I like Lego, I grew with these toys. So I like to watch the realisation made by the Lego community. In the Ludica fair a large space was dedicated to Lego games. And to a Lego city. Summing Lego brick after Lego brick, Lego set after Lego set, you can obtain this, a continuous table with lots of little scenes and details. With a railway and a monorail added.

Some realisation have a less gaming aspect, like these pieces inspired by Star Wars vehicles. Fictional reality deconstructed in Lego bricks.

In the Ludica Model pavilion there was an area where you could freely play with Lego and buy it in weight. A very popular place for children. While in the Ludica Bimbi pavilion there was a really huge mosaic with the image of the Colosseum. People could built it by sector using Lego bricks having a sector map for guide. Up with Lego community!

In Ludica Roma there were wargamers and modellers, so you could view a lot of beautiful miniatures.

A multicoloured scenario from an A La Guerre game.

Your miniature collection can become really huge after a lot of years playing wargame. Piles of 15mm for an 1:1 fight between Gauls and Romans along a small river.

Bigger miniatures and greater painters than wargame world. That Zues is awesome. I’m thinking about a game with this Zeus in the upcoming Of Gods And Mortals…

More models museum worthy.

A scene set in the Lybian desert, with Folgore paratroopers. My mobile camera is not so great but the weird yellow lights in the display case destroyed the fine paintwork. White lamps for another time, guys?

A customised Warhammer 40k squad. I don’t think that these miniatures are manufactured by GW. They are really huge and majestic.

A Dust diorama with a Jagpanzer. I have to buy something made by this Paolo Parente guy…

There were a lot of railway modelling dioramas. I remember them in their specialised fairs. Now I want to show you only this beautiful view of Porta San Paolo station. Every day I pass close to there to go to work. It serves the line for Ostia, the waterfront of Rome. It would be perfect is the lights in the platform were made by leds. Maybe this scene was built a lot of time ago. More on this station here

A display were made about the development of the Wings of War (now Wings of Glory) boardgame. It was very interesting to see as an idea was developed from the first rough pieces of paper to the final release with aeroplanes miniatures, through small sets for playtesting and prototypes of the game elements.

Thanks to Luciano and Valentina we had got a huge space for our Ganesha Games stand. Andrea was running a demonstration table for beginners with the new edition of Song of Blade and Heroes. So some people and children discovered the world of wargame. At the same place were possible to taste the water of the upcoming Of Gods And Mortals. We sold half of the book rules that we brought. And my Zen Garden game gone sold out quickly. Now I want to realise a little more luxury new version of it. Ready for Play Modena next year, I think. Only 15 copies and nevermore.

As you remember my arena was stolen in Lucca convention. Now I have built a better and larger arena by a Playmobil set. It is still needy of a paintwork to give a less toyish feel and some structure improvements. In the works, but good even now. A lot of children was attracted by it. Hey, it is not a toy for children, it is a toy for adults! ; )

Andrea stayed in Rome for 5 days. We playtested Song of Spear and Shields the day before, the first (desert) day of the fair and the day after. Andrea was not so happy about some aspects of the game so he wanted to stop it and to throw it away. But I insisted to save the core rules, leaving the group rules to a future game with more miniatures. I want this game a lot, I am almost a co-author of it. Now I’m waiting the feedback from the drafting of the version for external playtesters to have something more delineated to work.

Ludica Roma 2012 reboot. This time we had no snow to stop us. Do you remember the original Ludica 2012 in February? We were lost in the fair with scarce public to view us. This time the weather was good.

The convention was located in three pavilions: Model (boardgame, wargame, radio controlled modelling, railway modelling, live role play, videogames), Softair (softair, western & country zone (!), refreshment area), Bimbi (Lego, the reign of children). This one in the photo is the Model pavilion. If you think that there were not so many people around is because the structure is huge: almost 15000 people were in the fair during three days. Well, the first day there were only 2000 people, it was Friday and it is not a good day to do something like this.

This was part of the area for wargame clubs. Some displays and demonstration games were set up by local wargame clubs. A large area was dedicated to Tana dei Goblin and Reindeers clubs for their boardgame demonstration tables. New boardgames from Essen fair were available to try them. A great work from the people who created the GiocaRoma convention. That glorious event is now merged with Ludica.

A large skirmish game about Abissinia war. In the background some elements of the 501° Legion “the fist of Vader”.

The small detachment of wargame vendors. Edizioni Chillemi is specialised in military matters, Aster Wargame is a supplier of bases, hexagons, 10mm TB Line miniatures and painting service. The high cost of stands kept away other specialised vendors. Our world runs on small amounts of money and this structure is absolutely no cheap. It is not a fault of the organisers, it is a fault of the fair structure administrators. However there were other vendors in the modelling area, with 57mm miniatures and this kind of stuff.

The large spaces were good for radio controlled modelling and this kind of mobile models. Outside the pavilion there was a track for cars. Inside a swimming pool was available for ships.

One of the strangest forms of radio controlled modelling were that about earth-moving models. Pretty dirty indeed. Don’t try this at home. Especially if you live in an apartment.

Amy Pond was in the fair? Maybe… She was trying historic fencing movements. Some combats were done using a buckler too.

Another real fight area. But with gum swords. Girls are very competitive, more than boys.

A paintball rifle range. It reminds me something from USA but made with not so real guns. In Italy firearms are almost prohibited. There were three arenas, one for paintball, one for softair, one for lasergame. The lasergame stand assistant were gorgeous.

The Ludica Bimbi pavilion was where children can live in the wild. Lots of games and activities for 0-10 years children. The fair public was composed for the most by families with children. So we had generic visitors even for other areas. An opportunity to spread the game and modelling culture to people. Keep attention to wild children indeed.

A break from Lucca C&G reports. They will follow next week. Now is the time of Ludica Roma convention! I’m leaving with Andrea “Ganesha Games” Sfiligoi for a three days duty in a huge fair full of wargames, boardgames, videogames and more. A full report here after I will have ended the Lucca series.
See you in Ludica!

It was snowing on Rome, and we were frozen inside the Ludica event in Rome fair. You can read more on this old post of mine. At that moment, the organisers asked to made a video of us to promote their convention. I refused to speak because you have to be concise and professional, leaving to Andrea the duty to do it. Then they filmed a long interview about Ganesha Games and wargames, with a small talk about Flashing Steel, the game that Andrea was presenting during that fair.

We were waiting the edit of the video, but after a while we forgot this thing. Last week, while I was checking the dates for the next Ludica in Rome in November (I have to program the next appointments, in Autumn I will take part to 4 tournaments and 4 conventions), I found that only few days after they edited the material. I told Andrea the news and some instants after he spread the presence of the video on You Tube via his social networks contacts. So now you can see Andrea speaking while some inserts show my hands that throwing dices and move miniatures. He is the orange guy, I am the hands from black and grey sleeve. There is even the first Zen Garden presentation of the game. Sorry, all the dialogue is in Italian, but even if you don’t understand a word you can always view the images.

Again on Ludica. Friday and Saturday viewed scarce public presence but Sunday the people arrived even if many were stopped from crazy disposition by our unreal mayor. But the hall is huge like a hangar for aeroplanes that even a lot of people seems a small group. If you organise the same inside a smaller place, it could be felt like a success with an overwhelming crowd, while in this hangar all is scattered as you can understand viewing the photo above.

Ludica in Rome, a convention about games parachuted from Milan without a clear awareness of what Rome is. Add the snow. The result? Almost a disaster.
It was clear that this was a first edition so it cannot be perfect and a lot of problems were waited, but there was too much ingenuousness in the building of the convention. Beside this, goodwill and sincere people involved in the operation show promise for a better second edition in October this year (even if it will be dangerously positioned only two weeks before the bigger comics and games convention of Italy, more than 150000 people…).

Leaving organisation problems, I wish to speak about some things of the wargame area, a part that I helped to bring to life because I was the person that created the contacts with the Roman realities. Among other things there were slotcars (with beautiful girls to cure the stand), boardgames (a lot of them), Star Wars reenactors (“the fist of Vader” Legion), videogames (but with a low profile due to small care from producers like Nintendo) and bayblades (59 children in a competition the day of the snow!), an exhibition on old traditional games (do you know “lippa”?). But I haven’t got any interesting photos, so I speak only about wargame clubs that was present at the convention.

On the photos above you can find the beautiful scenario made by ARSM club, a Viking raid full playable mounted on real terrain! A great realisation for one of the scarce moments that ARSM come out from their humid cellar.

And this is a Napoleonic battle in Portugal by Le Grenadier. If you want to see more delicacies of this type go to https://www.massimomoscarelli.it/leadaddicted/?p=390

Another club from Rome is Miles Gloriosus. It was present with this large participation game about chariot racings in Roman times, but there was even a game based on samurai in Japan. In the middle of the convention there was a Shako II tournament too. Well, I hope in a better and safer Ludica in October, with a larger wargame presence.

Snow in Rome. Only few centimetres and it was an apocalypse because we are unprepared to this type of meteorological events because we see real snow only every 20 years. Furthermore Rome is without a real mayor so panic spread in the city. We wanted to be in Ludica at any price. So we travelled among panic measures that stopped trains and escalators without real snow around, and at the end of a journey started at the 6.30 a.m. (and before that an aborted tentative the day before) with an arrival at 14.00 p.m., along the last part of the road, snowed on us. We thought that the night we could sleep on the floor of the fair because no train or car could travel from the fair but later we were saved by Sun. Here you can see our clothes for the snow and our luggage.

Our Ganesha Games stand was present only Saturday afternoon and Sunday. It was very cold but we were there. We could take with us only few things however, Andrea travelled on foot from Terni so he couldn’t bring with him scenery elements for pirates (two big vessels). But we had Zen Garden and all the rulesets.

Zen Garden on display, with a exhausted myself. Andrea had cards and the booklets with the rules, I had all the materials: the game was complete for the first time! People was very enthusiastic about it. We sold 6 copies. We have just a lot of fans! Thank you!!! We made it only for passion and not for profit so it is a joy that people like it.

A photo about a mother and son while Andrea showed the world of wargames to them for the first time. That child a day will be a player?

We had got attention by the press. Well, it was only a Ludica internal service to promote future conventions, if it was from a normal television they probably would showed us like freaks. Andrea explained what wargames are and showed some basic mechanics. In the future there will be a YouTube channel for Ganesha Games with this and other videos.