Tomorrow is the release day for A Fistful of Kung Fu. More photos from a playtest session. At that time I was trying to create thematic squads to kill my enemies, but in vain because misfortune struck my dice rolling. We tweaked the rules but I lost 4 games that day!

We were in the ARSM headquarters. And this one is my jade mummy, moving slowly towards enemies. Too slowly, damn! Years ago I saw a real jade mummy in an exhibit in Rome. Very impressive.

You can recreate scenes from action movies like Enter the Dragon, Kill Bill, Big Trouble in Little China, Crouching Tiger – Hidden Dragon, and Hard Boiled. Here we try a mixture of ancient China tales and HK police stories. As the Osprey blurb says, “A Fistful of Kung Fu is set in a modern world walking a precarious line between the advances of next-generation technology and the tradition and mysticism of ancient cultures. Kung Fu schools face off in no-holds barred martial arts tournaments. Evil corporations hire hitmen and infiltrators to steal each other’s secrets. Overworked SWAT teams respond to street-level gunfights between feuding Triad and Yakuza clans. Ancient artefacts are sought by hopping vampires and cyborgs alike, each seeking to harness the power of the Four Dragon Kings and control the world. Bullets, punches, kicks and throwing stars fly in slow motion as martial arts heroes and gun-wielding cops defeat enemy after enemy in the pursuit of evil masterminds”.

In this game we created a scenario with a small bamboo grove. Characters can walk over them, use them as trampolines or as weapons.

Possible factions range from Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza to Ninja clans, martial arts schools, the men and women of the Hong Kong Police Department, demons, secret societies and almost anything else you can imagine! All struggle for supremacy – destroying the surroundings in the process.

Here the final struggle among our two rival groups. I didn’t score severe wounds to my opponents. Oh at least I tried.

Another game and another setting: more storeys for our houses and a venerated Buddha statue (bought on the same day in a local Chinese trinkets shop…) with an ancient treasure at its feet.

When we develop a game we never have the right miniatures or appropriate terrain. We use what we find because we have too many projects and we don’t have the time to build a pretty scenery. When we publish something we are just in the middle of another new project and another new setting. So no Chinese houses or modern urban hells but some ruined buildings instead.

In A Fistful of Kung Fu, mooks and supporting cast are swatted like flies, but can still be dangerous when given the advantage of numbers or automatic weaponry. Based on the popular Ganesha Games rules system, these rules introduce martial arts combat with manoeuvres that have different outcomes depending on the degree of success, and which allow for counter-attacks when they fail, giving a flowing, appropriate combat system. The game also includes rules for challenges and “gun-fu” stunts. And this hero cop moves forward to glory with his automatic weapons.

A pile of corpse after his passage. At the end of the day the cops won the fight. Only the hero still standing on the battle scene. Just like the style of an HK film.

Only two days to the official release of A Fistful of Kung Fu. So let’s go on with the countdown. Here are some more photos of our playtests. Here we are in Diego’s house on the kitchen table. And on blue ground!

Here a scenario with ghosts, sorcerers, and corporate thugs. While bodyguards defend the clan chief, a walk on the roof prepares a rear assault.

The miniatures are from my collection built before we imagined we would play this setting. Now official figures are sold by Northstar. I’m still happy with mine. I guess the message is, just buy miniatures, sooner or later you will find what to do with them!

Although it’s been more than a week that Northstar began to mail the copies of A Fistful of Kung Fu to customers, the official release date is the 18th of this month. Now I start a short countdown showing some photos about the playtest sessions happened more than a year ago.

This time an adventure among Chinese restaurant dishes. It was occurred in a pause of a more canonic playtest with miniatures and terrain. Playing a Kung Fu ruleset, what could be better than eating Chinese?

Unfortunately a form of food poisoning emerged from this playtest session. A specific ingredient used in this restaurant (maybe a preservative?) sends my immune system into haywire. My body was covered with a rash and an extreme itch impeded my normal activities. I needed more than a week, and lots of medication, to restore my skin to normality.

The past Saturday we met for a full day of playtesting. We are working on new projects for 2016 by Ganesha Games. At the moment we are still on the verification of the basic mechanics. So we talked a lot of what we think is the best for them and played a couple of games. On other things we are in more advanced phases. The publication of these rules is sometime only a matter of time and organisation for Andrea. We reminded of Song of Spear and Shield, so we play a speed battle with it. We don’t know if it is ready or if it needs something other. In the meantime I’m working on Ferrum et Gloria. I playtested some things for the second book but I have to complete the editing of the first!!! In February I want to complete the first book. Yes, it is late by a couple of years, but I think that every time I can put my efforts on it, it is better. Carry on… !

The 18th of the last month we met at Sergio’s house to play a “big battle” with Drums & Shakos Large Battle. Four people versus four people, French versus Russian on a large 300×180 table. Armies were divided in three sub-armies with three players and another player was the commander in chief. People from Arezzo took Russian, Sergio and Romans took French. Sergio is thinking about some definitive rules to administrate these big battles. He will publish them soon or after.

French troops toward the battle.

Russian march column towards glory.

The centre of the fight. Coloured cubes are troops fatigue.

To have a detailed explanation of the various phases of the battle go to the Sergio’s blog. Under a photo-video of the battle made by the winners, the Russian.

They started almost at 10 and finished in mid afternoon. With a pizza lunch in the middle. While these brave men from two opposite empires dying, in another room, I and Andrea tested something for the 2016…

The last post on Lucca Comics & Games 2013. Always in the Miniature Island but regarding only our space as Ganesha Games.

We had some new realisations: BattleSworn, Samurai Robots Battle Royale, Of Gods And Mortals, Non Andare Nel Bosco D’Inverno. Song of Shadows and Dust was still only in digital format.

Andrea presented his last games with a double scenario, so he could play with monsters and robots or with gods or gambling warriors.

This is my table. On the left the debut of my small arena for Ferrum et Gloria. On the right the demonstration game with Zen Garden in its best and last White Edition.

At the end I sold all the copies. Here the empty space after the last box was sold. I’m happy of what I obtain with this game. I met a lot of people and some of them now is playing with my game. I must start to think on something new to bring at convention. Maybe I will develop an easy version of Ferrum et Gloria for casual players.

An official photo of the presentation of Of Gods And Mortals by Osprey in the conference hall of the Games pavilion.

Andrea after he was awarded with the prize called Premio Conan for the 2013. It stand out the best Italian personality for wargame world.

With this photo you can note the differences between my camera (the bottom photo) and a professional one (the upper photo). Add the unstable hand of Andrea and you can obtain a blurred photo of me at the end after 4 days of fair. Ready for another Lucca in 2014!

I reported only something of what happened in the days of Lucca C&G. Too much things to do and to see. And now more than two months are distant from this event. However I hope I showed you what this huge fair means. So you could be here for the 2014 edition. Now it is time to concentrate on our specific area of interests: wargame.

We were inside the Games pavilion, in an area called Miniature Island. Around us there were some miniature related stands, than demonstration tables (where I was), and in the inside the painters area.

This a horse & musket wargame by our room mate in the hotel. I give him a couple of precious earplugs to survive to Andrea snoring.

A simple Napoleonic game by Narciso, now in the Clan Conan, veterans of demonstration games in Lucca.

Their huge playable scenario: Iwo Jima! Inside the Suribachi some tunnels are dug. To simulate the terrain they used huge amounts of coffee grounds! And all was assembled in the small living room of Narciso. That smelled of coffee, indeed.

Unofficial Games Workshop Warhammer 40000 demonstration battle. A nice group of alcoholic chaps ran these trenches and 4 days of fighting.

The magnificent trio: Sartori, Torriani, Sfiligoi. Presently they are the pillars of Italy regarding wargame rules. Their work is recognised outside our national and linguistic borders.

Losi, the martyr of last year Andrea snoring. This year he slept in another hotel. Co-author of the modern version of the Torriani’s wargame engine. In the fair he dressed as a Taleban or a private contractor. No, he is not totally mad. : )

The action in the streets of Iraq.

I feel the need of some concrete walls like these ones for my games…

A complete view of the set.

The new wargame by Torriani’s team is setted in Western period.

The painters area. He is Nano Nefasto (ill-omened dwarf), a professional painter from Brescia. On the left the Ludica team.

Luciano at work, illustrating how to paint miniatures.

Some of the pieces in the painting contest called Trofeo Grog.

Private collection by one of the painters.

The Blood Bowl gladiator squad by Auricchio grow convention after convention, year after year…

Always miniature sculpted by Auricchio: a 15mm Hastings range. Yes, 15mm, not 28mm!!!

Sculpting contest, always for Trofeo Grog: some gladiators.

My left thumb and a WWII US marine by Seven Samurai sculpting team.

1-48 Combat is back as 1-48 Tactic. This is a miniature for the game with his twin in a smaller scale.

We were a very large team in that mess. Some faces were the same of the previous years, some are new. Every evening we took a dinner together in various restaurants, the only moment when we could chat. We are part of a community, we are wargame players.

I have a lot of things in my backlog, so I concentrate my efforts to show you the main wargame conventions of November. But even in December there were interesting things, like this couple of fairs: Più Libri Più Liberi (small book editors fair) and Arti & Mestieri (handcrafted foods and objects). I spent a lot of money in books and foods, obviously. Moreover as Ganesha Games we met a couple of times to play with games and to playtest some secret future Osprey releases, eating pizza, Greek street food and drinking mjed. As Ferrum et Gloria author I playtested in another two occasions some new things for Ferrum et Gloria part 2. In the last days I refurbished this blog with new colours and contents.
In the meantime we even had Christmas and New Year events, with a lot of correlated lunches and dinners. January and February are empty as conventions or tournaments so I will be more free to work on FeG, even if at the end of January there is the Nettunia landing anniversay. Next posts still with Lucca 2013 report: it was an huge fair.