The Re-Mystified On Tour :: Stoke Challenge 2013

As you can tell by the picture I achieved a place at this one day, 650 point Field of Glory competition. The trophy is for second place but really I was third: Kevin Johnson did the gentlemanly thing and refused to win his own competition. Well done Kevin for setting such a positive example and a superb job organising the day's events.

Perhaps the competition was most notable for the third round match between myself and Simon Clarke: when Vexillia played Lurkio! More detail later. The results are given below (click on the image for a large version):

Down At The Club

Here's a photo of Sunday's game at MAWS our latest table set-up:

Field of Glory V2 - Too Many Draws?

On Friday I posted Phil Steele's worrying comment that "V2 continues to disappoint in this respect [producing too few decisive results in 3.5 hrs] and I am losing interest I think." I said I'd do some digging and report back so here's my findings plus some comments direct from Phil.

The scoring system for FOG is simple with players sharing 20 or 25 points depending on whether the game was drawn or decisive. This means the average score per round in the Northern League can be used to measure the proportion of decisive games: the closer the average score is to 25 the more decisive games have been. Looking at FOG V1 in the 2012 Northern League Ancient & Medieval competition:

• The average score, for two games, for all players was 22.1 points.
• This only varied by 1.0 across all 5 rounds (23.1, 21.0, 23.1, 21.8 and 21.4).

This shows that about half the 2012 games were decisive: the average is close to half way between that expected if all games were drawn (20) and that expected if all games were decisive (25).

Field of Glory V2 - Recent Comments

Whilst reading the most recent post on Phil Steele's "Ancients on the Move" blog I came across a slightly worrying comment:

"Our first 8 Doubles games [of FOG V2 Ancient & Medieval] produced just 1 decisive outcome and sadly a whole day's wargaming [at Triples, Northern League round 2] did not add to that total. Despite rattling through as many turns as we could in a losing second game, it still did not reach a natural result within the 3.5 hours. The earlier game was a 10:10 draw with only 2 units broken on each side (of the 30 or so on the table). V2 continues to disappoint in this respect and I am losing interest I think."

From an experienced wargamers like Phil this is a worrying comment. I'll be interested to see if this is a general trend and is reflected in the average points scored. Outright wins result in a five point bonus so more draws should mean a lower average score. I'll do some digging and report back.

Bodley Scott's Comments on FOG R

Whilst reading a thread on the release of the latest set of Field of Glory Renaissance errata, I found this comment by FOG author Richard and I think it worth broadcasting to a wider audience:

"I am not a tinkerer. DBMM only exist[s] because I declined to take part in any further tinkering with DBM. However, there are a few niggling issues in FOG R which mar an otherwise surprisingly bulletproof system. There aren't many of these left, so don't expect many more amendments masquerading as errata. Certainly there is no intention to produce a 2nd edition - perhaps ever - the game is good enough not to need one. FOG AM had certain issues that were driving some players away, so really needed an overhaul. FOG R doesn't."

I think this is good news indeed.

The Re-Mystified On Tour :: Walkden 2013

2013 is going to be a year of transition. After reviewing last year's tour and thinking about what to do in 2013 I decided that I try the Renaissance version of Field of Glory. The choice was really between learning version 2 of the Ancient & Medieval rules or version 1 of the Renaissance rules and I decided on a change in period.

I won't be attending more than a couple of rounds of the Northern League this year but I thought the first round at Walkden would be a good place to start playing competitive FOG R so I created a TYW Danish army list and emailed my entry to the list checkers.

Now before I comment on the games I'd like to say little about the army I fielded. It was essentially a converted DBR army but as DBR armies tend to be smaller I had little choice in what I fielded. With some very minor tweaks I played with what I had painted. I'm just glad I managed to finish some dragoons.

Why Are Wargames Rules Complex?

Introduction

The short answer is because they end up using complex logic not by design but by default and convention. I've been reminded of this very recently. My weekend project was working through the play sheets in the back of the Field of Glory Renaissance rules.

Depending on the rules author's approach, rules tend to tell you either what you can do or what you can't do. The complex logic arises when these approaches are mixed with rules structured like "factor W applies against X except against Y in circumstance Z".

In the body of the rules many authors take care to make the meaning clear and unambiguous. However, the space restrictions of a quick reference sheet, and when rules are tabulated in the body of the rules, places a heavy emphasis on logical consistency, brevity and clarity. These three are very hard to achieve but are crucial in assisting readers to quickly assimilate the mass of detail required to play the game.

What Does 2013 Have In Store?

Yesterday Graham and I played Field of Glory Renaissance (FOG R) and got two 650 points Italian Wars games in an afternoon. I lost both but who cares! This was the first time my French army had seen the light of day for years. You should have seen the layer of dust on top of their tool box.

Chatting to the other members of MAWS I learnt that the 2013 Northern League will not be using FOG AM v2, the newest Field of Glory rules, for their Ancient & Medieval FOG competition; rather they will stay with original version FOG AM v1. This wasn't a surprise but the spread of probable venues was. The list of venues isn't public yet but one of our favourite locations (if not my favourite venue) wasn't on the list.

The Mystified On Tour :: Annual Review 2012

The Northern League is over for another year and my congratulations go to the winners and my thanks go to the organisers and our various hosts in 2012.

Background

As an end of year review I thought I'd compare 2012 with previous years:

Year	Position	Points	Rounds	Wins	Av. Pts/Game
2010	25/26	24	2	1/4	6
2011	20/26	53	3	2/6	9
2012	07/19	114	4	4/8	14

The Mystified On Tour :: Walkden 2012

Sunday saw us taking the well worn path to Walkden for the final round of the Northern League for 2012.

We decided to give my Later Lithuanians a run out in an attempt to improve our scores with a class 2 army. Last time out we managed 23 points with a Early Russian army; we managed to do better but only just.

The Mystified On Tour :: Hyde 2012

This round should have been held at Halifax but on Thursday the venue was switched to Hyde after discovering the Halifax venue had been double booked.

One benefit of the Hyde venue is the corner shop doing bacon butties all day. You can see the remnants of one of them in the first photo if you look closely.

We missed the last round at Derby and so feared we’d be a bit rusty. We were using an Early Russian army, with lots of superior cavalry and one block of superior knights, which lacks real punch in competition games so we knew we’d a have to be patient.

The Mystified On Tour :: Stoke 2012

Another competition another third place! This time it was in the 650 point singles competition held at Stoke Challenge on Sunday, 15 July 2012. However, I’m not getting carried away: I was tied for third place and was awarded the trophy on “count back”.

Having said that this was a strange trio of games as will become clear. I had hoped to fight 1 or 2 games on my terrain of choice (steppe) but played two games in hilly terrain and one in the mountains. Just great for a cavalry army.

The main problem is I turned up expecting to play two games to be told there were in fact three games to be played. Note to self: must read competition rules more closely.

Silly Season

Once the UK goes on its summer holidays the country enters the silly season for news. However, the silly season usually starts in August so I was surprised when two press releases heralded its early arrival in the wargaming world:

1. Battlefront announced that they were to ban non-Battlefront models from competitions that they organise and sponsor.
2. Slitherine announced their intention to release version 2.0 of Field of Glory as an app for iPad, PC and Mac.

Given that I am enjoying the Northern League's Field of Glory competition and have been thinking about trying FOW these announcements were a double blow.

The common factor is the lack of consumer consideration and the marketing speak used in both announcements. As examples of the latter Battlefront used the deliciously concocted phrase "the FOW Hobby" whilst Slitherine were quoted as "proud to again be leading the charge and continuing the Wargames Revolution".

The Mystified On Tour :: Sheffield 2012

Oh what a circus oh what a show! Round two of the Northern League began with an unnecessarily early start in the urban wasteland that is the Don Valley. There’s lots of facilities but getting breakfast at 08:30 Sunday wasn’t that easy.

The scheduled start was 08:15 but the day before I learnt that the start time had to be put back to 09:00. In the end we were allowed inside at 08:30 but then had to wait until 09:00 to start the games.

For this round Graham & I used my Ilkhanid army with Armenian allies to provide a battle group of knights for some real shock troops.

The Mystified On Tour :: Manchester 2012

In my review of last year’s performance in the Northern League I set out two aims for this year: stop losing heavily with our weaker armies and try to pick up more points when losing with our better armies.

It was Graham’s turn to choose the army and he chose the Early Russians. Lots of average troops made this the “weakest” possible that we could field. The only superior troops were one battle group of four undrilled knights.

With my aims in mind we approached the first round of the 2012 league season with some trepidation. As you can see from the trophy above right we need not have worried.

Third place was our best showing by far and more importantly it got our 2012 Northern League season off to a flying start. It also matches my best finish since April 2009 when I was playing DBMM.

The Mystified On Tour :: Annual Review

The Northern League is over for another year so I thought I’d look back over the year and compare the 2011 season with our first Field of Glory season in 2010:

Year	Position	Points	Rounds	Wins/Games	Av. Pts/Game
2010	25/26	24	2	1/4	6
2011	20/26	53	3	2/6	9

On the face of it we’ve made some progress. However, the pattern remains the same.

The Mystified On Tour :: Manchester 2011

Graham & I took my Mongol Conquest army out for the day to the final round of the 2011 Northern League Field of Glory competition at Walkden.After our last outing I was anxious. Before the games we discussed how important it would be to at least compete.

Having fielded class 2 & 3 armies earlier in the year, the Mongol army was a true Conquest army. Everything was superior and there were even some elite troops: a true class 1 army. It did however have one weakness: no shock troops. This means that it’s all down to shooting manoeuvre and spotting the decisive strike.

We didn’t do too badly considering so let’s see what happened.

The Mystified On Tour :: Halifax 2011

It would be fair to say that this round of the Northern League was a struggle.  Graham and I take turns in choosing the armies we field and Graham picked Italian Condotta which, under the League gradings, is a class 2 army.  This was helpful as we don’t have a great deal of choice when it comes to class 3 armies.

Having said that, we both knew that all the Italian Condotta armies have a handicap in the large number of compulsory average knights.  We practised hard and often with varying results.  In the end we placed the knights in two battle groups of sixes and one of four. We also spent some points on a battle group of four superior knights for real punch.

Even so, the plan was to deploy in depth in one quadrant and expand out quickly using the knights and the heavy foot to force the pace.  Ideally, we wanted to choose the terrain or have some rough or difficult terrain to help us hold a flank.  So let’s see what happened.

The Mystified On Tour :: Manchester 2011

Last Sunday Graham and I played Field of Glory in the second round of the 2011 Northern League at Walkden. These events always involve an early start but this time the clocks went forward so we all lost an hours sleep as well.  At least I didn’t have too far to travel!

We took a 900 point Later Lithuanian army and scored 26 points out of a possible 50; not a bad start to 2011 and our best performance since our first outing in September 2010.

Vapnartak, York 2011

Last Sunday saw my annual trip to Vapnartak at York Racecourse. You may have read elsewhere how good the venue is but it’s so nice to see a show held in a clean, modern, and well lit location.

Although round one of the Northern league was being held at the show my trip was purely for the pleasure of shopping and catching up with old friends. Nonetheless once there I couldn’t resist taking a few photos of the competition as a small photo essay. I concentrated on members of MAWS and old mates with the aim of showing the fun of competition wargaming.