Every year we try to meet with members of our club Legio Palatina who live outside Rome. Festivities brought Luca from London and Paolo from Switzerland, together with Narciso from nearer Canino. This time we officially accepted new members: Gabriel and Jack are our younger generation. Locals are me and Diego.

Stuffed with panettone, butter biscuits and chocolate, we played an Afghanistan scenario with rules by Narciso, previously used during Lucca Games. Our table was too small for the huge quantity of polystyrene houses crafted by Narciso, so we kept another equivalent city in the boxes. Real house provided by Diego, instead.

Infidels were taken by white hair, Talibans by children. Sugar and fat excess in blood and juvenile impetuousness made a confused play. More a cavalry charge with automatic weapons than an urban fight. Moreover I killed my troops with an hasty advance, but some lucky throws hit my enemies.

At the end a draw and pizza for all. To the next year.

Do you know I have got another blog? Legio Palatina is the name of my gaming club. We play DBA at most, but we were playing at tournaments with SDS and Anticamente. Well, after a lot of years without a proper website, but a lot of mini websites for tournaments organized by us, some time ago I created a space for our activities, in a blog form. Or better, for our past activities: I was writing posts about our history, starting from 2002! I have got photos and remembers to fill up the posts. It’s a strange blog, it is speaking only about the past at moment. I have put in it materials until the end of 2004, and I wanted to slowly proceeding towards the following years. But I had other things to think as Ferrum et Gloria. So I postponed the duty. However it is beautiful to think about what you did. We appear a bit younger and slimmer in those moments. I think I will appear younger on the pictures of this month of 2014 when I watch them in 2024 or so.

The Legio Palatina blog is in Italian language, my mother tongue, to show our things better than my maccaroni English. There are a lot of pictures, maybe you can have fun even if you can’t read the words. And there is always Google translator…
For the blog, look here.

And now the birthday report! And an Of Gods And Mortals mega-game. Here my birthday cake with a 44 sign and a candle added: my mother couldn’t find the 5 to compose 45…

In the morning a party at work, in the evening with family. And Sunday with friends from university years. I organised the party at the local IKEA store. A novel meet with shopping. Next year another eccentric location is in my mind.

Saturday instead a trip to Canino to play with Diego, Narciso and Andrea. The 2nd of July is Diego’s birthday, mine is the 3rd, so I like to organise a special day with friends and miniatures. This time we played with OGAM for a Ragnarok scenario. I built armylists and some rules for this event. The duty was even find and assemble our available miniatures and terrains for it. Two Aesir (Thorr and Odhinn) versus two giants progeny (Loki and Surtr) for more than 2600 points each side instead of 900. Huge.

Surtr the black arrives with Muspell people. The 9 worlds are in flame!

Utgard Loki at Yggdrasil roots!

More giants and trolls are on rampage!

Frost Giants versus heroes from Valhalla!

Bersekers smashed!

Loki is free on a cliff, ready for his tricks!

Pause. Launch at restaurant and than after-launch with ice-creams.

Thorr arrives to kill giants!

Odhinn the All-Father strike!

Aesir won! They are unbeatable by giant hordes. Something in the scenario didn’t run as we thought. However Ragnarok is not ended: Fernir still doesn’t eat the Sun. So we will propose a better Ragnarok scenario at RomaGioca, the 20th of September. Hopefully we will play against our friends from Macerata for another epic struggle.

And here what remains after the Ragnarok! An empty terrain…

As if Ganesha Games playtests weren’t enough, we playtest even other games, as this one by Diego. It is a game about American Civil War still in development. An afternoon playing and discussing at Diego’s house together with the other Diego.

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…

I’m not capable to play with something other than Ganesha Games’ new projects because I haven’t the time to do more. Andrea is very happy about our dedication to the cause to better rules for better wargames. The Roman playtest team (me, Diego and Diego the other) did a lot of trips to Terni but this time Andrea came to Rome in the ARSM club. Sometimes I can’t speak about what I played because they are games that have to be secret. It is not a matter of secret service: publication dates are so far that it is better to not speak about them or contracts are signed to maintain the silence. So here no details and no specific photos. The 1st of September we played 3 matches with this new game. It was fun and credible, and we pinpointed some weak elements to improve the set. You could play with it in 2015?

This morning I’m leaving for a full week holiday to Lisbon, the first one not related to miniature games since time. A full report when I return, but a DBA tournament in Rome will take my attention the 21th of this month. Where is my luggage? I have to go!

The 16th of June a new wargame convention was held in Rome. It is called Roma Gioca (Play Rome). It is even relatively near to my home, but in a new built zone, among camps. A chess club with a wargame appendix is located inside a technical school. In a dungeon inside this huge structures amalgam, in the middle of nowhere, these chaps roll their dices.

Almost only a grognard convention because of the location, but full of tables. Every wargame club in Rome was here. We had a lot of space, three full rooms was used. My photos cannot give a real idea of the event because I was too much involved with my play. However from the first photo to the third one, you can see the room development of the convention, room by room.

During the day even an Operation Overlord tournament was played. Boardgames were there thanks to Tana del Goblin staff.

As Ganesha Games we were there in a full formation. Sergio played a Drums and Shakos Large Battle game, organised by Diego.

Here a participation game (before the participation) with an exciting helicopters charge of Apocalypse Now style.

A snapshot of what Andrea was playing, as you can see on the first photo. A dungeon, some green monsters, dices with 12 faces. And nothing more, it is a secret. And a playtest, indeed.

Always on the first photo of this post you can see the full table of the new naval game by Sergio. Here something more near to our eyes. It is called “Aye aye sir!”: Drums and Shakos goes naval…

A brief visit from Paolo, during a weekend in Rome from Switzerland. This time, last Saturday, we met with Diego too. Another Legio Palatina club moment at my home, the unofficial headquarters. A classic pizza dinner and a game. Pillars of the Earth is a favourite of ours. And Paolo know it so good that he always win. This time too. We are thinking to go together to Salute this April, one from Geneva, one from Rome. I have only to find the right flights…