Again in Terni. This city is in another region but the travel is so smooth and brief (little more than one hour with train) that is more simple to go to Terni than some areas of Rome. Me and Diego are a sort of wargame commuters! This time wasn’t a playtest for Ganesha Games but a DBA day.

I seriously started wargaming with DBA competitions. Saturday was only the last tournament of a long series since 2003. The last for now, indeed. When I see the old photos I can see the same faces but younger and with more hair. We are a championship built on friendship and almost all are here since 2003. Well, the child is a second generation player, he is the son of the champion. And this time he arrived second. A great family but I’m thinking to create a championship only for them so we could play freely.

To play we choice sad places as this dance hall for elders outside the city centre perimeter. You can observe two posters on the wall with the last sensations of accordion music, probably on programme for one of the following nights or afternoons. However here there will be a big wargame convention in October too.

The best moment of the day is always the convivial lunch. This time we ate pizza and gnocchi. Huge portions and cheap cost!
Under a game of Zen Garden between father and son during pauses among phases of the tournament.

Almost I forgot. It was one of my worst performances. Total misfortune. In the last game I lost 6 pieces against 1, half of the army! My dice was very scarce about numbers higher than 2… (put here a lot of swearing).

I’m very busy so I haven’t time to show you a Ludica report. While you are waiting, remembering that today is Giovedì Grasso and we are during Carnevale: and now something completely different! You cannot live only with miniatures of soldiers, little reproductions of men, there is other in the world. After a lot of time after its diffusion in the world I viewed this thing and I’m sure that someone of you don’t know it, so you have to know. Please, stay calm while you are viewing it…

Well, what is it? It is a children programme on Russian television, where young people can even see and dance the last pop-dance hit of the moment. The children of the show are really weird, more weird than the situation. I think about their parents that want to see them on television because they are little stars. Awful. Instead Angina is the fictional name of a young female artist. She has a cute little face and two enormous boobs. His song is called Кому какое дело (who cares?), so we couldn’t care about Russian cultural concept of decency and we can enjoy the view.

And this one is a fake backstage of the famous singer, known better for what she has under his throat than for his voice.

At this moment I would be in Ludica Roma, a wargame, boardgame and videogame convention here in the Rome Fair (it is not precisely Rome, the Fair is in the middle of nowhere outside the city). Indeed, I wanted to demonstrate Zen Garden and Mighty Monsters at the Ganesha Games stand for three days, but Andrea is blocked by snow among mountains with a car not suitable to it. He have to come from Terni and it is a long way to here. So sad. I’m here stuck with my camping backpack ready with a lot of copies of Zen Garden, miniatures for a quick SSS playtest, food and water. At this moment we don’t know what to do. The fair is for 3 days, snow in Rome it is not falling now, maybe we will see something for afternoon or night.

On these pages you will read the report of what we will do. Andrea is thinking to travel by train tomorrow. We will be present without big scenarios because of this. We want to present for the first time in its definitive form my wargame Zen Garden, maybe the smallest wargame in the world. Sergio of Drums and Shakos fame cannot be present with his new game because of a flu.

We will survive snowing? If yes, a large selection of boardgames are offered to public to play with them together a volunteer demonstrator for free. All Roman wargame clubs are in the fair (thanks to me!). It is cold, the fair is in the middle of nowhere, but we are a lot of people who wants to play, so if you are around come and give a try to our games. We will be here, I hope!

A new year for Anticamente ruleset, a wargame based on hexagonal areas. Incidentally I won the first national championship in 2010. The 2011 went very bad, but now is 2012 so I have new hopes! New army list and new miniatures for the Punic Wars period. I have got a Roman army, it is obvious, isn’t it? I’m waiting for other miniatures in the works under the hand of Cosimo Auricchio, the sculptor. They are the Roman allies, the Italic ones. Later during this year, I hope.

If you want to know more about this ruleset, you can download it for free here: http://www.tridentebologna.it/regole_E.php

I thought it was simpler to make. Now, after 4 months of work, Zen Garden is ready at last. I’m only waiting the pressing of the rules, but for this I have to wait Andrea. And you can buy it, even if I must calculate the price, because the sum of all materials do it not so cheap. Two editions. The red one (8 boxes) is without glued materials, the black one (22 boxes) has glued materials. Here is the red box number one. Limited editions of course.

Some materials ready to be put in the boxes: soldiers, measuring sticks, dices. In the other photo the black planks with drying glue.

Today (even yesterday in some part of the city at north) was the day with snow upon Rome. It is a rare event, but not so rare as before, because weather is changing. Now the snow is almost melted, but it is night so temperature is low again, but the sky is free of clouds, we had a sunny afternoon. We were waiting the snow since a week but our wonderful mayor Alemanno is like Schettino on Concordia, only unclear orders, no real countermeasures, to accuse others to save himself, and a policy over all:”save yourself if you can, it is snowing, it is the end of the world!”. Rome blocked by only 3.5 cm of snow…

I was almost forgetting that in the last days was out the last creation of Sergio, even in English edition. Here you can find some reviews:
Daleswargames.blogspot.com (English review)
Gioconomicon.net (Italian review)

I saw the development of the ruleset almost from the start and playtested it. You can find on my blog old posts about this. Last Saturday we met again in Terni at Sergio’s home for another playtest session. Under here there is the initial stages of development of a new game. You have to wait a couple of years to see it, so be patient!

Together with Andrea we tested the rules for Song of Spear and Shield about chariots and elephants. We made plans for next conventions and works too.

In the meantime we were visited by Bandini that painted my Roman army for Anticamente. In the next days, when I will end to doing things for Zen Garden, I put them on the bases.

In exactly the same days and the same beach of the landing but 68 years after. It was a two day revocation, during the 21th and 22th. Me and other chaps of the historical group of ANPdI (the national association of military paratroopers) made a display during the public commemoration of the event, showing that even Italian paratroopers were in combat for their country.

Trenches on the seaside.

German equipment in trench.

German cars.

Czechs dressed like Scottish? I don’t know, because one guy (not present in this photo) was wearing his original clan tartan.

The amphibious star of the event. It was sailing back and forth on water and sand. The man with the coat in the front of the vehicle is a Austrian paratrooper war veteran. He told us some personal war histories. He is even a choirmaster, so some people improvised with him some traditional German song. There was another war veteran, from Battaglione Guastatori Alpini “Valanga” X^ MAS. When we made him the military honours shouting the battle cry some tears spilled from his eyes.

Here we are on the south side of the beach. The harbour is at the end of the photo. Nowadays the pier is longer. On the seaside you can see the encampment for the display. During the summer here there are seaside resorts. Another display was in Nettuno, but only with reenactors in American dresses.

We made our Italian paratroopers display here. This is the casino. It still maintain his vintage luxury style. Some trainees from local Hotel School prepared and served the lunch for us. A strange situation: served from livered people at a table with an Austrian war veteran while I was with machine gun loaders on my chest and a dagger in my belt.

Royal Navy flag and a display of Allied materials, as this Bren gun.

The German display and a view on the photographic exhibit on the landing.

German steel.

Anti-tank weapons.

Our display with only materials made in Italy. And among them our MAB machine guns, Breda machine gun, helmets, all immersed in our old national camouflage pattern. We spoke about the Italian presence on this front. Some people wanted to tell us about their childhood years, remembering the bombed house at the port where they lived, or their relatives died in the conflict. Obviously people often didn’t recognise our uniforms because all thinks this was an affair only between Americans and Germans. Some people stopped me because they don’t like so much our uniforms, other instead liked them too much for political reasons. I live this thing with a historical perspective and nothing more.

Our paratrooper war veteran, the immortal Santo who fought in El Alamein battle.

Some beautiful models for you.

Angry cats: Tiger und Panther.

Jagdpanther.

More modest and compact Italian tank. You must had more courage if you fought in these little boxes.

And after the toys and people dressed like soldiers, a real aspect of war, the German war cemetery that we visited in the morning. People who died for the defence of another country, people sent to fight a war that they hadn’t declared, people who rest under pines and cypresses.

One week ago Andrea came to my house to playtest some rules for new rulesets in development in the Ganesha Games factory. After a lot of time we put our minds again on Song of Spear and Shield. The last time we had some problems with chariots because this type of vehicles are a real challenge to the geometric standards that are in every game.

If you look at the gaming tables in another way, we can say that we don’t play with miniatures but with bases to find a common ground when we consider the space and the form that a man (or a lot of people represented with a single miniature at variable ratios) assumes on it. So the movement rules in games are the interaction among these bases. If we are dealing with infantry we simulate how infantry moves. But when we add cavalry all is more complicated, and sometimes we simplistically handle it as an upper men on a longer base, a rectangular one instead of the square or circular ones. When we consider chariots we have to rethink all. We have a platform, pulled by horses, with warriors that can leave it. You cannot turn easily a thing like this and you have speed inertia that don’t permit to stop the ride. And every element of the composite weapon that we call chariot can broke, die or leave. Another thing: what happens when a chariot is launched against men?

So we spent 5 hours to develop some general rules that must clear every situation with chariots. Are our solutions the right ones? Today I will be in Terni for another playtest for chariots, but this time inside a real game. A report will follow in the next days…