Playing Carnage

Carnage works best as a close combat attacker. He has good mobility and can damage even invulnerable foes. I would probably hold off on using the Symbiote Blade power while he has a 4 damage showing. After a push to his second clix though, oh yeah its go time! Pushing him is a good option as he will gain the MASSACRES ARE MY SPECIALTY special power, and use the ability to heal with steal energy and flurry.

When Leap Climb shows up on his dial, you gain the option to pull him out of the fray.

Combating Carnage

Combating carnage doesn’t seem to hard a task. Ranged attacks are your best bet. Try to keep him from basing any of your important characters. One tactic would be to use an expendable character strictly to tie up Carnage and keep his ugly red mitts off your better pieces. His 4 range should be easy enough to stay away from. Since Toughness is on all 8 of his clix, if you do go head to head with him make sure you hit him hard, he won’t be able to evade the attack if you hit.

Feats

If you are playing in the golden age format, you may want to pick some feats for this psycho symbiote. For Carnage I recommend feats that will help him deal with his weakness, and by weakness I mean his unimpressive defense values. The 8 point Protected feat is an obvious and over used choice, but with Carnage’s lackluster defense values it is almost a must. Alias is another way to potentially keep Carnage from taking damage. At 3 points it’s cheap and comic accurate, since he can change his form and all. For 10 points, Nanobots is another good feat to pick, as he gains leap climb at the same time his damage values drop to 2’s. Carnage can leap away and absorb an object to heal for 2 clix.

Team Building

With only the Monster keyword avaliable, theme building is somewhat limited. It can be done for sure but I think Carnage will work best on non-theme teams. Just make sure the right support is there in the form of Telekinesis and Probability Control. Carnage takes up slightly more than half your team in a standard game. Pairing Carnage up with a ranged attacker is also not a bad idea. The Web of Spider-man set also includes some generic symbiotes, and Carnage’s spawn Toxin. You could theme team with those pieces, that’s going to be a fun team to run, if not competitive.

Final Assessment

Carnage is a bit pricey for what you get. That’s not a reason to avoid him; it just means use him wisely. In a 400 point or more game he will be a lot easier to work with. I would probably stay away from him in a 300 point game or a sealed event, unless I pulled 3 additional symbiotes at the same time, hey it could happen.