Today we remember a day of infamy for our Country, when our king and all our govern people fled from Rome towards the Allies in the south to save themselves, leaving Italy without a head during the war. They suddenly changed side in the war without thinking about the consequences, leaving the State and the Army without orders, causing the occupation of Germans and the civil war. They started the war without adequate preparation and later they claimed to accuse Mussolini for that as they weren’t part of that system too, rebuilding a virginity fighting together with our former enemies. Perpetual shame on them, parasites of society and thieves with blood-spattered hands!

Today I am in Rufina, near Florence, for a two days convention. I will speak about it in the next posts. Among other things we will try a WWII ruleset to play a game about angry Germans versus lost Italian regular Army.

Summer holidays at last! This time (9-17 August) I visited, together with my chaps Diego and Narciso, the Lac Léman & Lac de Neuchatel areas, the lakes at the South-East of Switzerland. We travelled with Narciso’s car, a comfortable vehicle without air-conditioner but with lower-able side windows. A lot of km along the Swiss Alps, among cities in the middle of water and mountains.

If you think about Switzerland as the Heidi country sometimes you have right. We found heat and sun. And cows, chocolate, emmental, watches and peculiar knives… Yes, stereotypes are confirmed! If you just want to limit yourself only to them…

These photos are taken at the frontier with Italy, 2000 meters above sea level. This eagle was built by Swiss soldiers during the WWII as a sentry towards us. I have got more photos but this is not the place for a lot of boring holiday souvenirs, as gay jokes at the Freddy Mercury statue in Montreux or our underwear portraits. But in the next posts I will show something interesting for you.

However, why Switzerland this year? Because Paolo, our friend and founder of our Legio Palatina club, married a nice Swiss girl the 11th of August in a church near Sion. His brother, and Legio Palatina member, Luca was with us from London (we are an international club…). Happy marriage!

Sun, beaches, heat, sweat, slices of watermelon,… it is Ferragosto time! This is the midsummer holiday and all is stopped. So you cannot have news about miniatures because it would not be in keeping with the mood of this moment of the year. Something else instead, some great music from Italy, some summer songs. I’m sorry that they are in Italian language but you can understand the same. Two examples of gangsta rap for you. Turn on the volume and have fun!

When little people gone bad

School is a bad place

If you like Gundam you can think to go to Japan to have some coffee in the Gundam Café. Have you understand? Yeah, a place where you can sit and talk with friends, surrounded by the epic deeds of giants robots manned by soldiers. It is a bit far, but it is the Gundam Café!

The video shows a nice place, a little weird, but with an appeal on anime fans. If you look better, you can find that this place is not so nice, it is only a café with a LCD showing a Gundam video on rotation, a couple of glass cases with some plastic models out of the box, a cappuccino with a Haro sketch made of chocolate on the top (instead of the usual and more romantic heart), and some dishes with an uninviting appearance (toasted bread with oil and herbs and tomato sauce as side, and so on…) but with very little Gundam decorations. They could do something more. Viewing this longer videos you can better understand the topic.

A theme restaurant built on a license so strong, but weak on the realisation. I can save to myself the trip to Japan. The best customised thing is the loo, where you can have a private Gundam experience. Last note: the loo is Federation for men and Zeon for women. Look here.

Men (Federation)

Women (Zeon)

When I chose the name for this blog I liked the fact of recognising my hobby as an addiction, one addiction for miniatures, made of lead obviously. And lead is poisoning. Well, I thought to be quite original, with a distinctive name to sign my space, composed in a graphic form that reminds the style of a logo even if it is written only with a simple and standard font set. After a lot of surfing on the web I found now that someone had used the same concept for his blog. Here I show the other two blogs with a similar name to mine. And I want to remind you about the fashion blog L.E.addicted that I reviewed some posts ago.

https://realm-of-lead-addiction.blogspot.it

https://leadaddict.blogspot.it

Once again it was the time of my birthday! Now they are forty-three. My mate Diego had his birthday the day before, so I tried to create a birthday event with miniatures for both of us together with our friends. The choice for the location was Terni, our adoptive city as regard to the miniatures. This is the picture of the participants. You may notice that Andrea Ganesha is sponsoring a vintage box of D&D miniatures that he found at Sergio’s home. A little pirate instead taught us Blood Bowl secrets.

A big surprise for us was a prototype test for a new rule engine by Sergio, the man behind the revolutionary Large Battle Drums and Shakos. It was only the basic engine without historical and terrain features, and it just worked very well! It is a game based on area movement and presence, driven by cards and a fighting style adapted from the LBDS dices. It can be develop for various periods. It is very great! An entire family of rulesets can be generate from this engine. The only problem is that wargamers are not fit with the concept of areas, they think that this is not for wargames but boardgames.

The latter half of the day was with Blood Bowl, a game that I tried a lot of years ago when the first edition was out in the eighties. At that time we haven’t got the miniatures but die cut cards on plastic bases and Games Workshop was only a creative company from Nottingham. My friend bought the expansion too. We didn’t understand the rules very well, we hadn’t experience with games, I don’t didn’t speak English, so we put the two boxes in an angle and forgot that fantasy football field. Now after ten years with DBA we want to find something new (!!!) and we are interested in Blood Bowl. I made my first game after 25 years and I liked it. The beautiful football stadium is made by Sergio and will be present at the next convention in Terni “ALT si gioca” in October, when a BB tournament will be held.

The day went very well, we had fun, we celebrate our birthdays. Sergio cooked the Bulgarian national dish, a fresh mixture of yogurt, cucumbers and herbs. Cheese and a rice salad as side dishes. In the evening we ate a great “piadina”, even if Diego suffer from Bulgarian “counterattacks”. I feel happy : )

I’m not a playing card collector, but I have just a couple of decks that a friend of mine gifted me. One of them is about Chinese posters, those strongly coloured images with propaganda scenes that years ago were very popular in China. Now maybe they are used only in North Korea. Their style is almost the same for all, a mix of comic art and realistic panting. I love these images, they are so naive even if their subjects are not so.

I choose some cards for you, reporting the scene in the brackets and under in italics the unintentionally funny legends. Left to right, obviously.

(Stalin and Mao, against the world, forgetting war between them)
Celebrating the longevity of the friendly alliance between China and the Soviet Union

(Haircuts with rifles)
The army and the people are all one family

(At school, ambushing among teaching post and desks)
Learning how to prepare for war

(Thoughts wearing military uniform)
Ruthlessly criticise the bourgeoisie

(Camouflage with leaves on a moving bike is a great weapon if used with a standing boy with a rifle on your back)
The red dawn lights up our parade ground

(The only good boy is a militarised one)
Be a good child of the Party

(Reading books is good for the apparitions of red ghosts)
Read revolutionary books, learn from revolutionaries and become an heir of the revolution

(People is red, the Mao’s red book is white)
Familiar with the life of workers, peasant and workers

(Bulling young geeks is good)
Don’t talk with him!

(Mockery and torture before a death sentence)
A bad element is publicly criticised

(Killed by a telephone pole is a great thing)
Learn from comrade Lei Feng

I’m very busy so I haven’t time to show you a Ludica report. While you are waiting, remembering that today is Giovedì Grasso and we are during Carnevale: and now something completely different! You cannot live only with miniatures of soldiers, little reproductions of men, there is other in the world. After a lot of time after its diffusion in the world I viewed this thing and I’m sure that someone of you don’t know it, so you have to know. Please, stay calm while you are viewing it…

Well, what is it? It is a children programme on Russian television, where young people can even see and dance the last pop-dance hit of the moment. The children of the show are really weird, more weird than the situation. I think about their parents that want to see them on television because they are little stars. Awful. Instead Angina is the fictional name of a young female artist. She has a cute little face and two enormous boobs. His song is called Кому какое дело (who cares?), so we couldn’t care about Russian cultural concept of decency and we can enjoy the view.

And this one is a fake backstage of the famous singer, known better for what she has under his throat than for his voice.