there are worse things. I don’t think I will run and start it at once, but I might do so in the future, especially if they continue to bring out cool miniatures… and who knows, perhaps I could easily add some Perry Miniatures there… I would probably scrap most of the background, though…
My factions of choice would probably be:
- Prefecture of Ryu: well, I can’t accuse GCT Studios of being Far East aficionados without admitting that I am one, too. The Prefecture consists mostly of Samurai stereotypes (though they are clearly more into gender equality than the historical Japan has ever been) and, you know, that does appeal to me somehow…
- Temple of Ro-Kan: actually I am not really into Martial Arts… originally I saw myself more digging into the demon-worshipping Cult of Yurei, but then they brought out this wonderful Gorilla and, well, I fell in love with that one…
Well, so much for those… currently I am also adding some pictures to that page, so that it’s not just a huge assortment of words… doing some minor editing here and there, too…
Oh, and I should warn you, don’t expect too many postings from me during the next days… finally working on that page about myself…
