23rd and 24th January, Usk

GODENDAG 2016

Back on the road for the new year and our first stop was for a weekend of tournament gaming at Usk in South Wales and this year we decided to give a go at l'Art de la Guerre ...

We chose to go with Maurikian Byzantines and a horse archer ally (and the best in period option was Khazar) ... we were beginners and it seemed to suit us very well.

The format was 400 points configured as two 200 point allied armies with the two players commanding the 3 adjacent command on their side of the table.

OK.   We won three out of our four games (though 'on points' rather than by destroying the enemy outright) and lost the fourth by a small margin.  We ended up mid-table.

(our four games at Godendag)

In truth we a tad overmatched in terms of power and protection, most of the entrants in a fairly open field were medieval knight/longbow/chopper types so we had to whittle and dodge to get any favours out of the exchange and that makes for a 'long game' strategy.

L'Art de la Guerre is an odd hybrid which feel like a mix of FoG, Armati and DBM and it takes a bit of getting used to (what with 'units' being able to about face and charge (things you are comfortable with the DB element game but which seem clunky in a unit based game) ...

(some scenes from our games)

Like FoG the movement is in units (in this case UDs), like DBA3, the UD is a 40mm (i.e. a BW) ..

The opposed die rolls and and variable levels of cohesion (2 to eliminate light troops, 4 cavalry, 4 for Heavt Foot etc.) work very well and feel a lot like Intro Scale Armati ...

(a rare 'in-period' battle against Armenians and Arabs)

The command and control uses Pips (CPs) much in the style of DBM ...

(more knights)

... and the basing is WRG standard ...

(the hurly-burly of ancient battle) 

The rules are poorly written (probably in the main poorly translated although some of the queries and anomalies are not just down to playing the English version) and that is disappointing given this is the third edition.

I suspect I will play some more of this but it is difficult to see it as anything other than an extra option compared to say Basic Impetus or DBA V3.

What we really need is BBDBA Doubles ...

(the various winners at Godendag 2016 ... )

Thanks a lot to the organisers and list checkers ... great Welsh hospitality and our generous and good spirited opponents ...

18th - 19th January, Usk, Sth Wales

Godendag FoG/FoG-R/DBMM Doubles ... 

My year of ancients on the road traditionally starts with the annual doubles event in the wetlands of South Wales ....

This year I think I can still include a report ... I went along, but (no need to reiterate) opting not to play FoG-AM version 2, I decided to give FoG Renaissance a try.  The period was chosen as a George Gush tribute, and featured the Age of Lance and Pike - starting in 1420 ... so easily within the Society's remit.   And easy for me to choose ... a pike and Roman dull thud which V2 does badly, or an Italian Wars outing (which FoG-AM did reasonably well, so why not FoG-R?)

Here's a pukka ancients scene from the AM competition ...

(Patrick's splendidly elephant heavy Carthaginians take a wall of pikes)

And here's a reminder of the Italians to which I would need to add some Swiss and Landsknecht pikemen to make a late 15th Century incarnation ...

(Phil's flamboyant Florentines ... they would leave all those clumsy pavises behind and pretend to be Milanese for Usk in 2014)

We got quite a good tour of what the age of Pike and Lance might have to offer ... world tour, that is ... and took on Ottoman Turk, Ming Chinese, the Knights of St John and a Japanese Samurai army ...  Well, I guess this was the age of exploration, and Italians were at the forefront of opening it up.   

Anyway, before we get started ... just a polite word ... A very significant formation in this period, and a specified formation in the rules, is the keil.  Keil is a German word (meaning e.g. wedge) and as such (ei, always) is pronounced kyle (rhymes with pile, style, Nile etc.) ... it does not (and never did) sound like the 'keel' on a ship (which in German would have the e and i the other way round, as in the German port city Kiel ...) ...

OK, OK ... I know ... wasted words ...

(Lost against Ottomans)

So, this was our first game as a team and my first game of FoG-R ... consequently my expectations were not that high but I did get to destroy a couple of groups of Ottoman cavalry.   My Italians have done a lot of these over the years, but on balance we have never killed enough of them - and likewise in this game which was mostly decided by the Turks' more numerous and better managed artillery ...

(Battle against the Ottomans: seen from the Turkish side, all guns blazing)

Siting and directing your guns is clearly one of the key skills in FoG-R ... Something which wasn't such a challenge for the Ming Chinese ... they had 16 of them (yep, 16 ... 10 mixed weight field guns and 6 'Regimental' guns) all across the front, as some kind of oriental firework display gone mad.

(Lost against Ming Chinese)

In a thoroughly enjoyable game, we just about survived the gunnery, got right the way across the table to that far distant and fairly low rated infantry line ... then stuttered ... fortune favouring the Chinamen ... Full Plate Gendarmes - who had shrugged the gunnery aside - disintegrated in the face of average bow and crossbow storms, while our superior armoured Swiss pikemen lost melee rounds to unarmoured archers.  The former is actually quite likely in FoG, though I dismiss it from my mind when I need to make an attack ... the latter is not remotely meant to happen - but I guess sometimes you just don't get what you paid for.

(Won against the Knights of St John)

Well, they call it winning ... a draw in our favour but not by much.   Ignoring the advice of Marco Polo, in round 3 we returned to the Mediterranean and found an inland heath to battle with some Maltesers.   I say inland in reference to those splendid DBM games of yesteryear when the Knights of St John would come replete with a waterway, BUA and fleet ...

More lessons in artillery management (ours changed hands ... twice!) but the Maltesers did have a plucky cavalry wing for my Condottieri to mix it with ... Despite the Knights being Elite, my Italians are very good at cavalry fights (whatever nonsense you might read in Machiavelli) and we won the right wing by enough to carry the game.

One of the more splendid sights was a tercio the Knights had brought along to hold their centre

(this is how FoG-R does tercios ... quite a daunting prospect)

I was happy to keep my horsemen away from that ... We peppered it with gunfire and arquebus shot, but to little effect.

The it was back to Pikes & Paddyfields ...

(won against Japanese)

FoG seems to do a reasonable job of representing Japanese (being more hardwarist than DB, so less dependent on interpretation of the tactical role of the soldiers involved) ... and it was good to feel that we would have the edge in firearms - I remembered that bit from Shogun ...

We had got much better control by now and I had confidence the Swiss would hold as we stripped away units from the fringes ...

(no difficulty finding the enemy on this battlefield)

OK ... Italians vs Japanese is a ridiculous battle and who on earth could speculate on how it would be resolved.   That said, this was keenly fought and good fun.  The Samurai were a spectacular army to fight against and we managed only to lose 1 attrition point.

So, 2 timed out wins out of 4 games ... (one rout and one timed out defeat complete the stats) ... not too bad for a first outing.

I think I prefer FoG-R ... certainly for medieval games ... What, say, Mike Ingram speculates about Bosworth ... the way pike fights, the influence artillery has on deployment etc. all comes out in this game in a way it doesn't in AM or, say, DBx.   That gave me food for thought.

Cavalry manoeuvre very quickly in FoG-R and, although you need lots of figures for it, there is something quite plausible in the way some of the formations work.

There are good reasons why I would not favour these rules by the time you get mixed units in the English Civil War, but the Keils and Columns seem to work well and the Tercio has the right look.

Rules for the Wars of the Roses?  FoG-R, I think.

Look out for the Society of Ancients at Cavalier next month ...

18th - 20th January, Usk

GODENDAG 2013

So ... deep mid-winter sees our annual expedition to South Wales for the Godendag festival of food and drink spread around 4 doubles wargames.  DBM, FoG-R and FoG-AM are on offer and I regularly opt for FoG ancients.

Differences this year were the red weather warning for South Wales (bit of a wet blanket by mid afternoon, but it put around 10% off) and V2 of FoG getting (I think) its first tournament run out - also a bit of a wet blanket in my opinion ... but regular readers will know what my opinion is worth :) ...

(FoG-AM V2 at Godendag ... our Seleucids take on the metal walls of the Roman Republic ...)

Constrained by this year's historical theme, we reluctantly took a Seleucid army - which Chris rendered palatable by the addition of a Parthian ally.   Neither of us really like the way FoG (or most other ancients games really) treat infantry ... but V2 has promised to tone down their battalion level manoeuvre (so maybe we should give a go ... maybe what seem like a few minor changes will capture the phalanx feel FoG never got): well you ought to give us credit for trying, anyway.

We got drawn against African Vandal, Palmyran, African Vandal and Romans.   The double rations of Vandals was because to even out the draw one of the pairings split (with each player reconfiguring their original entry army - exactly): we drew both players over the weekend so got to play against exactly the same army twice.   That really doesn't help variety.   It is also clearly not 'just luck' ... the same thing happened last year, and again we played both halves of the split team.   For the purpose of the 'modified swiss chess' playing the other half of a split pair where you have already faced that army ought to be an invalid draw.

(Patrick's Later Carthaginians take on some Alans from London)

The other parts of our SoA/Northants (and honourary Northants) were Patrick and Lee's Later Carthaginians (though Lee wimped out because the weather forecast said it was snowing) and Charles and Richard's FoG-R Malian/Tuaregs (or was it Tuareg/Malians?) ...  Everyone had their moment of glory ...

And there was also some DBM

What did I think of the changes to FoG-AM ... ?   Well, they didn't seem to have changed the game at all.

OK ... Temporarily, they seem to have slowed the game down while we all look up fiddly little word changes that either don't apply or don't make much difference.   There are changes to the 'turn and move' rules which seem to hamper Light Horse more than they hamper 'all singing/all dancing' infantry ... so one of the few things that did seem to work quite well in V1 (skirmishing) works less well in V2 ...  Hmmm ...

But really, the bottom line is this.   We played to win, and with a reasonably 'game on' spirit ... but all our games were score draws (all games were timed out after 3 1/2 hours), two of them at a barely happening 11-9 score.    This is a woeful judgement on the game.

We would normally get a result (either way) in around half our games.   Obviously the perverse way FoG was designed to stay indecisive despite the long game time (to give everyone a full game, I was told by the designers) is partly to blame, as was all the looking up associated with a new version.

Nevertheless, FoG remains a game where shock troops spend most of the game dicing control tests not to charge each other (as in  too many cases it is advantageous, often unhistorically so, not to charge).   Inspired Commanders really help pass these tests and are becoming ever more popular: so battlelines stare at each other and games end unresolved.  This is a fault in the game design, I have no doubt.

Armati still models this period of warfare much better than FoG, and it is a pity it has missed the overhauls that would have been necessary to keep it up to date.   It is a pity that the only Armati Doubles event (at Stoke Challenge) has fallen by the wayside.   I would certainly play an updated Armati Doubles game in the classical/antiquity period.

21st - 22nd January, Usk

Godendag 2012

Back on the road again after the short winter break. Short winter break? OK, it has felt like a good break courtesy of a family Christmas down at Dartmoor and hasn't felt like winter because the weather has been kind.
The Usk weekend is more an annual weekend away with old friends and toy soldiers than a 'competition' (but don't they all feel like that these days? - well, OK, let's leave Britcon out of the assessment then ... I'm talking about Doubles ... )...

Hats off to Field of Glory, though. I had long argued that the 'renaissance' period was a surprisingly poor relation to 'ancients' given the period's unique mix of pageantry and military innovation. Commonly thought of as covering the transition from the high Chivalry of the Italian Wars to the uniform coated regular armies at the start of the 17th Century - it is hard to see what doesn't appeal ...

(FoG-R ... adding artillery to the combination of Men-at-Arms and pike blocks)
FoG-R seems to haved tapped into this less exploited vein of military history, and at events like Godendag has attracted player numbers not at all typical of previous tournament offerings (say, DBR). At Godendag, FoG-AM (Ancient and Medieval) needed to combine its player numbers (20 teams) with DBM (12 teams) to keep 'ancients' ahead in popularity. FoG-R with 24 teams was the single most popular choice.

Astute mathematicians will have come to their own tally already :) ... Over 100 people playing Ancient to Renaissance wargames for a wet January weekend in south Wales ... indeed you can't doubt how healthy and appealing this sort of thing is.

(FoG-AM ... feudal and medieval splendour)

Choice of periods for the AM category gave us a free run at the medieval period and we picked with moist eye rather than a cynical mind, maybe. The good news about my old Feudal Spanish (7th edition and DBM veteran) Aragonese is that, resplendent in its 11th century FoG version, it has won its last 5 engagements (including a whole day of decisive bonus wins that earned it a pot in Halifax ...) ... The not so good news is that (only Armoured in FoG) it can easily get found out by heavily armoured troops (like most of the entrants you might expect in this event), and its principal skirmish weapon - the javelin or dart - needs careful handling (or a bit of luck, like we got in Halifax) to bring any advantage.

OK - that's a bit pompous: the risk is there will be plenty of troops who can outrun us, plenty of troops who can out fight us, plenty of troops who can outshoot us, and plenty of armies that will outnumber us. Feudal Aragonese have an endless will to fight but have top trumps in no department!

Day One hamstrung us. Because of date, we got drawn against one of two identical Xi Xia armies (of that sort that dismounts almost everything if it wants to). It did dismount (despite having an armour advantage), and using IC initiative, then turned the battlefield into a cabbage patch (further protecting its dismounted troops from any mounted threat).

(stiking close together: Spanish foot needing 5s and seeing off some Xi Xia cavalry)
It looked like a stalemate strategy, and despite our best efforts, turned out to be so - a marginal defeat by a point.

Sadly, the other Xi Xia (which was a pair who had split to even the draw, and had duplicated their army to do so) used the same tactic with the same results. That made them odds on to draw us in the next round. And they did. And out came the same cabbage patch and dismounts - and the same stalemate ensued.

Two perfectly good games of their sort. Less ambitious than I like, but the whole point of these events is to embrace challenges that are not always played your way.

I am a bit grumpy though, as the consequence of the Xi Xia split was that the same game/army was in the draw twice. And the procedure generally follows that you shouldn't get the same game twice. But we did. Perfectly good players but we didn't get our fair share of variety.

(game 2: Aragonese skirmishers push beyond the cabbage patch but the heavier troops have to go round or through)
Sunday morning brought us a Latin Greek conundrum ... did they have Catalan allies? If they didn't we were probably going to face overwhelming numbers of knights who were more heavily armoured than our own. If they did, we were probably going to be confronted by another cabbage patch (and another draw). As soon as the terrain process began it was clear that it was the cabbage patch.

Of course, I have no problem with Aragonese vs Catalans, but having used Latin Greek myself, I think it needs to fight in the open to get a big result. Unfortunately the terrain dice gave us another oversized compulsory piece slap in the middle of the table.

What are the chances of that I hear you ask ... well around 1:6 actually (they get middle/we can't shift it much) but like all long shots, it slowed up all of the first three games.

Players, of course, think about their own armies and look to manipulate the terrain system to gain an edge. A fault of the ex-WRG terrain system FoG continues with. I'd just say that - against an Aragonese army a third of which is javelin skirmisher - churning up the middle of the table with dodgy terrain is a good way not to get a result.

We did our best to take the game to the Latins and got the better of the score draw. Only 28 points from 3 games which start out 10-10 (down 10% after 11 hours wargaming) ...

(game 4: some splendidly turned out Frenchmen to fight)
Finally, against a French army that wanted to get at us, in Game 4, battle was joined across a relatively open field - and, despite their better armour and nasty looking Switzers, good prospects of a result.

Skirmishing against them was hard work and we took some initial shocks from the new technology of their hand gunners. We recovered and set about them with sticks and stones, chasing them off and creating the opportunity of getting at their heavier troops not all of who were top quality.

We managed to break the French pikes with javelin skirmishing, and got our knights into their unstaked English archers without taking critical damage (which is enough) - and by game end we had won a couple of uneven knight melees against the odds as well. Exciting game.

(the flower of feudal Spain battle it out - and those archers are not looking happy)
All told, we came up 1 attrition point short of routing the army (although I think we made a couple of mistakes towards the end which flattered the Aragonese) - nevertheless we got a pretty emphatic result that needed maybe one more turn to complete. Perhaps the others had been right to go for their cabbage patch games!

Thanks to all the players, back-slappers and comrades in arms. A very enjoyable visit to Usk as usual.

(FOG-R: those plucky Africans closing in)
Very nice also to see the Renaissance armies ... including an Aztec army originally painted by Lee from down the road, and Richard and Patrick's brave Africans also taking on metal armoured Europeans in FoG-R


I last played that Aztec army back at a Loughborough period Britcon (I think I was invading Mexico with a army of Hohenstauffen Sicilian adventurers if that makes any sense - which I suspect it won't) ... great paint job, plus imaginative baggage and a pyramid temple. Worth another look of course.

(Aztec Baggage from a DBM original)

Of the ancients categories, honours went to Dave Ruddock and Ian Stewart in the FoG-AM and to Dave Madigan and Chris Smith in the DBM.


Us? Oh, we came 9th out of 20 teams with 44 points in the end. Just ahead of the game, and with a handful of dead generals to crow about.

I will post a link to the results when I get the information.

FOG-AM
DBM

Some decisions to make about Burton Doubles

But hopefully we will see you at Vapnartak next week where I will be doing an Egyptian game with those pretty classic flats - but in an up-to-date twist, I'm trying them out for DBA and giving you a taste of the new version 3.

Don't forget to sign up with the Society of Ancients by the end of the month
SoA Memberships page

Usk, 22-23 January

Godendag 2011


The (semi-formal) first outing of the new year for the Society is Richard Bodley-Scott's annual Godendag tournament in Usk.

A weekend of moderate impact Doubles (these days mostly FoG with some DBM and FoG-R) coupled with less than moderate quantities of food and drink. A very convivial start to the year, generally amongst old friends but always with some new faces.

The main event is a FoG 15mm tournament, alongside which a DBM event continues to be well supported and FoG-R now has been added. The mix of FoG-R and DBM seems to keep everyone coming including those who didn't really take to FoG ancients.
(There are a couple of pictures from the FoG-R tables on my ECW page)

This year the ancient and medieval theme was pre 1042 and excluded knights.

A harrumph from me, then (I'm never convinced these very intricate 'manoeuvre heavy' wargames get infantry right but generally enjoy the games they give in the Dark Ages and beyond ...)...

It is a bigger exclusion than might first appear: it means no Normans or Norman type mercenaries (and so takes the punch out of a number of armies that are not, per se, knight armies). It doesn't exclude Cataphracts, of course, and these proved a popular choice.

We entered with Palmyrans, amongst 2 Palmyrans, 2 Parthians a Kushan and some 'Cat heavy' Graeco-Bactrians and Later Seleucids. Indeed the year of the Cat. Dave Handley and Nik Sharpe won with their Parthians. We played against fellow Palmyrans, Huns, Bactrians and Khazars.

We played quite well against the first three of those and gave the Huns a good battering.

Playing against Khazars commanded by Pete Dalby and Lance Flint and (me, at least) not being able to pass Cohesion Tests (however good or bad the circumstances) is never going to be easy: in fact I was on the back foot from the start ... but thanks to Pete and Lance, it was one of those games you can enjoy even though it didn't ever look like we were going to win (well not on my side of the table - Chris had quite a good game against Lance, but was never going to compensate for the attrition points I was surrendering to Pete).

Doubles continues to be my preferred format for tournament play. It is, of course much better if the two partners play their own sides without too much conferring (play like co-operating generals rather than as a beast with two brains). It is more fun and the game rattles on more quickly.

I'll move on, but will just leave the thought that our one defeat was to a team that gets on playing independently (Pete and Lance), and the event was won by a team that plays like-wise (Dave and Nik ... so long as Nik does what he's told!).

There is a great Doubles event at Burton in a few weeks, of course. And Knights will be allowed.

See you all at Vapnartak.

York Racecourse. We will be running 'Greyhounds in the Slips'.

If you move quick, you might just get your 2011 Society of Ancients subscription logged before the Membership Secretary completes his January Slingshot list (and qualify for this year's free game) ...

www.soa.org.uk (follow the 2011 membership banner)

A good start to 2009

Winter/Spring shows 2009

2009 kicked off with the usual string of busy days out for the Society - Vapnartak in York, Alumwell, Cavalier (helping the southern shows team out in Tonbridge), and Triples where we again sponsored the DBA Northern Cup on the Saturday and ran through Welcome to Jerusalem on the Sunday. We also visited some tournaments ... including the ever popular Godendag weekend in Usk.

(FoG at Usk - Patrick's infantry push up as some Latin mercenaries appear on the enemy flank)
We were pressed for space at Vapnartak, so made a popular return to the Society of Ancients stand-by, Gladiolus (the big figures version). This always seems to please the visitors and we played some entertaining games, and recruited some new members to the fold.

Cavalier is another worthwhile 'early' show, this time at Tonbridge. Actually it has become quite a big event with plenty of traders and a good choice of games. It was also a good chance to catch up with people or renew old acquaintanceships - Neil Thomas, Bob Cordery, Martin from PP ... even Gareth Simon of Pallas Armata (and former editor of Slingshot ) ...




Philip Sabin ran the scaled up display version of Roma Invicta ..


At Cavalier, Gareth passed me this old copy of Miniature Wargames with a collage of pictures from the Devizes show, way back. Full of Society of Ancients personalities. Hmm. I wonder if you can name them?

(MW back cover - who can you spot)
Yes indeed. Plenty of other stuff to look at, too.

(Some other attractions from Cavalier)

Alumwell saw us back on the road with the Jerusalem (FoG) siege game ..


(WMMS 2009)


Welcome to Jerusalem at Alumwell

This time, in order to give a broader taste of the basic Field of Glory mechanisms, we opted to include a 'what if' sally by the defenders from the side gate in the Kidron Valley ...


(Sally party - a BG of Turkish cavalry)
This worked very well, and allowed the Crusader nobles to get on their horses for a fight. FoG does Knights vs heavy horse archers very well, I think, and the scenario provided a good tour through the game's charge, evade, impact, shooting and melee mechanics ...

At Triples this year, we offered the usual mix, sponsoring the Society of Ancients DBA Northern Cup on the Saturday, and taking our regular show game on the Sunday. This year's DBA event was won by former SoA Treasurer, Graham Fordham (he's not from Sheffield, but I suspect that still counts as a 'home win') ....