Andrea "Liga" Ligabue - Italy

This section contains the columns of Andrea "Liga" Ligabue, who will be reporting from Italy.

About Andrea "Liga" Ligabue:

Andrea born in 1972 in Modena (Italy) ... since he was a child he really enjoyed spending time making games to play with his friends at school (sometimes also during the lessons!). When he was 16 he joined the club TreEmme, the biggest game club in Italy (founded in 1980!). He started his game career as a RPG player first, than as a Game Master for several years. In club TreEmme, Andrea also started playing wargames, Battletech and most of the old GW and AH games. It was a very nice experience because every week there was several games to learn and play! During a working period in Denmark he met Mik Svellov at the Viking Con and started to play German Games (in 1999 almost no one in Italy knew about these games) ... and from that moment he tried to "import" and play these games with as many people as possible in Italy!

He was involved in the organization of ModCon (the biggest game convention in Italy that took place the last week of September in Modena) from 1998; from 2000 he was the one that takes care of the whole Boardgames area and helped its exponential growth. He was involved (administrating, writing reviews, moderating forums) in the Goblin's Lair project (www.goblins.net), started in May 2003 which is now the biggest games web site and community in Italy. Now he plays games two times every week at club TreEmme and also at home with his wife and his daughter.

He is always thinking about designing his own good games, but there are so many nice games to play that he spends most of his free time playing and reading rules! Andrea has worked as a Theoretical Chemist in the Department of Chemistry (Modena) from 1998 and from 2004 he also works in the IT group of the University, programming and administrating the computer network. He is married to Serena since 2000 and they have an almost 5 year old daughter (Caterina) that started her game career very early by eating some pieces (the largest and most colorful ones) of her father's games. Andrea also like a lot to play videogames and he has played rugby for 17 years until his right shoulder decided that was the moment to stop!

Andrea lives in Modena, Italy.

< Back to International Columnists
<< Back Home

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Liga version 2.0 released

Dear gamers

after more than 20 years with long curly hairs last year I shaved like a sheep, but my virtual identity on the net take more than 12 months to be updated. Now, thanks to the effort of the illustrator Jacopo Ziliotto, Liga vs 2.0 is on-line. The same gamer, the same interviews, the same articles but a different face ... my face!

good play and sorry for the OT
Liga

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Cosa Bolle in Pentola ? #38 - Guglielmo Duccoli

Dear gamers, here again with my interviews to Italian designers. This time I’m going to catch a new Italian designer that really hits hard with his first title: Gonzaga, from dV GIOCHI, is really a great game that perfectly fits in the borderline between gamers games and family games. Also the first title for the new dV GIOCHI (restyled daVinci Games).

Gugliemo was almost unknown also in Italy before Gonzaga but if these are the preambles I’m really hunging-up for the sequels ...

Read more...

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Cosa Bolle in Pentola ? #37 - Pierluca Zizzi

Dear gamers, here again with my interviews to Italian’s designers. Essen is every-day closer and I’m trying to grab new designers with interesting titles in Essen. Today is time for Pierluca Zizzi, another one from the Turin school (Walter Obert, Andrea Chiarvesio, ...) that will be in Essen with Caligula, from PostScriptum (I hope in the next days to write a detailed preview/review of the game). Pierluca is not a new name for Italians gamers, since he attended several conventions and events presenting self-published games like Defence of Agarthi.

But now it is time to read what Pierluca has to says us ...

Read more...

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Cosa Bolle in Pentola ? #36 - Giacomo Santopietro

Dear gamers, here again with my interviews to Italian’s designers. Essen is coming close and so it is time to reveal new talents and new games. Luckily it seems that design games is something enough fun to keep a lot of people involved in Italy. Today I was able to catch Giacomo Santopietro, a “new generation” author (his father is also a game designer!) that designed Death Note, a card game of deduction based on the manga and anime of the same name.

Before starting here is the complete list of all my “Cosa Bolle in Pentola ?” interviews with the links to the BGN pages.

Read more...

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Italian Style - Ghenos Games

Editor’s note: Liga published this interview in February 2009, but I think it was overlooked at the time, so I’m republishing an edited version.

Hi gamers,

After having first interviewed daVinci Games in December 2008 for a new series of interviews with Italian publishers, I went to catch Anna and Alfredo Genovese from Ghenos Games, which has been establishing a position for itself in the publishers’ plaza thanks to its nice sports simluation games, starting with Bolide and leading up to the most recent release, Leader 1, which had great success at Spiel 2008.

Read on to learn about a new special edition of Leader 1!

[Liga] Hi, Anna and Alfredo, and welcome to Boardgame News. Ghenos Games is already an established name in the game world, but how did the company come into being. Can one of you summerize the history of Ghenos from its beginning to the current day?

[Anna] We started off by publishing Bolide, our car-racing game, for fun and people seemed to like it. After attending the most important game fairs, we liked the world of game publishing more and more. At the conventions, we found many people who choose to play as a form of healthy gathering. All of these reasons pushed us to stay longer in this world, and we decided to publish more games. We have specialized in sports simulation games, but we are now looking for other games that could be part of a “travel and adventure” topic.

Read more...

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Italy in Games - My 2008 Personal Reportc

Hi gamers, I’m here again with my annual report of the game-related activities in Italy, as I have done in both 2007 and 2006.

First of all, I want to say that I’m really happy about my personal game score this year! Adopting Dale Yu’s resolution for 2008, I was able to play much more than in 2007, both in plays and games. I was not able to track all the games played – as I’m quite lazy and also a bungler – but I think at least half of the games played were tracked on my BGG profile, making a real improvement from 2007 when my performance suffered for the first year of life of my son Francesco.

Last year, I talked about the growing of the Italian market and the self-publishing style of “everyone being able to make his own game.” By contrast, 2008 will be remembered for the great economic crisis that also seems to have affected the game market. The self-publishing enthusiasm is still growing, but larger companies have seemed to consolidate and regroup. That’s not bad since the quality of the games produced is improving and also the heavy problem of wanting to play everything is less insurmountable. On the other side, I think boardgaming is becoming more and more diffuse in Italy ... time to start the colonization?

Read more...

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Italian Style - daVinci

Hi gamers,

We are close to Christmas and I want to give you a special gift, so I’m starting a new series of interviews. The idea is to take an inside view of the past, the present and the future of Italian publishers. Of course during these interviews I’ll try to draw out as much news and previews as possible about upcoming games, both in the near future and far.

I decided to start with daVinci, a small but renowned Italian publisher. Spending time with me for the interview were Domenico Di Giorgio (editor-in-chief), Silvano Sorrentino (webmaster and press), Salvatore Perna (sales manager) and Roberto Corbelli (CEO). daVinci is well-known for its great success with Bang!, but there is a lot more under the cowboy hat!

Read more...

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: ILSA magazine #4

I’m proud to announce the #3 of ILSA Magazine.

ILSA: Informazione Ludica a Scatola Aperta (that means something like information about games with open box).

36 pages of reviews and articles. the number is about Trilogies.

The magazine is in Italian only. The cover is from Jacopo Ziliotto.

Download the Number 4
Download the Number 3
Download the Number 2
Download the Number 1
Download the Number 0

The issue are also viewable online from issuu.com

Source: ILSA

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Holidays

Hi gamers

no more news from Italy (at least not from me!) for the next 3 weeks! I’ll be in Sardinia, far away fro the net, until the 12nd of July. I’m just packing the baggage and the games!

A lot of interesting things for the summer when I’ll be back: first of all the road to PLAY: The Game Festival (the web site will be online in the next weeks), the event that starting from ModCon experience, the greater gamers convention, will aim to become in the years The Italian Games event. The Friday will be all dedicated to the presentation of the new Italian games that will be available in the autumn: a sort of Italian Essen press day .. and there is really a lot boiling in Italians pots! More when I’ll be back ...

good play and an happy start of summer!
Liga

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: ILSA Magazine #3

I’m proud to announce the #3 of ILSA Magazine.

ILSA: Informazione Ludica a Scatola Aperta (that means something like information about games with open box).

56 pages of reviews and articles: Race for the Galaxy, Galaxy Trucker, Kingsburg (including a full statistical analysis after playing the game with a simulator), Darjeeling and more ... and also Martin Wallace about Treefrogs line and an exclusive interview to Sèbastine Pauchon

The magazine is in Italian only but the interview is also in English. The cover is from Jacopo Ziliotto.

Download the Number 3
Download the Number 2
Download the Number 1
Download the Number 0

The issue are also viewable online from issuu.com

Source: ILSA

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: ILSA Magazine #2

I’m proud to announce the #2 of the new free boardgames magazine.

ILSA: Informazione Ludica a Scatola Aperta (that means something like information about games with open box).

50 pages of reviews and articles: DSP, Twilight Struggle, RA and YS. The number #2 is about the number “2”! Includes an exclusive interview to Cyril Demaeged.

The magazine is in Italian only but the interview is in English. The cover is from Jacopo Ziliotto.

Download the Number 2
Download the Number 1
Download the Number 0

The issue are also viewable online from issuu.com

Source: ILSA

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: try to play the biggest WoW games ever

Next try to play the largest WoW game ever, with more than the 34 pilots of PisaCon 2007, will be at the Encontro Nacional de Boardgames - Leiria (Portugal) the 26th of January, 2008.

A game with at least 35 miniatures will be tried.

LeiriaCon has a tradition of very nice WoW games. This is a 12 planes game from the previous edition (img1 and img2).

The designer Andrea Angiolino will be there. Meeting time is 10 o’clock in the morning (no Dawn Patrols for us Southern people...).

Please enlist there

Happy flights,

Source: Andrea Angiolino

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Happy Birthday Boardgame News!

Two years ago I was embarked in a nice project called Boardgame News. Rick Thornquist decided to try to invent a website about boardgames, thanks to his great experience with Gamewire. I was recruited, through a strange successions of events, into the staff to give an insider view of the Italian game community and more or less that’s what I have done in these two years. We were not sure about the possibility of this website but thanks to Rick’s great energy, the ability of the people included in the staff (apart from me, all the others were great and respected gamers), and great support from publishers and gamers, BGN became what is it now.

Some thought that there was no need for another BG website since almost everything could be found on BGG: That is partially true. I use BGG daily and it is great for getting info about games, but what make also BGN special is the focus on the news (releases and previews) and the presence of an editor and an editorial staff: people that you can start to know, to trust, who are responsible for BGN’s content. Also one of the greatest BGN feature was the omni-comprehensive Essen preview! So, when one year ago Rick decided to let his creature alone and start a new project, we were all worried about the future of BGN: What is a realm without a king? A ship without a captain? A kitchen without a cook? A coffee without caffeine? Games without a gamer? ... we needed a new editor who was competent and enthusiastic like Rick and also with the energy and ideas to put BGN ahead. We were lucky since W. Eric Martin is that kind of person and also he was able to arrange a fantastic Essen preview! So after one year under Rick’s guide, the second year, Eric’s kingdom, was also great for us and for readers!

So, singing “happy new year” to BGN we move into the third year. What is the editor preparing for us? Where will BGN go this year? Will there be still enough games to preview/review ? Will the English version of Agricola be printed soon enough to save the lives of game addicts?

For me also this two years was great: I was able to interview more than 30 Italian designers—at the beginning I wasn’t sure there were more than 30 Italian designers!—and preview almost everything nice that was released in Italy (everything not so nice was released as well, but that’s part of the job!) and I hope to continue in this adventure!

Happy birthday BGN. Good luck King Eric! ... and good play to all!
Liga

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: HomoLudens, a new Italian publisher

HomoLudens is a new Italian game publisher.

The first game, Constantinopolis, will be published in Nuremberg 2008.

If a publisher’s style will be marked by his first title we are attending the rising of a new gamers games company.

In the next months, as soon as the game will be in his final form, I’ll post a full review of Constantinopolis.

Good play
Liga

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Best of Show 2007, all the winners

Here is the official and complete list of all the awards and the winners for the Lucca Comics & Games Best of Show 2007.

The Best of Show is the prize Lucca Games award to the best games shown at the fair. From 1993 to 2005 there was a difference between Best Italian Game and Best Translated Game but this distinction was dropped starting from 2006.

Source: Fabrizio Paoli, Best of Show Coordinator

Read more...

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Kingsburg win the Best of the Best 2007

Kingsburg, by Andrea Chiarvesio and Luca Iennaco, published by Counter-Stratelibri wins the 2007 Best of the Best at Lucca Comics and Games.

Kingsburg won also the Best of Show in the Boardgame cathegory.

I’ll post the official Lucca Comics & Games press release in the following days, including all the winner in the other categories and side awards (as soon as I got it).

Source: Lucca Comics & Games

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: ILSA Magazine #1

I’m proud to announce the #1 of the new free boardgames magazine.

ILSA: Informazione Ludica a Scatola Aperta (that means something like information about games with open box).

50 pages of reviews and articles, all about International Gamers Awards 2007, including a special behind the scene and exclusive interviews to Vlaada Chvatil and Bruno Cathala.

The magazine is in Italian only but the two interviews are in English. The cover is a special tribute from Jacopo Ziliotto (illustrator) to the two winners! Here you can see it in a small thumb and also the editorial staff.

Download the Number 1
Download the Number 0

Good play and happy read!
Liga

Read more...

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: from ModCon to Essen, a mediterranean view on the European Autumn Cons

Hi gamers,

here I’m with my personal report of the two biggest European events in the season of the falling leaves. To be exact, this trip will have to end in Lucca Comics & Games Festival (next week end) but since I’ll not be able to attend I decided to report now.
Why mix all together ? Because ModCon was for me the occasion to see and play most of the Italian’s news and so my Essen report will necessary has been Italian-less ... and that is not fair for one who profess to be the Italian’s games prophet in the world!

Just a short paragraph to say what ModCon and Essen are been to me before jumping in a game by game report. ModCon is the greatest Italian games con and in the last five years boardgame is quickly expanding to be the largest area in Modena event. Tournaments but also a really big and cowled area for free boardgaming. As our international special guests (Andreas and Karen Seyfarth in the past years, Christophe Boelinger from 2006 and this years also William Attia) could confirm, the boardgames area is really active, rich of games opportunity, big and small publishers, designers and play testers, self publishers, family and everything you need to satisfy your boardgame voracity! 3 days full of gaming and playing. Sadly I was also deep involved on the organizational side of the event, so boring practical task often keep me away from the tables. I was anyway able to cut time for playing, interviewing, testing and chatting and finally my balance was more than positive! On the other side Essen was for me in the last five years the real opportunity to have a full immersion in gaming, This year my official role as Boardgamenews press man and my role in the International Gamers Awards committee has stolen some time from pure gaming but was nice to have possibility to meet and talk with designers, gamers and publishers I was used just to email during the rest of the year. I was just sorry to not be able to have a brainstorming session with Eric, my editor here at BGN ... but we was both so busy that we are been able only to say hallo each other a couple of time running in opposite directions ... perhaps next year! Anyway also Essen was for me a really thumb up!

Read more...

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Lucca Comics & Games 2007

After ModCon (September), Essen (October) another big game appointment is approaching for Italians and Europeans Gamers; Lucca Comics & Games 2007. Last year more than 80,000 visitors from all the world.

The Italian Games and Fantasy Show hits the XXI edition.

Lucca Comics & Games, the main italian gaming and fantasy festival is back, bringing larger room for exhibitions and the usual lot of rich cultural propositions. This year’s edition features an even larger showroom: more than 7.500 square meters dedicated to great publishers, international guests, exhibitions and play areas, with a total gaming area surpassing 15.000 mq.

Dr. Rainer Knizia will be special guest in Lucca this year with a dedicated exhibition called “Giochi con la K Maiuscola!” (Games with the capital K!)

Source: Lucca Comics & Game

Read more...

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Medievalia FAQ and Tutorial now available

Medievalia FAQ and a flash tutorial (lesson one and lesson two) are now available on Giochix.it web site

Source: Giochix.it

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: ILSA, a new free boardgames magazine

I’m proud to announce the birth of a new free boardgames magazine.

ILSA: Informazione Ludica a Scatola Aperta (that means something like information about games with open box). It is a fanzine made by gamers for gamers with the aim to talk about games by the gamers point of view, without secret, with “box open”. ILSA is not periodic but we have so many things to say that it will be out often!

The number 0 is freely available for download from here.

I’m sorry for most of you but the magazine is in Italian only ... but it could be a good reason to learn our beautiful language.

Good play
Liga

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: ModCon 2007 Preview

Hi gamers

this week end will be the highest moment in the Italian Gamers life, since it will be ModCon again: thousands of gamers filled in the Polisportiva Sacca spaces, grabbing tables and games, playing tournaments, flipping cards, moving meeples and rolling dices, close to strange peoples dressed like Vampires or Orcs while, in the backyard, an incredible amount of tables are invaded by painted miniatures resembling armies from the past, the present and the future!

This is ModCon! This is a convention! The game room with over 300 boxes to take and play; more than 15 boardgames tournaments and events including Caylus, Dungeon Twister, Memoir’44 and Puerto Rico. Designers and publishers showing new products and releases. A nice window on the Italian market just few weeks before Essen.

Of course I’ll be there, from 21 to 23 of September, playing, photographing and reporting news and events, with a special for the new boardgames release.

Read more...

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Cosa Bolle in Pentola ? #35 - Luca Borsa

Hi gamers

was a long time Cosa Bolle in Pentola ? was missing from the BGN pages. I was thinking to have caught almost all Italian designers but luckily they seems to rise like mushrooms after an heavy rain. Most are still not yet really known because I go to harvest when they are just came up.

If you want I go to dig up someone in specif please drop me an email at .
The complete list of all the interview with the link to the BGN pages.

Today my flower bud is Luca Borsa, known in Italy with the nick Mesaverde. 

Read more...

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Game Master Magazine #11

It is now available the #11 of Game Master Magazine, edited by Stratelibri together with KDS Distribution and Raven Distribution.

In this issue reviews of Zooloretto, Dust, Kanji Battle, World of Warcraft, Haloclix, True 20, Sine Requie, Star Wars rpg

Together with GMM 11 you can get Teenager Manga Mutanti or winter deck of A Game of Thrones

Source: www.stratelibri.it

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Gone CardBoard Italy: Bulp and Medievalia release announced

Giochix.it announce that the two card games: Bulp! and Medievalia will be available for Essen 2007 with multilingual rules.

Soon I’ll post here the preview of the two games.

The entries are been added to Gone CardBoard Italy page

Source: Michele Quondam Giochix.it