This year there are little possibilities of holidays for workers because the 1st of the year, the 1st of May (labour day), the 25th of April (official end of WWII in Italy) and the 25th of December (Jesus birthday) are days off like Sunday or Saturday. A strange calendar in these years.

Italian politicians are a total mess, so the idea: “let be happy people, a new holiday only for this year!”

And so we have got this “flag holiday”! What a stupid thing!
If you ask around what this holiday is, why just this day, none know the answer.

We have got this fake celebration of the 150 years of Italy, but Italy was not really reunited 150 years ago, it was all another story, and nowadays Italy is not so united.

And in the North there is a very influential political party that is a rule force in our government, based on racist and secessionist ideas (but it is only a fable for dumb and a matter of money to steal), that don’t want to celebrate this flag. They claim to be descenders of Celts and call themselves Longobards (that are Germans)! They wanted, and so have obtained, a holiday for their flag. They are thinking about which flag utilize, maybe a St. George flag, the England flag! And they are Celts… And this 17th of March is St. Patrick day, the national holiday of a real Celtic country: Ireland. And Ireland flag is similar to the Italian one. While Italians who suddenly 20 years ago named themselves Longobards thinking to be Celts, want to celebrate a English flag!

Another thing. After this precious gift of free time, someone reminded about the cost of it. Who will pay the workers for this new holiday? The solution: for this year all will have for holidays one day less!

Our national flag is green, white and red. Like pizza. It is not casual. Italy is like pizza. But if you put in pizza some genetically modified basilico, mozzarella produced from dioxin polluted fields, cheap Chinese tomatoes, what do you have? You have this actual and real wasted Italy.

Meka is a ruleset by Paolo. He is affected by megalomania and wants to create a system to play with 1:144 models of Japanese androids drawing inspiration from animes. After his former efforts now he realized something more reliable. We made this test to verify his ideas. And a lot of things seem to work out. There is something to improve, especially for a more fluid movement, but I think this is the right way for the game. He have to test what we have found out this afternoon and after he has to test again the game, with more pieces involved inside.

The great thing is that you can buy an action figure for a small amount of money, ready without painting and with a lot of possibility of poses and weapons, and instead to put it on a bookshelf you can play with it. There is a point system to built your mechas and so you can have different choices of play. While you are playing you can replicate the situations of the anime.

Here you can see Zakus, the best mecha design ever did. Look at the N scale scenario. It was bought in Japan during Paolo holidays.

The effort is to put inside the game all the weapons and mobilsuit types, so the datasheets are very large. With this game you could play even with other universes than the Gundam one. I hope to use my 1:144 Patlabors.

The testing was with me, Paolo and Franci. We made all versus all. I won the day. Next Sunday I will be in Terni to testing new Ganesha Games rules. Guess what I play with.

You can view here 1/6 action figures of WWII. The owner, a friend of mine, was a paratrooper when he was serving in the army and so he is interested to this branch of elite forces. And so I am after his example, as you can ascertain on other my posts.

These figures are very flexible and customizable, but not so easy to manipulate. We bought single pieces to create what we wanted. These are dolls to dress, and sometimes you can have some difficulties to do it. I broke a hand of one figure of mine while I was dedicated to make wear it a jacket. Well, the last year I almost broke a rib trying to wear a slim Afrika Korps shirt, so I think all is due to the weird uniforms of the Axis. 😉

Here there is a His Majesty paratrooper. This year in Nettuno I saw a man with this uniform and the camouflage was great. But not so great with this yellow light and on IKEA parquet. If we will have enough time we take better pictures with a realistic war scene.

Folgore in Africa. Enough said!

A fallschirmjager with his drop camouflage. Uh, it has not so good looking trousers. They was more wide than these. With a bit of cotton you can better recreate the effect. Another time.

These are the three first action figures on the battlefield. He has got another two more elaborated pieces to built: ardito paracadutista RA/ANR and marò NP Btg. Barbarigo X° MAS. I have got even my action figures, see it in a following post!

Fabio is a little busy with a new project he will present at Play Modena (and after to Hellana), a huge scenario for Anticamente about Romans. So he has forgot my viaduct. Shame on him! This is the last image that he sent me. I hope I see the final result at Modena at the end of March…

Chess? What means…

Quar are a fictional alien race, a concept for a world at the technological level of Europe during WWI. And they are a creation of Zombiesmith who together with Ganesha Games realized a gorgeous rule book for them. It is based on Flying Lead and Song of Blades. I bought it only for the extremely good graphics and for the love that the author put in it. This world, and the miniatures, are great. You can find more here.

Now there is even a computer graphic teaser of this saga. I like it very much, so I hope it for you.

I’m falling asleep… And almost without voice, too much loud chatting with friends. I’m just returned from Terni for the latest DBA tournament. Terni is very near to Rome, only 1 hour or something more, but there was traffic along the way.
The result was not so great but usual: two won, two lost. A draft. Here you can view the fight for the first position.

New location, always outside the centre. A place for the meeting of elder people, very large, and with the worst bar around (it is equipped with only 1 snack and 3 crisps packets, you can starve at death). A little sad, but this time there were around people with little lead people. The weather was frosty too. But there were a lot of friends, so we had a happy party. Under there is the social dinner.

And here there is the Ganesha Games counter with our friend Andrea back from Ukraina. You can see his iphone and ipad, while he is working on new rules during the tournament. I picked up a couple of new rule sets that I cannot have before.

How to disrupt a serious business? Starting a new one about miniatures. The famous man from Bologna, the master of hexagons, the artist of polystyrene, portrayed his office warehouse. Here you can see shelves with the TB Line 10mm production, all divided for type. All the TB Line’s little men coming from this place. An army ready to fight.

We are here again!

Every two months there is this event in Rome for train collectors. This time we are at full force: Renato who looking around for scratched trains to rebuilt them for Japan, Paolo who wants more for his 1:144 city, me for some pieces for Flyton, and Franci to put some feminine elegance among us.

A lot of people around, and this time seems that is the best to find something. I leave a lot of pieces on the counters. Maybe another time I will pick those things.

I would like to put some lights on my scenario. However I found these tunnels and they are great, made of hard resin and very cheap!

I decided that in Flyton there is a side with a face blocked by a cliff. And this is the tunnel under the hill. Here is with bricks at the end, but that piece will be used to the sides of the tunnel door.

Here the same scene from the top. In Flyton I will put something on the upper part to hide the structure. I have this idea because in games there are always the forbidden parts of the terrain where your minis cannot go, the extremes of the world. Well, this time one extreme is really closed, but with a hole where troops can escape.

I saw this resin piece with metal rubbish so I bought it to put it in a part of Flyton, in a yard near the viaduct I think. There will be necessary a paintwork to have a more varied look of this piece.

The best of show this time was a HO junkyard all in rust colours, with a huge amount of little pieces, ruined wagons, abandoned cars, military surpluses. And among the stuff, little orange men are working to recycle this mess. Wow, I like the romantic feeling of rust!