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Loads of photos of a War of The Roses Army using 10mm Pendraken figures
(A classic random link from Madaxeman.com)
It's now been over two years since I last posted a full-year update on who was playing what on the UK Ancients Competition scene - which is of course hardly surprising given that no-one was able to play anything face to face for much of that time, with various grades of Lockdown running from the start of 2020 until around mid-June 2021.
Ancients competition wargaming in the UK did however stutter (or in some cases "roar") back to life again in the middle of last year, and so with over 12 months of events to look back on it's probably as good a time as any to start once again having a look at Who's Playing What.
This set of "post-Lockdown" stats cover the UK "player universe" numbers for competition players across 7 of the most popular Ancients mass-battle rulesets for all events held in the UK in since things started up again at the end of June 2021 that I can find results for.
Most sets now have a single, comprehensive results or rankings page and I'm therefore indebted to the various people who undertake the thankless task of maintaining these pages. I do also keep a weather eye on various forums and FB groups to make sure I also pick up any "unranked" events, and sometimes extra players who only filled in, or dropped out part way through some events as well - that's why the numbers you'll see here can sometimes be higher than those you'll see on the "official" rankings page.
I've also focused this time exclusively on UK-based players, as overseas travel has not really gotten back to normal and so relatively few overseas players have made it to the UK to play.
To make comparisons to the pre-Lockdown era I've used the figures for the 2019 calendar year. A handful of events did manage to take place at the start of 2020, but even then attendances were impacted by the looming shadow of Covid to various degrees, so using the clean" 2019 numbers seemed a better benchmark than using Feb 2019-Feb 2020.
Even so, the calendar is still not quite settled yet with some events not yet sitting in their regular calendar slots (Campaign), and others (from last summer) still yet to happen (Britcon), and so I've tried to flag where this may have had an impact on attendance numbers in the commentary.
First posted on 28 July 2022 | 9:11 am
At the recent ADLG Worlds in Rome I picked up a little fort from Rafa's stall, to use as a fortified baggage camp for some of my ADLG armies.
I should have had one of these already, as they are made by a guy in Alicante, and were given to all competitors at the event I attended there in January, but somehow I lost mine on the way home and so, given the opportunity, decided that I just had to actually buy one instead!
First posted on 25 July 2022 | 10:06 am
With the new edition of CWC coming put from Pendraken recently, I remembered I hadn't posted a load of photos I took of a CWC Big Game (OK, 9x4 table with 1/300th scale models) that we played last autumn in Brixham after the Brixham Classic.
So, with a bit of time on my hands, here they all are shufled together into a single page 'lite' battle report (the ones here are just a taster)
First posted on 28 June 2022 | 7:49 pm
Yes, competitive international ADLG yet again, this time with a flight rather than a drive (and so a shorter set of reports) as the Khurasanians take another tilt at the World Championships!
First posted on 20 June 2022 | 10:42 pm
With ADLG taking vigorous root in Germany's Ancients competition scene, Two Daves and a Madaxeman took a road (and rail) trip across France, Belgium and Germany and on the way ended up in a variety of castles, museums, cathedrals and of course schitzel-serving bierkellers - all of which you can now share in too!
Sandwiched inbetween two epic travelogues are 5 Madaxeman Match reports as the Palmyran army of the ever-feisty Zenobia takes on Arabs, Byzantines (twice), the Might of Imperial China, and the Xia Xia Nomad Empire in a series of battles
The reports also feature a band new educational component, in the shape of a suite of painstakingly accurate and fully researched German exclamations and a number of entirely plausible German compound words as well.
To top it all off there is also an accompanying podcast to listen to as well.
Click through and enjoy the road trip !
First posted on 10 June 2022 | 2:26 pm
A Carolingian army has been sat on the to-do shelf for a couple of years now - I bought it partly to see what Baueda figures looked like in the metal, and partly as I had already bought 1 dozen of their mounted Carolingian archers with a vague thought of adding them to some generic Gothic cavalry and cobbling together a morph army at some stage.
Digging into it a bit more I had soon realised that the whole army needed to be, well, "Carolingian-looking" though, hence the purchase.
Over the past year I'd added some more Forged in Battle cavalry through a few eBay purchases, and that had both bulked out the army and made it harder to begin to paint as well.
However after a road trip to Aachen, seat of the Carolingans and interment place of Charlemagne himself I became inspired enough to pick up the spray can, and to give them a quick and colourful (mostly Contrast) paint job to get them table-ready, in part as I had to paint something to get away from rigging more little ships, and in part as Aachen Cathedral is so fabulous that I convinced myself I didn't need to paint the soldiers all in Middle Ages style duns and tans, as this dude had some style, and also some money to splash around.
The end result is a fairly over-enthusiastic and colourful army with all of the possible options;
These are Baueda - their horsemen don't mix with FiB's very well as the Baueda ones have very narrow horses and V-shaped riders legs to fit on them, and the FiB ones are chubby beasts with suitably arch-shaped riders legs - so the two manufacturers provide (mostly) separate parts of the army
This is the same unit from the back. There seemed a lot of red and blue in some of the contemporary depictions of the Carolingain military I found, so I felt comfortable giving these "better quality" guys a bold uniform red cloak look.
FiB horsemen in leather armour, as Medium cavalry. Of course, LBMS shields.
The Horse Archers - a Baueda special, painted ages ago and now rebased to the same scheme as the rest of the army
Armoured cavalry from FiB (maybe a couple of Baueda boys sneaking in there too)
Baueda infantry, apart from the unit in the centre front, who are FiB with the more distinctive Carolingian helmets. Because the Baueda chaps are fairly non-specific they may appear as Saxons or something at some point in future too.
From the back the Contrast Paint style really shows up well.
FiB Light Horse. I only needed 2 bases, so mixed in a few of the other riders with the Medium cavalry
Javelin skirmishers. Fairly weedy dudes, not sure how long their ankles will survive in-game handling TBH
And, the whole set - 38 bases including Generals. I suspect some Vikings will also freelance as mercenaries at some point when they finally get on the table too.
There are even more photos in the 15mm photo gallery of these dudes.
First posted on 18 May 2022 | 2:30 pm
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