A couple of Sundays ago we received a visit from our friend Paolo who is now living in Switzerland. So we had the opportunity to set two DBA games to test a tournament list proposal for the next DBA event in Rome.

Since 2004 we are a 6 men club devoted to DBA tournaments at most, with some great results in 2006. But life reserves obstacles to players: Luca now lives in London, Narciso returned to his little town near Viterbo, Maurizio is missing with wife and two little children in an obscure somewhere in Rome, and now Paolo is feeding himself only with chocolate and cheese. But we are still involved in Italian DBA circuit, so even this year we are organising the Rome annual tournament. We have almost lost the enthusiasm for doing it because after exactly ten years of DBA events we wish something different. But a lot of friends are from the DBA circuit so tournaments are the pretext to meet them.

For this year I thought to something very different than usual: a choice of each of a kind of the DBA troops (Kn, Cv, Lh,…), until to 12 pieces. The only fixed troop was Cv as general. We tried this scenario that afternoon. It worked and it is a heavy duty for players because you have to manage your troops very well. But at the end we choose to do things in a more orthodox way: people could not find this of their taste even for the unreal historical feel of the thing. And DBA is a historical game, you know, if you can conceive a historical meaning in the usual line formation of DBA armies…

For the refinement gentleman I show you the Paolo’s personal measure instrument for DBA paces, a elegant compass used for maps. Paolo is a geographer, do you know it? And he now has got an iPad to shoot photos.
Well, the evening ended as usual, with pizza and beer in a near restaurant. Only few days after I received the invitation for his wedding during this August. We are projecting the upcoming trip to the land of clocks with birds inside…

We were here as every year since 2004. Hellana is the wargame annual appointment for Centre and South Italy. It is not so big, it is situated inside a school gym, but it is our convention, and we love it.

We are in the middle of nowhere, a village along the road from Firenze to sea, where you can find Lucca, Pisa and Viareggio: the upper side of Tuscany. It is amazing as from this bunch of houses some people organise their convention that calls people from various parts of Italy.

The main event is a interesting bring & buy space. This year I find an old magazine with crucial articles on Italian paratroopers in WWII, especially for the evolution of cartridge vests called “samurai”. I own one of them, a reproduction that I use in paratrooper reenactment. Among other things, miniatures and books, but I had just spent too much money on Vallejo colours, forex bases and miniatures for a special project for the next year to be published on Ganesha Games’s Free Hack.

Some tables were intriguing but you cannot find realisation out of normal because clubs don’t challenge each other to produce the outstanding table. They only want to show their usual games. Instead TB Line with Fabio Farneti bring home always some convention price because he is a perfectionist and he build perfect tables for 10mm miniatures with his friends.

Another event in Hellana is the DBA tournament and the Wings of War contest. In the last years I didn’t play DBA here because I want to try something new and chatting with people, free from four DBA turns that engage all the day. And the last year, me, Paolo and Andrea, re-invented Song of Spear and Shield during a experimental demonstration game.

In Hellana 2004 we found snow in Agliana. This year the weather was fantastic, so we found only this Russian scenario in snow.

I put the photos not in a strictly order bounded to the report. There were various tables and vendors, people played with their games and someone viewed the work of other people. We had fun and in a next post I will show the Ganesha stand. I close here with the more “vertical” game of the day.

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).

We think of my home as the venue of our club. In the past times we were all strictly compressed in the larger room of the house, playing 3 games of DBA at the same time, and more people were watching them. Now we are separated and dispersed, so I organised for the past holidays a playing reunion. It was hard because of distances and events, so only four people were present. Some news about the core members of our circle of friends: Luca is living in London while the third child is on arrival; Maurizio is living in Rome but our city is so chaotic that is difficult to meet each other, and a second child is on arrival; Narciso is living in Canino, a small town two hours far from Rome; Paolo is living in Swiss now with a marriage waited for August and this evening was his farewell to us. Me and Diego are always the same instead.

What you can see here is an extravaganza in small format, a 15mm DBA classic fight Roma versus Carthage but with a variation: every base is composed of 4 regular DBA bases. The overall effect is great, more troops in combat, more army look for your miniatures. The effect on the rules is that when a base is destroyed only one of the 4 bases is destroyed, so the play continues. This simulate attrition better than the disappearance of an entire base and the sudden hole in the line-up. Why none thought it before???

Here Narciso and the making of the cheap big bases. As you can see we utilised a red table cloth to play, because my home was setted for the holidays! Red instead of green, a colour not so easy to tolerate, indeed.

Later in the day, after the lunch in a Muslim fast food based on fried chicken meat and before a dinner with pizza and beer, we played two games of HOTT, the new (!) sensation in our Italian DBA world. Narciso wants to organise some tournaments so he is pushing me to compose a HOTT army. I’m thinking about a simple mummies army, my friends are thinking for me about an army based on gladiators. Another project!? I have enough of them!!! Well, maybe I will do something. However a day that we will remember.

Another day in Arezzo, this time for the last DBA tournament of the year for the Italian championship. There will be another one but it is in Milan, too far away. Maybe there will be a special tournament in Rome in December, but now we are thinking about other things. The first time I was in Arezzo, I went for an holiday to do something new, the day before a DBA tournament somewhere more north. Now we go to Arezzo more than two times every year. And we pass our time inside a comic shop with a large room on the back for games, like GW ones and card games. On Sundays we always found a kindly lady, the mother of the owner of the shop. Among matches we can walk around comics and some boxes of costly GW products. Every time I buy some ancient Confrontation colours at sale prices. I like the tone of that flesh colours, and now you cannot find them. And just on the opposite side of the street there is a restaurant for our convivial lunches, because our tournaments are an opportunity to meet people from other cities that, tournament after tournament, are become friends. The only sad part is the menu, because I dislike meat but our men in Arezzo organise always a lunch based on meat…

I want to be short here, because I’m very busy. So I would say only that this time I risked to reach the podium during the last turn (my opponent reach the third position). The choice of the army list was almost forced because there was an army stronger than others. So it was a civil war, and if you were the defender you could, after the double switch, have a big advantage, positioning your stronger pieces against weaker pieces of the enemy. When I could make this I had great results. I broke my dice in the fight! It was a dice with runes around the edges and weird Roman numerals. Black with yellow engravings. It was like a demoniac dice who fears the enemy. It was wounded in the fight at an angle. Too much hard launches. It is dead while serving and now it is in Valhalla.

Something more from tournament in Canino.

Canino in Italian language is “little dog”. So this is the place with the monument to a little dog, the coat of arm of the municipality.

I saw this sign. It says that is prohibited the entrance of dogs in the area (a garden for children). It is weird that the sign has a barred dog that is practically the same dog of the coat of arm!

Saturday we slept here, with open windows for the heat, in the main place of the town. Just under there is a bar. In front there is the bell tower of the church with the Bonaparte’s chapel. Near a dance hall in the open for elder people that works until the 24.30. It is like to live inside a speaker box. Gigione on the stage sung “my heart is like a dancer and it make me suffer”…

Near Canino there is this castle with a 2100 years old bridge. It was the frontier between State of Church and Tuscany. Now inside there is a museum.

And near the castle there is Vulci, a ancient and great Etruscan (and after Roman) city. Or better those that remains of Vulci. A large flat plain under the sun with some walls and basements of buildings. Two hour to walk in the area where under our feet there was a great city. It is not dug by archaeologists because we cannot conserve it. A large part of gold from Etruscans it is from here. There are camps and horses (and a lot of flies!!!) but in the museums of the world there are jewels from here.

Last picture for a pre-tournament nocturne match: me versus Narciso, to remind the rules.

Thank you very much to all people involved in this event, and thanks to Narciso for his ospitality!

Well, I still fell tired about those two days in Canino. And I have to prepare myself to upcoming GiocaRoma that is next weekend. And I run two jobs too. I haven’t time for all this… So, only fast posts about the past event!

The prizes, small coups but great glory. And a bottle of oil from Canino trees, a high quality oil.

Genuine cheese as medal for the first squad!

We are so generous that we give away a bottle of oil to all participants!!! We kept this as a surprise. So everyone had something to bring home. And we distributed holy cards too!

My matches went not so well. Two win, two loss. I always made the terrain so I put coast to limit manoeuvring for a more direct approach. But I had very bad dices against my strongest opponents, instead lucky dices against my weakest opponents. So not great story, fast play and results.

The wide hall was offered by Municipality of Canino. We only paid for chairs and tables. However it was hot, as September is.

A great dinner on a terrace. And a lot of chats. But I felt bad with my stomach so I eat not so much. The evening before I only eat a half coconut, and for dinner two small packs of homogenised fruit with bread.

And this is my camp, an idea took from Brancaleone films.

Next year there will be a new tournament organised by us. But it is so early to think about it…

Here we are! Sunday it’s the day, with the struggle in Canino among DBA armies, to elect who will be the true Pope (“lo Papa vero”, our theme) in XII century. We have the usual problems about tables, food and these things, but it is because we want all to be perfect. In the meantime, for who is a reader of this blog, a preview of this year gadget for the players: holy cards (a small flyer with a saint image on the front and a prayer on the back) with faces of Legio Palatina members like characters from the Brancaleone’s films. They are made by talented Paolo of Ronin Clan.

Next time the report of the event!