11th March, various locations in the UK

(Hawkwood's English mercenaries occupy an orchard in Manchester)

A BUSY DAY IN THE SPRING

The Northern Doubles, WMMS and Skirmish in Sidcup all happen at the same time and there were good things going on all round. The Society's Shows North stand went to Wolverhampton ...


Will and Graham F volunteered to do the Alumwell event and took along Will's developing Armati II contribution for this month's Plataea BattleDay.

Many thanks to everyone who stopped by ... we recruited some new members and Will got to network about the game with other Plataea contributors.

(Plataea - in Armati 15mm)

It sounds like it was a great show. Thanks to Graham for sending me some pictures.

(more good ancients stuff from WMMS captured by Graham Fordham's camera)

Meanwhile, I caught sight of an interesting ancients Participation Game in Bob Cordery's coverage of the Sidcup show ( Wargaming Miscellany )

(Let the Dominoes Decide on Heroscape terrain tiles: photo by Bob Cordery)

The Old Guard had this Gladiators game using the Society of Ancients game Let the Dominoes Decide. It uses (and includes), of course, Graham Hockley's combat mechanism Anno Domino - the same mechanism used in last year's popular Domino Double Header (GitS and The Elephant in the Room).

Both publications are still available through the website (webstore: games ) - and are great after dinner games ... just add a few packs of dominoes!

Thanks Bob ... you can see more of Skirmish by visiting Bob's blog on the link above.

Meanwhile, I took Hawkwood's Florentine Italian Condotta troops to Manchester:

(Florentine Elmeti press forward: Field of Glory Ancient and Medieval)

Thanks to everyone for two enjoyable games giving my Italians their annual run out. We got a bit tangled up by some tough and aggressive Anglo-Danes in the first game, but were back on warm Mediterranean ground tackling some Spaniards (Crown of Aragon) in the second.

Nice opponents and a draw that didn't take us too far out of period ...

(in 'open' competition, we were very fortunate to draw as appropriate opponents as these Medieval Spanish caballeros)

Having muddled up the first game - it was a good game, but I messed up the list - we were all sorted out for the afternoon, and got in a good, see-saw, chivalric stand-up fight which eventually resolved itself in our favour.

(The Florentines in pursuit: photos by Phil steele)

Some mistakes by our opponents and some luck by us were embraced in the best possible spirit and we came out about par after the 2 games. Within NDBML's 3 level handicapping, this was our class 3 army (1 being good!) ... so we were pleased with our day's work ...

Here's a quick line up of the FoG glitterati ... Mike and Colin enjoying the limelight for a change.

There were also FoG-R and DBMM divisions, and full results can be found on the MAWS site.

All that was on Sunday - we are blessed with choices these days, that's for sure.

I hope you enjoyed your's as much as I enjoyed mine.