Carnevale Escape From San Canciano Preview

Carnevale is a fantasy skirmish wargame from TTCombat, set in the canals and alleyways of Venice. It features factions of thieves, underwater creatures, plague doctors, vampires, the nobility, and religious enforcement. Carnevale already has a fantastic and extremely cost-efficient 2-player starter-set, but if you want a cheaper way to try out Carnevale, then the newly released 2-player intro set, Escape from San Canciano is your chance.

You can buy all the Carnevale Products from our Tabletop Sponsor, Firestorm Games.

The Escape from San Canciano set includes:

• 2 Gangs (4 miniatures each for The Guild and Rashaar)
• A full digest-sized rulebook, quick reference card, and introductory mission card
• Dice, range ruler, tokens
• Card scenery, including 3d buildings and a double-sided game mat

The Intro Set is designed towards getting you playing quickly. The miniatures are single-piece resin sculpts, and just require cleaning up, then attaching to their bases. The scenery is all card, and the buildings fold quickly into shape. There are character cards for the 4 miniatures for both gangs and along with the digest rulebook with its own scenarios, it also has 2 narrative introductory scenarios on a separate card to bring you into the game.

Carnevale is relatively rules-light and uses very simple mechanics for tests. All rolls are done using 10-sided dice, D10, and usually require rolling a 7 or more, with a number of dice rolled based on the stat being used for a test. Opposed tests see players rolling off against the same stat and some tests use an opposing stat for the target number.

Each character has a number of action points that they can use to complete actions each turn, and leaders also come with command points which they can use to give other units additional actions or activate powerful command abilities. 

There is a focus on acrobatic movement and the use of water that dominates the Venice setting. Some units are sea-based creatures and can swim through the canals to fall upon their prey, which they can drag into the water. Other units can make use of gondolas, which can help ferry your characters around the map. There is also a bonus for attacking a foe after moving from a higher point, which benefits games with lots of multilevel terrain.

Escape from San Canciano comes with a double-sided game mat featuring the canals of Venice, 3 buildings, and some card terrain. The included terrain is used in the 2 introductory missions, and it gives players a base that they can then build up their own terrain as they expand their forces.

While there are several gangs in Carnevale, the included Guild and Rashaar, as they are also part of the larger 2-player starter set, are poster factions for the game. The Guild is a secret society of thieves and killers but also features merchants from the population of Venice and the Rashaar are members of the Church of Dagon, their human worshipers, and the monsters Dagon sends into the world.

The Escape from San Canciano Guild force features a Fisherman, who’s great at bringing down larger enemies and operates well in water, a Gondolier, who’s effective at operating the gondola, an Arbalest, an accurate crossbow armed marksman, and a Pilferer a fast, agile and sneaky character.

The Escape from San Canciano Rashaar force includes a Cult Enforcer, a solid fighter who can be hard to take down, their weapon has the stun trait which can be very effective, a Lesser Rhyll, a creature that’s very fast in water, causes fear and also has access to stun, a Hybrid, another fast water creature and an Officiant of Dagon, who while not as tough as the Enforcer, is still a dependable fighter.

Carnevale uses Ducats as its points cost for characters, and while the Ducats aren’t listed on the cards included in the set, they are similar points values when expanding beyond the intro set (48 for the Guild, 51 for the Rashaar). All of the miniatures are unique sculpts as well, so if you pick up the 2-player starter set or a Faction starter set, you won’t have 2 miniatures that look the same, even with similar gang member types. The 2 included gangs also don’t feature a Leader character (the Escape from San Canciano stat cards have an acting leader with a command ability), which means they can be added to the gangs in the 2-player Starter Set, or any of their corresponding faction starter sets to build them up to 150 ducats for larger games straight away.

Escape from San Canciano is a fantastic introductory set to Carnevale. Along with being great value, It allows players to experience most aspects of the game and also sets up expansion into Carnevale easily. The forces and scenery can be easily added into the Carnevale 2-player starter set, or if you love it and want to go deep, you can pick up TTCombat’s huge range of MDF Venice scenery to really bring your game to life, along with building up your faction of choice.

The copy of Carnevale Escape From San Canciano used to produce this preview was provided by TTCombat.