English women and girls are famous for the abuse of hats at celebrations. I saw this strange habit at the Luca’s marriage too. If lots of hats are around in English houses, you can find hat boxes too. So, if you are a real wargamer, you can sacrifice a hat box to built a circular arena. The only thing to do is to cut the height of the “walls” to a more proportioned dimension. Some paint work, some sand and grass for the terrain, some details added as doors and gratings, and you have got your arena. Look more for this one here.

An arena from the miniature wargame past. This thing was created a lot of years ago but it is bright with its simplicity. First, take a biscuit tin, then decorate it with some shaped and coloured card using some glue, giving to the box an arena appearance. On the lid there is the place for a rule summary. Magnetised miniatures can fight in the arena even in travel. Simple. Fast. Easy to storage. And you can eat biscuits before making it! More information here.

Another version of the same idea. This one is a step by step guide to your tin arena. Designed for D&D miniatures and with a medieval feel. You can find downloadable decorative elements for this arena on the dedicated web article.

Victory! The 9th of June I win a DBA tournament here in Rome. It wasn’t an official one, but an event only for Romans to show rules and tournament formula to not “professional” DBA players. So I had less competition from hard gamers, however my victory was a real one. A 30€ gift was the prize. I spent them quickly for a Vallejo matt varnish can and for a photographic book about local fallschirmjäger reenactors.

The tournament theme was Caesar and his enemies. Obviously I brought a Roman army. These are my troops after the aristocrats defeat, 5 bases destroyed against nothing for me.

In the upper photo you can see my first game. I’m the reflexive chap in the centre. On the right upper corner there is Andrea, in Rome from Terni because the day before we passed all the time together playtesting his latest new game.

We were in SoloGiochi, a wargame shop in the north of Rome. I never stayed there before, because the city is pretty big and I live far from here. However we like this location very much so we will organise the official Roman DBA tournament here in September.

Our national DBA tournament circuit is based on groups of friends that live in cities in the north and centre Italy. Some new DBA player entered this event, so we hope they will be here the next time, and in the other tournaments. The photo of an happy day with miniatures.

This time only an holiday report, there aren’t miniatures here. But only a three days trip in Turin, a city in the north of Italy.

I begin with this cupola, the symbol of the city. When I went here some 15 years ago, it was only an empty building, after it was converted in a cinema museum. Under there is a photo of the elevator inside the cupola while it is going towards the roof terrace. It is realised all in clear glass, so you can have vertigo symptoms. And you pay 4 euro for this too.

Canyons made of bricks, in a raining night, with lights from the streets. After the trip to the roof.

My friend tied up with a 19th century 3D peep show experience in the cinema museum.

The Po river full of water. It is the biggest river in Italy. At the deep end of the photo you can see the Mole Antonelliana cupola.

Turin under the rain. The castle inside the city and the cupola again. It is like the Eiffel tower in Paris, in every photo you have to have the symbol of Turin.

The monumental door from Julia Augusta Taurinorum, a piece of the Roman ancient times.

Black stones from Egypt in the famous Egyptian museum of Turin. Pity, it is in refurbishment so I could have only a partial vision of the collections.

We had a fantastic experience in Pietro Micca museum because of a guided visit, thanks to a retired official. We lived the moments of the 1776 French siege of Turin, looking to weapons and models of the fortifications. After we walked for 300meters under the citadel walls inside underground galleries that are 31km long!

The main event in the city was the biggest fair in Italy about books. It is held inside an old car factory. Cars were the motor of Turin development, and decline, in the 20th century.

I prefer the smaller fair in Rome about small editors because you can find some unknown gems. However even dimensions are important, so this fair is a must see. I bought only two books (60 euro…), one on a Gothic manuscript and another one on sacral and ritual aspects of Bisanzio’s hippodrome.

Me together with a green cow-man… Well, it is a bull, like the totemic animal of Turin, city which name means “city of bulls” indeed.

The new underground made for the winter Olympic games of 2006. It is pretty small inside the wagons, like a tram. But stations are big.

The new train station of Porta Susa. It is still in the making. We arrived and left here.

After the overall review of Dadi.Com, now we are going to see the Ganesha Games presence. We were at full force, with me, Andrea, Sergio and Diego. Among other things, we spent a lot of money in the Bring & Buy, but we offered some demonstration games too. Andrea was in the convention with an OGAM preview. In the meantime he organised a brainstorm for the boardgame that he is writing in these days, as you can see in the photo. Instead Sergio took a pause from his new games and were inspired by Bizio’s work for an entirely new game.

The new edition of Zen garden is ready! It is the white one, after the black and the red. The final edition indeed. Better than before, with reorganised rules, more pagodas, white sand glued on the board and more sand available to add a real zen garden feel at the scenery. Gualtiero Grassucci is a fan and a promoter of the game: he play it to show wargame mechanics to children! Thank you!

This was the opportunity to show the last developments of Ferrum et Gloria to grognard public. I run some demonstration games trying new tweaks. A game with 4 people divided in 2 squads (retiarii versus secutor and scissor) was held. The fight became very hard and participant. It was a real challenge! A lot of blood was spread on the sand. During these days I tried a sagittarii fight and in another game I put 3 equites versus 3 equites. To adapt the core rules to these two gladiatorial categories I had to study something to reflect their specific methods of fight, because they use bows or mount horses.

Now my arena is better too. I put some spectators on the bleaches and some improvement was done. I have got rules for referee too…

Herat was a game about Italian development in Afghanistan based on Flyin’ Lead rules by Ganesha Games. It was a valid scenario with a lot of models, houses and a bazaar. It won a prize. I wish a modern Italian army too, but these miniatures are out of commerce.

Another club chose OGAM for a demonstration game. The scenery was better than those made by Andrea. He is always focused on mechanics and the scenery is pretty scarce. These chaps instead have found a game that can substitute other fantasy games. So they have cured the aesthetic aspect too. OGAM will be out towards October, so you have to wait some months to read the rules. Here a game with Vikings versus Greeks. On the book you will find Egyptians and Celt too. If I would find some free time, I have to develop Sumerian and Shardana lists for future official expansions.

So, this was Dadi.Com, the wargame convention of South Europe… I don’t know if the next year I will present here my finished gladiatorial rules or if I will be in San Marino again. In the meantime this year we will have two big convention in Italy, Lucca Comics and Games in November and Ludica in December. And for the 16th of June a new wargame convention will be held in Rome. On these pages the future reports.

At last! I’m so busy these days that I couldn’t write about this great convention. Here we go.

San Marino is a small republic inside Italy. It dominates a fortified mountain so with natural and artificial defences they obtained a form of independence along centuries. Moreover it is only a mountain, a not so important land to conquer. It was ever used as free port, so its existence was a safeguard to balance of power and economical interests in the area.

Today San Marino is a tourist trap inside real medieval walls and houses. Very beautiful indeed. You can find tourists shops, stamps and money minted only for collectors, an amazing view, some fake museums (wax museum, curiosity museum, torture museum, vampires museum,…), weapons sold almost freely, castles, money recycling in local banks, Russian female shopping assistants. However it is worth a visit.

Under the main city there is a luxury hotel where our games convention was held. Huge spaces and great treatment. I never stayed in a place so beautiful. It is too much for our wargamers habits!!! Because we were out of season, we pay for this hotel an extreme bargain price. A paradise…

The convention was held in a two storey hall. In the photo you can see less than a half storey, so think about the rest! There is a cinema inside too. At the first floor we had the boardgame convention, at the second floor the wargame section. Dadi.Com is a convention funded by Lorenzo Sartori in Crema, his city at the north of Italy, but since 2011 it is held inside another convention in San Marino, because of higher money necessity to run it in the original place. More images on Dadi & Piombo website. And these are the pages on the convention Dadi.Com, while these ones are for the San Marino Game Convention.

The location was great but the public was scarce. San Marino is out of main routes, moreover the economical crisis cut trips of wargaming people. We had the place, we had Italian vendors, we had 2 UK and 1 German vendors, we had great wargame tables. But we had only some local visitors and too few grognards too. So we had fun but there weren’t the numbers to foster this convention. This was my first time in San Marino, I like it very much, but other people said me about the loss in participation.

I’m in a hurry so I can’t describe everything that I saw in this trip in San Marino inside this two day convention. I can only briefly speak about what I loved of it.

Manorhouse is an Italian maker of buildings. Here a rather passable scene made by their products…

The big game was this Peach Orchard wargame. I’m not into ACW but the spectacle was great.

Instead here we are in Castelfidardo 1860, an Italian affair…

What I like most was this game by Bizio, an house rules version of Starfight by Beer & Pretzel Games. I found this game very easy to understand and with interesting play mechanisms. No sheet necessity, all is done with dices! Brilliant rules, a smooth mastering by Bizio, a lot of fun. A space (naval) game with the right ideas to play it speedily. A must have! Look at the miniatures: they were made by a friend of Bizio with every kind of materials.

My battle against Diego. I lead a Klingon vessel against a Federation ship. My vessel was weaker than that feeble human scum warship but my heroic aptitude win the day!

Follow the next week…

I have got an outrageous backlog about work as web designer, homework, game designer and tester for Ganesha Games. More, I have a main daily job and the last weekend I visited Turin for three days. So my Dadi.Com reports is delayed again. However I prepared before another 1/6 action figure review, so here it is…

Kaustic Plastik are 1/6 action figure producers based here in Rome. I suppose they had a past experience about WWII action figures, when they released a Italian soldiers range. Their pieces are a little cheaper than rivals. Good as historical accuracy but some details look not so perfect because of fault manufacture design for some proportions, like you can see for the leather sleeve, the long neck or the large vests. But the overall and historical look is pretty good.

A retiarius with the Totti’s face, the captain of the Roma football team. I’m not a football fan, so it is awful to me. I would buy another head as substitute…

This thraex has got a real bronze helm! The better thraex around in 1/6 format.

Well, at this moment I don’t know more 1/6 gladiator figures. These are almost limited edition for collectors at high prices but with finer details than a 28mm miniature cannot give. To accomplish my dream of a game with 12″ action figures I should choose a fighter couple. The support to keep them standing can be utilised as a base, following Ferrum et Gloria rule principles. But my rules aren’t thought to this scale and the possibility to add details that are spontaneous to give to a fight with these enormous “miniatures”, would lead to the adoption, and the creation, of an entirely new rule system. What will I do? I don’t know, now I’m only dreaming about it.

While I’m recovering from Dadi.com convention, selecting photos to show that event, I retake the 1/6 gladiator action toys reviews. ACI Toys wants to create a full gladiator range. At the moment we have got a myrmillo, a dimachaereus and a provocator, but more are on arrival. You can go to their website to follow their production.

What can I say? Almost perfect. With the right muscle body too. The only fault is the metallic sleeve with the articulation at the elbow, build according to a wrong concept. To have the needed flexibility at the elbow they wore leather plates. But this is a common fault.

According to me, this is the most beautiful gladiator 1/6 action figure. What I like most is the colour choices, perfect! Do you want to find a flaw? The sword is too long and the shield was a little smaller, egg-shaped and with a reinforcement on the end.

Another gladiator inspired by a famous tv show. If as myrmillo and provocator the result is really great, as dimachaereus we have got a fantasy puppet. The swords are right, the shin guards too, but the armour is absurd. Well, if you are a follower of a Hollywood soap-opera with sex and violence that claim to represent Roman times, you can think that is beautiful. I don’t think so. This is sold as an expansion kit, only head and armour.

Another dimachaereus, with the same name (?), always from Spartacus. The axes are purely fictional, but the helm is great, a real thraex helm! The shin protectors are not decorated but they better because they are really realistic. Give him a sword and a shield, so you can have a thraex. Still at preproduction phase, it will be out towards the end of the year.