21st October, Portsmouth

2012 English DBA Open

A week after SELWG  sees us on the road again, this time to Portsmouth, home of the Royal Navy.    

Congratulations to Tony and Max, whose wedding we had attended the previous evening.   I'm confident we made the trip from Norfolk to Portsmouth faster than even Nelson would have envisaged.

(my Gepids ... mostly Lurkio figures with some Gladiator, Chariot and Old Glory)

I had originally intended to debut a Kushite Egyptian army this year (as I was working on some special decorative features) ... but decided to recycle some of the Eastern Front armies as a way or promoting the 2013 running of the event.    Taking all four - I opted for Gepids and Chris, who has a vast collection had no time to prepare, took the Sub Roman British.

It worked out fine as Richard Pulley had brought Kushites anyway (and I always prefer avoiding duplications) and my Ostrogoths also ended up going out on loan for some friendlies.

('home clash' ... an Eastern Front encounter between Arthur and the Gepids)

As has become normal, the 28mm event was cancelled due to lack of interest, and the 15mm were split into pools of 5 players for a series of 'round robin' matches before the winners of each would progress to a semi-final phase.

Lo and behold, the draw gave us a home match to kick off with ... me vs Chris in the early medieval pool.   A good draw actually, as both of us were a bit rusty and it gave us a warm up round to get our acts together.

In the pool matches my Gepids fought against Sub Roman British, Tuareg, Rajputs, Anglo Irish, and Teutonic Order.    I managed a couple of rounds in the 'un-pooled' Plate ... and encountering Early Burgundian and Marian Roman.

There were a number of great looking armies in use on the day and some attractive encounters:

(Colin's Arabs a caught on camera by Martin Smith.  Click on the pictures)

 

(this wave of Tuareg camel warriors crashed over my Gepid army which they had lured into the desert)

(Chris getting stuck in on the adjacent table)

(another desert clash amongst the sand dunes)

(a great close up shot from the ancients pool courtesy of Martin Smith)

So, a very enjoyable series of games in good company with a number of stylish armies on display.

I did not accumulate sufficient points to be any where near the finals, but got a flukey win over junior Findlay to progress a round in the plate!    A full breakdown of results will follow in due course on Society of Ancients News, but suffice to say that Scott Russell won the Senior final and Findlay Schofield the Junior final:

In addition to their trophies, they won gift prizes kindly donated by Magister Militum.

The Plate competition was won by Richard Pulley's Kushite Egyptians who gave us all a demonstration of how the littoral landing rules work.

The 2012 English DBA Open was also the final round of the SoA UK DBA League, and after some crunching of the numbers, the top positions went to Scott Russell, and, retaining his junior title, Patrick Myers.   Again, a full breakdown will follow on the Society's news page.

Congratulations to all the winners, and many thanks to PAWS for organising and to Magister Militum (DBA Open) and Monarch Books (UK DBA League) for joining in as sponsors ...

(Scott Russell's Open winning Ptolelmaic army - Museum figures painted by Arnaud Marmier)

You can catch up with the Society of Ancients next at Warfare on the 17th and 18th of November.

Society of Ancients UK DBA League

*24/10 edit ... caption on the Arab picture corrected per reader feed back ...