And this one is the last report of GiocaPerugia 2013, the fourth. If I want to survive to this blog I think that I have to write briefer reports. I have so little time for all my things to do. On the list there are the Lucca and Ludica reports. However…

This is the Bizio team. They are the authors of this mega-luxory scenario for BattleSworn. This is a independent effort to propose an easy game to casual people. They chose these rules by Andrea because they are very immediate to learn. Moreover BattleSworn possess original mechanics, no measurement necessity, and an engaging way to develop your game strategy.

The main modeller is a little crazy because he spent so much time to built it and its details. Under here the two dice towers!!!

But this is only the start. They are thinking to expand the model with another terrain module to duplicate the gaming area. Maybe it will be ready for the next Hellana at the end of March. In the following photos some details of the playable scenario. Enjoy.

A final statement on GiocaPerugia. The location was great and unique, but moist. With more people could be dangerous because this dungeon is very narrow and without exits. But Perugia people is a bit lazy: we could have more public because with university this city is full of young people that could be interested in various gaming forms. Or they are too much absorbed only by study, drugs and sex. In the reverse order too. Well, it was an open convention so the hardcore wargamers were a bit misplaced. However I had: fun, not so much sleep (I am dominated by motormouth gaming ideas by Andrea), an opportunity to meet other people from our players community. Moreover there were some cosplayers, even if partially frozen, and other events. Maybe in a period far from Lucca and Ludica Roma this GiocaPerugia will be better for us. I think I will be here the next year.

Full of events weeks. So the next posts will be dedicated to a retrospect of my past events among some new things. Now I want to show you something happened the 10th of this month: the DBA tournament in Terni.

The participants, from Roma (8), Arezzo (3) and Terni (1). We were in an hospitable miniature shop called “La Tana della Donna Nana” (“the dwarf-woman vault”, it is called from an Italian joke).

The smallest coup for the third place in the tournament. Another personal success in the last part of the season. Effectively I reached in the last three tournaments the 1st, 4th and 3rd place!

A classic DBA match that I lost: I vs Salini. This time was my very bad luck, a constant 1 result on dice.

My glorious Roman army versus vile Egyptians scum.

A classic DBA match that I win: I vs professor Mariani. This time a tie and a lot of personal boldness.

My camp. All roads lead to Rome.

One club partner of mine versus Gaul.

A couple of tables during the tournament.

Someone succeed to stop Gasbarri at the first match!!! However, after he won the other three matches…

This was the last date of the annual DBA Italian tournament, so we consigned the prize to Gasbarri as best Italian player, a fact that we know very well…

In the morning, while we were reaching the train for Terni, we saw this steam train. It was used for a special journey that day. We took a more standard train instead. And now we are waiting for the 2014 annual DBA torunament…

This is the market for railway modelling in Rome. Approximately every a couple of months, or more, we have this event inside a school gym. It can be the opportunity to find something that can be useful for my miniatures.

Railway modelling is a hobby almost comparable with 3D wargame. But the real effort is to create large dioramas. We think always to create a movable space where put miniatures in a way to move them easily and precisely. Instead their aim is to have a fixed realistic landscape where trains can move along a rail net. So, we have some common characteristics, but very different scales and aims.

I feel this hobby world as distant from me. I don’t mind all kinds of railway cars available and what is related to them. They are captivating but I can’t understand 120 euro for a little piece of plastic with wheels. Whereas I find justifiable the same amount of money for miniatures or action figures…

Some remarkable things. Some tramway cars used on local lines. Note the double decker used at the begin of the last century.
Below, a 54mm diorama with toy soldiers. I can’t understand why these miniatures are sold inside these kind of fairs. They aren’t trains. However I saw around someone that sold single Foundry’s medieval miniatures with a wood base and a banner at the bargain price of 12 euro… Toy soldiers hobbyists don’t know the real price of our miniatures…

This year we had two Romics. It is the main comics fair in Rome. It is always nice to walk around huge piles of comics and gadgets. Together with Andrea (Ganesha Games) we came here for a full day (10.00-19.00), watching stands and buying stuff. We met some people too, and we had interesting chats with a medieval style fencer and with a games vendor. It is a 4 days long fair, but I visited it the first day because I will be very busy for work in the weekend. Moreover the fair is pretty overcrowded the other days.

A blast from the past: once upon a time comics fairs were populated mainly by middle age people.

Nowadays this kind of fairs are full of young people with costumes. And half naked young girls with exhibitionism symptoms.

I like so much this world of cosplayers, a touch of colour in life, comics and animes in the real world.

A big organised group is the 501th Legion, local imperial forces inspired by Star Wars.

The usual Nintendo stand with young girls as hostess.

Among comics a huge presence is for gadgets and statuettes. These are very nice!

A choice of pillow-cases for lone people pillow to hug during the night.

More gadgets and another kind of pillow among them: the pizza pillow!

The food choice in the fair were good but we opted even for a more exotic flavour as these Japanese sweets.

Really a beautiful day, the time fled away smoothly and we had fun.

San Paolo station was built some years after the WWI and it is crucial to connect the city to its part along the sea. Rome is a city along a river, but it has got a seaside too. Nowadays this station is one of the rail station of Rome, with an underground station and terminus of the sea light railway (that you can see on this photo).

Inside the station there is a little tramway museum. Every day I transit in this station but I haven’t the time to stop and visit it. Until this day about holiday at museums.

Before the opening of the underground line near my house, I used this tram to move towards the city centre. It was true until I was 9 years old but I can remember it as it was only a couple of years ago.

The exposition is without staff due to lack of money. So you cannot visit the internal with some historical photos about the past glories of this public transport service.

A little museum in a yard, with only trams from the ’50-’80. I haven’t got a car because I love public transports. Even who has built this little museum love them. Who don’t care about them are our rulers. They travel on big cars with chauffeur and a lot of bodyguards, all paid by our work.

I’m a comic reader before I could reader: I watched only images at that age. Another Romics edition in my city. A big business because from this year we will have a spring and an autumn edition. And this time the organisers thought to add more trains for the location, the same nowhere place among ex-swamps.

I understand why I came all the times to this kind of fairs. It is not only comics or sparse game stands, it is principally about girls. Here you can watch lots of young and very beautiful females in their best age. Half-naked females with imaginative dresses. Exhibitionism is the rule. It is called cosplay… Sometimes the situation is really embarrassing. Among girls that practically wears bikinis with some fabric variously added, one of them with one D size bra on put herself on all fours on a car to show better her boobs to a crowd of males.

As I always say, this is a place where to show your costume, and your corpse. Everyone take photos of everyone, it is an infinite play of images based on fantasy worlds better than crude and monotone reality. Mine was a really fast trip, I stayed only 5 hours inside the fair on the 4 days duration. So I didn’t take lots of photos. You can find more on Flickr.

This time among cosplayers I noted more male and female homosexuals than usual. Some famous drag queens played to this costume thing too.

More sex talking. This Japanese statuette impress me. Only 110 euro to have a sex slave on a bookshelf of yours.

Something more polite and childish. My partner in the trip while is buying a Spiderman nice puppet.

In the very old times you cannot find a Gundam model, they were a chimera. Now the usual wall of models, everyone with their price tag made by post-its.

Another fair view. Some gadgets around and the upper entry of one of the 3 pavilions used for Romics.

I have to show even some comics, otherwise you could think that there weren’t comics in a comic fair. Here my partner while is buying from the author a comic that I don’t like at all about a fat panda… Instead I bought a Belgian/French school comic about airplanes in the WWII. I have got a better style of life…

The next appointment for comics is in autumn here in Rome and a month after there will be the Lucca madness. Instead, wargaming speaking, the next appointment is Hellana, this Sunday. I will be present with Ferrum et Gloria.

It is Christmas time and in Rome there was the annual fair about handicraft and regional foods. More than ten years ago I participated with one game stand a couple of times. It was called “Natale Oggi” (Christmas Today) when we were in the old fair structures inside the city, while now it is called “Arti & Mestieri” (Arts and Crafts) in the new fair along the Tiber valley.

My first beer after some time. It was my first exit after my allergic reaction that lasted two weeks due to stress: I run three different jobs. In the morning I visited the Happymodel fair about railway modelling and 54mm soldiers for collectors. Sorry, I took some stuff but I didn’t take photos because I was late. Then I was in this other fair. I bought some gifts for my family. There was a lot of good traditional food: cheese, jam, beer, oil, sausages,…

This was the place where a Guinness record was established: the biggest pizza. And it was edible to coeliac people too. This pizza was cooked a couple of days before so nothing remains. They ate it all! Pity!

Another event was inside the fair, an international beer exposition. A good idea ruined by the policy of high prices, among other idiocies as sloppiness and the distant place where they put it. These the rules to drink: 20cl of beer for 12 euro; 3 euro more for each additional 20cl. But they gave to you a glass and a book. Well, this is not the snob wine market, this is beer, another way to drink! Moreover the nearest snack or other kind of food was 10 minutes walk far. How you can drink without nothing to eat? And the fair is reachable by car at most, so after all that alcohol you cannot drive.

The result: 420 kinds of beers, 40 cash registers and 40 paying people.

Have you ever heard of 3D printing? We have saw it in the making! Unterwelt is a small company in Rome that love open source technology and had a stand in Ludica convention. They use a kind of DIY plotter with vertical movement in addiction to horizontal one. It is technologically based on Arduino platform. Over a heated plate this plotter start to draw a plastic flux from the base of the object, going up, building the object layer after layer. The head of the plotter is like a syringe. A plastic wire, unwound from a roll, feed the syringe. A computer control the flux and the plotter. It is like built something by a microscopic tube of toothpaste. The plastic is melted by heat and after is firm up by ambient temperature. They use various plastic materials. One of them is that used for Lego bricks. The only fault is the slowness of the process, we are still in a pioneering phase, these are not industrial machineries that can built at enormous speeds.

On the photo you can see some objects that the machine created. In the making is a green foot. The parts of this plotter are partially created by another similar plotter. The machine replicate itself! The only necessity is to have a CAD project. The structures of the drone in the other photo are build with this 3D plotter! Drones build by a CAD project downloaded by internet! Moreover, if you have a 3D scanner you can replicate every kind of object without CAD programming. The kit to built this plotter is only 750 euro. Materials are cheap too. Ideal for professional modelling.

There is another company based on 3D printing services. It is called
Shapeways. They have a small miniatures catalogue, CAD draws that can become 3D objects. People design their pieces, upload them, and people can buy the final product. I have ordered a not so cheap 28mm Dalek miniature, just to taste the water. The future of miniatures production? Imagine: you need a specific piece and you want to give it an unique pose or aspect. 3D printing is the solution.