Carnevale – City of romance, grandeur and bloody screaming.

Every Carnevale board starts with the water and the iconic Venetian streets, so naturally I am painting those first as the buildings will all need to match them.

First off I did a colour test of one larger section and put that down on my water mat with some minis to get a feel for the shade.

Last year I bought a nautically themed TTCombat terrain bundle at UKGE. UKGE is back next month so I guess that I had better get on with it!

Also Gerry recently passed comment on my lack of terrain updates, and as we know internet shaming is a great motivator.

I am going to set my sights on getting a playable 2×2 done for some if the smaller scenarios and build up from there.

Filling out my roster, I have been working on a Merchant and Venetian Spy. Venice is best ruled by trade in coin and rumours I feel. Or a sniper rifle.

Sun & Moon are a Patrician power couple as they are among the Gifted. Bestowed with supernatural powers they are all set for a good old fancy murder party!

These sculpts are the event exclusive versions that go on sale during conventions and the like.

While we all await Rome, let us make do with Venice.

As there is a bit of a local surge in interest and club day approaches, I figure we need a bit more terrain so started building!

First things first, the streets! There is a mix of heights and steps in the Dorsuduro block set so should lend itself to some interesting layouts.

Following up on the ground floor I decided to just go straight up and put together the Torre Del Arsenal, the grand towers of Venice’s dockyard.

I have decided to spray prime in subassemblies to deal with some of the recesses. I also noticed that the tower tops would be difficult to get minis in and out of so I won’t be gluing the roofs on for access.

Next step is some modification. Carnevale includes some advanced terrain rules for ziplines and tightropes running between buildings. This presents a cool but tricky terrain building challenge! How do you make a modular tightrope?

I think the answer probably involves magnets! I’m not entirely sure how, it might involve gargoyles or something that I hook/stick thread or picture wire onto (or just the magnets), but I think there is some mileage in sticking adhesive magnetic strips onto the buildings as anchor points.

I also want to try breaking up the flatness of MDF panels with a bit of texture, that I can also use to conceal the magnetic strip. So, polyfilla!

Carnevale hasn’t left my horizon but it has been a long while since I added anything to the collection. I have been meaning to start a Strigoi crew and build my own board, but kept putting it off.

Then I went to UKGE, saw one of TTCombat’s £100 table bundles and cracked. That was made to me order and arrived today!

Behold, a heavy box, heap of packing peanuts and a heck of a lot of laser cut MDF sprues!

While waiting the 4-6 weeks delivery on that lot, TTCombat had a spray paint sale. Obviously I need primers for all of that MDF and had a Carnevale itch to scratch so went through the single figures section of the website and ordered some new Patricians and the core of a Strigoi crew made up of the alt-sculpt minis you don’t see in the retail sets.

At some point I’ll start painting this stuff in between my Kings of War Halfling project.