This is the back of Games pavilion, the biggest one. We were inside it, approximately in the middle on the left.

The queue to enter in the pavilion.

Inside there are gadgets, videogames, boardgames, cardgames. And wargames too.

He is Gipi, an Italian and international comic author and film director. He created a cardgame and illustrated it. On the floor he played a lot of matches. A best seller.

Artists paint their works for benefit. At the end an auction to benefit children hospitals.

This is a Roman amphitheatre, now a square. And inside it, the pavilion with the event theme of this edition: Star Wars.

However other Star Wars pavilions, shops and events were scattered in the city. Here an hooded Andrea as a Star Wars character.

Our preferred restaurant, “Gli Orti di Elisa”, changes in “Star Wars Restaurant”.

The cake called “May the Force be can you”.

An event based on the more numerous quantity of laser swords in a place.

Lego and Star Wars. I want a lego AT-ST walker for Christmas!

A weird kind of cosplay for Star Wars.

And a sexy one.

Here we go with the 10 parts report! Back at the end of October and the begin of November. We were in Lucca for Lucca Comics & Games 2015. You can’t understand what is this mess if you weren’t there. More than 700 stands, more than 75000mq exposition space, more than 300000 people around during 4 days.

It is the bigger and greater event of the year. You must be here.

This time people didn’t prefer Saturday but all the days to visit the convention. These photos were taken in not so overcrowd moments. It was during my free time trips to visit the convention. However I didn’t reach all its parts scattered around the city and its walls.

Queues, as usual. When you spot one of them it means that an event is running. This is Panini/Marvel/Disney pavilion. However the queue could be only to buy something…

Queue at Bonelli pavilion. It is the most important comic publisher in Italy. Authors signed prints made for the event at the end of the queue.

Hello Kitty pavilion, a new thing for this year. Kwai.

An hot-air balloon to see things from above.

The Japan Town. Obviously where you could find all what is Japan related.

Overcrowd corridors in some shop places in Japan Town.

Temporary shops. During these days you cannot find normal shops, every shop changes in food shops or comics/gadgets shops. It is crazy. I spot an hairdresser shop with dismantled machines, transformed as a comic shop. Lucca is a different place the rest of the year.

Sketches by comic authors. I bought a present for Christmas, and they added an illustration on it.

Stan Sakai drawn this for me on Italian version of 47 Ronin comic.

Batcar parked in a place.

The water canal inside Lucca.

Churches around…

At night, around. This is an internal door of old Lucca walls. Walks after the day duties.

In the meantime. The global government wants to terrorise us in every manner. It finances terrorists as Daesh and wants to destroy Russia that wants only the right to live. After the prohibition to fly with bottles of water or nail-clippings, now it wants to ban legal gun ownership. With a series of excuses it claims that even deactivated weapons, as rusted iron pieces of WWII era without firing mechanisms and closed barrels, cannot be in possess of registered collectors. Everything that resemble a semi-automatic weapon must be destroyed. Toys too.

Let’s try to sign this petition on
Change.org. And never trust the global government.

Following the text of the petition:

On the morning of 7th January 2015 Terrorists attacked Charlie Hebdo, with fully automatic, unregistered and illegal firearms.

Since then the EU has been preparing new legislation to ban semi-automatic firearms in the hands of law abiding EU citizens. Despite the fact that these weapons were not used by terrorists and are not even typically used by criminals.

They use unregistered, untraceable black market full auto Kalashnikovs.

The new legislation has been on the back burner since April 2015, only to surface now on 18th of November, barely 5 days after a second attack in Paris.

The victims of this tragedy have not been buried yet, the criminals are still on the loose and the police has not even finished the investigation and yet the EU is announcing measures to prevent something like that from happening again.

Unfortunately nothing in the draft would have prevented these 2 attacks since neither were done with weapons that are now legal and would be banned with this new law. Nothing.

It is not logical and above all it is extremely unfair.
It is unfair to the victims, it is unfair to the law abiding citizens whose hobby and property will be taken away.

Say NO to the draft proposal announced on 18 November 2015
Do not restrict semi-automatic firearms ‘because they look like an automatic firearm’

We the Citizens demand that the EU brings focus on the real problems:
– That the external borders of the EU are not protected.
[note: Turkey will enter in Schengen area in October 2016!!!]
– Our population has groups in it that refuse to align with our democratic core values and our culture.
– Illegal arms trade is rampant within the EU.
– Criminals and terrorists have easier access to illegal weapons than legal gun owners have access to legal arms.

That is the current situation and this new legislation does NOTHING to address those problems.
The 18 November IP-15-6110 draft to amend 91/477/EEC is not only populist in nature, it is also an insult to our civil liberties and to the intelligence of the EU citizens as a whole.

Read here the UE law proposal.

After a general coverage of the convention (but more things were around), now the part dedicated to Ganesha Games presence: two gaming tables and one large table as vendors.

Mushrooms at large. Miniatures were cast and now Andrea can demonstrate the Advanced version of Song of Blade and Heroes with them. An enormous house was built by Miraz, the author of the new western rules, SBH based. Dwarves are arriving from casters.

The first convention day was with an OGAM scenario run by Diego based on new OGAM supplement on Celt mythology.

Andrea as entertainer for mothers and children.

Your hero together with a mother and her child. Note my new Gojira t-shirt. Sometime the demo work is useful to attract new people to wargame, sometime is simple entertainment for children.

During inaction time we playtested some new rules for venationes. A very useful session.

This is our group photo. A beautiful holiday among miniatures. My regret is scarce possibility to visit places where we play because all the time we remain involved in gaming. Only dinner time is free. All restaurants in town were sold out so we winded up in a pizzeria where the owner sang old tunes together with orders. Chisena sang following the owner. Weird and fun. However pizza was not the best, pity. But lunch was worse: internal canteen was not cheap and not good. After the dinner, the concierge delighted us with descriptions about his artistic ceramic personal collection. We heard it with dreamy interest. Because we were falling asleep. Our friends of wargaming clan ate in another place. A great and genuine meal based on meat plates. We declined because of vegetarianism. And even because we know that was a meal that lasted more time. So when they returned later than us, the impact with the concierge was far worse. The Sunday morning they were destroyed by scarce sleep.

We are completing the back events schedule. No coverage of Tiferno Comics (too near to Empoli, only Andrea went) and Maker Faire Rome (too many people and chaos to pick an interesting photo). So it is time for Lucca.

Back to 3rd and 4th of October. After Romics we rested one day. Then on car toward Empoli for one of the best Italian wargame conventions. This was the first time for me. Two days of fun. The place is huge and it is inside the local fair palace. Empoli is a sort of part of Florence’s economic area. As hotel a budget place in a near town specialised in ceramic. But now a speed review of the tables.

A club of young people prepared games for younger people. Patience, creativity and great things.

A boardgame-wargame extended to bigger dimensions. And dinosaurs. That cannot be small. Note children around. Spreading the disease…

Always simple games but for older people than children.

Playing with 6mm on a map. Captivating. But abuse of hand lens to understand who is killing who.

Salini and his crusade for a new Italian tournament standard adopting “L’Art de la Guerre”. Maybe the new sensation for DBA, DBM, DBMM, FOG orphans?

Di Bartolo and his Napoleonic dream. He use an abacus for malus and bonus, and this sometime isn’t a bad idea. And his soldiers are always the best.

Naval war with big sailing ship. This deserve an applause.

Urban fight in WWII. I like these things a lot. And I want to replicate them with my Flyton scenario. What is it? It is one project of mine that I frozen in the last years. You can find traces on this blog. Now with the new house and new spaces to put scenario elements I can build my little city.

A wild western town and its leisure facilities.

Frogs versus turtles. An epic struggle.

More canonic fight. Did I never transpire that I love Romans?

The convention was originally a modelling convention. But now wargames are really dominant. However something remains, as static modelling and railway modelling. Here some wagons as we know it (dirty and shabby). And than a near station in a big diorama.

On the next post more on Empoli.

Back to the 1st of October. Romics is the comic convention of Rome. It is held twice every year in Rome fair. However the buildings are sinking in the ground. Moreover Rome fair is sinking in debts. But be happy: Romics is a money war machine and we will have a Roman comic convention continuously.

We are always present in the convention the first of the four days, from opening hour to end. It is the less crowed. So we can spend money freely and talk to people. And we did it abundantly. But not so many naked female cosplayers around the first day. Pity.

This time the convention was exploded in five pavilions. It is a very huge convention with lots of people around, but without cultural events and publishing companies presence. It is only shops and cosplay.

More boardgames this year. But it is not an easy situation where you can play: too many people around that don’t know games and don’t want to know them. In a matter of fact, as Ganesha Games we are not interested to be here.

However our friends of Reindeers club are here every edition. Praise them and their efforts to spread gaming culture. And this is the last Zerloon realisation: Mad Max flick was out in that time. And roads needed warriors.

Speaking about cars, an exhibition about Diabolik. And his cars.

This time there were two interesting exhibition: one about Bruno Bozzetto work, and this one about an Italian comic legend. He is the “king of murder”. A fictional one, obviously.

Some original drawings on the walls. The cover of one of the first numbers and its modifications. Look at the Diabolik’s eyes. And on Lady Kant the sign of a patch to change lineaments of the girls in following editions.

Another original draw and another version.

The original cover of a new series.

Comic convention are not more a matter of comics. They are more based on merchandise and gadgets nowadays.

And all what is from Japan is classified as something comic related. Thanks to anime, and later to manga.

Stuffed animals are cute and related to comic convention. Too much girls around nowadays as comic fans. But this is good. And I bought one of them for my love.

More cute things. Doraemon as a superhero.

Statues. Costly enough. And 1/6 action figures by Kaustic Plastik. I need some Roman to add to my collection.

To close some statuettes. Males like them more than stuffed animals. I don’t know why.

Back to the 26th of September. Still t-shirts around, as DBA, in the 3 edition version. A tournament was held in Rome, the first and maybe the last with this rules version.

We waited for this new edition since a lot of years. Its publication was a thing that never happened. And DBA was lacking interest between players.

Rules modification proposals were around for years. So the new edition displease almost everyone because everyone had his personal ideas how to fix and improve the game. And the new edition was something other than so many people wanted.

It is impossible to create 1000 different rules for 1000 different people. And what was created was not so intriguing to placate unhappiness. Someone found in the rules new inspiration but more people that were dissatisfied now are looking for something else. We played DBA tournaments since 2003, so if people want something different, the new edition, with its usual hermetic language, was the decisive event.

We were in Solo Giochi shop:
https://www.solo-giochi.it/
And this is the mini-website that I made for the event:
https://www.legiopalatina.it/lopapaveronovoconclave/index.htm

Some western building to play with Torriani rules.

A commission work for a WWII set. Still unpainted.

This incredible set is modular, so new parts could be added. And you can play in sewers and cellars because there is an underground level with parts that are connected too.

Some 28mm minatures painted by the owner of Solo Giochi. He sells them. It think that the ancient ones are really great.

I didn’t play in the tournament. With old edition tournaments I could choose an army (usually a Roman one…) and play without review rules. I hadn’t patience and free time to study new rules. But I wanted to be with my friends at the tournament, so I bring something else with me.

Another try for venationes and an opportunity to show my book to customers that were in the shop. 3 copies sold.

If it could be the last official DBA tournament in Roma however it was not a funeral. We had a lot of fun. DBA is what created our friendship. No more official DBA tournaments here in Rome? We can always play with DBA, play with other games, and meet for our common passion about wargaming. It is not a matter of rules but only of free time.