I want to bring to your attention the Blood Reef kickstarter by Antimatter Games:
https://www.kickstarter.com/p…/524168246/deepwars-blood-reef

Blood Reef is based on Deep Wars, that is a detailed variant of the Song of Blades rules. Antimatter licensed the rules and gave them their own spin. The end result is quite different from SOBH but has the same core rules.
The sculpts are terrific and Ganesha Games sculptor Paolo Fabiani is also working on this one.

But remember that tomorrow another kickstarter will begin, the Ganesha Games’s third kickstarter, on miniatures of anthropomorphic mixed apes with flying squirrel!!! And this is not an April fool joke!!!!!

A new location, an old convention: Hellana. Here again, year after year. But this time I didn’t bring with me gladiators. Moreover I wasn’t interested in tournaments. So only chatting with people about our lives and little soldiers.

Maybe the new location is a little larger than the old one. More space among tables.

One of the tables. A pause in the war.

Another view on tables. In the crowd a lot of known faces.

Le Granadier and its Napoleonic rules.

People from Macerata. And little people from North Indian Wars.

Flames of War tournament.

DBA 3.0 tournament. Old faces from North clubs involved in DBA. The South clubs now are on L’Art de la Guerre.

Learning table to play with L’Art de la Guerre.

WA.SP. table on WWII. They won a prize for it.

Beautiful trenches for WH40K.

The South and the North at distance.

The best of show scenario. Glamorous vessels here.

Canyons made of bark for a western scenario with Redskins and U.S. forces.

Roman legion stand strongly against cataphracts. In 28mm scale.

Civil war at the end of the Empire. In 1/72 scale. Magna Acies rules by Appius.

Ganesha Games table with Andrea and Miraz.

Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes table in a dungeon scenario.

Cute scenario for Heel Creek, the Ganesha Games’ western rules. Still only in Italian language.

The prize as best participation table for Heel Creek.

Next year another Hellana. I hope I present something new for the event. However this weekend we are going to Modena Play. A longer trip than Hellana one, for an huge convention about boardgames and other kinds of games. See you there!

I’m looking for rules for my ancient army. I thought to write them by myself but Ferrum et Gloria is still at half of its path so I haven’t enough time. I’m a DBA 2.2 player but I want something more historically based, with formations and troops with more characteristics. Now I found “To the strongest!” by Simon Miller and bought it for 10 quid in pdf version here: https://bigredbatshop.co.uk.

I tried it with my friend Diego, using 15mm bases from my DBA armies collection. On the back of a 60×60 table for DBA I traced a square grid. This because movements are area limited with 4 fronts. With this stratagem all geometric problems are almost eliminated. It is not a boardgame, it is a smart way to concept movement. Because a game with this abstraction level wants regular and compact direction lines. It is not a skirmish, armies had contact on the fronts, so you must go straight towards the enemy! Tricks abusing geometry in rules are not a historical representation. And squares are better than hexagons because gamers abuse hexagons for constant flank attacks.

To produce activations you use poker cards. Various counters are used for disorder, victory points and shoot quantities. It is a game created for convention play, and you can feel it. It needs something more. As gamer designer I understand why some game elements were used. Well, I think that the overall structure is good but there are wrongs (shooting counters, shooting range, bonus by single based figures) and improvements to do (armour value, real veteran experience, formations, troop types, moral, bonus based on cards). When I’ll have time, I rewrite the game using my taste. I have to play a huge Late Roman army for a 28mm civil war. They are waiting too many years…

Next time the Hellana 2016 report!

Another day of work on games. My new house as playtest studio. As first game we tried one of those you saw a couple of weeks ago. Game mechanics need some tweaks, but we are on the right path. We have to show it in April to another game publishing company. The other game is ready, book format too. Today I will print my beta copy. A supplement is ready too, and another one is playtested in these days. I’m thinking to add a supplement with gladiators in the future. This new game series is a surprise. Out in 2016 among other projects as kickstarters.

As second playtest phase we played with the newest version of Song of Spear and Shield. This is a very old project that is on development since the firsts years of Ganesha Games. Now we found another game mechanic for it. Are we satisfied with it? I dunno, however I think that this is 2017 matter, even if I wish to play with it.

Later in the day Andrea spoke at a class on game design here in Rome. In some weeks he will keep a full 3 hour lesson for it. It is a class about developing personal games, teaching notions about marketing, game designing, graphic realisations and all these elements. An interesting thing.

I bought a new house for my miniatures. It was at the end of February 2015. Just one year ago. You can go to these past posts to know more about the original house state,
https://www.massimomoscarelli.it/leadaddicted/?p=6662
and the start of demolition and reconstruction works
https://www.massimomoscarelli.it/leadaddicted/?p=6778

Now we are arrived at the end of the refurbishment works. Not an easy thing. Delays, delays and delays. And delays, delays and delays again. Some wrongs, some intuitions, some problems, some solutions. It was only a 40mq house (and 9mq balcony). But sometimes I think that it was a palace.

Now I need furnishings to complete the work. But now I’m money empty, so I don’t know when I will buy a bed and other vital stuff, like a new panoramic monitor for my computer…

I hope to live here before the Summer. And my miniatures too.

Suddenly the construction workers decided to complete some works for my new house. It’s not complete, it is still an empty shell, but it is almost clean. And with doors and windows, lights and loo. Only a kitchen table and garden plastic chairs. So at the last moment I organised a playtest Saturday at my new home. Andrea, Diego and the other Diego were here.

We playtested the newest games by Ganesha Games. I don’t intend to explain what is on the censored photos. You will know in the future. However it not what you can think. I can only say that dices are involved…

More secrets. This is another different kind of game. And it is almost complete with its development. Some drawings are realised too.

More news in the future for the games, and a full report for the house. Here instead a selfie with four mates after their games.

Ieper is a famous city for being the killing ground of young people in uniforms. Just 100 years ago. In the ’90 it was famous to being the city where there was the Vort’n Vis squat. Nowadays there is still an art-gallery squat with that name but in another place. Where I lived for a sum of 3-4 days there is now a polite restaurant-bar.

Some time ago I spoke about a blog with photos about my hardcore punk years. You can find the post here:
https://www.massimomoscarelli.it/leadaddicted/?p=6717

After about six months we have another post on that blog with other photos that I took in 1993:
https://90svortnvis.wordpress.com/2015/11/07/93-09-19-eversor-hiatus-nations-on-fire-strength-of-the-will/

I live very near the Cinecittà studios, even called “Hollywood on Tiber river”. Here they make films since 1937. This time I visited them for a special event.

The last Tarantino film, “The Hateful Eight”, was filmed in 70mm. I remember when I was a child, where cinemas were enormous halls with big screens. Nowadays we have only cinemas with a lot of small screens. So inside a Cinecittà studio, the mythic “Teatro 5”, a cinema hall was recreated to play the film with all its 70mm glory.

In the foyer, some Cinecittà set designers recreated a set inspired to the film one. Like making models, but in 1:1 scale.
And in the end we spent more than 3 hours watching a great film as old times. Exciting thing. That was very different than television.