After all of the models were assembled from my Patrician starter set and venetian navy, I couldn’t wait to try the game so printed the rules and found an opponent.
We put together a simple table using a mixture of Lake Town and Age of Sigmar Terrain from Games Workshop. We used the scenario ‘Acquisition’ from the rulebook.
It took us a few activations to get used to how it all works and it took a few turns before any combat happened. It was mainly getting use to the freedom of movement via the different actions and their charts. The charts add an interesting element of uncertainty to the game, even if you pass the jump roll do you jump far enough? However, having to keep going back to the chart did slow downplay (when we remembered to add the destiny dice)
The first game ended up mainly being focused on just fighting on a level platform. We soon got a good understanding of the core rules after a few rounds. The first round resulted in my lose due to less victory points, although it is possible we calculated victory points incorrectly.
The second game was more level ground as before however swimming was used more. From my deployment zone there was a small pier to cross, my unfortunate household staff was sent across first but only making it halfway across before being annihilated by a Naval Lieutenant on guard. After this I decided to swim around out of range of the Nock gun. However, this led to my opponent getting a head start to the objective, resulting in a lose for me. This game was mostly me trying to swim to one of the objectives which I failed at. From this we quickly found that more land is needed than the few platforms we used.
In the last game we played there was a more even distribution of water to land with more elevated areas to be used. This resulted in my venetian noble doing acrobatics around the table and almost killing a Strigoi noble in one turn after nearly knocking him off his gondola. The venetian noble succeeded in the next turn after a Barnabotti and butler unloaded their pistols into the Strigoi noble (We proxied some Necromunda Delaque models as Strigoi) doing minimal damage. This last game I won mainly due to the venetian noble using his ‘Monster Behind the Mask’ command. He finally had the space to use his three actions to do considerable damage to the enemy gang.
Overall, our first few games were fun and exciting. We found the rules to be generally east to learn (the tables will take longer to memorise). The game flows well and it feels exciting and strategic. It allows movement and actions most games don’t, such as grabbling an opponent into the water.
We will continue to play the game more and maybe once I have a better understanding of the rules and just experience with it, I can try my hand at some tactica/unit reviews.