Northern League - 2025 Review (*)

It’s that time again: time to review the state of the Northern League (the wargames competition scene in the North of England). I managed to participate in three rounds including a top ten finish in one round. This will be my last year for a while as I'm taking a break from ADLG competitions.

Northern League - 2024 Review (*)

It’s that time again: time to review the state of the Northern League (the wargames competition scene in the North of England).  It's a bit late this year. The organiser's probably been busy.

I'm glad to say that, yet again, I managed to participate in my increasingly standard two rounds.

DBA 3.0 Army Design Tool - Update (*)

Late last year I released the first version of this tool.  It was a nice data project that I thought would fill a rainy afternoon and be of benefit to others.   Earlier this month Chris Laudermilk left a comment that lead to a significantly improved v1.0.

Via email, Chris contributed a couple of neat formulae.  One parsed the options text removing the need for users to enter the number of elements.   The other selected the troop type where there was only one option; once again reducing user input.  Very efficient.

What's new and what's changed?
Unfortunately, there's a drawback with the second formula.  When a user selects an army and enters an option it overwrites the formula.  Repeated use would remove more of the formulae eventually removing them altogether.

Northern League - 2023 Review (*)

It’s that time again: time to review the state of the Northern League (the wargames competition scene in the North of England).  In fact it's a little early this year as the organisers seem to be red hot this year.

I'm glad to say that this year I managed to participate in my increasingly standard two rounds.

DBA 3.0 Army Design Tool (*)

I haven't played De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) for decades, but I do own a copy of the latest version.  Who knows I may use it one day.

I built this a few months ago after I spotted a nearly full data set on the Fanaticus DBA forum.  This was just before I left the forum and was looking for a small data project to occupy some dead time.  

Northern League - 2022 Review (*)

It’s that time again: time to review the state of the Northern League (the wargames competition scene in the North of England). I'm glad to say that this year I managed to participate in both the opening and final rounds.

Moving House

My wife and I have been trying to move house for almost all of this year, but the whole process in England is a nightmare.  As I write, we're still not certain our purchase will ever happen.

One of the by-products is that we have spent, and continue to spend, considerable amounts of time looking at our possessions and thinking “do we need this?” and “how are we going to move that?”.

Now add in the factor that this is a very troubling set of questions for a wargamer, and you should be able to imagine how stressful the entire process is.

15 mm Confused General (Resin 3D Print)

2025 update: three years on an AI is running amok, so I reworked the images in the original animated gif to "unblur" them with the help of an AI powered image editing site. I also cropped the images closer to the subject. I think it's an improvement. Progress marches on.

Original post: Sometime ago I stumbled across a free STL file for the "Confused General" from the cover of the De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) rules.

Thanks to fellow Lance & Longbow Society member Will McNally I now have half a dozen 15 mm resin prints.  I'm grateful to Will for finding time to print these amongst his busy printing schedule.

Northern League - 2021 Review (*)

It’s that time again. Unlike last year when the League was cancelled, it's time to review the state of the Northern League (the wargames competition scene in the North of England). I'm glad to say that this year I managed to participate in the final (open) round.

Northern League - 2018 Review (*)

It’s that time again. Time to review the state of the Northern League; the wargames competition scene in the North of England. I suppose it is something of a landmark that the data below covers thirteen years of the League.

2018 saw the second year of the increasingly popular Art De La Guerre (ADLG) competition. It also saw the return of the Field of Glory Ancients & Medieval (FOG AM) competition; albeit in a truncated three round format.

What About DBMM And ADLG?

Introduction

This is a follow up to both this year's survey about Art de la Guerre (ADLG) and my previous survey about DBMM v1.

In 2009 I ran my first ever online survey about wargaming.  The subject was DBMM v1 and examined all the things you might expect.  As I've already stated no one took a blind bit of notice. Even so, I decided to run another survey.  This time the subject was ADLG.

When designing the ADLG survey I intentionally re-used many of the DBMM questions with a view to writing a comparison post like this.

Unfortunately the specifics of some questions do not allow a direct comparison despite being superficially the same.  For example: DBMM uses four books of lists whilst ADLG lists are divided into seven periods.  So the question "What's your favourite period?" produces very different answers.  Eliminating such questions left seven directly comparable questions.

So without further ado here's a short comparison of the two surveys.

Northern League - 2017 Review (*)

Doesn’t time fly? Once again it is time to review the state of the Northern League; the wargames competition scene in the North of England.

2017 was a year of change. The League saw its very first Art De La Guerre (ADLG) competition and no Field of Glory (FOG) competitions at all.  The absence of FOG R was deliberate but that of FOG AM was due to lack of support.

One further change was that ADLG introduced a different format for the day: three 2.25 hour games with small 200 point armies. The DBMM format was unchanged from the standard: two 3.50 hour games with 450 point armies.

Northern League - 2016 Review (*)

Doesn’t time fly? Is it time to review the state of the Northern League, the competition scene in the North of England, once again? It appears so. This year the review is a touch late as the data's only just been released.

In 2016 the trend of steadily declining numbers continued. In last year's review I expressed the hope that the missing FOG AM players would return and the League would spring back to life. Sadly FOG AM continued its decline:

Rules War :: Compilation Released (*)

This booklet collects a series of my blog posts together with an extract of an article I wrote for Miniature Wargames.  They share a theme: the popularity of rules for 15 mm wargames in the ancient, medieval & renaissance periods amongst competition wargamers.

Northern League - 2015 Review (*)

Doesn’t time fly?  Is it time to review the state of the Northern League, the competition scene in the North of England, once again?  It appears so.

If you want to read the background to this analysis have a look at last year’s post. In it I said that "2015 looks like it's going to be another year of transition. As the Chinese curse says "may you live in interesting times".  This has turned out to be all too true as the graph below shows:

It's clear that overall attendance has continued to decline and the downward trend from 2011 to 2015 cannot be ignored.

Northern League - 2014 Review (*)

It's that time of year again! Time to review the state of the Northern League the competition scene in the North of England.

If you want to read the background to this analysis have a look at my 2014 article: Competing Views, Miniature Wargames, 374, 43-46.

In it I said that "the Northern League is both stable and set fair for the future". This is no longer true as this chart shows:

Rules War :: Three Years On (*)

This time last year I analysed the player registrations for the Northern DBM Double league and the three main competitions in the UK; Warfare, Roll Call & Britcon.  I’ve had the time to repeat the exercise for 2009 and the results are interesting:

The Befuddled On Tour :: Halifax 2009

Sunday morning saw me on the road early heading for Halifax and the latest round of the Northern League 450 point doubles competition.  I could tell it was going to be one of those days right from the start.  Believe me it was.  I apologise in advance for a longer post than usual.

I’d never been to the Halifax club before and this proved to be a problem: Halifax town centre looked nothing like the maps I’d downloaded.  Luckily, I spotted a large flyover which I hoped was the one on my map and headed for the nearest garage.  The guy in the garage hadn’t a clue but the large lady sitting on the wall outside the garage enjoying a cup of tea did.

DBMM Report Card Results – Part 4

Introduction
This is the fourth, and final, part of of my look at the results from a recent online survey into player’s attitudes to DBMM.

• Part 1 – Basic findings
• Part 2 – The rule book
• Part 3 – Playing the game
• Explanation of results format

Issues & Wishes
Two questions in the survey were designed to assess which internet resources players used to resolve their issues:

• Internet resources used – 38% of players used the Yahoo! DBMMlist whilst 22% used the DBMM forum and 19% used this blog.
• Quality of resources  - The DBMMlist was rated as either good or excellent by 62% of respondents.  This blog’s rating was 43% whilst the DBMM forum’s rating was 40%.

Surprisingly, the DBMM wiki was only used by 8% of players with 16% rating is as either good or excellent.  I wonder if this is because it is the least well publicised of the internet resources available.

DBMM Report Card Results – Part 3

Introduction
This is the third part of of my look at the results from a recent online survey into player’s attitudes to DBMM.

• Part 1 – Basic findings
• Part 2 – The rule book
• Explanation of results format

Playing The Game
Four questions in the survey were designed to assess how the rules where used during a game:

• Needing the rulebook – 62% of players needed to refer to the rulebook during a game.  In contrast 25% did not.
• Using the standard play sheet – 41% of players regularly used the standard play sheet during games.  45% did not.
• Referring to the rulebook – 42% of players agreed they had difficulty consulting the rulebook during a game. 40% did not.
• Using the Commentary – 39% of player found the Commentary useful during games.  14% did not.

What is most striking is the relatively small number of neutral responses to the first three questions above: 13, 13 and 18% respectively.  Unlike the distribution of responses in Parts 1 & 2 the distribution differs a touch from that you’d expect with almost a double humped, “polarised” or possibly even bimodal distribution.  It’s tempting to suggest that there are two distinct groups of players.