Play Modena is a huge convention about boardgames, and wargames too. This year we went to Modena for a 4 days tour! We stayed in this hotel, a building with 114 rooms!

The first day a tourist trip around the city. It was he first time I saw it. Beautiful but very small, I’m from Roma, another thing. Here you can see the Duomo with his campanile dressed like a Tetris for refurbishment work.

I ate a lot in these days. Modena cousin is famous. The first night in a posh restaurant: polenta, quaglia eggs, vinegar and cheese.

And after: tortelloni with pumpkin inside.

At the convention we ate tigelle with a mixture of garlic, lard and grana cheese!

Saturday was a hard day to found some place not overcrowded. At last we ate a great pizza. Mine with salty ricotta and small tomatoes.

Sunday night it was very calmer. A lot of people was on the way to home. So we ate in city centre where someone from Ganesha told us about a beautiful waitress. He was fucking right.
We ate tagliatelle with prosciutto and porcini mushrooms, boiled rice with vinegar and grana, tortelloni with asparaguses.

And to end the night this light combination of cream and chocolate.

We are in Terni again, at Sergio’s house, also known as Palalaliscia!
Were a lot of time we wanted to do another gaming day with new productions in the works by Ganesha Games. So, me and Andrea played with giant monsters and Diego and Sergio played with little Napolonic soldiers.

Here can view Sergio during the rules briefing. This is the last version of Song of Drums and Shakos Large Battles. We tried it last year with an area movement approach and in this metric form.

I followed only part of the battle setted for the testing. It was the first day of the Tolentino battle of 1815. The play went on with debating about the rules and how to improve them. Diego is a fan of rules discussions and of Napoleonic era, so I think this session was very useful to Sergio to prove his game.

In another room another struggle went on. It was about giant Japanese monsters from cinema screens. I’m following this game from its born because I am a fan of kaiju. I have got a shelf full of 7cm mosters and a big Godzilla is watching me from a bookshelf while I’m writing on the keyboard.

Mighty Monsters is now almost ready. This latest version go on smoothly, only little adjustments are necessary. The wound system is brilliant: you have got 3 kind of dices, white to red throught yellow, every wound you have to substitute one dice with a worse one. If you fail your activation test with 1 on your yellow dice you must throw on a disaster table, while if you fail your activation test on your red dice you must throw on a worse disaster table. So you have wounds that effect your powers or your actions. Every monster have peculiar statistics and comportment, and you can build them with a point system. We had got some Toho’s monsters and you could watch them fighting like in a film!

For the gossip column I won the fight. Andrea’s Godzilla was lazy and without talent while his Ultraman fight well. My MechaGodzilla save the day with an heroic attitude.
Here you can see the Ipad with a page from the upcoming ruleset. We ascertain that a 90×90 terrain is the best, with a bunch of buildings as scenario. We must prove with Japanese Defence Forces another time…

Before the crisis: Berlusconi kissed Gheddafy’s hand to pay homage. And after Gheddafy cleaned his hand.

At the start of the crisis: Berlusconi said he don’t want to call Gheddafy because he thinks he is busy.

Now: Berlusconi is ready to fight Gheddafy…

This year there are little possibilities of holidays for workers because the 1st of the year, the 1st of May (labour day), the 25th of April (official end of WWII in Italy) and the 25th of December (Jesus birthday) are days off like Sunday or Saturday. A strange calendar in these years.

Italian politicians are a total mess, so the idea: “let be happy people, a new holiday only for this year!”

And so we have got this “flag holiday”! What a stupid thing!
If you ask around what this holiday is, why just this day, none know the answer.

We have got this fake celebration of the 150 years of Italy, but Italy was not really reunited 150 years ago, it was all another story, and nowadays Italy is not so united.

And in the North there is a very influential political party that is a rule force in our government, based on racist and secessionist ideas (but it is only a fable for dumb and a matter of money to steal), that don’t want to celebrate this flag. They claim to be descenders of Celts and call themselves Longobards (that are Germans)! They wanted, and so have obtained, a holiday for their flag. They are thinking about which flag utilize, maybe a St. George flag, the England flag! And they are Celts… And this 17th of March is St. Patrick day, the national holiday of a real Celtic country: Ireland. And Ireland flag is similar to the Italian one. While Italians who suddenly 20 years ago named themselves Longobards thinking to be Celts, want to celebrate a English flag!

Another thing. After this precious gift of free time, someone reminded about the cost of it. Who will pay the workers for this new holiday? The solution: for this year all will have for holidays one day less!

Our national flag is green, white and red. Like pizza. It is not casual. Italy is like pizza. But if you put in pizza some genetically modified basilico, mozzarella produced from dioxin polluted fields, cheap Chinese tomatoes, what do you have? You have this actual and real wasted Italy.

Meka is a ruleset by Paolo. He is affected by megalomania and wants to create a system to play with 1:144 models of Japanese androids drawing inspiration from animes. After his former efforts now he realized something more reliable. We made this test to verify his ideas. And a lot of things seem to work out. There is something to improve, especially for a more fluid movement, but I think this is the right way for the game. He have to test what we have found out this afternoon and after he has to test again the game, with more pieces involved inside.

The great thing is that you can buy an action figure for a small amount of money, ready without painting and with a lot of possibility of poses and weapons, and instead to put it on a bookshelf you can play with it. There is a point system to built your mechas and so you can have different choices of play. While you are playing you can replicate the situations of the anime.

Here you can see Zakus, the best mecha design ever did. Look at the N scale scenario. It was bought in Japan during Paolo holidays.

The effort is to put inside the game all the weapons and mobilsuit types, so the datasheets are very large. With this game you could play even with other universes than the Gundam one. I hope to use my 1:144 Patlabors.

The testing was with me, Paolo and Franci. We made all versus all. I won the day. Next Sunday I will be in Terni to testing new Ganesha Games rules. Guess what I play with.

You can view here 1/6 action figures of WWII. The owner, a friend of mine, was a paratrooper when he was serving in the army and so he is interested to this branch of elite forces. And so I am after his example, as you can ascertain on other my posts.

These figures are very flexible and customizable, but not so easy to manipulate. We bought single pieces to create what we wanted. These are dolls to dress, and sometimes you can have some difficulties to do it. I broke a hand of one figure of mine while I was dedicated to make wear it a jacket. Well, the last year I almost broke a rib trying to wear a slim Afrika Korps shirt, so I think all is due to the weird uniforms of the Axis. 😉

Here there is a His Majesty paratrooper. This year in Nettuno I saw a man with this uniform and the camouflage was great. But not so great with this yellow light and on IKEA parquet. If we will have enough time we take better pictures with a realistic war scene.

Folgore in Africa. Enough said!

A fallschirmjager with his drop camouflage. Uh, it has not so good looking trousers. They was more wide than these. With a bit of cotton you can better recreate the effect. Another time.

These are the three first action figures on the battlefield. He has got another two more elaborated pieces to built: ardito paracadutista RA/ANR and marò NP Btg. Barbarigo X° MAS. I have got even my action figures, see it in a following post!

Fabio is a little busy with a new project he will present at Play Modena (and after to Hellana), a huge scenario for Anticamente about Romans. So he has forgot my viaduct. Shame on him! This is the last image that he sent me. I hope I see the final result at Modena at the end of March…

Chess? What means…

Quar are a fictional alien race, a concept for a world at the technological level of Europe during WWI. And they are a creation of Zombiesmith who together with Ganesha Games realized a gorgeous rule book for them. It is based on Flying Lead and Song of Blades. I bought it only for the extremely good graphics and for the love that the author put in it. This world, and the miniatures, are great. You can find more here.

Now there is even a computer graphic teaser of this saga. I like it very much, so I hope it for you.