January ... Winter Quarters ... 2014 retrospective

This is apparently AoM's 250th post since reporting the Society's Shows North season began on blogger in March 2008 (so a surprising 7th birthday coming up soon).

Despite the number of posts dropping slightly (due to the manifold disappointments of V2 of FoG, we have dropped out of a number of tournament events) monthly pageviews bobble around the 3,500 mark (which isn't too bad for a special interest blog posting on average 5 times every 2 months - 29 posts for 2014) ...

Shows North attended 10 wargame shows and 10 other wargame/heritage events ...

Shows (please click on the picture for more on the event) ... 

(as part of the Lance & Longbow Society team)

(incorporating the SoA DBA Northern Cup)

(with the Lance & Longbow Society)

(a Society of Ancients/Lance & Longbow Society/Northampton Battlefields Society venture)

(as the Northampton Battlefields Society/Wargame Developments)

(with the Northampton Battlefields Society)

Events

(including FoG-R, Armati, DBA and Basic Impetus)

(as the Northampton Battlefields Society)

(with The Battlefields Trust and Northampton Battlefields Society)

(with the Battlefields Trust)

What a high content year!

This shift towards history/heritage reflects my personal interests as much as it does the health of historical wargaming and/or the Society of Ancients ...  That said, the drift towards 'history lite', 'minis gaming'  and Space Marines in hollywood historical outfits ('historicals' as the minis gamers call them) seems unstoppable.

On the credit side, my Montaperti game got 'best game' at the BattleDay, my flats got featured in the BFFS magazine, I took the runner up position in the English DBA Open and the Northampton Battlefields Society won a community award.  I was voted a trustee of the Naseby Battlefield Project and I got to explain the Battle of Bosworth to cricket hero Freddie Flintoff for a TV clip.

My actual wargaming has only tallied to around 80 games in 2014 (call it 3 games per fortnight) ... that's probably the lowest in 3 decades but has a lot to do with the collapse of interest in FoG/DBM ... (so far fewer 4 game weekends than in past years - and, really, I haven't missed them much) - that said, DBA V3 may encourage a pick up in interest.  Armati, for me, is now just for old times' sake and I expect my 'mainstream' ancient/medieval wargaming in 2015 to be mostly DBA, Basic Impetus and Neil Thomas's AMW ...