Ancients on the Move: 4th March, Newark Showground

Saturday, April 15, 2017

4th March, Newark Showground

HAMMERHEAD 2017 and the SOCIETY of ANCIENT DBA Northern Cup

With no Triples this year, the Society sponsored DBA Northern Cup moved seamlessly over to middle England's 'up and coming' Hammerhead - and a very successful move it was.

Hammerhead has established itself at Newark showground which now hosts the two Partizans as well. OK it lacks the charm of Kelham Hall but wins on parking and convenience.

The main hall at the showground is, shall we say, spartan in its appeal - but the DBA event was in the gaming annex in a building across the way and had a number of advantages (shh or they'll all want some ... but lets just say 'carpet' and coffee without queueing ... ) ..

So ... a good venue, and, as always, a well managed event by Paul and Tony.

(The SoA DBA Northern Cup: my first four games)

The format for the Northern Cup is preset armies and tables provided by the organisers ... attack/defend specified for the game but otherwise free deployment.

It works very well and is a great leveller.

All the limited spaces for the event were sold, so we were 'full' (come along next year but book early)

The armies were all from the early periods.

(The SoA DBA Northern Cup: the morning session)

Also in our annex was this very appealing try-out game of the new Helion Armada game (simple Andy Callan rules and print-cut-and-glue paper ships).

Very tempting ...

Elsewhere in the show there was not a lot for the ancients enthusiast - but a good range otherwise and again, a lot of modern, some naval and some colonial ....

We were back for a couple more games after lunch (in which I fell from needing a miracle to no chance at all) but overall had a a great series of games and met some new players (as well as old friends) ... Indeed we had a nice mix of players including newcomers and youngsters (kudos to V3 of DBA for this encouraging trend and another full house).

And so to some worthy prize winners ...

(Dennis, Mark Johnson in First place, and Patrick)

A grand day out ... in support of which I took along the 54mm participation game of Bosworth which is also, of course, run to the latest version of DBA ...