Pevensey Bay, 7th-8th November

Anderida Doubles(click on the images for a bigger picture)

Yes, Pevensey Bay still looks as bright and blue as this, in Early November.

Many thanks to Eric Cruttenden and his team for continuing to bring us the Anderida event and its unique flavour. As an unashamed 15mm enthusiast, I delight every year in the trouble the entrants take over their armies - and actually just the brilliance of what they achieve. There is something about the size of 15mm and its ratio to table space that makes the spectacle of massed miniature armies in this scale unsurpassed, I think. And at this annual event, for sure, the effort is always appreciated.
(Pevensey Bay - some local colour)

OK ... While we're doing the beach view thing, I thought I'd indulge you a view of the local night-life. Not quite a pagan festival, there was certainly a ritual burning! Anderida is held on the weekend of Remembrance Sunday ... and this year that also meant that on the Saturday night they had organised their Guy Fawkes celebration. Quite handy to have a beach at your disposal. All this took place right outside the Aqua Club, the event's now traditional venue. The event now embraces an extensive FoG competition as well as its traditional DBM. The big prize of the event is the annual Society of Ancients trophy - not, of course, for the top scorers, but for the most valued contributors ... and appropriately half the Society Committee were playing (and the last two Slingshot editors usually umpire the competitions) so it has a bit of a family atmosphere.

This year, the DBM theme was medieval, the heavily subscribed FoG theme was the Greeks. Well, quite a lot of pikes, then. Thankfully, they can provide a reasonably diverting game in FoG, even though it remains more often the cavalry and the flanks that settle the battles (not, in itself, of course, a bad reflection of Hellenistic warfare - but I still feel Armati does this sort of thing better) ... That Seluecid mix of Phalanx with Elephants, Cataphracts, Chariots and Imitation Legionaries (Thorakitai ... Horse Archers .... Arabs ... the list is endless) proved very popular, of course (and I still have a soft spot for it - it was my first ancients army back in the early seventies ....)...

(Anderida 2009 - yes, we did get the 200 pikes vs 200 pikes clashes ...)

(Some very nice Legionaries chase off those pesky horse archers...)...

Yes, Chris and I did OK, and our Graeco-Bactrians had four entertaining games against Seleucids, Early Successors, Persians and Classical Indians (2 wins saw us sneak into the top half of the table in 9th place) ... You can get a full round up of results, and more pictures on the Anderida website (here ...) but the top teams were ... (FOG winners) Ian Stewart and Richard Collins (DBM winners) Darrell Pearce and Jeremy Morgan.


Coming up trumps again in the best army category, Adrian Bird's colourful style caught the judges eye, and his Seleucid army took first prize.

The blue ribbon award went to Kevin Large and Andy Rourke for an all round warmly appreciated contribution - helpful and entertaining play, good 'up for it' wargaming and a smartly turned-out Thracian army that was a contender in the painting prizes.


(Society of Ancients trophy winners Kevin and Andy surrounded by some of the good looking troops from the event)

Time to get the brushes out, I guess ...