After Zen Garden work I’m back on Ferrum et Gloria, my old project for a ruleset about Gladiators. This time is the fourth attempt to built something very easy, fast and with a strong adherence to historical situations. Diego is helping me with playtesting and ideas. I’ll keep you informed about what is happing.

And now a revamp of the “arena” series, camps for your gladiators. Bigger is better. This is the believe of U.S. people. A giant country hasn’t space problems, so them have huge constructions when smaller proportions are more functional. Indeed, this must be true even for wargame conventions, as you can see here. This one is the arena presented by Vul-Con, a madness 5 foots wide. Gladiators are in 90mm scale, Chinese plastic soldiers that in Rome you can find in souvenir shops that sells them to tourists. You can understand the real dimensions of the arena only with the men behind it. They aren’t dwarf, it isn’t an optical trick, is the arena that is big! Look at chairs too! And in the photo there is a hippodrome too… more than 20 foots long… A real madness!
In wargame conventions you have to show something that can emerge from the wideness of the show, because a DBA terrain is invisible among those spaces and other scenarios. But this thing is decisively unreal, however is a great view. I envy them! A day I could do the same but with 12 inch gladiators…

More here: https://vul-connews.blogspot.com/2011/04/gladiatorial-coliseum-and-ubi-es-vulcan.html

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.

Again in Terni. This city is in another region but the travel is so smooth and brief (little more than one hour with train) that is more simple to go to Terni than some areas of Rome. Me and Diego are a sort of wargame commuters! This time wasn’t a playtest for Ganesha Games but a DBA day.

I seriously started wargaming with DBA competitions. Saturday was only the last tournament of a long series since 2003. The last for now, indeed. When I see the old photos I can see the same faces but younger and with more hair. We are a championship built on friendship and almost all are here since 2003. Well, the child is a second generation player, he is the son of the champion. And this time he arrived second. A great family but I’m thinking to create a championship only for them so we could play freely.

To play we choice sad places as this dance hall for elders outside the city centre perimeter. You can observe two posters on the wall with the last sensations of accordion music, probably on programme for one of the following nights or afternoons. However here there will be a big wargame convention in October too.

The best moment of the day is always the convivial lunch. This time we ate pizza and gnocchi. Huge portions and cheap cost!
Under a game of Zen Garden between father and son during pauses among phases of the tournament.

Almost I forgot. It was one of my worst performances. Total misfortune. In the last game I lost 6 pieces against 1, half of the army! My dice was very scarce about numbers higher than 2… (put here a lot of swearing).

At this moment I would be in Ludica Roma, a wargame, boardgame and videogame convention here in the Rome Fair (it is not precisely Rome, the Fair is in the middle of nowhere outside the city). Indeed, I wanted to demonstrate Zen Garden and Mighty Monsters at the Ganesha Games stand for three days, but Andrea is blocked by snow among mountains with a car not suitable to it. He have to come from Terni and it is a long way to here. So sad. I’m here stuck with my camping backpack ready with a lot of copies of Zen Garden, miniatures for a quick SSS playtest, food and water. At this moment we don’t know what to do. The fair is for 3 days, snow in Rome it is not falling now, maybe we will see something for afternoon or night.

On these pages you will read the report of what we will do. Andrea is thinking to travel by train tomorrow. We will be present without big scenarios because of this. We want to present for the first time in its definitive form my wargame Zen Garden, maybe the smallest wargame in the world. Sergio of Drums and Shakos fame cannot be present with his new game because of a flu.

We will survive snowing? If yes, a large selection of boardgames are offered to public to play with them together a volunteer demonstrator for free. All Roman wargame clubs are in the fair (thanks to me!). It is cold, the fair is in the middle of nowhere, but we are a lot of people who wants to play, so if you are around come and give a try to our games. We will be here, I hope!

I thought it was simpler to make. Now, after 4 months of work, Zen Garden is ready at last. I’m only waiting the pressing of the rules, but for this I have to wait Andrea. And you can buy it, even if I must calculate the price, because the sum of all materials do it not so cheap. Two editions. The red one (8 boxes) is without glued materials, the black one (22 boxes) has glued materials. Here is the red box number one. Limited editions of course.

Some materials ready to be put in the boxes: soldiers, measuring sticks, dices. In the other photo the black planks with drying glue.

Today (even yesterday in some part of the city at north) was the day with snow upon Rome. It is a rare event, but not so rare as before, because weather is changing. Now the snow is almost melted, but it is night so temperature is low again, but the sky is free of clouds, we had a sunny afternoon. We were waiting the snow since a week but our wonderful mayor Alemanno is like Schettino on Concordia, only unclear orders, no real countermeasures, to accuse others to save himself, and a policy over all:”save yourself if you can, it is snowing, it is the end of the world!”. Rome blocked by only 3.5 cm of snow…

I was almost forgetting that in the last days was out the last creation of Sergio, even in English edition. Here you can find some reviews:
Daleswargames.blogspot.com (English review)
Gioconomicon.net (Italian review)

I saw the development of the ruleset almost from the start and playtested it. You can find on my blog old posts about this. Last Saturday we met again in Terni at Sergio’s home for another playtest session. Under here there is the initial stages of development of a new game. You have to wait a couple of years to see it, so be patient!

Together with Andrea we tested the rules for Song of Spear and Shield about chariots and elephants. We made plans for next conventions and works too.

In the meantime we were visited by Bandini that painted my Roman army for Anticamente. In the next days, when I will end to doing things for Zen Garden, I put them on the bases.

One week ago Andrea came to my house to playtest some rules for new rulesets in development in the Ganesha Games factory. After a lot of time we put our minds again on Song of Spear and Shield. The last time we had some problems with chariots because this type of vehicles are a real challenge to the geometric standards that are in every game.

If you look at the gaming tables in another way, we can say that we don’t play with miniatures but with bases to find a common ground when we consider the space and the form that a man (or a lot of people represented with a single miniature at variable ratios) assumes on it. So the movement rules in games are the interaction among these bases. If we are dealing with infantry we simulate how infantry moves. But when we add cavalry all is more complicated, and sometimes we simplistically handle it as an upper men on a longer base, a rectangular one instead of the square or circular ones. When we consider chariots we have to rethink all. We have a platform, pulled by horses, with warriors that can leave it. You cannot turn easily a thing like this and you have speed inertia that don’t permit to stop the ride. And every element of the composite weapon that we call chariot can broke, die or leave. Another thing: what happens when a chariot is launched against men?

So we spent 5 hours to develop some general rules that must clear every situation with chariots. Are our solutions the right ones? Today I will be in Terni for another playtest for chariots, but this time inside a real game. A report will follow in the next days…