Party Interrupted – Carnevale Action Report

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My buddy Yaum just finished painting his beautiful (but also filthy and decadent) Patricians for Carnevale. To start their story on the table, we decided to play the Patricians campaign from the big rule book. The rules might not be the most recent, but it’s a treasure of lore and scenarios, with a small campaign for each faction. I’ll be facing them with the Guild at the start, since they are their natural opponents, and because I’m still missing a model or two for my Doctors to have a large enough force, but I might switch later on depending on the scenario setups.

The Story

Our story begins in Venice, the city of canals. La Serenissima. The night is young, and the various guests of Contessa Jezabella Cattivo are dancing, drinking and enjoying themselves in her palazzo. However, there is a palpable tension building, as they all know that this masquerata will soon spread to the streets. Suddenly, shouting is heard from outside. It seems the spark has been lit by unseen assailants, probably some jealous lowly commoners. The Contessa takes her hand to her blade and says: “Let’s party.”

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Out with 2024, in with 2025

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2024 was a weird year. I wanted to paint, play and blog more. And I had a pretty good start too! However, some troubles at home made it difficult for part of the year, and that was before we got flooded in August. Almost everything had to be put on pause until December. This was a rough and tiresome period, and it showcases how much this hobby, both the personal painting time and the social gaming part of it, are a core component of my mental health.

Luckily, we didn’t have that much damage, so it was mainly a time consuming endeavour, and the new basement is better separated. My son’s room is slightly bigger and will give him the space a growing teenager need. I also got myself a closed office and hobby room, which is a big upgrade from sharing the noisy and messy playroom with the kids and their visiting friends. Sure, with the added wall and the bigger bedroom, we are losing some storage space, but we were due for some cleaning and sorting anyway. I cannot say I’m happy it happened, but the final results are at least positive.

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They are all mad under the light of the Rent

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I was able to sneak in some painting time last minute, just before the year ended, and get some henchmen done to add to my Doctors of the Ospedale for Carnevale. They are joining that poor Plague Doctoress that has stood alone for the whole year in the cabinet.

I finished a couple of Madmen, and a duo of Lab Assistants. To be honest, I’m not sure I’ll be using both of the latter at the same time, but I was already going, and it was simpler to just paint them together now than eventually come back to the second.

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Water under the bridge, and the floor…

~ Tonio ~ 2 Comments

Well, as much as I pledged to post a bit more often this year, Mother Nature didn’t agree with it. Our area got a historic level of rain happen at the beginning of August, and our basement flooded because of that. Luckily, we didn’t lose much, but it has been a long process to empty it out, dry and clean everything, renovate, and slowly move stuff back. We are not fully settled back in yet, but it’s finally moving at a steady pace, and I got back most of my hobby setup.

One positive side of that event was that in doing the rebuilding, we managed to create a closed office room for my work and hobby. It’s small, but I have a zone of my own now, which I am quite happy about. It’s also quieter than the playroom I was sharing with the kids, which is another bonus.

While all this was happening, I didn’t get much hobby done or games played. I managed to paint a bit some slower nights, on the corner of the kitchen table, but it wasn’t the most efficient way to do it. Also, without most of my material on hand, nothing was really done, as I still needed to varnish those, and even find some missing bases. It was not the best time for me as a hobbyist, I must say.

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The Hunting Pair

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I am slowly but surely adding terrain to my Carnevale collection. I’ll have to make a post about that eventually, when I have a full table worth of buildings done. I’m almost there, with only needing to use a couple cardboard buildings last game.

In the meantime, I took a break to paint some miniatures instead of terrain, adding a pair of new models to my list, to hunt the opponents of the Guild: a fisherman and an arbalest. We started to play bigger games, and this will let me swap out some models in between games. I did a quick modification to the fisherman, to match his card weapons, by adding a net to his hand, made with cheese cloth, white glue and bits of green stuff for the weights.

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First foray into the Rocavivas

~ Tonio ~ 3 Comments

Now that I have enough Orphans painted for a small force, all they were missing was an opposing force. Since I initially got into the game with the Arbonte’s Menace two-player starter, I already owned the start of a Rocavivas army, which I reinforced with a faction starter back in the 2010s. I wasn’t looking at the rules when I bought them, but by a strange happenstance, both my collections come to about the same point size, so that was perfect.

The recent announcement by Zenit Miniatures that they are relaunching the game couldn’t have come at a better moment for me, as I was already invested in painting and trying the game. That also meant that I want to play it sooner than later, to know if I really like it, before they launch the upcoming Kickstarter project. That made me make the decision to try out painting the Rocavivas a bit faster than the Orphans, in a more army scale way, starting with a test unit of Kyanites.

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Dark Object

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The always productive Kawe from Westfalia Miniatures has just launched a new crowdfunding project for a sombre and gritty sci-fi game, and the models that go with it: Dark Object. I had the pleasure of painting a set of the preview models for it, so let’s take a look at them!

The models were hand-sculpted by Boris Woloszyn. He’s an amazing sculptor, and do really well with dark and moody subjects like this set, but you should check his previous work with Westfalia, as there are a lot of really nice pieces from him in the catalogue. The models are cast in resin, and have sharp details. Some of the pieces are quite thin, so progress with patience in the cleaning and assembly, not to break anything.

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The army of Arbonte is Growing

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Over the last month, I started working on my second Nemesis faction, the Rocavivas, as I mentioned in the last post, cleaning, assembling and priming them. However, I’m not sure yet on the colour scheme or basing, so I decided to continue painting the other Orphans I already had prepared, to keep the motivation going.

These new additions round out my small force quite well in terms of gaming diversity, and also continue the theme of having an extremely colourful warband. Luckily, the forest bases tie them up together visually.

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Delta Station

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I don’t do much commission work anymore, but I was recently contacted to paint a small line of civilian sci-fi models. The project was interesting and small enough to be manageable, so I took the plunge.

The models are from Wyrm Forge, to be released in an upcoming crowdfunding project on Kickstarter. You can register to be notified of the launch. The models were hand sculpted, and they have an old school sci-fi vibe to them.  The look I was asked for was “colourful 70s sci-fi”. I made a colour montage board for it, that you can see below, and followed the mood.

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The orphans of Arbonte

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Back in 2012-2013, I bought into Nemesis, by the Spanish company Zenit Miniatures. What really sold it to me was the Orphans faction, a group of unaging kids disguising themselves as insects, protecting the living forest Arbonte. I painted a single model back then, one of the Mantis, for a painting contest, but the lack of opponents, combined with other priorities, relegated them to the back of the pile.

Flash forward to last month. I was doing some digging in my pile of opportunities, to clear out and sell some projects I now know I won’t get to, or lost interest into, when I stumbled upon the box containing my Nemesis models. Being between projects, and wanting to paint something colourful, I decided to get them out again, and finally paint enough to try out the game. It just took a decade to get back to it…

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