Well, its August and along comes the Britcon dilemma. Britcon can be a pretty dull affair if you aren't playing in the competitions - but a relentless bind if you are. Now that I have stopped playing Armati, I am back with the three and a half hour (plus) games ... so a Saturday of 10 to 12 hours competition style games back to back (and for all that, with the games mostly not completed ...) starting at 8.15am (no, that's not the breakfast, that's the actual game start) with no proper flexibility. So it was Field of Glory for me, and another run out for the Condotta Italians I had used in America ... more as a default choice than anything else (this year has been almost devoid of time to prepare ... that said, we have had to wait almost til the end of the publications cycle for one of the more interesting titles, Oath of Fealty - and so there was nothing like enough time to absorb that selection before submissions for Britcon ...) ...
(I used my Italians again - seen here, appropriately enough, anchoring a position amongst some enclosed fields)From a Society point of view, the event was OK - its a good opportunity to keep up with the competition players, and show them what SoA is up to. But there is little in the way of visitor interest - so my thanks go to the stalwarts of the Lance and Longbow Soc, Steve and Dave, and to Alison on the door, all of whom helped out while the usual suspects were away playing games.
This year's Britcon saw a further coalescing of the current tournament scene. Most ancients enthusiasts in 3 FoG 'periods' (28mm, 15 ancient and 15 dark age/medieval), backed up with a credible DBMM event and 'just viable' numbers playing Armati and DBM. Warhammer Ancient Battles seems to have dropped off the bottom, now (and sadly I suspect Armati will be following it). For what its worth, the raw stats had just under 100 playing FoG (double all the other ancients categories put together), plus 50 odd fantasists and a similar number of Flames of War players (many of who once would have been ancients players ..)... In the medieval FoG event, there were two other Condotta Italians (including listmeister Paul Robinson) - we all came in the 'bottom 10', ho hum - while in the top ten, a couple of Serbs got in amongst the usual suspects and their Later Ottoman armies (the lowest placed of the 4 Ottomans came 11th ... a fact I include because someone asked me the other day ...) ...
(Kevin Ellis's resplendent Swiss army)So an enjoyable but tiring weekend at the Condottieri coalface. As well as one of the other Italians, I played an Ottoman, 2 Catalans (one of which was Karsten from the FoG group - nice to meet you, Karsten) a Swiss and a Later Crusader. It was a great game against Kevin's Swiss, and I managed to scrape a win in that one. It is a sign that the mainstream game has moved since DBM 3.1 ... you now can get both a good game and a win against Swiss with Italians (that said, the results page speaks for itself ...).
Pete Dalby won the Medieval FoG with his Ottomans, Phil Powell won out over the Dom Rom Swarms in the ancient period (relentless use of tactics throughout the event - read more on the forums and mail groups ...), with, elsewhere, Richard Collins taking the 25mm, Mike Bennett the DBMM and Jez Evans the DBM.
This year's all round, ancients, Mr Popular was Ray Duggins - the highest vote winner of the game-by-game 'sportsmanship' poll of opposing players, Ray was presented with the Society of Ancients 'Persian Helmet' trophy, and gets a pat on the back from Ancients on the Move to go with it ... Well done, Ray ...
The rest of Britcon? Well sadly, I didn't get to see much of it because I was stuck at a table (and so apologies for the scarcity of photos, too - on site for 46 hours, but no time to dither around with cameras ... one must game, game, game ...). It was very hot and humid this year which probably added to the fatigue. Would that there was more to Britcon than the competitions, because it is such a great social event and a good chance to meet up with so many people ... but I guess you can just have too many queues for this and queues for that in an environment strangled by its own over-regulation. Lets see if we can't organise some kind of big participation game or similar next year (and maybe some fresh air too ...)...
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