When scenery made of cardboard from printable pdf becomes three-dimensional. This is the state of the art of this kind of constructions. They have got a modular construction principle, so it is all rigid and stable. Moreover you can print what you want and change the final aspect, so it is easy to built with this kit an arena more oriented on Roman architecture. I still prefer more scenery based on materials that does not undergo the humidity, but if I thought to a cardboard arena, my choice would fall on this one.

Know more on this company and their arena here.

If you want to live in a flat world with 3d miniatures inside it, you can try this cardboard scenery for your gladiators. It is easy to store, it is decent to see. Better than my orange flat arena that I use in my playtests for sure! Well, it is more a fantasy arena than a real one, but it give you the right feel, and it is very affordable. You can download the pdf here for only one buck, and than print it at a service near you if you want a large surface.

Another benefit for my stay in Terni was a visit to Carsulae, an abandoned (pre-)Roman city near Terni. We have a lot of ancient remains here in Italy that we don’t mind them. So much history and so lack of interest in it. Even if I love archaeology I never considerate a visit to this site, but now I’m pleased to have did it.

This is a part of the old route of the Via Flaminia inside Carsulae. This road joins Rome with Ariminum (present Rimini), and therefore the two sides of Italy, sea to sea, through mountains. It was the way to have a road for the north, the other sea, and to control the territory even against Italic Celts. Now when I hear about Via Flaminia I only think about car traffic. In this photo you can view no congestion, luckily.

As remains you can view only some structures, mainly building foundations. I suppose that the walls were used centuries after to built other houses around: walls can fall after years without maintenance, and their bricks and rocks are available building material to all near communities. Probably you could find Carsulae inside the walls of later little towns that were born around.

The most evident buildings are the amphitheatre and the theatre, symbols of Roman civilization and necessary to a city to have a sporting identity and a cultural life. The last three photos taken from various angles are dedicated to them. You can see the stage and the bleachers with their structures, formed of walls made of white stones with narrow lines made of red bricks. The city is not entirely archaeologically investigated and large areas are still buried by the earth accumulated over the centuries, so in the future they could find more materials. The arena is partially excavated, its half is still filled with an earth mound and trees over it. It think they could find subterranean structures. An instructive and enjoyable visit under a spring sun.

I started to speak about these two projects a long time ago. Now I can give you some updates. The former is the project for an arena for my gladiators, the latter is the viaduct for Flyton, the fictional town where I want to set my battles with miniatures.

At the last Hellana I could meet some friends of mine, as Filippo, that gave me this present, a prêt-à-porter arena made of cardboard from a box for computer equipment, a sheet for railway modelling with engraved regular stones, a touch of spray paint that create the stone effect. And his skills for assembling all in this attractive form. Three doors are made with toothpicks or other little wood bars. The final touch is the waterproof wood-like coating of the external surface with some sort of adhesive sleeve. I will utilise this arena for presentations or other similar contexts, because it is built to be portable. I have to give it some final touches to complete the global aspect. Now all is flattened on a single tone. I want a sand colour for the base, the same of the gladiator bases used for my fighters. I must buy more Vallejo “dark sand”, I suppose. And I wish a reddish brown for the walls. When I will do it? I’m thinking to bring with me this arena to explain the rules to my future playtesters. So very quickly! I’m almost in the external playtest phase.

Do you remember the viaduct? Fabio was building it with his family help, but he is always so busy with his job (and the TB Line, and Anticamente) that these polystyrene blocks were remained at the bottom of the to do list. Finally he gave me the unfinished materials so I can realise the model. Fabio printed some sheets with the brick motive to create the missing parts. The work is not so complicated to complete, there are some pieces to be glued. Flyton city is still without houses and gladiators are more urgent, so this viaduct is something that now must wait for better times. Maybe next year, this is the year of “Zen Garden”, “Ferrum et Gloria” and “Song of Spears and Shields”, only to mention the main Ganesha Games rulesets on the works where I am “slightly involved”…

Some time ago I found this photo along the web in a place that now I forgot…

A monstrous arena from hell! A dream! A huge delicacy made of sweat, polystyrene and resin. I remember that some guy spoke about Dwarven Forge, but I cannot found it on their catalogue, so it can be a limited edition set or old item. Think about it with a velarium and spectators: more beautiful than what you can see now. I want something like this one!!! But I cannot afford a thing like this one. Sad. Very sad.

In the meantime I passed my days working, but this weekend I will be in Terni for some playtesting of Ganesha’s games and in Agliana for the annual wargame convention. So I will have something new on the game fields to show you.

Last time we see a gladiator arena with a drawn background as scene, here there is the same principle, a scene + an area for the fight. But this one is a scene with modelling skills of high class quality. It is so beautiful! And you can play without the need of step over tiers. The ground is so obstacles free and easy to storage and transport. When you want to add more style, you can add the scene. It is very well done, little in dimensions and tiers, there are not walls, but it has the right colours and proportions. The final touch is the velarium on the podium.

If you want to know more and watch more photos, you can read directly the blog of the man who realised this beauty: hetairoiwargames

In these days I was little lazy about taking photos with my camera, and I suffered a interruption of my ADSL connection for 8 days. So I didn’t produce posts with the same rhythm of the past times, even if I have got a lot of new painted miniatures and the realisation of Ferrum et Gloria run very well. I defined the core rules and me and Diego tested them. Sunday I had even a visit from Paolo who now is living in Swiss. We playtested Ferrum et Gloria and played a game with the boardgame Ventura. Sorry, no photos, you can hope for better days. A now we can speak about the “Arena project” with the presentation of other people projects, like this one.

A huge arena is a problem about space and modelling. The action of the play is what is inside the arena, usually a hole with a flat and dull surface. So why spend a lot of time, energies and modelling skills for something around the play, for the boundaries of the hole?
A solution could be a scene, simple and cheap, to create the feeling of the situation. It’s as a theatre, a scene where your fighters can tread the boards.

This man (you can read more here) drawn a portion of the arena with some audience on it. He assumed that the focus of the eye will always be on the miniatures, so not many people was drawn, or all was a matter of heads. Instead he tried to give the individuals some character and animation.

He mounted the finished artwork on 3 millimetre foam board, then glued that to one 5 millimetre rectangular base section with an inside curve cut into it, giving the shape and stand for the model, with a prospective touch too.

After Zen Garden work I’m back on Ferrum et Gloria, my old project for a ruleset about Gladiators. This time is the fourth attempt to built something very easy, fast and with a strong adherence to historical situations. Diego is helping me with playtesting and ideas. I’ll keep you informed about what is happing.

And now a revamp of the “arena” series, camps for your gladiators. Bigger is better. This is the believe of U.S. people. A giant country hasn’t space problems, so them have huge constructions when smaller proportions are more functional. Indeed, this must be true even for wargame conventions, as you can see here. This one is the arena presented by Vul-Con, a madness 5 foots wide. Gladiators are in 90mm scale, Chinese plastic soldiers that in Rome you can find in souvenir shops that sells them to tourists. You can understand the real dimensions of the arena only with the men behind it. They aren’t dwarf, it isn’t an optical trick, is the arena that is big! Look at chairs too! And in the photo there is a hippodrome too… more than 20 foots long… A real madness!
In wargame conventions you have to show something that can emerge from the wideness of the show, because a DBA terrain is invisible among those spaces and other scenarios. But this thing is decisively unreal, however is a great view. I envy them! A day I could do the same but with 12 inch gladiators…

More here: https://vul-connews.blogspot.com/2011/04/gladiatorial-coliseum-and-ubi-es-vulcan.html