A friend of mine, a real demented friend of mine, gifted me, some Christmas ago, a small Zen Garden that you can put on your desk. He thought to be witty, but I hated him (well, he is still one of best friends of mine, so I didn’t kill him). Now, what could I do with this little newage crap for puffs? I put it on a bookshelf for some years. After I had the right idea.
When you go to conventions you have to take with you a lot of miniatures and a beautiful terrain if you want to show a game. But the game is full of options and a convention is full of people, of confusion and of heat, so you cannot have the right attention from your guests. A easy move is to present simple scenarios with less rules and standard troops. That results as a watered down version of your game, and so you give away a poor aspect for your game. So I thought to a specific game only for conventions, with a small terrain, few miniatures, easy rules, fast explanations. A game contained in a zen garden that you can put on your desk…

My mini zen garden is really mini. It can be used only with 6mm miniatures but you have to buy an hundred when you only want ten. So I brought from IKEA a simple and small frame (Nyttja type) at 5 euros for a two pack. I closed one part with cardboard, put a lot of vinyl glue and spread quartz sand. My intention was to design the classical tracks of zen gardens, but the glue was too thick so I had a lot of lumps. I tried to solve this situation but the final effect was more a Lunar surface than a garden for Japanese monks. At the end, I didn’t give to it a particular importance, I have got my terrain, if it is not so zen I don’t care. I can always tell the story that it is a zen garden in the middle of the fighting storm! So no regular tracks, but scattered sand!
Then I added some trinkets I found in the mini box, as the rake, creating obstacles to miniatures.

For the miniatures I ask to Paolo (Ronin Clan) if he can gift me some of his 10mm samurai. Eight are enough for a scenario. To create the bases I brought some rings for rivets in a hardware store. I put here the result on cardboard, ready for the painting process. On a next post more zen on arrival…

Something more from tournament in Canino.

Canino in Italian language is “little dog”. So this is the place with the monument to a little dog, the coat of arm of the municipality.

I saw this sign. It says that is prohibited the entrance of dogs in the area (a garden for children). It is weird that the sign has a barred dog that is practically the same dog of the coat of arm!

Saturday we slept here, with open windows for the heat, in the main place of the town. Just under there is a bar. In front there is the bell tower of the church with the Bonaparte’s chapel. Near a dance hall in the open for elder people that works until the 24.30. It is like to live inside a speaker box. Gigione on the stage sung “my heart is like a dancer and it make me suffer”…

Near Canino there is this castle with a 2100 years old bridge. It was the frontier between State of Church and Tuscany. Now inside there is a museum.

And near the castle there is Vulci, a ancient and great Etruscan (and after Roman) city. Or better those that remains of Vulci. A large flat plain under the sun with some walls and basements of buildings. Two hour to walk in the area where under our feet there was a great city. It is not dug by archaeologists because we cannot conserve it. A large part of gold from Etruscans it is from here. There are camps and horses (and a lot of flies!!!) but in the museums of the world there are jewels from here.

Last picture for a pre-tournament nocturne match: me versus Narciso, to remind the rules.

Thank you very much to all people involved in this event, and thanks to Narciso for his ospitality!

Well, I still fell tired about those two days in Canino. And I have to prepare myself to upcoming GiocaRoma that is next weekend. And I run two jobs too. I haven’t time for all this… So, only fast posts about the past event!

The prizes, small coups but great glory. And a bottle of oil from Canino trees, a high quality oil.

Genuine cheese as medal for the first squad!

We are so generous that we give away a bottle of oil to all participants!!! We kept this as a surprise. So everyone had something to bring home. And we distributed holy cards too!

My matches went not so well. Two win, two loss. I always made the terrain so I put coast to limit manoeuvring for a more direct approach. But I had very bad dices against my strongest opponents, instead lucky dices against my weakest opponents. So not great story, fast play and results.

The wide hall was offered by Municipality of Canino. We only paid for chairs and tables. However it was hot, as September is.

A great dinner on a terrace. And a lot of chats. But I felt bad with my stomach so I eat not so much. The evening before I only eat a half coconut, and for dinner two small packs of homogenised fruit with bread.

And this is my camp, an idea took from Brancaleone films.

Next year there will be a new tournament organised by us. But it is so early to think about it…

Here we are! Sunday it’s the day, with the struggle in Canino among DBA armies, to elect who will be the true Pope (“lo Papa vero”, our theme) in XII century. We have the usual problems about tables, food and these things, but it is because we want all to be perfect. In the meantime, for who is a reader of this blog, a preview of this year gadget for the players: holy cards (a small flyer with a saint image on the front and a prayer on the back) with faces of Legio Palatina members like characters from the Brancaleone’s films. They are made by talented Paolo of Ronin Clan.

Next time the report of the event!

Every year we organise, as Legio Palatina wargame club, a DBA event here in Rome. This is true since 2004, when we started this with “De Bello Italico”, a scenario on ancient Italy in the first Roman age. We are members of the Italian DBA community called DBA-Italia, and we collectively run the DBA Italian championship dedicated to Dionigi Ioghà. We are very happy to create these play opportunities for our friends and for DBA lovers. We always want to set in Rome something special with a strong theme for our tournaments. And we give away special prizes and gadgets as peanuts for tournaments based on Asian lists with a lot of Elephants, or head bands with a red sun in the middle for a tournament on samurai lists. And before the tournaments we test the lists, changing aggressiveness and composition, to have a better balanced list of armies to choice.

We don’t want the same old soup, so every year is different. Now, after 8 years here in Rome we were searching something new to do, so we thought to Narciso, our mate in Canino, whom lives in that small town in the north of actual Lazio region (Latium in latin). Near there is ancient Vulci, an Etruscan city. And one member of Bonaparte family (a Napoleone’s brother) lived here, as prince of a artificial princedom. So, the usual Rome event will be held in the unusual place of Canino.

This year theme is the clash in Italy between Empire and Church, in the XI and XII centuries, a moment when there were more than a pope at once. We focused on Gregorio and Clemente popes and all the struggle for power in those years.

There are two great films here in Italy called “L’armata Brancaleone” and “Brancaleone alle crociate”, the humorous story of a knight and his fellows in those years, in a violent and decadent world full of beggars, mad priests and hungry people, in a false and absurd, but more true than real, portrait of the period. And some scenes were filmed in Canino! We take inspiration from this story, with the fight between Gregorio and Clemente, to set our theme.

We use another method to compose the armies, adding allies to the lists, substituting up to 3 of your original pieces. But these forces can be used only referring to which kind of enemy you fight against. For example, if you are against Empire you cannot use pro Empire allies, if you have Empire allies your opponent cannot use that nation of Empire allies. This was used with success in the Bologna 2006 tournament and was thought by Filippo (see his blog, linked on the right menu!)

We have this appointment for the 4th of September in Canino. If you can, come and play! To know more, visit the website I made for the event:
https://www.legiopalatina.it/lopapavero/index.htm

It’s a love story. You cannot deny it. These are some pictures, available to all, where you can see with your eyes which rapports are between these two great minds. It is not a scandal to show love in public, it is a natural thing. And remember, “bunga-bunga” is a Gaddafi creation, Berlusconi only adapted it.

While I was surfing the net, I put on google a search about this blog and I found that exists on blogspot another blog with a name very similar to “lead-addicted”:
https://leaddicted.blogspot.com

Well, I was surprised by this. At the start I thought that someone had the same idea for the name but using it with a contraction, for something based on lead addiction, that is to say something based on soldiers collecting and wargame. But when I opened the page I found that someone was speaking about addiction to “limited edition” apparel! So it is for fashion victims! I like the models, but I can’t understand the contents. Moreover this blog is so arcane, there aren’t explanations, only pictures. And I cannot understand why to pay outrageous posh prices for pieces of cloth only because they are produced by a famous label. I only understand to pay a lot of money for beautiful pieces of finely sculpted pieces, casted in lead and painted by real artists…

Another day in Terni, another day in Sergio’s house, another day of testing of Ganesha Games’ rules. This time was the 7th of August and the staff were: me, Diego “Legio Palatina”, Sergio “SDS”, Andrea “Ganesha”, Gasbarri “Italian champion of all miniature wargame tournaments”, Salini “Chimera”. So we had two gamers from Rome, two from Arezzo and two from Terni.

After a debate on who from Arezzo works as a apothecary (don’t mind, it is a inner joke), we started a game with Song of Drums and Shakos Large Battle. Every time I think it is in the final state of the testing, every time I found something new in the rules. Well, you can’t say we didn’t try this ruleset before its publication! We are testing it since a couple of years. What can I say? I confirm all my impressions. This time the game was faster because Sergio wants to close a game in a 2 hours and half, because he is tired of longer games that you cannot end in a evening. So you have a more deadly play, but with realistic results. I would prefer a slower and less compress view of the game, but frankly 2 hours and half are enough for a game, so now SDS LB is still better.

In the middle of the play we made a pause for lunch. At the restart I left SDS LB (my place was taken by Sergio and they made another game too, with a long debate after) for a game with Mighty Monsters. I aided Andrea in its development and founded some key ideas about the mechanism of the game. They were a lot of months that I didn’t play with these small versions of Godzilla and foes. We made some little adjustments and tried some terrain effects. It is almost ready for betatesting to external playtesters, but still we have to try it putting Japanese Defence Forces in the pit.

At the end I tried for the second time the new game of Andrea, Swatters (not the definitive name), a sci-fi game about voracious aliens and terrestrial garrisons (I talked about it in the 17th of July post). Andrea is very involved in its development because of the new form of the play. It is a game with easy rules and with a immediate visual recognition of the troops statistics and wounds using the miniatures and their position inside circular trays (made from old CDs). I think that especially this game it’s very easy to play without reading the rules before, because you have all what you need just on the table. I suggested to use trays made from mini-Cds, but now you can find only mini-DVDs, and Andrea is stockpiling them to play a very large battle. Using 15mm, the Ganesha’s distance sticks, a bunch of dices to add probability factors to your fighting results, and mini-DVDs as trays, you can have your sci-fi battle.