Archive for the ‘ mighty monsters ’ Category

Alt si gioca 2012: the report

More on the beautiful Alt si gioca convention. This time some photos and comments. There are some previews about Ganesha Games new games too. But if you want to see more photos go to the two Dropbox photo archives:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/upm85fpqbni2m3y/jmdS3HOhyL
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3hezsv8m5sm74as/-rvZ1WN1bT

Former city of Bologna fair manager, now author of SDS game series and other games, Sergio Laliscia at the convention organisers desk.

The huge Ganesha Games stand with the Origins prize among Napoleonic rules. A show of some of the rules produced by Andrea Sfiligoi. Some are still in the works. On the wall some funny posters about dance folk music performed when the hall is populated by local elder people.

A demonstration game and playtest of the upcoming Of Gods And Mortals, out the next year for Osprey publishing. A classic: Greeks versus Vikings. Another time we have to test it with Egyptians…

Monsters Island with Mighty Monsters rules. This is only a display indeed. An usual fight is with 3/4 monsters per squad.

Samurai Robot Battle Royale is in an advanced development. We are thinking about a Gundam style match at my home soon. We have the book cover and some posters will be ready for Lucca Games in Halloween time. The rules are almost ready for an open playtest.

A display with Apocalypticum miniatures. Andrea postponed the development of these rules because he wanted to dedicate himself to other books. But now he wish to fix the rules utilising the notes that he collected with playtests. To start a new and definitive playtest phase.

A game with Drums & Shakos Large Battle. I think that these rules don’t have the right attention that they deserve from the potential players. It is a really valid Napoleonic system. Well, it is a bestseller in Ganesha Games sales but I don’t read about it often on the web. Please, give it a try, it is revolutionary, historically determined, fast and fun.

My children: Zen Garden and Ferrum et Gloria. I sold two boxes of the former at the convention. The gladiator game instead was practically proposed in a display mode here, but at Lucca Games convention I will present a scenario to show it easily to people.

Sherlock Holmes display. A gracious scenario full of Victorian little scenes: lamps, cobblestone ground, coaches, tramps, dogs and cats and other life scenes. I fell in love with it! I like the houses very much too. I saw them in Salute a year and half ago but here they are painted better. I want them for my Flyton city.

The huge 15mm Napoleonic display. Almost 11000 pieces. Sergio spent 5 hours to place them on the tables! Maybe next year he will have got more miniatures…

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Alt si gioca 2012: the videos

Alt si gioca was a wargame convention in Terni who took place the 7th of October. When I was free from my demonstrations I realised with my mobile a movie to report the event.

Some main topics:
0:12 – Blood Bowl tournament
0:51 – Flame of War scenario
1:00 – Battle on Ice in 10mm from Aster
1:20 – Heroquest
1:38 – Bring & Buy
1:53 – A La Guerre
2:30 – Gino Pilotino
2:48 – Subbuteo
3:01 – Operation World War II
3:17 – Wings of Glory
3:54 – Drums & Shakos Large Battle
4:20 – Zen Garden
4:28 – Ferrum et Gloria
4:34 – Samurai Robot Battle Royale
5:05 – Mighty Monsters
5:43 – Of Gods And Mortals
5:51 – Zulu on rampage
6:08 – Weird War II scenario
6:23 – Sherlock Holmes scenario
6:44 – 6mm
7.07 – 11000 Napoleonics in 15mm by Sergio Laliscia

To view a better show of the Napoleonics array, here another video.

And to know more about this convention go to altsigioca.6sided.net

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A year ago, Ganesha Games published the Mighty Monsters miniature rules for battles between giant monsters.
Andrea Sfiligoi is adapting the same engine to giant robots. I am the main playtester. This s not just Mighty Monsters under a different name, but a different and fully compatible game. Monsters are biological creatures while robots are mechanical constructs and take damage differently. The rules go to great lengths to differentiate A.I. robots, piloted mecha, bio-armour types, transforming robots and so on in the usual Ganesha “toolkit” philosophy.

We played a few test games but more are needed. Ganesha is trying to have the rules out for mid 2013. For the moment, we can enjoy a stunning, dramatic cover illustration drawn by Giandomenico D’Amoja and colored by Greg Bain.

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Tokyo apocalypse

I have got my copy of a ruleset to fight battles with giant monsters in small scale. I even have got the miniatures (gashapoon), so what could I do?

On a very cold Saturday afternoon, I visited the Reeinder club, in the suburbs of Rome, relatively close to my place. I wanted to test the complete Mighty Monsters ruleset in a 4-players game. Lorenzo set up a tennis table with a urban landscape. I added some Monsterpocalypse buildings. They are a bit sparse because the play area was larger than I initially thought. One player didn’t show up, so this was a three player game and I was the umpire. I explained the rules. If I read them more before the play maybe the game could run better, especially for the victory conditions at the end… My bad…

Well, all this was a lot of time ago, it was cold, very cold, I was half frozen. You can see Lorenzo (of Zerloon blog fame) wearing only a t-shirt, while his friends are less impervious to low temperature.

There were three factions: “Mechagodzillas” (one model for the first movie incarnation and another one from a later flick), “Space Aliens from an evil planet” (Megalon, Gigan, and the little Mogera), and “The stomping forces of good” (Godzilla and Mothra).

Godzilla is the king of monsters (King Kong is only the king of Skull Island…) so all the enemies thought to stop him and take the crown for themselves. The fight was a gang up over poor Godzilla, who fought back vigorously. Mothra could help him but the player was unlucky and this over-sized butterfly did absolutely nothing! In the meantime, the huge mechanised monsters kept at a distance striking with long range missiles and energy beams. And then all the aliens were in the fight. Godzilla still stood — barely. The game emphasizes this type of fighting, just like the films. The alien player forgot about the mechanised menace at his back. So, in that cloud of destruction, the steel monsters joined the fray virtually undamaged. The end was nigh.

I have to set up a game again in this club. They are very friendly fellows. In the photo, you can see some of the games on their shelves…

Their website is: https://www.reincorp.it

For another chronicle of the play:
https://zerloon.blogspot.it/2012/01/diario-di-gioco-173-mighty-monsters.html

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Ludica Roma is here!

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!

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Lucca 2011: ganesha games show

A view of Historical Island. The Clan Conan space is at the end. Ganesha Games area is very large. Lava erupts from the volcano at the Andrea’s desk.

My Zen Garden in the fair. You can see the new materials at the work.

A playing preview of Swatters, the new game with 15mm aliens vs humans. Almost completed, it will see the light in a few months.

Flashing Steel on the table! Look at the wonderful sea, waves seems real. Some games were setted with this new ruleset. Pity, it was available only in English, so none could buy it, because Italian version is waited in the following weeks.

Sergio was very very tired due to work, but he could show his new Large Battle Drums and Shakos. A real success. His terrain was awesome, there was even a perfect vineyard.

He could explain the basic mechanics of the game with the throw of some dices to put spice in this. Some people wanted to buy it but you have to wait some weeks again. The book is in the editing phase.

Mighty Monsters, here presented in the Italian version and called Mega Mostri, results as a big hit in the heart of audience who reminds the lost sagas of Godzilla and its enemies.

Andrea presented the game with a volcano scenario and a lot of gashapon to show what we are speaking about. Children were attracted by these little figurines, adults were amazed finding their monster hero from younger time at work. And some child know the videogame of Godzilla and could name the monsters.

Scarred for life with Godzilla name!!! He is a hardcore Godzilla collector. However some people buy the ruleset ONLY because it is about kaiju, they don’t play wargames, they wanted Godzilla! I sign even an autograph on a copy, because I participated in the creation of the game!

Some happy customers playing with Mighty Monsters. Have fun with kaiju! And in the future you will have fights with giant robots from Japan too!!! Mazingaaa!!!!! And I have got a Patlabor large gashapon set to play a scenario with robots against a monster, as in Patlabor 3!

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News about Ganesha Games

In the past months I playtested some new games from Ganesha Games as you can see in these pages in older posts. Now it is time of some releases as Mighty Monsters, but now only in Italian language because Andrea wanted to have a version to present in Lucca at the end of the month. In Italian it is called “Mega Mostri”. Another released game is Flashing Steel, but I didn’t test it. Swatters, aliens against terrestrial colonials, is almost edited. Playtests are ongoing for a new game in a post-apocalypse set bounded to a miniature factory. And Sergio is at work with Drums and Shakos Large Battles for the final version, but I suppose it will be ready only in another month. And more rulesets are in the works, as Song of Spear and Shield! In the meantime the new website of Ganesha Games is on line, but its narrow band caused some problems for the downloading of the rules in some peak moments. There is a lot of work for the society of seated elephant. More on arrival, like my limited edition Zen Garden.

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Swatters + MM + SDS LB

Another day in Terni, another day in Sergio’s house, another day of testing of Ganesha Games’ rules. This time was the 7th of August and the staff were: me, Diego “Legio Palatina”, Sergio “SDS”, Andrea “Ganesha”, Gasbarri “Italian champion of all miniature wargame tournaments”, Salini “Chimera”. So we had two gamers from Rome, two from Arezzo and two from Terni.

After a debate on who from Arezzo works as a apothecary (don’t mind, it is a inner joke), we started a game with Song of Drums and Shakos Large Battle. Every time I think it is in the final state of the testing, every time I found something new in the rules. Well, you can’t say we didn’t try this ruleset before its publication! We are testing it since a couple of years. What can I say? I confirm all my impressions. This time the game was faster because Sergio wants to close a game in a 2 hours and half, because he is tired of longer games that you cannot end in a evening. So you have a more deadly play, but with realistic results. I would prefer a slower and less compress view of the game, but frankly 2 hours and half are enough for a game, so now SDS LB is still better.

In the middle of the play we made a pause for lunch. At the restart I left SDS LB (my place was taken by Sergio and they made another game too, with a long debate after) for a game with Mighty Monsters. I aided Andrea in its development and founded some key ideas about the mechanism of the game. They were a lot of months that I didn’t play with these small versions of Godzilla and foes. We made some little adjustments and tried some terrain effects. It is almost ready for betatesting to external playtesters, but still we have to try it putting Japanese Defence Forces in the pit.

At the end I tried for the second time the new game of Andrea, Swatters (not the definitive name), a sci-fi game about voracious aliens and terrestrial garrisons (I talked about it in the 17th of July post). Andrea is very involved in its development because of the new form of the play. It is a game with easy rules and with a immediate visual recognition of the troops statistics and wounds using the miniatures and their position inside circular trays (made from old CDs). I think that especially this game it’s very easy to play without reading the rules before, because you have all what you need just on the table. I suggested to use trays made from mini-Cds, but now you can find only mini-DVDs, and Andrea is stockpiling them to play a very large battle. Using 15mm, the Ganesha’s distance sticks, a bunch of dices to add probability factors to your fighting results, and mini-DVDs as trays, you can have your sci-fi battle.

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