The new issue is out. This is the Italian magazine about wargame with miniatures. It is bilingual, so you can read it even if you don’t know Italian but only English.

In this issue you can find an interesting article about Crusader and Foundry gladiators and how they are historically adequate or not, with notes about the real typologies of gladiators.

This issue is one of the best in the last times. You can find more here.

This is the last post about Lucca. Wow, I wanted to publish only some pics but instead I covered all the event with 14 posts! And to make this I spent a lot of time. I don’t want to pass all my time on this blog, I have other things to do! I had so much fun in Lucca and I wished to show you the feel that remains in me. From the last year, when I stayed in Lucca only a day, I wanted to stay the full period of the convention. I waited an entire year, so this was very important to me.

My game was present in Lucca too. I took with me the miniatures, the rules and my portable arena! Lucca games was so huge that I think only a few noted me and my fighters. Another time I must bring with me some hostesses undressed like female gladiators and it will be a full success.

I presented the game but I’m still not full ready with the rules and the heat and the chaos were not the best situation to explain it. It was only a taste of water. I was in Lucca too and this is the important thing.

In Lucca we tried (and bought) this boardgame wrote by two young Italians. It is about the management of teams of gladiators. The fights are decided by series of throw of dices (fun and with a good feel of gladiator style, indeed), but the interesting part is about the interaction with the other players to cheat the fight and to compete to set a spectacle in arenas around the Roman world. It is a simple game complicated by the possibility of interact with the others, to compose temporary alliances and treason to set your spectacle in the best way. Playable only with four players, for 2 or 3 people is lame. Game’s historical feel of the art is very good. Nice box with good materials, but I changed quickly the D10 dices inside with two with Roman numbers!

Here their website: https://www.albepavo.com/en/munera-FG_overview-en.html

Tomorrow I will go to Lucca for 4 days to participate to Lucca Comics and Games 2010. A terrific convention all around a beautiful town setted for this annual event. I hope I survive.
The website: https://lucca2010.luccacomicsandgames.com/

I will present my gladiator game there. You will see the pics when I return.

Chariot races were more popular than Gladiator games in ancient Roman world. There is a ancient TSR boardgame that seems to be fun.

Here some useful links:
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/244/circus-maximus
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/843/circus-minimus
https://ravenscraftcybernetics.com/circusmaximus/

Here another game with similar intentions:
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2224/circus-imperium

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…

My secutors and a scissor. Beautiful minis from Crusader! I changed the shields with a typology without upper angles, so the net cannot stick itself on them. A historical fact…

All starts here. A day I was surfing the web and I found these little things from Crusade Miniatures. What superb sculptures! I liked the poses, the historically accurateness, the mass of the pieces. The style of Mark Sims is superb, his soldiers are stocky, heavy, with a gravity. You can think: hey mate, these are too plump. But I dislike slim soldiers or those with real human proportions: I don’t want little men, I want something who fit well on the table. Real humans are too dry, legs are long and without a real interest. I want to see armours, helms, shields and not male photo models. In the 1/72 format you have more slim pieces. It is the technique of the manufacturing of the pieces. Lead for me is better!
Well, the story is simple: I liked the pieces, I bought the pieces. But I had to obtain a cause for my impulsive purchase. What could I do with them? I have heard about rules for gladiators. Could I buy them? Oh, no, I wanted something very historical, I’m Roman and I have a degree in History, I had to do something by myself, for my new gladiator pieces. So I started to think about a rule system for gladiators. I’ll speak about this in a new post.
At the moment I want to suggest these pieces. You have a lot of good fighters, some historical and some fantasy from the (in)famous film “Gladiator”. Sims made the historical pieces first, and various months after he sculpted the others. You can found some pieces for the arena feeling: two referees, Charon, Mercurius, wounded and some spectators. The address is this: https://www.crusaderminiatures.com/list.php?cat=1&sub=27&page=1