The Noble Revellers box saunters it’s way closer to release and to keep up with the party we thought we’d throw a few example Patricians gangs together. Let’s see the kinds of bloody good time we can make with the whole range of Patricians miniatures!
Let’s waste no time and get straight into these gangs, after all the Mascherata waits for no one.
75 Ducats – Money is no Object
Leader:
- Venetian Noble
Heroes:
- Fadhila
Henchmen:
- Soldier of the Guard
- Soldier of the Guard
- Courtesan
This gang is a bit more fluffy than the others in this article. With the theme of this one being the Noble flashing his cash and going out for a bloody good night. Killing people.
Playing this gang should be fairly straightforward, your Noble is going to be putting in a lot of the legwork while the other characters play back-up. Fadhila gives protective auras to everyone close while the Courtesan provides an additional body as well as will points.
100 Ducats – Three Barnabotti walk into a Mascherata…
Leader:
- Guard Commander
Heroes:
- Fencing Master
- Syphilitic Noble
Henchmen:
- Barnabotti
- Barnabotti
- Barnabotti
- Household Staff
This gang is built around the 3 Barnabotti sculpts. Here we use some great supporting Heroes to make the three of them incredibly dangerous combatants.
The Guard Commander and Household Staff seem like odd picks, they’re mainly there due to the difficulty fitting the right things into a Patricians list. As we’re so stuck on having the 3 Barnabotti we have to adjust the rest of the gang to work with the available ducats. If you didn’t want these two, you can always swap them out for a Noble and Courtesan.
Our Heroes are the key players in making our this list shine. The Fencing Master provides a small amount of command points as well as his incredible command ability. Make sure to use this on a pair of Barnabotti for best effect. Your sole Syphilitic Noble gives you another pair of command points in addition to being a great offensive character.
You’ll need to go on the offense with this gang, it won’t be survivable for long. The best bet to secure victory is to take out a couple of your opponents key characters early on. This shouldn’t be too much of a problem, with a good amount of command points and incredible alpha strike potential.
150 Ducats – Guard Contingent
Leader:
- Guard Commander
Henchmen:
- Captain of the Guard
- Captain of the Guard
- Venetian Spy
- Fencing Master
Henchmen:
- Soldier of the Guard
- Soldier of the Guard
- Marksman of the Guard
- Marksman of the Guard
- Merchant
That’s a lot of Guard, you could probably garrison an entire fortress with this gang, though that wouldn’t be a very Patrician thing to do. This is probably one of the toughest, tankiest lists you could make with purely patricians.
Starting off we’re using the Commander, this is a no-brainer for a guard list and we’re including a pair of Marksmen to make good use of his first command ability. Thanks to Aim Fire! being restricted only to line of sight we’re able to cover quite a lot of ground with ranged attacks from these two.
Two Captain of the Guards provide us with a large repository of command points, with 3 each for a total of 6. They might be a bit limited on how and who they use them on, but most of their targets meet those restrictions. Keep one of these guys close to your Commander as a bodyguard and the other within 6″ of other guardsmen to give them Expert Offence and Expert Marksman with his command ability.
Your Venetian Spy is able to be set up alone. She doesn’t benefit from any of the guards command abilities, but makes up for it by being an excellent sniper. Stick her on a rooftop with good visibility and take out targets of opportunity, or finish off weakened characters.
The Fencing Master benefits any character that wants to be in close combat. His command ability to give Penetration -2 lets you make more out of your guardsman’s 3 attack and strong weapons. Command points are also a benefit here, as well as his already great stats. You’ll want to keep him somewhat protected as he’ll be one of your key damage dealers along with your Guard Commander.
Finally this gang has a single Merchant, here to give another couple of command points with the ranged weapon being a bit of a bonus. You likely won’t be worrying about dealing damage with him, getting his command ability off is going to be more important. Once his command points are spent, he does make a good harasser or objective character, as he’ll be mostly ignored in favour of other, more important targets.
Lots of Options, Lack of Cash
Patricians have a lot of strong characters, with a bunch of great synergies. You can make some gangs with really varied playstyles, if you can find the ducats for it. Gang building with the Patricians is the toughest part of the faction, with so many great options being quite pricey, you need to really think about the ducats you spend. At some point you may need to sacrifice something to get the character you want in the gang, though with everything being so good you won’t need to give up much.
When you build a Patricians gang, it helps to start off with the things you really want to focus on. In each of the above gangs I tried to focus on something, be it a fun fluff theme, a particular miniature, or keyword synergies. This really helped inform the choices I needed to make for each list, as well as where to save ducats for important characters,
Of course these gangs are only suggestions, part of the fun of Carnevale is coming up with your own gangs and building stories around them as you play. If any of these have inspired you to pick up Patricians and take part in their extravagant murderous ways, you can find the Patricians range over on our store.
I have a friend who likes to deploy 150 ducats for a “fire team” gang: 1 Guard Commander, 2 Captain of the Guards, 2 Venetian Spies, and 5 Marksmen of the Guard. There were bullets everywhere! He didn’t win the scenario, but it was quite memorable.