As in previous years we are in Agliana for Hellana wargame convention. The same trip to Tuscany from the early hours of the Sunday morning to the night, with a pause for the highway stop dinner. All is done to live another wargaming experience together with our friends from every corner of Italy. Look at the categories tag for other editions.

The classic DBA tournament. I prefer to play with other games during a convention, so even this time I only supported my DBA community with photos and friendship.

A Russian view with snow. And Italian and Soviet soldiers.

A WWI naval battle with an interesting use of cotton to built clouds!

When railway modelling in HO scale meet wargame in 20mm scale: a WWII fight in Germany.

Bigger scale and bigger building. Another WWII delicatessen.

Using Comitatus rules to build a battle at the Roma’s gates.

This playable scenario displayed a view of the Porta Ostiensis near the ARSM club headquarters. This scenario recreate a specific Gothic War event.

A new presence in the convention was the Gundam Italian Club. I’m an orphan of eighties too.

Some models, even if the better one was the Zion vessel!

I did my duty with a couple of Ferrum et Gloria scenarios. This one was an opportunity to test the “duel rules” and to have a fight secutor/scissor versus retiarii. An experience to make some tweaks to something. Then some people wished to buy the rules, but I’m still writing them, pity. Now I’m a little distracted by this convention period because we will have “La storia per gioco” and “Dadi.com” in the following weeks, but I’m very involved with the rules writing.

From the Indiegogo announcement:

Fantasy Warriors, the fantasy miniature wargame, is finally going to be back on your tables!

The Indiegogo campaign should hopefully create the possibility to bring to you the new edition of this famous system, devised in the 1990 by Nick Lund and originally published by the famous Grenadier Miniatures firm.

This new edition updates pratically every aspect of the game, from rules to army lists, and creates a real world to stage your battles on.

The new edition is published by Mirliton, founded in 1983 by Stefano Grazzini.
The activity began with a series of Napoleonic ranges and finally covered pratically every age of the bellic history.

Mirliton is known worldwide among the players of wargames, collectors and enthusiasts of military history.
He now has a very large catalog of miniatures, accessories, books on military history and everything that can serve the passionate collector as the veteran player alike.

This year, recurring the 30th anniversary of its foundation, Mirliton wants to celebrate with a new edition of this prestigious wargame, an edition supervised and driven by the veteran player an Fantasy Warriors fan Massimo Brigandì.

Share this: http://igg.me/p/362435

More miniatures in Lucca Games pavilion.

Here my mate Narciso that is dazed watching some greens by a miniatures sculptors stand. He wish to produce some miniatures too. If you remember, Narciso is the man that last year sculpted my pagodas for Zen Garden.

Same stand, part of the display case. I fell in love with that sort of cyber-spider. Only a green for now.

An absolute preview! The first pieces of a new range by Cosimo Auricchio. They are dwarf gladiators for Blood Bowl. I have instantly reserved a set for me… On the background the new legionaries range.

In the Miniature Island there was a painting competition called Grog. Really stunning pieces, but I’m more a wargamer than a modeller so I utilise less detailed miniatures to play. Their painting is excessive. Yes, envy is a bad thing…

More little things not painted with flat colours and detailed with “wonder wash” technique like mine…

A waste of sci-fi tanks at unreal little distance each other: a huge WH40k scenario.

The Calcio Storico Fiorentino (Florence historical football) is an ancestor of modern football and rugby, and it is still played nowadays. It is a very strong violent kind of football. Some years ago the authorities prohibited the annual match because it was the opportunity to settle a score among criminals and hotheads. Just like the Slapshot flick, the players forget the ball and start a brawl! People from Firenze are very proud of their traditions. This is the miniature game by Castle Arts.

Another queue to enter to Lucca Games pavilion. It is more easy to be on the other side of the fence… You can even see some of the young staff volunteers, in blue sweatshirt, that allowed all this for free.

The Miniature Island is the space that Lucca give for free to the wargame miniature world. It is managed by Lorenzo Sartori, the editor of Dadi & Piombo (dices and lead) magazine. He printed a special and free issue to show to common people what we do. When I saw some interest in people towards our little world, I distributed the magazine.

This year we had some demonstration tables with Deus Vult (the new game by FireForge for medieval warfare), Operation Squad (WWII and modern skirmish combat), À La Guerre (XVII-XVIII warfare), FOW (WH40K with Panzers, ah ah!), Bolt Action (WWII skirmish), Infinity (cyber-skirmish). Obviously there was Ganesha Games too.

This is the modern version for Operation Squad, in an Iraq scenario. Losi (or Lodi, I don’t remember, ah ah) set up this interesting ambush fight. This man is a really martyr because he slept in a hotel room shared with me and Andrea. The last night, due to the usual violent snoring by mister Sfiligoi, he chose to slept in the loo on the floor!

Iraq fighters. Losi is one of the authors of Operation Squad Modern. He is working on a Vietnam version too!

Chip ‘n’ Dale at the Miniature Island! In the background the Mirliton miniature stand. This year there were more miniature vendors as Steel Model (with Warlord staff), Kabuki, Cosimo Auricchio, Greebo, Miniature Mania and Chasseurs. On the right the painters zone. Our Miniature Island, the demonstration area, is the support to these vendors, our space exists because them pay for their stands.

Inside a luxury area you could find some painters at work. The aim was to show that painting is not impossible. So the artists explained how to paint and some special techniques.

Oh, I was forgetting the Impetus demonstration table with these gorgeous Byzantine!

And this is the Clan Conan, the first year with my friend Narciso of Legio Palatina club. He is the chap with the beer. These chaps were running three demonstration tables for common people and children. Simpler or exemplar games to access to this world.

Near us two demonstration tables with WH40K. It is an anniversary for this game. I started to play with miniatures when the second edition was out, but I read White Dwarf at Rogue Trader times. A lot of time ago…

This is our Miniature Island team at dinner time. We had a lot of fun! And we hope to have converted some people to our little world.

This was the right time! Third place in the Arezzo DBA tournament of the Italian DBA annual championship. Yeah, I’m a champion again…

After a lot of time Legio Palatina, my club, humiliated the Compagnia della Chimera club! They humiliate us every tournament indeed. However this one was held in their city and they were in full formation. So we are more happy. Gasbarri, the Italian 3D wargame champion and leader of the Arezzo club, ate humble pie, prostrating himself in front of our club.

We lined up on the field a larger team than usual, with the new entry Gabriele. I always try to intimidate our adversaries remembering them his physical presence. In lots of competitions I team up only with Diego, so we could combine only two scores to built our team score, when you can add the best three scores as team result. And this time Diego reached the first place.

Another humiliation moment for Gasbarri. He is desperate viewing Narciso deployment! Great photo! : D

We were 13 people, 5 from Roma, 2 from Canino, 1 from Firenze and 5 from Arezzo. We played in the Fumettopoli store. As every time I bought one skin colour paint bottle of the Rackham range, remains of a old supply. The owners are very kind but their loo is permanently almost out of order for something. The loo and the paint, two constants of my Arezzo tournaments. However this time we looked for something more exotic to eat instead of the restaurant in front of the shop. There was a big fair about international food along the streets of Arezzo but too many people had crowded it so we chose another restaurant. To close, a photo of my small DBA camp. Or rather the reason why I won with my army: I had got hidden troops inside the fort!

Alt si gioca was a wargame convention in Terni who took place the 7th of October. When I was free from my demonstrations I realised with my mobile a movie to report the event.

Some main topics:
0:12 – Blood Bowl tournament
0:51 – Flame of War scenario
1:00 – Battle on Ice in 10mm from Aster
1:20 – Heroquest
1:38 – Bring & Buy
1:53 – A La Guerre
2:30 – Gino Pilotino
2:48 – Subbuteo
3:01 – Operation World War II
3:17 – Wings of Glory
3:54 – Drums & Shakos Large Battle
4:20 – Zen Garden
4:28 – Ferrum et Gloria
4:34 – Samurai Robot Battle Royale
5:05 – Mighty Monsters
5:43 – Of Gods And Mortals
5:51 – Zulu on rampage
6:08 – Weird War II scenario
6:23 – Sherlock Holmes scenario
6:44 – 6mm
7.07 – 11000 Napoleonics in 15mm by Sergio Laliscia

To view a better show of the Napoleonics array, here another video.

And to know more about this convention go to altsigioca.6sided.net

A lot of events in these days. So I am behind schedule with my reports. Be patient! This is a brief report about the tenth DBA tournament in Rome, organised by me and my Legio Palatina chaps. Well, the first note is that it wasn’t in Rome but in Canino, a town north of Rome where Narciso lives. The municipal authorities gave us a room and the place is peaceful and a little bucolic.

We went to Canino the day before to find room, tables and seats. We had some troubles, changed three times the place, competed with local Red Cross (!) for tables and seats, but we found what was necessary at last. We bought bottles of prime quality olive oil to give free to participants, and some cheese directly from producers to bring with us at home. And in the meantime we tested our armies at Narciso’s home together with a new entry: Gabriele. Here you can see Diego while he is doing what he likes more: teaching strategy.

The day after, the tournament day, he had 13 participants, an odd number, so I sacrificed myself and I didn’t play. I brushed up the DBA rules only to act as umpire and not as a player and my army fought only in the tests.

While we were playing with little toys, another child was playing with a computer. Bigger children played 4 games, 1 hour and a quarter long, two in the morning and two in the afternoon. The lists were based on the late Roman era.

We were inside a local small museum about archaeological finds in the area, precisely from a destroyed medieval castle and from Vulci, an Etruscan (Roman, later) city in that neighbourhood. More photos than material objects, but the museum is still growing with new donations. While the tournament was playing some people give them 3 coins and a fibula they incidentally found in the garden, 2000 years old things. We have got a lot of history in our country… Here in the photo the president of the Gruppo Archeologico Romano, the Canino section, owners of the rooms.

The lunch moment. Well, two hours are not properly a “moment”, but restaurateurs are a bit slow and it was a little demanding an à la carte three-course meal with side dishes, pizza as bread, wine and coffee. Burp! Sorry…

Our heroes, our duces, got together to elect the magister militum! A beautiful day with challenging rules and great people.

More on Rufina convention. This time some photos and words on the game that I played.

Because it was the 8th of September, the day that remind us the escape of king and government during the war, leaving the State and the Army without orders, we played a game with Operation Squad WW2 rules. The setting was pretty basic and a little scratch. We wanted to reproduce a fight of Italians versus Germans. The firsts were desperately trying to save themselves and the Country while Italy was collapsed as nation, the latter were invading the territory while were only a few in a foreign place where their former comrades switched sides for the Allies but without knowing it!

We made some mistakes because it was the fist time we play with these rules. My friend Pippo of Pippo’s Blog fame, fought with a fallschrimjager squad even if he wore a t-shirt with a commie red star on the national flag and the writing “always partisans”! I had got standard Italian troops instead.

After a lot of promises, I organised a demo of my Ferrum et Gloria for Pippo. He wanted to try these rules and in the future he will run a full playtest for me, based on the written text, to understand if all is clear. I hope he will play an entire campaign to tweak the system points and the added rules. Bad lucky dices for me this time, so the test was not so valid to state the full potential of the rules. But Pippo liked it.

Here you can see my new arena, made by Pippo and painted by my father under my direction. Small, portable, elliptical.

Sunday an Anticamente tournament was held in Rufina. The first time with my 10mm Roman legion. And I wore my tourist t-shirt with a big “SPQR”, a real statement of Roman creed! Last time I played with these rules it was almost a year ago. So I had only a lot of good dice result to survive to enemy armies. However I know something about this game: I reached the forth place on eight participants. I had to leave early due to distance, and a fake photo was taken while I receive the cup for the third place because maybe I could reach that place in case a player would lost more pieces. Now I haven’t got the cup but only a photo. Yes, but together with my friend Fabio.