Christmas is the time of the year when Luca come from London to meet his old mates here in Rome. His wife is a writer for the Roma guide by Lonely Planet so all the family is here for the copy edit of the new annual edition. So we have got Luca, while Narciso come from Canino. Hence we can organise a Legio Palatina reunion year after year, even if Maurizio is missing while Paolo is in Switzerland with his pregnant wife. Our club still lives for a day.

This time we have got two new full members: Gabriel and Jack. Their father is teaching them the wargame basis for future glory on the game boards. But they still have some confusion. Gabriel displayed some 15mm single based modern troops with flamethrowers in our mini Large Battle SDS in 28mm scale. Smaller but more deadly indeed.

Diego opened his house for the first time ever! It could be perfect headquarters for our club, but he wants to preserve it for something less important. As you can see, it is along a railway. This fascinate me in some way.

Andrea was with us from the morning. We playtested again Song of Spear and Shield with Diego. Later we did a collective visit to the local wargame store, now only few blocks from Diego’s house. And after a lunch with pasta, the afternoon with the kids, SDLB and snacks, the evening with some ugly reality shows about Yankee food while we were waiting that Luca consigned the kids to their mother in another part of the city, we ate the annual dinner based on pizza and beer.

To digest we playtested a new game from Ganesha based on western films. Four players, two sides. My dices were so bad that I did nothing at all! At least the others had fun with the game.

The classic reunion photo. So we can see photo after photo the passage of the years, but even the fact that we are always here together year after year!

In the night Narciso and Andrea slept in Diego’s house. Because they are two famous long-winded people, they fell asleep very late. In the late morning we visited IKEA to buy some stuff: assorted for Narciso, two bookshelves to put inside the miniature closet for Andrea, some Zen Garden bases for me.

Then me and Andrea made another playtest to the western game. On my Christmas red tablecloth. This time I had only good dices and Andrea the bad ones. I can say that they are some interesting concepts in the game but there are lots of things to do before it can be full playable. Something for late 2013 or 2014 because there are so many new rules that have to be published by Andrea this year, and the next.

The 2012 passed away, the begin of 2013 was still with a holidays atmosphere, Luca was almost leaving for London, so we setted another reunion, even if shorter. This time Diego and Narciso were playtesting Ferrum et Gloria with some tweaks about thraeces and andabatae.

Another club photo before of another pizza and beer dinner. Maybe I will see Luca in London for Salute. Maybe we will be here another time 12 months more later.

Every year there is in Rome this fair about books. It is based on small publishers. It is the opportunity to know and buy something different from the usual, that is something that you cannot find in mainstream bookstores. So you have obscure publishers, whodunit specialised ones, archaeological ones, and extreme left and right ones. Oh, there is space for cooking, travel and poetry books too.

All this is inside a strange building from fascist era, a congress palace conceived for the universal exposition of 1942, that was build in the ’50s instead. Cold new-classical rationalism. A little freezing those days because the temperature was below the zero. And with the economic crisis in Italy the fair was less crowded than usual. The name of the fair is “more book more freedom”. But now we have “less books and less freedom”.

This time we hadn’t the usual space for publisher from Sardegna. The crisis. We had more space for ebooks, but Berlusconi – the owner of the biggest publishing and distribution companies – don’t want them, so this market is pretty close and non influential. I bought just a couple of book for me and some to give for Christmas. This was the time for a book on Etruscan origins and another one on military strategy. More to read while I’m going to the job place.

After two years Pabogel is in Rome again! Two pavilions in the nowhere land of the Fair of Rome. The entry was restricted only to professional food operators, but I have got a special card to get to every fair. The main food typologies were pizza, fried, croissants, ice creams, coffee. It is all very interesting…

This fair is the opportunity to eat great food for free. A competition about pizza was held in the fair, so you could eat pizzas from master chefs. Or you eat it or we throw it away. I sacrifice myself and eat as pizza as possible to my stomach.

Traditional pizza is cooked in wood stove. So this company is selling electric ovens disguised as wood stoves. Tree stumps are furnished to camouflage the truth! With the wood stove the taste is different, more bitter, and the consistency is harder, but pizza made with electric oven is good the same. The real difference are ingredients and leavening with natural rising agents. Often these are the weak part in a pizza, not the oven!

Various fresh croissants and strudels, ready for the oven. They were selling machines to industrially produce them. So the frozen product is sold to vendors that cook it as their homemade product.

The great revelation: the crisps machine! So we can understand as they are made! They were even selling an automatic crisps machine for movable vending stands. From the potato to the hot crisps in your hands.

We know this Kanon coffee from Naples only because they are present in the fair. Every time they promote themselves with the use of gorgeous South-Americans stand assistants. Another reason to go to fairs is to watch female stand assistants. The only remark is that for a food fair you expect rubicund female cooks, a sign of good appetite, while here you could see only slim girl with bare thighs. I appreciate them for sure, but they are a sign of anorexia indeed.

I still have got some posts about 2012 events like this one. So I’m late about my things but I want to show all to you. After these kind of posts more arenas and little soldiers.

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.

I like Lego, I grew with these toys. So I like to watch the realisation made by the Lego community. In the Ludica fair a large space was dedicated to Lego games. And to a Lego city. Summing Lego brick after Lego brick, Lego set after Lego set, you can obtain this, a continuous table with lots of little scenes and details. With a railway and a monorail added.

Some realisation have a less gaming aspect, like these pieces inspired by Star Wars vehicles. Fictional reality deconstructed in Lego bricks.

In the Ludica Model pavilion there was an area where you could freely play with Lego and buy it in weight. A very popular place for children. While in the Ludica Bimbi pavilion there was a really huge mosaic with the image of the Colosseum. People could built it by sector using Lego bricks having a sector map for guide. Up with Lego community!

In Ludica Roma there were wargamers and modellers, so you could view a lot of beautiful miniatures.

A multicoloured scenario from an A La Guerre game.

Your miniature collection can become really huge after a lot of years playing wargame. Piles of 15mm for an 1:1 fight between Gauls and Romans along a small river.

Bigger miniatures and greater painters than wargame world. That Zues is awesome. I’m thinking about a game with this Zeus in the upcoming Of Gods And Mortals…

More models museum worthy.

A scene set in the Lybian desert, with Folgore paratroopers. My mobile camera is not so great but the weird yellow lights in the display case destroyed the fine paintwork. White lamps for another time, guys?

A customised Warhammer 40k squad. I don’t think that these miniatures are manufactured by GW. They are really huge and majestic.

A Dust diorama with a Jagpanzer. I have to buy something made by this Paolo Parente guy…

There were a lot of railway modelling dioramas. I remember them in their specialised fairs. Now I want to show you only this beautiful view of Porta San Paolo station. Every day I pass close to there to go to work. It serves the line for Ostia, the waterfront of Rome. It would be perfect is the lights in the platform were made by leds. Maybe this scene was built a lot of time ago. More on this station here

A display were made about the development of the Wings of War (now Wings of Glory) boardgame. It was very interesting to see as an idea was developed from the first rough pieces of paper to the final release with aeroplanes miniatures, through small sets for playtesting and prototypes of the game elements.

Thanks to Luciano and Valentina we had got a huge space for our Ganesha Games stand. Andrea was running a demonstration table for beginners with the new edition of Song of Blade and Heroes. So some people and children discovered the world of wargame. At the same place were possible to taste the water of the upcoming Of Gods And Mortals. We sold half of the book rules that we brought. And my Zen Garden game gone sold out quickly. Now I want to realise a little more luxury new version of it. Ready for Play Modena next year, I think. Only 15 copies and nevermore.

As you remember my arena was stolen in Lucca convention. Now I have built a better and larger arena by a Playmobil set. It is still needy of a paintwork to give a less toyish feel and some structure improvements. In the works, but good even now. A lot of children was attracted by it. Hey, it is not a toy for children, it is a toy for adults! ; )

Andrea stayed in Rome for 5 days. We playtested Song of Spear and Shields the day before, the first (desert) day of the fair and the day after. Andrea was not so happy about some aspects of the game so he wanted to stop it and to throw it away. But I insisted to save the core rules, leaving the group rules to a future game with more miniatures. I want this game a lot, I am almost a co-author of it. Now I’m waiting the feedback from the drafting of the version for external playtesters to have something more delineated to work.