January is not the best time of the year for a trip to Terni. But we wanted to meet Sergio after some months. We were busy with fairs and tournaments so now was the time for a new visit at the Sergio’s war-rooms.

Exactly at the end of the year, when people were thinking about New Year’s Eve parties, Sergio put on paper his new game. It is called “100 dices”. It is a hex-based game system and it is built to reproduce a horse & musket battle. Its engine could be adapted to other periods too.

The main idea is to give 100 dices to players. Every time a player use a dice he throw it away. Well, however there are lots of other things more! The rules are very simple, fast to play, easy to remind. Something to play in a couple of hour or less. We played on a small board composed by 10×8 MDF hexes. It is even a low-cost way to play and an introductory game to wargames newbies. It can be a great game!

The sad thing were my dices. I had the average result of 2 or 3 during all the battle. Pretty frustrating. It is difficult to realise a real playtest when one side is systematically under a low-dice-spell. Every action I did were a failure. I appreciate the game but another time please give me the 100 dices with the 6 side…

Another playtest, this time for Andrea. The game is called “Gunfight at Hell Creek” and it is a spaghetti western scenario realised with the famous Song of Blade and Heroes engine and something more. Born as an extravaganza, it is in a very fast development process. Maybe it will be ready in the first part of this year.

We played a rough version of the game with our Legio Palatina mates during the Christmas club reunion. Now some tweaks were done and the game was better, more fluid. We had some problems with the high weapons power and the scenario rules, but playtest are made for this, to find problems and adopt solutions. On the ground some little houses, fresh from the producer. Next time we will have more houses and western stuff around for a better play.

The game that I won without be in the place, without be in the same city. Well, all this is a little unusual, but it could be. Sergio, Drums & Shako author, thought about a very large battle for his Drums Shakos Large Battle. It was the 12th of December, and this is a chronicle from far.

Three gaming tables, six players and two coordinators for faction, one master. At the coordinators were referred the duty to plan the battle, to supply troop reinforcements, to order strategies to players. And they couldn’t see the tables. So a fog of war occluded the real development of the battle. Moreover messages between coordinators and players, commander-in-chief and generals, were slowed and confused. To add fog of war, the players had various shapes instead of real miniatures to concealing troops at the enemy. Stratagems and surprises were planned by Sergio along the battle. I played as French coordinator, so I had a map of the terrain and could refer to it to give orders. In those days I had an allergic rash so I couldn’t go to Terni. Thanks to Sergio I could play through mobile telephone and emails.

Often what you plan is not what you realise. We had more people than we planned, nine players for the tables. But at most they didn’t remind the rules so well and play turns took too much time. So the battle was stopped before the natural end of the conflict. The communicating system between me and generals lacked due to not strictly rules about my role. I planned the battle but I couldn’t intervene in it. But my faction won. All lessons for another time and another very large battle. We are thinking how to play it better another time.

Christmas is the time of the year when Luca come from London to meet his old mates here in Rome. His wife is a writer for the Roma guide by Lonely Planet so all the family is here for the copy edit of the new annual edition. So we have got Luca, while Narciso come from Canino. Hence we can organise a Legio Palatina reunion year after year, even if Maurizio is missing while Paolo is in Switzerland with his pregnant wife. Our club still lives for a day.

This time we have got two new full members: Gabriel and Jack. Their father is teaching them the wargame basis for future glory on the game boards. But they still have some confusion. Gabriel displayed some 15mm single based modern troops with flamethrowers in our mini Large Battle SDS in 28mm scale. Smaller but more deadly indeed.

Diego opened his house for the first time ever! It could be perfect headquarters for our club, but he wants to preserve it for something less important. As you can see, it is along a railway. This fascinate me in some way.

Andrea was with us from the morning. We playtested again Song of Spear and Shield with Diego. Later we did a collective visit to the local wargame store, now only few blocks from Diego’s house. And after a lunch with pasta, the afternoon with the kids, SDLB and snacks, the evening with some ugly reality shows about Yankee food while we were waiting that Luca consigned the kids to their mother in another part of the city, we ate the annual dinner based on pizza and beer.

To digest we playtested a new game from Ganesha based on western films. Four players, two sides. My dices were so bad that I did nothing at all! At least the others had fun with the game.

The classic reunion photo. So we can see photo after photo the passage of the years, but even the fact that we are always here together year after year!

In the night Narciso and Andrea slept in Diego’s house. Because they are two famous long-winded people, they fell asleep very late. In the late morning we visited IKEA to buy some stuff: assorted for Narciso, two bookshelves to put inside the miniature closet for Andrea, some Zen Garden bases for me.

Then me and Andrea made another playtest to the western game. On my Christmas red tablecloth. This time I had only good dices and Andrea the bad ones. I can say that they are some interesting concepts in the game but there are lots of things to do before it can be full playable. Something for late 2013 or 2014 because there are so many new rules that have to be published by Andrea this year, and the next.

The 2012 passed away, the begin of 2013 was still with a holidays atmosphere, Luca was almost leaving for London, so we setted another reunion, even if shorter. This time Diego and Narciso were playtesting Ferrum et Gloria with some tweaks about thraeces and andabatae.

Another club photo before of another pizza and beer dinner. Maybe I will see Luca in London for Salute. Maybe we will be here another time 12 months more later.

Thanks to Luciano and Valentina we had got a huge space for our Ganesha Games stand. Andrea was running a demonstration table for beginners with the new edition of Song of Blade and Heroes. So some people and children discovered the world of wargame. At the same place were possible to taste the water of the upcoming Of Gods And Mortals. We sold half of the book rules that we brought. And my Zen Garden game gone sold out quickly. Now I want to realise a little more luxury new version of it. Ready for Play Modena next year, I think. Only 15 copies and nevermore.

As you remember my arena was stolen in Lucca convention. Now I have built a better and larger arena by a Playmobil set. It is still needy of a paintwork to give a less toyish feel and some structure improvements. In the works, but good even now. A lot of children was attracted by it. Hey, it is not a toy for children, it is a toy for adults! ; )

Andrea stayed in Rome for 5 days. We playtested Song of Spear and Shields the day before, the first (desert) day of the fair and the day after. Andrea was not so happy about some aspects of the game so he wanted to stop it and to throw it away. But I insisted to save the core rules, leaving the group rules to a future game with more miniatures. I want this game a lot, I am almost a co-author of it. Now I’m waiting the feedback from the drafting of the version for external playtesters to have something more delineated to work.

Once again it was the time of my birthday! Now they are forty-three. My mate Diego had his birthday the day before, so I tried to create a birthday event with miniatures for both of us together with our friends. The choice for the location was Terni, our adoptive city as regard to the miniatures. This is the picture of the participants. You may notice that Andrea Ganesha is sponsoring a vintage box of D&D miniatures that he found at Sergio’s home. A little pirate instead taught us Blood Bowl secrets.

A big surprise for us was a prototype test for a new rule engine by Sergio, the man behind the revolutionary Large Battle Drums and Shakos. It was only the basic engine without historical and terrain features, and it just worked very well! It is a game based on area movement and presence, driven by cards and a fighting style adapted from the LBDS dices. It can be develop for various periods. It is very great! An entire family of rulesets can be generate from this engine. The only problem is that wargamers are not fit with the concept of areas, they think that this is not for wargames but boardgames.

The latter half of the day was with Blood Bowl, a game that I tried a lot of years ago when the first edition was out in the eighties. At that time we haven’t got the miniatures but die cut cards on plastic bases and Games Workshop was only a creative company from Nottingham. My friend bought the expansion too. We didn’t understand the rules very well, we hadn’t experience with games, I don’t didn’t speak English, so we put the two boxes in an angle and forgot that fantasy football field. Now after ten years with DBA we want to find something new (!!!) and we are interested in Blood Bowl. I made my first game after 25 years and I liked it. The beautiful football stadium is made by Sergio and will be present at the next convention in Terni “ALT si gioca” in October, when a BB tournament will be held.

The day went very well, we had fun, we celebrate our birthdays. Sergio cooked the Bulgarian national dish, a fresh mixture of yogurt, cucumbers and herbs. Cheese and a rice salad as side dishes. In the evening we ate a great “piadina”, even if Diego suffer from Bulgarian “counterattacks”. I feel happy : )

What do you do in your holidays? Sun, rest, sex, shopping? Well, I passed 5 days in Terni at Andrea’s home to playtest 5 new games. I thought that this could be a little boring but time flowed speedily. Absurdly I am relaxed with a lot of sleep and had some trips around looking for food and to visit the weapon museum, GiocaPerugia and Carsulae, as I said before in other posts. And now a short chronicle of the playtests.

We are working on it since a couple of years but we still have got a lot of problems. This test must be the final time to define the rules but we found some inconsistencies in the style of the game. The problem is about armies dimensions and a easy way to resolve individual and group fights. I want a game for more than 100 miniatures versus other 100 miniatures, with military formations and historical variations. At the end we have got two different set of rules, one for skirmish with 20 fighters each side and another one for 100 fighter each side, with a single engine, too big for small fights, too small for big fights. We have to make a choice. For the moment we are thinking to produce a smaller game more in the style of Song of the Blade and Heroes as perspectives. In the future we could try to produce a mass game with the aim to pit buckets of ancients in fight in hoplite formation.

Another playtest for my game. A table full of sheets to track movements and rules. It seems a command bridge of a warship! Well, it is just an impression because all is more handleable. This is only the playtest form of the cards needed to play smoothly. All is fine, only some tweaks are needed to the specifications of some gladiatorial types. This time I used my lego gladiators, a 6 figures team with interchangeable weapons and helms. They are very practical for playing away. And lego minifigs are very nice!

This set of rules for fantasy combat is still in development but Andrea has found the right way and I can say that I like it. The only thing to do is to test all the rules and to balance special powers. This is a project for the late 2013 so it is not a priority at moment. Just to say, we played with pieces that we had at hand because we have not the right miniatures, and the name is fictional. You will hear about it in the future.

Before the tests we celebrated the event hanging on the wall the poster of a film that you know for sure. I played with Ganesha’s superheroes two years ago, if I remember correctly. Andrea had a little neglected it to spend mental resources on other rules. However now it is more fluid. We played two different games to find extreme situations to resolve. Indeed we found that in some situations the fights were not so incisive. The development still run but I think that this year we can read these superheroes rules in the paperback form. And then we will have to wait for a supplement with more superheroes powers because them are too much to fill only a book.

We played games at all hours, even at night. This one was tested before launch, two full games. It is very fast and reproduce a Song of Blade and Heroes fight in a card game. It is still in a primitive form but I like the engine. He have to work hard on it to give depth to the game. Ten years ago Andrea was a Magic expert with a fixed column on a game magazine, so it is not so impossible to do it. It is even a production duty not similar to the usual Ganesha’s rulesets, you have to illustrate and print decks of cards. Now Ganesha Games have a lot of games to produce so I don’t know when he will find the time to develop the card game. In addition to those I’ve played in this playtest marathon, there are other rulesets in an advanced phase: Swatters, Apocalypticum, Samurai Robot Battle Royale, Tales of Blades and Heroes rpg manual series, Song of Blade and Heroes II edition, to name those I saw in a semi-definitive form. And before I left we have collected some ideas on what could be published in late 2014…

The day before the annual appointment with Hellana, the national wargame convention in Agliana, me and Diego went to Terni to visit Sergio Laliscia (Song of Drums and Shakos) and Andrea Sfiligoi (Ganesha boss). We did this visit to take some miniatures from Sergio for the demonstration game of the day after and to make some playtest for the new Ganesha games in development. We slept in Andrea’s house at night, so Sunday we could go very early to Agliana with a single car.

On the table the initial stages of a new big Andrea’s project. It is still secret so I cannot say more. You can only know that some miniatures are involved… ha ha ha : )
Sadly I felt asleep during the brainstorm and the playtest phase while some ideas were showed and tested for the first time. It was after lunch, so sand were in my eyes. I will playtest the game in the future because I have got some particular skills specifically for this game from my university studies.

A crucial moment! The new version (the forth!) of my Ferrum et Gloria gladiator game for Ganesha Games is tested in the hands of Andrea. Here you can see my portable cardboard arena and a fight of 3 thraeces versus 3 myrmillones. Every figure has got a card with the specific moves. There were 6 cards because every figure had different weapons and combat style: in the ancient times there were 4 different types for thraeces and 5 types for myrmillones. Some counters reminded the state of the figures. The wounds system is similar to the Mighty Monsters one. Three coloured dice are used for activations, fatigue, wounds, save rolls and fight. The play is more elaborate than SBH: here you have only few gladiators and the hype is on the fight with specific weapons. I don’t want to say more, I can’t explain the game here. You will see the development of the game in the following months, even on the bar on the right of this blog.

I was worried that something went bad because Andrea was judging my work and he is severe and the game have to like to him. All fine! Andrea played my game and suggested some things. Here while he was using his ipad to take some photos for an immediate posting on facebook during the play.

These mock up cards are the prototype of the SBH card game. I like the cards in this form, basic but charming. Sergio spoked about it very well. Andrea only explain us the principles of it but we hadn’t the time to play it. Next time…

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.