Archive for December, 2014

More things in December

Holidays are an heavy duty so less news on the blog. However I promised to myself that this year I had to spend less time on the blog because I need time to write rules for Ferrum et Gloria. Well, this year I published 86 posts instead of 88. Target achieved…
Some brief news. In a month I visited my fiancée, spent a lot of money in a couple of fairs in Rome (books and food), walked around a lot, ate like a pig during Christmas, worked at my bureaucratic job, wrote an article for Dadi & Piombo about gladiators (out in April). And I took this photo at another playtest for Song of Spear and Shield. The rules are still blurred as this photo. Every time Andrea is not happy enough with the rules, but even this time he think that he found the right way. Instead for my photos I’m thinking about a new camera at the start of 2015.

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Pontiarii

Do you remember where I took this photo? I was in the Ancient History museum in Trieste this May. And this is a bas relief with Pontiarii.

While we are preparing the English translation for Ferrum et Gloria, something new is on the arena sands. I’m laying down and playtesting new kinds of gladiators for the second book. This time I have better player sheets and rules summaries from the book. More stylish and handy than notes made with simple wordprocessing.

Pontiarii is a peculiar combat set between retiarii and contraretiarii utilising a bridge. Who hold the bridge win the fight. You can throw stones from the top of the bridge. And all is more three-dimensional because gladiators can fight from top to down or from down to top. And the bridge is a peculiar terrain. A lot of situations that were clarified during the test.

In the same session we had a combat between velites. Other situations, other rules. And more things to play with gladiators.

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Stone walls by Stronghold

Mainly I speak about gladiators and fairs. This time I want to show something about other wargame stuff of mine: resin stone walls. The best around.

The attention to painting soldiers have to be employed for terrain too. Instead terrain in wargames is subsidiary to miniatures, so soldiers usually fight on a flat surface, green coloured. Some small trees simulate woods, broken houses are randomly scattered around. We have to invest our time and money on terrain. The only complication is the space required to store terrain, less flexible than the necessary space to store miniatures. I’m still building my city for wargames. Space is what I need. Rather than large buildings I dedicated my attention to walls, that are a vertical obstacle on the battleground. I chose those ones by Stronghold, a small Germany company.

A friend of mine brought me these colours with earth tones. They are pastels with watercolour feature. I and my father draw every stone of the walls with a random effect. The result look a bit too heavy as contrast.

Then I washed all with my personal magic wash paint, obtained by acrylic wax for parquet, matt acrylic paint and chestnut ink. Due to watercolour feature, the coloured dusts melted. Moreover the paint amalgam them with surface. So the contrast was attenuate. Every stone has its characteristic tone, but all look realistic.

A photo with a RSI Folgore soldier with his camouflage uniform. You can look at painted walls and their available variants: a destroyed wall with broken and deformed railing; a gate with moving doors with a curved shape. However this railing with upper points is awesome. And absolutely not boring.

I like these walls so much that I bought a long circuit of them. Their modular system allow walls to be composed in various ways. I’m sure that they are a nice touch to my battleground. And now I stored them inside a old rigid plastic case for video beta tapes. It’s not this on the photo, it’s a very compact box.
If you want similar walls go to Stronghold shop.

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DBA Terni 2014

The last tournament of the year. DBA, as usual. In Terni, again. This time I chose the army list only after a look at the theme. No brush up of rules too. I picked up a list with more knights than other ones. And nothing more. Incidentally it was the Papal one, so I chose to combat with the colours of Rome. As usual. A bloody tournament! First game: I lose 3 vs 4, with the last throw of the dice to decide who between I and Mr. Gasbarri could win. Second game: I drew 4 vs 4, fighting until the end of legal time, even if I could win. Third game: I won 5 vs 4 with my general dead, and the last turn with 3 dead of mine. Forth game: I won 4 vs 1, a result obtained after the first impact of armies. I reached the forth place, so no cup but maybe a record for body count in a tournament.
The next year we are thinking to play with 2.2 edition again because we don’t know very well the 3 edition still. And maybe the 2.2 is more engaging. However in 2015 I wish to dedicate my free time to Ferrum et Gloria, so I don’t know if DBA will be a priority again in my activities as player.

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