Northern League - 2019 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 sad to say that this year I did not participate in any of the rounds. Perhaps next year. Who knows?

A Wargame At Last

Yesterday I finally managed to get a game in!  Graham & I traveled to MAWS' new venue in Eccles, Greater Manchester.  It was the first outing for my new Early TYW German Protestant army complete with a newly painted Transylvanian ally.  The army list I used is below:

Off the table things didn't really go according to plan.

Playing Pieces

There are times when you think you are at the forefront of your hobby. There are times when you think nothing ever changes. There are also times when you think things have changed but you eventually realise they haven't. I've just had one of the latter moments.

When I returned to regular wargaming in the later 80s I quickly made the transition from DBA to DBM. I then followed the masses to DBMM and on to Field of Glory Ancients & Medieval (FOG AM). I also played DBR switching to Field of Glory Renaissance (FOG R) when FOG AM palled.

I stopped playing DBA when the twelve element format started to get repetitive. I moved on for a more complex game. I certainly got that with DBMM: perhaps too complex!

When I switched to FOG AM in 2010 I was looking for a "cleaner" set of rules with more structure and fewer conditional clauses. Until recently I thought I was playing a game far, far removed from DBA. I was wrong. Let me show you why.

Help Wanted & Current Projects

As regular readers will already have guessed, I am on something of a wargaming sabbatical.  I haven’t played a game since 06 March and my plan to play in July’s Stoke Challenge didn’t come to pass as the Field of Glory Renaissance (FOGR) competition was cancelled due to a lack of players.

The time since March hasn’t been wasted.  I have steadily increased my painting output and have even decided on my next mini-project: I’d like to create a 17th century Transylvanian allied contingent in 15 mm for the early part of the the Thirty Years War.

I’ve been doing a bit of research online and I’ve got  a very rough idea of what the various lancers and light horse will look like but I’m struggling to find suitable figures.  This is where you come in: any suggestions for figures and links to online resources would be really helpful.  What do you have?

Why a TYW Transylvanian ally?  Well it’s a result of circuitous (wargamers?) logic.

Re-Mystified on Tour :: Stoke Challenge 2015

As you can see I did not come away empty handed from this year's Stoke Challenge.



Having said that I had a very mixed day.   Best described as follows:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way."

Charles Dickens: A Tale Of Two Cities (1859)

My newly painted, and very recently completed, Safavid Persian army made their competitive début and were promptly and repeatedly trounced.  If you are interested my army list is available to view.  I scored a total of 5 points in three games! By far my worst competitive performance to date.  Consistently rolling 1s in Field of Glory Renaissance is never a good idea.

Another Month Nearly Over

I've just realised that it's nearly a month since my last post. So what have I been up to? Well the Islamic Persian project continues to progress. This month I have:

• Finished 4 of the second six bases of Turcoman cavalry.
• Finished 6 sample figures of armoured Persian Qizilbashes.
• Prepared the figures for two Persian command bases.
• Drafted a 650 point list to see how much more I need to paint before this year's Stoke Challenge.

The sample figures are an important breakthrough for me. The army has both Elite and "regular" qizilbashes and I need to easily distinguish between them in the midst of the hurly burly of a game. To this end I've finally decided how I'm going to do this as well as deciding how to get a touch of variety into the bases.

Almost There

A few weeks ago I wrote about my new plan for 2015. Well it seems to be working.

This morning I finished four more Islamic Persian musketeers and have the heads and hands finished of the remaining eight. Once these are finished, and based, I will have completed all the firearm infantry for my long delayed FOGR project. Plus, last week I finished four cavalry figures which means I have completed one third of the Turcoman cavalry bases I need and have more underway. Little bits and often seems to be working for me.

I would do more tomorrow but I'm planning to attend Vapnartak at York Racecourse where I'm going to give the tabletop sale a try. I'm not sure how well I will get on but if I don't try I'll never know. I'll report back next week.

Wargaming In 2015

I've been promising myself I'd write about my experiences of playing Field of Glory Renaissance (FOGR) over the last two years but my day job kept getting in the way.

The recent changes to VAT for ebooks and Corvus Belli's decision to suspend production of their 15 mm historical ranges ensured that I was propelled headlong into Christmas and kept busy until today.

After much thought I've decided to take a break from regular wargaming in 2015. "Shock horror" I hear you cry! Let me briefly explain why:

Re-Mystified On Tour - Northern League R5

Sunday, 07 December dawned bright and early as I headed for Walkden for the last round of the Northern League in 2014. As before I was looking forward to playing in the Field of Glory Renaissance (FOGR) competition.

I had decided to take a class three variant of my TYW Danish army. Effectively this meant one less battlegroup of heavily armoured, superior, pistol, pistol.

I managed 18 points over two games with one winning draw and a big loss. This brought my total to the year to 62 points in 6 games. Averaging ten points a games isn't too bad at all and it's an improvement on last year. Overall I was placed eighth out of nineteen for the year.

At this stage I'm not sure what I'll be doing next year but I will collect my thoughts and post my plans later this month.

Luck Or Strategy?

Graham & I were sat in the pub last Sunday having our regular post game debrief when I asked Graham what turned out to be a key question: did he win by luck or better strategy? As we all know this is the perfect topic for a chat over a pint or two but this time it was different. Firstly because it lead to an second discussion about rolling "good, or bad, dice at crucial moments" and secondly because we'd recorded every dice roll in the game.

That's right, in our 800 point game of Field of Glory Renaissance (FOGR) we recorded over 1,000 dice rolls in a three hour game. That's just the number of spots nothing else. Sad, I know. I don't want to go into the specific reasons why we decided to do this at this point other than to say we've done this before and found it really helpful.

Re-Mystified on Tour :: Review

Whilst writing the previous post on my latest Northern League adventures it occurred to me to review all my competitive games of FOGR. I started playing at the beginning of 2013 so it's not that many. This is how I've done:

Competition	Northern League	Stoke Challenge
Points	800	650
Wins	2	1
Draws (Winning)	0	0
Draws (Losing)	3	2
Losses	3	3
Total	8	6
Average	0.25	0.17

At first sight it looks like I've got to get more practise in but what I really need to work on is converting the losing draws in to winning draws and picking up more points along the way. You can see this by looking at the total points scored and the average points per type of game:

Re-Mystified on Tour :: Halifax 2014

It was a good event!



On Sunday I took 800 points worth of Italian Wars French for two enthralling games of Field of Glory Renaissance (FOGR) in the third round of the 2014 Northern League.

The army was dated 1523. This turned out to be important because this season Northern League armies before 1570 have been given a boost by an alteration of the army classification system: they are allowed to drop a class. This is to encourage players to field earlier armies and go some way towards compensating for their poorer weapons and tactics when facing later armies.

My army contained just over 400 points of superior troops and would have been class 1 but now it dropped to class 2 with the incentive that they could gain 2 bonus points by beating higher class opponent. All I had to do was win a game!

Re-Mystified on Tour :: Stoke Challenge 2014

I've finally recovered from Sunday's 650 point Field of Glory Renaissance competition. The day was organised by Ray Boyles and Keith Spedding who worked well as an organising team and the day went quickly and smoothly.

Between games I got a chance to take some photos of the very well attended DBMM competition which gives you a flavour of the venue:



Speaking of flavours the smell from the canteen was awful and lasted all day. Yuck! Naturally, the only photo I got of the FOGR competition was between rounds:



As far as the games went I, or rather the Early Lithuanians, had a terrible, if enjoyable(!), day with only 15 points from a possible 75. Here are the reports:

Victory Or Defeat

One of the of the hardest things to do during a competition is work out the b****y score. It's especially difficult at the end of a hard fought game that's just "gone the distance" and it seems to get harder as the day goes on.

In Field of Glory (FOG) games are scored out of twenty with a five bonus points for breaking your opponent army so you'd think it would be simple; wouldn't you? Well you'd be wrong. Look at this typical example of a helpful cross reference chart (click image for readable version):

I had a quiet half hour today so I sat down and tried to figure out why this is so confusing.

Re-Mystified on Tour :: Walkden 2014

I'm sorry for the recent hiatus but the last 6-8 weeks have been hectic as it included the financial year end of my business and, as always, there was a lot of paperwork and financial analysis to be done.

Even so I managed to play in the first round of the 2014 Northern League on Sunday, 16 March. I decided to try my 1625 Danish TYW army once again. As always there was a welcoming and friendly atmosphere throughout:

Field Of Glory Renaissance - Artillery Redux

The latest set of errata for the Field of Glory Renaisance rules has been released. It goes part way to solving the problem with destroyed artillery. The FOG R V1.10 Errata says:

P.67. INTERPENETRATIONS. Add additional bullet after the 4th:
"Any troops can pass through uncontrolled artillery perpendicularly from back to front or front to back only"

Of course this still leaves the glaring inconsistency that artillery "vanishes" if shot at but if fought over it remains in place. See the original post for full discussion.

The Re-Mystified On Tour :: Walkden 2013

Last Sunday saw my second visit to this year's Northern League competition. This time I took an Italian Wars French army from about 1523 which was very different from the highly mobile TYW Danish army I used in the spring.

I've been playing Field of Glory Renaissance (FOGR) for a full year now and felt I was ready to try a heavy foot army although I anticipated the games would be slow. I was proved right: neither of the games finished within the allotted time.

For this competition report, and all future tour reports, I've decided to switch styles and focus on recording just the key details and will try and avoid writing a narrative in the comments section. Interesting, blow by blow accounts are very hard to write. I'll leave that sort of thing to Tim Porter (aka The Madaxeman).

Field Of Glory Renaissance - Artillery

In January I wrote an article wondering why wargames rules are so complex. In it I used a table from the Field of Glory Renaissance (FOG R) rules as an example. Well this month I've stumbled across another inconsistency in FOG R that has me stumped.

It all started with a thread on the Slitherine forum (no longer online) about the impassibility of captured artillery to mounted troops. Feel free to read the thread but here's the situation in a nutshell. In FOG R:

• Unlimbered, and unsupported, battle groups of artillery are immediately lost on contact with the enemy.
• The lost battle group is not removed because it can be re-crewed and turned against its previous owner.
• Lost artillery can only be captured by pike and shot units either immediately, if they have assaulted the guns, or later in the game.
• Mounted troops assaulting artillery face an insurmountable [sic] obstacle because they cannot interpenetrate artillery, captured or otherwise.

FOG R Mini-Tournament

Yesterday saw a small scale, informal four player mini-tournament at MAWS in Walkden. We played two games each using the Renaissance variant of Field of Glory (FOG R). Everyone had a great afternoon and said they'd like it do it again.

I'm pleased to say the organiser (me) came last with two loosing draws whilst Robert (Mac) McCelland came first with his horde of armoured Japanese warriors. They did really well on their first ever competitive outing:

Competiton Player Numbers - Food For Thought

On the Slitherine Field of Glory (FOG) Ancient & Medieval forum there's a recent thread that started with a suggestion about adjusting the winner's attrition points in subsequent games so that the stronger players will have to try harder for the remainder of the competition.

Later the original poster, hazelbark, stated their assumptions which proved to be very revealing:

1. There is an attendance and interest problem in [FOG AM] events.
2. [M]ore people [are falling] away [at] the lower end of the standings than the higher end.
3. [Gamers] don't like [being] repeatedly stomped ... Some will keep playing, but [some] will fall away.
4. The 800 4x6 straight jacket is killing the game just as 400 killed DBM.

Sometimes these "the sky is falling" threads arise for no good reason but in this case there appears to be genuine concern about the speed of play in FOG AM, retaining existing player and attracting new players. The thread developed into a broader discussion and I was prompted to join in by this comment:

Being repeatedly stomped is always dull, but when players start to expect that they will experience some dull repetitive games even in the rounds where they aren't being stomped as well, the risk/reward ratio of entering a (more open, 800 6x4-type) competition starts to get too far out of kilter to be attractive.