Archive for April, 2012

A figure in the making

This is my new 1/6 action figure that I received for Christmas from Renato. In these months I bought some specific pieces for it to realise a Folgore fighter for the Regio Esercito side in 1945. It is almost done. And my father fixed its feet because their joints were broken. Here you can see the surgical operation. Next time I will show the complete model.

Today I’m on the road for Cervia, to meet a celebration of the date of the end of WWII here in Italy, the 25th of April 1945. I’m going to participate as reenactor of the Folgore. In these months I built, with the help of Renato (and with my mother), a uniform like that dressed by this action figure. It is a version of English Battle Dress with Italian badges. You will see more when I come back.

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Legionaries march – the video

Another view on the Roma’s dies natalis. This time it is a full video!

I own a great mobile, a Sumsung Wave, with a great camera. I took some photos and some videos. I thought that those images could be over my personal interest, so I showed them to you on this blog. Then I had these small videos but I didn’t know what to do with them. So I bought an app for my iPad, the Avid Studio one, and within an hour I created a video. It was intuitive and simple. In the future I will took more videos for my blog. Enjoy the legionaries march!

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Pompa magna

Another set of photos from the Roma’s dies natalis. This time I show you a gladiator procession, the “pompa magna”. Some are spectacular others are not so philologically exact but the spirit is all.








In the afternoon some fights were played in the arena but I preferred to fight at home, playtesting the rules for retiarii vs antiretiarii. Ferrum et Gloria is a priority!

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2765 Ab Urbe Condita

A lot of years ago (2765 to be exact), the 21th of April, a groove around some hills was traced to mark the territory of a new founded city. That city is my home.

In this date there is a celebration with a reenactors march around the Palatinus and the Capitolium to homage our ancestors. It isn’t a political moment but a festival for who is interested in ancient Roman times. And an occasion to make an holiday under our Sun and among our past glories (at present we don’t have actual beautiful things to admire, sorry). I suppose this is the largest event for this type of reenactment. This year we had guests from a lot of places, as Germany, Czeck Republic, Slovakia, France, Nederlands, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, United Kingdom, Georgia and obviously from every part of Italy. We are all sons of Roma.

I took some photos to show you the manifestation at its start on the site of Circus Maximus. I concentrate myself on legionaries but there were a lot of other people, this is only a fragment of the event. Enjoy.























To know more go to the programme.

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TB Line exclusive 10mm preview !

Again and again on Hellana, where I could see a preview of the new 10mm miniature set from TB Line about armies for Punic Wars. This time was the turn of hoplites from Italy, useful for both the sides, the good and right one (Roma) and the bad one (Chartage). So you will have an army with Italian vests, different from the three orders army typical of Republican Romans or the Greeks.

Here you can see the general of the army. It is so good that I couldn’t keep my enthusiasm. It is part of a command with a bearer and a horn player. The army is not still complete. That day the sculptor (Cosimo Auricchio) presented to Fabio, my friend and owner of TB Line, the fresh fusions of the cavalry of this army. The hoplites are still under sculpting. Cosimo is very very slow with sculpting, but the results are great!

I wanted to emphasize the beauty of this little metal piece, putting it in comparison with other things as an attach or my fingers, because if you see it only on a screen, you can think it is a very good 28mm piece. Instead it is only 1cm high! It is a real miniature! The painting is great too. The eyes and the hands of the painter are phenomenal. These photos are take with my mobile camera (it is a Samsung GT-S8500 Wave) in free hand mode with natural light inside a gym…

The last photo is for the scenario at Hellana by TB Line, a horde of Mongols versus Rus. It think it was the best table at the convention. They were playing Anticamente rules. Obviously with 10mm miniatures.

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Hellana 2012: Ganesha stand

Again about Agliana, but this time for the Ganesha stand. As you have read before, me and Diego slept in Terni. The morning after we left at the 6 with Andrea, with a stop to say hello to other players from Terni who were leaving in another car with a table for Ganesha. Then to the motorway in Orte where Narciso was waiting for us. That night we returned to Orte for a dinner with him in a Chinese all-you-can-eat restaurant with fake Japanese and Wok credentials. A stop in Terni, and Rome at midnight.

At the convention we brought with us a pirate scenario, a quite compact one because we couldn’t take the galleons. I ran my Zen Garden game. This was the second time that I could sell it in its definitive form. I gave a free copy to some friends of mine that helped me in various things: Pippo, Bizio and Fabio. Instead “the principal playtester” of Drums and Shakos Large Battle was dedicated to a demonstration table of the game, because Sergio, the author, was busy with work in office even in Sunday. We had more attention on this Napoleonic ruleset than other games. People generally had scarce attention to tables, everyone were too much involved in his things to discover other things. Maybe in the first half of May, at Dadi.com convention in San Marino, we will have more opportunities to show our games. At that time I will organise a playtest of Ferrum et Gloria. I want to show the basic rules to my Italian friends, to start a full playtest campaign for the game.

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Hellana 2012: a report

We were here as every year since 2004. Hellana is the wargame annual appointment for Centre and South Italy. It is not so big, it is situated inside a school gym, but it is our convention, and we love it.

We are in the middle of nowhere, a village along the road from Firenze to sea, where you can find Lucca, Pisa and Viareggio: the upper side of Tuscany. It is amazing as from this bunch of houses some people organise their convention that calls people from various parts of Italy.

The main event is a interesting bring & buy space. This year I find an old magazine with crucial articles on Italian paratroopers in WWII, especially for the evolution of cartridge vests called “samurai”. I own one of them, a reproduction that I use in paratrooper reenactment. Among other things, miniatures and books, but I had just spent too much money on Vallejo colours, forex bases and miniatures for a special project for the next year to be published on Ganesha Games’s Free Hack.

Some tables were intriguing but you cannot find realisation out of normal because clubs don’t challenge each other to produce the outstanding table. They only want to show their usual games. Instead TB Line with Fabio Farneti bring home always some convention price because he is a perfectionist and he build perfect tables for 10mm miniatures with his friends.

Another event in Hellana is the DBA tournament and the Wings of War contest. In the last years I didn’t play DBA here because I want to try something new and chatting with people, free from four DBA turns that engage all the day. And the last year, me, Paolo and Andrea, re-invented Song of Spear and Shield during a experimental demonstration game.

In Hellana 2004 we found snow in Agliana. This year the weather was fantastic, so we found only this Russian scenario in snow.

I put the photos not in a strictly order bounded to the report. There were various tables and vendors, people played with their games and someone viewed the work of other people. We had fun and in a next post I will show the Ganesha stand. I close here with the more “vertical” game of the day.

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New playtests in Terni

The day before the annual appointment with Hellana, the national wargame convention in Agliana, me and Diego went to Terni to visit Sergio Laliscia (Song of Drums and Shakos) and Andrea Sfiligoi (Ganesha boss). We did this visit to take some miniatures from Sergio for the demonstration game of the day after and to make some playtest for the new Ganesha games in development. We slept in Andrea’s house at night, so Sunday we could go very early to Agliana with a single car.

On the table the initial stages of a new big Andrea’s project. It is still secret so I cannot say more. You can only know that some miniatures are involved… ha ha ha : )
Sadly I felt asleep during the brainstorm and the playtest phase while some ideas were showed and tested for the first time. It was after lunch, so sand were in my eyes. I will playtest the game in the future because I have got some particular skills specifically for this game from my university studies.

A crucial moment! The new version (the forth!) of my Ferrum et Gloria gladiator game for Ganesha Games is tested in the hands of Andrea. Here you can see my portable cardboard arena and a fight of 3 thraeces versus 3 myrmillones. Every figure has got a card with the specific moves. There were 6 cards because every figure had different weapons and combat style: in the ancient times there were 4 different types for thraeces and 5 types for myrmillones. Some counters reminded the state of the figures. The wounds system is similar to the Mighty Monsters one. Three coloured dice are used for activations, fatigue, wounds, save rolls and fight. The play is more elaborate than SBH: here you have only few gladiators and the hype is on the fight with specific weapons. I don’t want to say more, I can’t explain the game here. You will see the development of the game in the following months, even on the bar on the right of this blog.

I was worried that something went bad because Andrea was judging my work and he is severe and the game have to like to him. All fine! Andrea played my game and suggested some things. Here while he was using his ipad to take some photos for an immediate posting on facebook during the play.

These mock up cards are the prototype of the SBH card game. I like the cards in this form, basic but charming. Sergio spoked about it very well. Andrea only explain us the principles of it but we hadn’t the time to play it. Next time…

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