Carnival Zombie Second Edition – The dark side of Venice
Review
Carnival zombie throws us into the immortal Venice, a city that really needs few introductions and that the whole world envies us.
And if we think of the Serenissima, we cannot help but also think of the famous one carnival: those who have visited it (and survived to tell it like myself), cherish in their hearts an image suspended in time, surreal, with a whirlwind of alien and mysterious figures, impossible to decipher, which take us back in time and make us mysteries live a truly unique and inimitable experience.
Turning through the calla lilies and seeing, perhaps emerging from the early evening mists, appear a mask wrapped in clothes from another century, projects us into an “other” dimension, evocative and cloaked in mystery.
Among the greatest mysteries is how such an immense city can stand unchanged for centuries on the water. Well: what if I told you that the foundations of the city are nothing but resting on a Leviathan? A hellish creature that has been dormant for years of years and which, unfortunately, is now starting to wake up?
This ancient and filthy horror sets off an army of creatures not death that will give to the unfortunates who remain during the hunt and who enjoy the magic of the carnival that cooperate with each other attempted with the strength of desperation to return to dry land.
Game mechanics
Pure cooperative, from 1 to 6 players, for games that travel between 45 and 120 minutes. You can decide to play the campaign or the individual scenarios, for a number of hours of fun approaching 500.
The players, dressed up in the famous masks of the Italian carnival, will adopt action strategies and defense of the tower to survive the days and nights that separate them from salvation (or death).
The game turns are divided into day and night. In the first we will escape through the streets of the city looking for objects that make us more powerful and prepared for the hordes of zombies; during the nights, however, we will have to fortify the defense and resist the assaults.
The game takes place in three chosen cities at the end of which the players can be assigned to the victory conditions, or indicate within the campaign cards, or fail and be captured to stay for themselves on the streets of the cursed city.
After assigning the characters and preparing the deck of cards of each mask, the order of action of the turn is chosen together (which will never change) and the difficulty: Carnival zombie in fact, it allows you to choose between four levels of increasing difficulty, which will impact both the preparation and execution phases.
At the beginning of the game, the first player makes a draw from the bag containing the different resources and based on the extraction resolves the corresponding effect (for example, he may have drawn a “barricade” which will be useful for defending himself at night). The first draw is mandatory, while the next two are decided by the player himself; depending on the type of effect it could accumulate elements of “stress” that will have to move the indicator on the corresponding path. Once the draws are complete, the next player is moved on.
Once everyone’s fishing is over, you can dare to go on the first day. The first thing is to carry out the “aurora ritual”Which consists in the extraction of two cards from the deck of nightmares and solving the indications of the cards. In the four hours available, players can move around the city and carry out the daytime actions: rest (stress recovery), barricades (material recovery), special action (depending on the character), research (extraction of a card from the nightmare deck and resolution) and revive (bring back a character whose stress has gone beyond the scale).
After the daytime actions are over, we move on to “Sunset ritual”Which consists in checking the terrain where the group has stopped: starting by checking the obstacles on the track, they are extracted from the reserve and placed on the map of the city, at the distance indicated; the fortifications follow the same logic as the obstacles but the corresponding tokens are placed in the center of the map, in correspondence with the refuge area.
Once the barricades have been built, the players place the miniatures in one of the areas of the shelter. Now it’s up to the bosses: based on the day, a number of boss cards are drawn and based on the result, the boss figure is placed in the corresponding area on the map.
let’s begin the night hours: players can use the objects that have the night time property, once the zombies start moving: the cubes are extracted from the bag and placed on the map. In addition to the zombies, paranoia cubes (which will be attributed to the players) or survivors can be extracted.
Based on the speed characteristics of the zombies (and any bonuses given by obstacles or bosses in the game), we move the infected to the shelter. It’s up to the players who can use their items, move or engage the infected in melee.
Here an interesting mechanic intervenes: when a player eliminates one or more infected, he takes the cubes from the board and makes them fall on the tile “heap of dead“: If the cubes remain on the tile, all is well; if, on the other hand, they roll on the table, they must be caught and put back into play immediately.
The game goes on like this, from day to day, increasingly difficult and challenging (but you can choose the difficulty level at the beginning) as time passes.
Carnival zombie it has many rules and the rich manual must be faced with the right calm and all the time necessary to acquire it, because there are really many, as you have seen, the mechanics and terms to learn. The same regulation sometimes does not apply if we are very clear and therefore it is often necessary to the many examples of the game present.
Once you’ve made it yours, however, I assure you that you can’t wait to register it. At least whenever you have at least 2 hours of time (once you have acquired the dynamics).
Materials
The box, really impressive as you can see from ours unpackingcontains the following components:
- 1 Scoreboard
- 16 Miniature
- 89 Paper
- 1 Regulations
- 5 Planning scenario
- 5 Conclusion Sheet
- 6 Character Sheets
- 1 Consultation tab
- 6 Player Reminder
- 1 canvas bag
- 199 Wooden cubes
- 16 Figure
- 37 Tokens
- 14 Tiles
The materials are really of excellent workmanship. The card illustrations and the cards convinced me both for their evocative capacity and for that sense of restlessness that they manage to give.
Another important part are the miniatures: excellently finished and which will be a real pleasure to paint for fans.
He also convinced me the use of cubes so as not to burden the load of materials too much, which if used as a token certainly cloying results. If I had to make a wish, however, I would have liked to have some more miniatures for the infected (the bosses are there, don’t worry), which instead are managed by tokens placed on plastic supports.
Conclusions
Carnival Zombie is a cooperative board game that offers more than 500 hours of gameplay thanks to 6 characters for 63 possible teams, 3 difficulty levels, 1 campaign mode with 5 conclusions to choose from, 4 scenarios and 10 different final bosses. Definitely a game, not for everyone, but able to fascinate for its level of scalable complexity, increasing difficulty, and the combination of different mechanics: combining action, exploration and exploration with tower defense I found it an apt choice of game design.
Of the two mechanics I found the night part is very solid and convincing, with the survivors using their arsenal the hordes of monsters in dangerous approach. The part is less convincing: I really found the few four hours available and with only three days, it is necessary to get out of the way well without second thoughts, or the exit conditions will not be reached.
Finally, to be a pure collaborative, I was not convinced by the constraint of the selection of the game turn, which can no longer be changed, an element that (in my humble opinion) must be adjusted with a house rule dedicated. It is also a pity that you cannot exchange items as players (Remember? In Zombicide you can also “swap” wounds inflicted) but it is also true that the set of items is proprietary per character.
There longevity of the game, finally, is absolutely top notch: not for the quantity of scenarios available for replayability at different difficulties, but also the choice of characters, the daytime paths and the night events to order to ensure that no two games are alike between They.
Not only that, but players are given the possibility to choose between Campaign (for an experience with all the characters) and single scenarios (for smaller games) or even The Path of the Saints, in which each player leads only one character and increase the level of challenge.
Carnival zombie is available for purchase on the Cranio Creazioni website at the price of 69.99 euros.
Nerdando in short
Carnival zombie makes us escape from a Venice on the edge of the abyss.