Luca is back from London for a holiday and we organized a game session at my home, headquarters of Legio Palatina. A dinner with pizza at a restaurant, but a slow service shifted the start for our game at 22.30… I was falling asleep because usually I wake up at 6 in the morning for work and these day I’m feeling bad too. Well, for this night we had choose Song of Drums and Shakos, the Napoleonic game from Ganesha Games and our friend Sergio Laliscia. A big game was set, Russian advance against French defence. Some savage French horsemen decided the result. Not a defence but an assault! A happy night among friends!

I would like to put here a image gallery, but plug-ins for WordPress doesn’t install on this webspace!!!

I had got the gladiators, now I needed the rules, my rules. After some months I founded the name and the game: Ludus Magnus. I was thinking about a system driven by cards, without dices, to obtain more strategical decisions. You had some cards in your hand and you could secretly choose a defensive or an aggressive action. At close combat you played the cards and saw the result. You could play a bluff or hit hard! A set of special event cards randomised the events. A track for each fighter signed the fatigue caused by the suffered hits and gave different possibility to the piece.

A lot of efforts were made to give a curate aspect to the game. I made a lot of photos of my miniatures for the cards, I bought protective envelopes, I printed them in colours, I created a logo. Wrong move. You cannot give all this to a prototype! After two different test sessions with three friends, I founded the sad true: a lame game, without movement, without balancing, without fun.
I had to do something. I thought, thought and thought. And I discovered the Ganesha Game system, but that is another story…