Who Played What - the 2025 Edition

 Put down the egg-nog, step away from the mince pie, hold fire on the jingle bells and brace yourself for another vaguely interesting edition of my regular end of year update on competition attendances across a number of widely played Ancients mass-battle rulesets in the UK.

As usual I'll start with (repeating) the ground rules and caveats. 

The only thing these numbers measure is attendances at UK “competition” events held during 2025 for which results (or runners and riders) have been published online that I've been able to find and make sense of.

Every ruleset in this list is very good at doing this with most also producing their own annual rankings as an additional reference point to double-check the data. The odd player might be missed (or included) at an individual event, especially where nicknames have been used or if someone dropped out part way through the weekend, but other than that unless any events have somehow been publicised, organised, played and concluded during 2025 without leaving an online footprint of any kind on any of the mainstream forums used by the players of the rulesets concerned (I mean, really...?) it’s a fair bet that every competition that has happened should have been included. 

Whilst some players appear in the stats twice because they played two rulesets over the course of the past year this is discounted for the analysis as numbers are too low to impact the main trends. And it's too much work to de-dupe them by name as well !

The final thing to bear in mind is that for most of the rulesets in this analysis the total number of players falls between 30-70, so a car not starting, or the designated driver's daughter getting married on the weekend that 4 clubmates would otherwise have done their “once a year” competition will generate a 5-10% swing in overall player numbers for almost all of these 7 rulesets - so please don't read too much into any single digit, single year variation. 

Instead it’s the bigger trends and swings that count, capturing moments in time and adding them together to form a broad-brush picture over the longer term - which is why I have similar stats from the end of 2024, 2023, 2022, 2019, 2018, and 2017. 

So with those qualifications out of the way, onto the 2025 data.

Total Player Numbers 

(UK based players / UK+Overseas players): 

1. ADLG    174 / 191       (2024: 172/184)     (L'Art de la Guerre)
2. DBA       74 / 75          (2024: 64/64)          (De Bellis Antiquarius)
3. MeG       60 / 65           (2024: 77/82)         (Mortem et Gloriam)
4. DBMM   54 / 68          (2024: 57/71)         (De Bellis Magister Militum)
5. TTS!        51 / 51         (2024: 47/47)         (To The Strongest!)
6. DBM      41 / 41           (2024: 37/38)         (De Bellis Militarium)
7. FoGAM  36 /38           (2024: 41/41)          (Field of Glory Ancient & Medieval)

No change at the top as ADLG continues its stranglehold on the popularity rankings, with a total attendee count that is not too far short of matching that of the next three sets combined.

DBA continued its inexorable rise of recent years, leapfrogging MeG into 2nd place as DBA's 17% increase in UK players this year was counterpunched by a 22% decline in UK MeGGers across the same period.  DBMM remains marooned in mid table yet again this year. although its continued strong overseas showing means it achieved a bigger pool of UK tournament attendees than MeG's even thought it has fewer UK-based players. TTS! also makes another year of small incremental gains to nail down 5th place.

At the other end of the scale the two "free" sets, FoG and DBM, have swapped places with one new player plus a few returnees to the DBM circuit seeing it bounce back up to 41 again, overhauling a FoG player pool that lost a handful of players and saw no new players at all pick up competitive FoG in 2025. 

In aggregate these was an almost inconsequential fall in the total number of UK-based players, with 491 last year compared to 504 in 2024 (and 496 in 2023). This rises to 528 including overseas entrants, compared to 538 in 2024.   

Total number of entries made 

1. ADLG      696    (2024: 729)
2. MEG        274    (309)
3. DBA         244   (241)
4. DBMM    204    (226)
5. FOG         199    (240)
6. TTS          142     (159) 
7. DBM        139    (164)

These figures count the total number of entries across all competitions for each set, and are therefore indicative of a number of factors - average attendance, number of events held - and also reflect to a degree the number of active players on each circuit. As such, some of the rulesets figures in this table show quite marked year on year variances, this year mainly negative. 

DBA was the only set to see an increase in participation this year, with FoG, MeG, DBMM, TTS! and DBM all seeing overall attendances fall by 10%  or more. 

TTS!, MeG, DBM, ADLG and DBMM all lost a few, often fairly small local events from their regular circuits, driving some of these declines, with TTS! taking the worst attendance hit with their 3 "lost" events including the only 2 events previously held in the South West region, and a London-based Doubles competition that attracted a lot of "unique" players last year.

FoG was something of an outlier, as it maintained an unchanged circuit of 12 events whilst experiencing lower attendances almost all across the board, as only 2 of the 12 regular competitions on the 2025 UK FoG circuit managed to maintain last year's turnout levels.  

New to Each Circuit this year

1. DBA        28 / (2024: 17)
2. ADLG     25 / (20)
3. TTS!        13 / (19)
4. MeG        5 / (16)
5. DBM        1 / (3)
6. DBMM     2 / (3)
7. FoGAM    - / (2) 

A huge year for DBA, streaking to the top of the leaderboard with an astonishing 28 new players joining the UK circuit in 2025 - even more impressive when you consider that 11 of the 25 "new" ADLG players were overseas-based visitors to these shores compared to only 1 DBA player packing that tiny army in their hand baggage and heading here.  

Aside from DBA and ADLG, the new-player count for all of the other rulesets fell year on year, and ADLG also shows a small y-o-y decline (of 1) if only UK-based players are considered.  FoG's inability to attract any new players in 2025 I believe marks the first time this has happened for any ruleset since I started collating these stats back in 2017. 

Ruleset-specific commentary

ADLG (L'Art de la Guerre)

ADLG remained the most widely played Ancients competition ruleset across the UK in 2025 with 32 events held compared to 36 in 2024. Taking the Covid-affected years out of the equation ADLG has now been competitively played by 170-200 UK-based players every year since 2019. 

69 players (36% of the total pool) played in only 1 event this year, with a further 19 only appearing twice to put an aggregate total of 46% of the UK ADLG circuit in the "casual competitor" category this year. This is lower than most other sets, but is also 1% higher than 2024, accounted for by the increased number of overseas visitors seen in 2025.

16 players accounted for 25% of all of the 696 competition entries made in 2025 (1 more player than last year), with 43 players (also up from 39 in 2024) making up half of the aggregate annual field, meaing that the UK ADLG circuit became marginally more diverse in terms of potential opponents than it was in 2024.

The 32 events held included some competitions some taking place in parallel (in different scales) at the same venue, and with date clashes as well the most events anyone could theoretically have entered in 2024 was 26. Only three players managed to make it to even half of this total, again helping ADLG to deliver potentially the most diverse mix of potential opponents of any ruleset - although someone would still have to drive the 657 miles from Plymouth to Elgin to be sure of experiencing the full benefit of that mathematically-derived diversity!

8 of the 32 ADLG competitions were held in the 25mm/28mm scale, the rest being 15mm events. The 28mm events attracted 48 different players and 118 total entries. Were these 8 larger scale tournaments to be treated as a circuit in their own right, 28mm ADLG would have seen more players, but less entries than both FoG and DBM

Four competitions this year drew in 40 or more competitors playing ADLG, each of these running parallel events in both scales with Warfare hitting an impressive 58 across 15mm & 28mm this past November - meaning this one event exceeded the full-year UK-wide pools of players for 3 of the 6 other sets. 

DBMM

The size of the DBMM player universe across all UK events remains pretty much flat this year, although still continuing the slight downward trajectory seen since the Covid hiatus.

Overseas players make up a bigger proportion of UK DBMM pool than for any other set, at almost 20% of the total player numbers - with no "overseas" player attending more than 2 events it seems unlikely that any of the players listed as "international" on the DBMM.org rankings site are in fact now UK based.

Of the 16 DBMM events to take place 9 failed to reach double figures of attendees (although three of these were pools at events where 6mm and 15mm ran in parallel). 2025 was also a year where overall participation fell noticably, with the 204 entries across the year dropping almost 10% from the 226 recorded in 2024 - following on from the previous 10%+ fall (from 263 to 226) seen between 2023-2024

6 players made up 25% of all entries, with 15 different players forming half of the aggregate field. 25 players (37%) only entered one tournament, and 37 (54%) only entered one or two events this year, although this stat is of course skewed by the large number of overseas players. This pattern is essentially unchanged from previous years

DBA

DBA has really picked up the pace in the last few years, and that storming run continued in 2025 with 75 players making up the biggest DBA circuit since I started looking at competition results back in 2016.

DBA always seems to be able to draw in new players, and 2025 has been no exception with 25 new faces appearing on the circuit for the first time (including 1 US visitor). 28 players (37% of the pool) entered only 1 event during the year, with over half of the UK's DBA players (44 players, 59%) only entering 1 or 2 competitions this year.

With all bar one of the DBA events in the calendar being one-day affairs, the logistics of "how far will I travel to play in a one-day event (and then drive home)?" is probably behind some of this particular stat's relatively high score for the UK DBA community as other circuits which run mostly with 2-day events might expect more of their attendees to stay overnight.   

6 players made up 25% of all entries, with 14 making up half of the aggregate field across the year. One player nearly completed a full sweep, attending 13 out of 14 possible events across the year - not bad for an 85 year old (or so I'm told)!

TTS! (To The Strongest!)

TTS! had a curates egg of a year, with a decline in the number of events but a slight increase in player numbers as some competitions which popped up in 2024 did not return in 2025.

The 9 events held this year averaged just over 16 participants each, with the Worlds topping the list with 32. No-one (quite) managed to attend all 9, but two players only missed out once with 8 appearances each. The 5 most active players contributing 25% of the overall entries and 13 contributing more than half that annual total.

17 players (33%) only entered one event, with 30 (60%) only entering one or two, meaning that the 5 most enthusiastic players between them appeared almost as many times as the "lest enthusiastic" 30. 

MeG  (Mortem et Gloriam)

MeG experienced a notable drop in top-line numbers in 2025 as the loss of a couple of events from the circuit, a reduction in the numbers of "new" players and lower overall attendances at the majority of events in the calendar held across 2025 delivered a player count of 65/60 (International/UK-only) - down around 20% year on year, and almost a third down from the 2022 peak where 89 players, 78 of which were UK based, appeared at a UK MeG event.  

19 players entered only one event this year, 11 of who's appearance was at one of two different events taking place in different locations on the same weekend in May! A further 10 only attended 2 events, meaning that these "occasional" players now make up the minority of the MeG circuit - a notable change from recent years where significant numbers of (usually) new, but often short-lived circuit participants had seen this group make up as much as 59% of the UK player pool

At the other end of the scale the keenest 4 MeG players on the circuit managed between them make more appearances than the least-active 32 combined, with 7 players making 1 in 4 of all aggregate entries this year, and 14 players chipping in with over 50% of  entries across the entire calendar.

All of MeG's events are now held in 15mm, with the 28mm MAGNA format not featuring on the circuit in 2025.  The event circuit is also strongly centred around Midlands, with 44% of the total attendance across the year being seen at the 6 events held in just two venues in Daventry and Derby. 

FOGAM  (Field of Glory Ancient & Medieval)

2025 has see the recent limited growth in the UK FoGAM circuit come to a grinding halt, with a few non-returnees and no new players seeing FoG slip below DBM to be the least widely played ruleset in this survey.

Attendances across 10 of the 12 events held this year all fell, with just Godendag and the FiB Team event managing to hold steady. The FiB Teams event again weighed in with the biggest attendance of the year, with 29 of the 36 UK based players taking part, followed by Warfare with 22.  

The UK calendar again saw 12 events taking place, and while no-one this year managed a full sweep of attendance, 3 players did turn up at 11/12 of the possible tournaments. 

Just 5 players made up more than 1/4 of all entries to the UK FoG circuit, with 11 players making up 50% of the aggregate field across the year. 16 players (down from 21 last year) attended at least half of the available events.

8 players only attended 1 event (21%), with 11 (29%) attending 1 or 2, the lowest percentage of "casual" participation of any ruleset in this year's survey.

DBM

Numbers for DBM again barely moved year on year, with 41 players making an appearance in 2025 compared to 38 the year before - as always, unsurprising for a circuit strongly centered around a smallish handful of clubs.  The total number of entries did however fall to 139 compared to 164 in 2024 and 166 across 2023.

Underlining that gradual tailing off, 12 DBM players only attended one event this year (up from just 7 last year), with 18 (up from 13 in 2024) only making it to two of a slightly reduced calendar of 9 events (10 in 2025). The busiest 6 players made up just over 25% of the total entry, with 12 people contributing half of the aggregate field across the year.

No-one managed a clean sweep by appearing at every single event in the year, with 14 managing to grasp at least half of the opportunities to play competitive DBM during 2025.

The Conclusion (FWIW!)

In summary as 2025 draws to a close these 7 popular Ancients rulesets have continued to see around 500 UK-based players taking part in at least one UK Ancients competition in the last 12 months. That total remains down by around 75 on the 2019 pre-Covid peak, but in line or better than most other pre-Covid years.

(Aggregated player count by year, omitting 2020 & 2021 due to Covid impact)

This year has seen most sets lose (often smaller, one day) events from their calendars, and this may have resulted in overall attendance numbers trending downward for some sets, although not to a significant extent in most cases. DBA's surge in player numbers is the notable exception, with the oldest ruleset in this sample still clearly going strong even now!

(Individual ruleset player count by year, omitting 2020 & 2021 due to Covid impact)

The closest set to making it into this analysis is still GB's Swordpoint, but with only a handful of events and round 21 players it is still some way behind even FoG in terms of popularity. 

 

With nothing else new really coming along to make a mark on the Ancients competition scene in the best part of a decade either, perhaps next year I can just do a straight cut-and-paste! 

(If there's anything I've missed that you are better sighted on than me, please don't hesitate to get in touch with the data and I'll do my best to add it back into the stats and update this post)

Who's Playing What - the 2023 (slightly delayed..) edition

Various real life things, and a ridiculous amount of actual gaming have rather gotten in the way of usual programming here on Madaxeman, however I have finally managed to run a quick update on my now-traditional full-year snapshot of the UK Ancients competition scene in 2023.

As usual I'll start with (an abridged) version of the ground rules and caveats. 

• These "2023" stats cover competitions held in the UK during 2023 for which attendance information is the public domain. In practice this means "results that appear in the rankings" plus a few more unranked events that I've picked up from keeping a weather eye on various forums and FB pages - or in some cases where I've been sent results by the people who organise events for each set.
• It only covers "competitions" - that essentially means 5+ people from multiple clubs gathering together to play over a day or two at a single venue, at the end someone gets a prize for winning, and the then the world gets to hear about it afterwards on a forum or FB group. If it's a "gathering", an "organised play" weekend, a "boot camp", a "club ladder tournament"  or a "This isn't a competition, no scores will be recorded or published"-type event it's not included, a criteria which is applied consistently across all sets.
• I've adopted a totally arbitrary cut-off of "about 30 players and half a dozen events-ish" in the calendar year for any set to be included. Of the other sets being played Swordpoint may be closest to meeting this criteria, but is still a little short at the moment.
• I'm largely guessing who is "overseas" and who is "UK". C'est la vie huh..?
• Some players appear in the stats twice because they played two rulesets over the course of 2023. This is still (just about) too low a number for me to worry about, but it does seem to be on the rise so I have noted it in a couple of places. Maybe one for next year? 

After doing this analysis annually since 2016 I think I have a pretty good handle on whats occurring and where to look to pick up the data - and the idea that in this day an age a competition could be promoted, organised, played and concluded without leaving any sort of online footprint of any kind on any of the mainstream forums used by the players of the rulesets concerned, and not be picked up in the rankings system either is rather far fetched to say the least ! So, while I would not want to promise 110% accuracy, especially where nicknames are used, or where players may have dropped out midway through an event for example, all in all it's still a pretty good bet that every UK-based "competition" that has happened for the rulesets I'm looking at here has been included. 

The other thing to bear in mind is that for all bar one of the rulesets in this analysis the total number of players falls between 30-90, so the absence (or presence) of a car-full of players turning out for a single event staged at their local club can swing almost all of these figures by as much as 5-10%. 

So, please don't read too much into any single year-on-year variation - this is all about capturing moments in time and adding them together to form a broad-brush picture over the longer term - which is why I have been collating similar stats since 2017. 

So with those qualifications out of the way, onto the 2023 data.

Total Player Numbers 

(Numbers are UK based players / UK+Overseas players): 

• ADLG    178/186  (2022: 172/185)     (L'Art de la Guerre)
• MeG       78/89 (2022: 71/76)      (Mortem et Gloriam)
• DBA       64/64        (2022: 57/58)         (De Bellis Antiquarius)
• DBMM   60/73       (2022: 69/78)         (De Bellis Magister Militum)
• TTS!       43/43        (2022: 32/33)        (To The Strongest!)
• DBM      41/42        (2022: 39/40)         (De Bellis Militarium)
• FoGAM  34/38 (2022: 34/35)        (Field of Glory Ancient & Medieval)

In "League Tables" terms therefore ADLG continues to lead the pack by some margin, with over 1 in 3 of all players in this survey taking part in at least one ADLG event in 2023, more than the next two biggest sets combined.

MeG has consolidated it's grip on 2nd place through a combination of solid growth through 2023 and a continued tailing off of the numbers playing DBMM. 

This in turn leaves DBA very much now neck and neck with DBMM in 3rd place, recording higher UK-based player numbers but unable to match DBMM's international pulling power which sees total DBMM attendances just outstrip those of DBA. 

At the other end of the table (as John Motson would say..) both FoGAM and DBM have been overtaken this year by TTS! despite small upticks for both sets, as what appears to have been a concerted effort by the TTS! community to stage more events has started to pay off with greater overall attendance figures.

%age Change 2022 vs 2023  

(UK based players / UK+Overseas players):

• TTS!        +34% / +30%
• DBA        +12% / +10%
• MeG       +10% / +17%    
• DBM       +5% / +5%
• ADLG     +3% / -%
• FoGAM   -% / +9%
• DBMM    -13% / -9%

Unsurprisingly TTS! saw the biggest %age increase in overall player numbers, with MeG and DBA both recording double-digit increases too in UK-based players. 

DBMM saw the biggest fall in player numbers, somewhat masked by an increase in overseas players heading to these shores. 

Total number of competition entries made 

• ADLG      727    (2022: 703)
• MEG        379    (2022: 338)
• DBMM    263    (2022: 291)
• DBA         220    (2022: 204)
• FOG         185    (2022: 185)
• DBM        167    (2022: 123)
• TTS          101    (2022: 57)

These figures aggregate the attendance figures for every event in the calendar for each ruleset, and so give a combined flavour of the number of events held and average attendances at each event. 

Both MeG and TTS! saw significant increases in aggregate turnout, both coming off the back of increased numbers of events in their respective calendars. 

The star performer in this bunch is however undoubtably DBM, with a 36% increase in overall number of entries across its' 11 events last year compared to the aggregate attendance across the same number of competitions in 2022. DBMM was the only set to see a decline in the total number of entries made across the year. 

New players first seen on each circuit in 2023 

(UK based players / UK+Overseas players):

• ADLG     23 / 26
• DBA        13 / 13
• TTS!        13 / 13
• MeG        10 / 15
• DBMM     6 / 6
• FoGAM    3 / 5
• DBM        2 / 2

These numbers underline the fact that the strong showings by DBA and TTS! were driven in the main by significant numbers of UK-based players joining each circuit for the first time in 2023.

All of the sets bar DBM saw around 10% of their total player numbers made up of new recruits in 2023, with MeG notably drawing in as many "first time in the UK" overseas players in 2023 than all other sets combined.  

ADLG meanwhile saw 5 of its 26 "first-timers" last year coming from the ranks of players of other rulesets, with MeG also recording 2 inbound recruits as well. These are still tiny numbers in absolute terms however, underlining how few players have been drifting between rulesets in recent years.

7 year trends in UK player numbers (omitting 2020 & 2021) 

• DBM uses July-July figures for 2015 and 2016 as these were more readily available, all other figures are calendar years.  
• 2020 and 2021 have been omitted as all circuits were dramatically curtailed by Covid in these years

The clearest trend in the period since 2015 has been ADLG's rapid replacement of FoGAM as the most widely played rule system in the UK Ancients competition scene, with ADLG first exceeding  the "100 active players in the last 12 months" benchmark in early 2016, a benchmark no other set has managed to reach since then. The last few years (Covid excepted) have seen this position solidify (ossify?) with the UK's ADLG calendar consistently witnessing more players than the next 2-3 biggest sets combined in recent years.

7 years after its' launch MeG has now doubled-down on its position at the head of the "second tier" group alongside DBA & DBMM, all of which draw somewhere between 60-80 UK-based players annually (with DBMM and MeG both adding to this through their material overseas contingents too). 

After a rather erratic start, the TTS! competition circuit is now seemingly coming up on the rails, with both of the "free" rulesets, FoG and DBM both showing stable numbers in the 30-40 range made up of a core of longstanding supporters.

Ruleset-specific commentary

ADLG (L'Art de la Guerre)

Not much has chnaged for ADLG in the last year, with again 38 events across the UK, and player numbers hovering in the 180-200 band throughout the year, as they have done ever since mid 2018.

16 players accounted for 25% of all competition entries in 2022, with 42 making up half of the aggregate annual field. The 38 events held included some competitions some taking place in parallel (in different scales) at the same venue, and with date clashes as well the most events anyone could theoretically have entered in 2022 was 32. 

Unsurprisingly no players managed to make it to even half of this total - a symptom of both ADLG's uniquely wide geographic spread of events across the UK, and the sheer number of ADLG competitions now available to enter each year across the length and breadth of the UK.  

52 players appeared at the 6 ADLG events held across Scotland in 2023, just over a dozen of whom hailed from south of the border (with a good number of the Scottish players making the reverse trip to play in England as well). 60 different players also took part in at least one of the eleven 25mm events staged (with half of these 60 only wheeling out the big toys the once in the calendar year).  Either of these "circuits with a circuit" would sit mid-table in the popularity stakes in their own right, underlining the importance of both in ADLG's UK-wide popularity. 

64 players only took part in one ADLG event in 2023, including all 8 overseas players to grace the UKL circuit last year. At 34% of the total attendance pool this is a fractionally higher "one off" figure than seen with many other sets, with a couple of events staged at extreme opposite ends of the country (Elgin and Brixham) accounting for much of this variance.

MeG  (Mortem et Gloriam)

MeG saw it's third format shift since its launch in 2016, moving from a traditional hard copy rulebook to PDF + Print on Demand formats, and this has coincided with an uptick in player numbers which has seen the UK MeG circuit hit its highest ever rolling 1-year total of unique attendees at the end of 2023. 

The number of events also surged in 2023, up to 22 from 18 in 2022. Half of the 2023 MeG calendar took place in the East Midlands, with Derby and Daventry alone playing host to 9 competitions, and both Nottingham and Burton also chipping in to help deliver more than half of MeG's aggregate attendance to venues that fall within 25 miles of Leicester Forest East Services. Knowing wargamers this may well suggest that one of the M1's better "Full English" breakfasts is on offer in the cafe at this particular motorway service station!

8 MeG players chipped in with more than 25% of the aggregate entries across the year, with 19 players making up half of the total aggregate field. Those same 8 players all managed to enter half or more of the events held in 2023, with the most dedicated MeGGer making a phenomenal 18 appearances in the calendar year, more than anyone playing in any of the other sets in this survey. 28 of the 89 players (31%) only attended one event during 2023, with 9 of these unsurprisingly being overseas players.

2023 also saw the first 28mm events using the reduced-scale MeG Magna format competitions (DBMM's and ADLG's circuits also both feature reduced-scale events) included in the stats and rankings. These two 28mm events attracted 19 different players, only one of whom (an overseas player) did not make an appearance at any of the other 15mm events across the rest of the UK circuit in 2023.

DBMM

The DBMM player universe has dipped below 80 in both of the last two years and now stands almost 25% below its 2012 peak of 97. 

In 2022 the DBMM circuit was more adversely affected by the tail end of Covid than other rulesets, with one of it's traditionally best-attended events taking place in very early in the year. Despite this Milton-Keynes based January behemoth roaring back with 38 roundabout-loving attendees in 2023, overall DBMM numbers continued to slip across the rest of the year, with total player numbers falling for the 4th (Covid excluded) year in a row.

The non-appearance of the Guilford event in 2023 undoubtably affected numbers, however attendances appear to have reduced across a range of events in the MM calendar in 2023, with only 2 events exceeding 20 entries last year. For comparison, 5 events hit this mark pre-Covid in 2019, and 4 achieved it in 2022.

7 players now make up 25% of all entries on the UK DBMM circuit, with 17 making up half of the aggregate field across the year. The maximum number of events it was possible to enter in 2023 would have been 17, and 8 players managed to attend half or more of these with the keenest two players making it to 12/17. The proportion of players who took part in just one event was 34%. 

DBA

2023 saw DBA reverse a post-Covid decline in attendee numbers, with some new events and some returning to the calendar generating the busiest year of events for DBA since 2015, helping generate a notable uptick in overall players numbers as well. 

7 players made up 25% of all entries, with 15 making up half of the aggregate field across the year. The closest anyone came to entering all 15 events was to attend 11, with only 6 players managed to turn up to over half of the full circuit this year. 

TTS! (To The Strongest!)

As has been previously noted, the TTS! community are currently making a concerted effort to promote "organised play", and this seems to have paid off in 2023 with a notable increase in overall attendee numbers - even when discounting attendees at a number of TTS! "events" in the last year held under a decidedly "non-competitive" banner, which were therefore out of scope of this analysis.

With 8 events at present spread across a map which has seen events take place as far afield as Cardiff,  Glasgow and London, the TTS! circuit still clearly has more room to grow, with just 9 people making it to more than half of the 8 competitions staged in 2023 

FOGAM  (Field of Glory Ancient & Medieval)

FoG adopted a totally free, PDF-only format for it's v4 edition at the end of 2022, and this helped bring in 3 new UK-based players in 2023, seemingly all drawn from the same Wessex club which (with the demise of the Reigate club which saw the remaining players absorbed by the "Surrey Spartans" club) is now the epicentre of the UK's FoGAM community. 

Aside from that Wessex-based influx, the total number of FoG competition players in the UK remains stable at just over 30, with the 12 events drawing an impressive average of 17 players. That equates to over half the total UK community taking part in each event, with an astonishing 31/38 taking part in the biggest competition of the year (held in... you guessed it, Wessex!).    

Just 5 players chipped in with over 25% of the aggregate entries in 2023, with 10 making up just over half of all entrants. 16 players attended more than half of the events on the circuit, with three committed FoGGers managing to take advantage of every opportunity to play offered throughout the year. 

DBM

As is now almost traditional, numbers for DBM wobbled slightly but stayed very much in line with those seen in previous years in a roster of events which continues to be concentrated in two hubs, one in Essex/Norffolk and one in the West Country. 

The 10-event UK DBM circuit had 2 ever-present players last year, with just 5 players making up over 25% of the total field across the year, and 11 making up half of the aggregate field. The calendar features a mix of singles and doubles, with some 25mm events as well. 

All bar one of the events on the circuit are stand-alone DBM-only affairs, with the competition taking place at Attack! in Devizes the only time in the calendar year that DBM players get to rub shoulders with gamers using other Ancients systems. 

The Conclusion (FWIW!)

In 2023 the 7 most popular Ancients rulesets saw 498 UK-based players and a further 34 international visitors taking part in a UK Ancients competition in 2023.

The balance in numbers between all of these rulesets continues to be broadly stable, with very little migration of players between sets happening to upend the existing picture. 

In 2023 68% of all UK competition players were also still getting their Ancients "fix" using one variant or another of Phil Barker's "DBx" paradigm, with DBA, DBM, DBMM and ADLG all very much direct descendents or successors of the original DBA which first hit the shelves some 34 years ago. Who said historical wargamers are creatures of habit eh?!  

Encouragingly however, headline numbers are still creeping ever closer back towards the pre-Covid 2019 full year count of 549 UK-based players, and are already well ahead of the equivalent 2018 year end numbers - all suggesting that ancients competition gaming remains stable, but also very much in rude health across the UK right now, no matter what form or flavour of rules you personally prefer! 

Previous Years

I've been repeating this analysis every year since 2016. 

Previous years are available here:

• 2022 Year End
• 2019 Year End
• 2018 Year End
• 2017 Year End
• 2017 Mid Year (April) 
• 2016 Mid Year (May)

Check it for Yourself!

With almost all of the information used to generate these stats being drawn from a handful of "rankings" websites it's relatively easy to eyeball the original data sources for yourself and sanity-check these stats (should you so wish). 

The main sources I have used are as follows: 

• ADLG - The BHGS Rankings Page (PDF's of year-end rankings can be found by scrolling down the page)
• DBMM - The DBMM Rankings database (select "GB" and "2023")
• MeG - The MeG Rankings at Draco Standard (this is a global ranking system including overseas events, and sometimes seems to run for more than 12 months as well, so you may need to manually exclude attendees at non-UK and non-2023 events to get to the 2023 UK-only numbers) 
• DBM - John Graham Leigh's DBM page (The DBM rankings year runs July-July, so for 2023 numbers you'll need to look at the results from individual events too)
• DBA - The Fanaticus Forum (The DBA rankings year runs November-November, so as with DBM you'll need to do a bit of a manual adjustment using individual event results to get a 2023 full-year set of stats )
• TTS! - The TTS! Forum "Events" section (No "rankings" as such, so  you'll need to comb through the results from individual events)
• FoGAM - The BHGS Rankings Page 

  

Who Played What - the 2022 Year End Edition

This week it's been too cold to go outside and spray-undercoat any new figures to add to the painting queue, so that inevitably means I have had a little time to work out how on earth to produce my once-traditional end of year snapshot of how many people have been playing each of the most widely seen rulesets on the UK Ancients competition scene in this first full post-Covid-impacted year.

As usual I'll start with the ground rules and caveats. 

These "2022" stats count players at UK events held during 2022 for which results (or runners and riders) have been  published online that I've been able to find and make sense of. Every ruleset in this list is very good at doing this with most also producing their own annual rankings as an additional reference point to double-check the data. The odd player might be missed (or included) at an individual event, especially where nicknames have been used, but other than that unless any events have somehow been publicised, organised, played  and concluded during 2022 without leaving an online footprint of any kind on any of the mainstream forums used by the players of the rulesets concerned (I mean, really...?) you can safely assume every competition that has happened is included. 

I have omitted a number of the smaller circuits, adopting an arbitrary cut-off of 30 players taking part in the calendar year for inclusion. Of the other sets being played Swordpoint appears to be closest to meeting this criteria at the moment with 25 different people taking part in the 5 events staged across 2022, so in future years it may well be added to the list.

Normally a key part of this summary is comparing attendance trends with those seen in the previous years. With organised play across the UK ending abruptly early in 2020 and only really starting up again midway through 2021 both of these years are a rather tricky to include in any comparison, especially as the different circuits were impacted in very different ways by the shutdown and restart. To keep things clean therefore I've used 2019 (the last full year of events) for the headline comparisons with 2022 - it’s not perfect, but it feels like the least-worst option for creating as close to a true like-for-like scenario as possible this year (thank you Covid..). 

Whilst some players appear in the stats twice because they played two rulesets over the course of the past year this is discounted for the analysis as numbers are too low to impact the main trends. And it's too much work to de-dupe them by name as well !

The final thing to bear in mind is that for all bar one of the rulesets in this analysis the total number of players falls between 30-70, so the absence (or presence) of as few as 3 players turning out for a single event staged at their local club can swing almost all of these figures by as much as 5-10%. A car not starting, or two-lines on the driver's Covid test one Saturday morning is all that it takes, so please don't read too much into any single year-on-year variation - this is all about capturing moments in time and adding them together to form a broad-brush picture over the longer term - which is why I have similar stats from the end of 2019, 2018, and 2017. 

So with those qualifications out of the way, onto the 2022 (and 2019) data.

Total Player Numbers 

(UK based players / UK+Overseas players): 

1. ADLG    172 / 185  (2019: 189/210)     (L'Art de la Guerre)
2. MeG       71 / 75  (2019: 62/71) *      (Mortem et Gloriam)
3. DBMM   69 / 78     (2019: 73/84)         (De Bellis Magister Militum)
4. DBA       57 / 58  (2019: 67/68)         (De Bellis Antiquarius)
5. DBM      39 / 40  (2019: 43/45)         (De Bellis Militarium)
6. FoGAM  34 / 35  (2019: 48/48) **    (Field of Glory Ancient & Medieval)
7. TTS!       32 / 33  (2019: 64/66)         (To The Strongest!)

• * Rolling 12-month attendance for MeG in 2019 peaked at 71/75 in April 2019. 
• ** Rolling 12-month attendance for FoG in 2019 peaked at 59/59 in January.

After the first full calendar year of events post-Covid ADLG has comfortably retained the top spot in terms of popularity, seeing almost 25% more UK-based competition players than the next two sets combined. MeG has in turn climbed up to second place partly as a result of DBMM dropping a handful of UK-based players compared to 2019.  

At the other end of the scale FoG has continued to shed significant numbers of players between measurement points, only avoiding becoming the least widely played set in this ranking as a consequence of TTS!'s even more dramatic fall (driven in the main by the still as-yet unresolved dateline issues around the scheduling of its biggest annual event). 

In %age terms this gives the following picture:

%age Change 2019 vs 2022  

(UK based players / UK+Overseas players):

1. MeG       +15% / +6%    ( -/-  : no change compared to 2019 peak)
2. DBMM    -5% / -7%
3. DBM       -9% / -11%
4. ADLG     -9% / -12%
5. DBA        -15% / -15%
6. FoGAM   -28% / -27% (-42%/-42% : compared to 2019 peak)
7. TTS!        -50% / -50%

All sets bar MeG saw player numbers decline to some degree between 2019-2022, with even MeG's apparent year-on-year increase not quite managing to exceed that systems' previous high water mark for participation reached in April 2019 (after which the rolling 12-month player count began to tail off towards the end of that same year). 

FoG's and TTS!'s relative declines stand out as the clear outliers in this list suggesting more was going on with both of them here than just the mild post-Covid hangover that most other sets seemed to be experiencing.

Total number of entries made 

1. ADLG      703    (2019: 699)
2. MEG        338    (298)
3. DBMM    291    (311)
4. DBA         204   (189)
5. FOG         185    (221)
6. DBM        123    (143)
7. TTS          57     (92)

These figures are driven by a number of factors (most notably number of events held) in addition to the number of active players on each circuit, with both ADLG and MeG registering increases in the number of entries made to events on their respective circuits across the year.  

%age of players who appeared in 2019 but not 2022 

(UK based players / UK+Overseas players):

1. TTS!          70%                  (45 / 45)
2. DBA          37% (25 / 25)
3. FoGAM     33% (16 / 16)
4. DBM         33% (13 / 13)
5. ADLG       32% (60 / 76)   
6. MeG          31% (19 / 26)
7. DBMM     23% (17 / 18)

Pretty much all of the rulesets saw close to 1 in 3 players active on each circuit in 2019 fail to reappear in 2022. This sounds dramatic, but taking into account these stats span a 3-year period this level of churn is probably to be expected, even had Covid not intervened. 

As a comparison, the 2018-19 equivalent stats showed most  sets experiencing annual churn rates in the mid 20%'s across that one-year timeframe. 

Current Players first appearing post-2019 

(UK based players / UK+Overseas players):

1. ADLG     41 / 48
2. MeG        25 / 28
3. DBA        13 / 13
4. TTS!        12 / 12
5. DBM        6 / 6
6. DBMM     6 / 6
7. FoGAM    1 / 2

These figures only include players taking part in at least one event in 2022. 

Total UK Player numbers by system in 2022, new and returning 

A very healthy 104 players across the UK have used the opportunity of the Covid-imposed break to take up a new system game and joined a new competition circuit over the timeframe covered by these stats, with ADLG chipping in the most new recruits with over 40 new players picking up the (new v4) rulebook post-Covid to play at an event in 2022, a feat achieved achieved every (non-Covid) year since the ADLG ruleset first hit UK shores back in 2015. 

MeG's heavily promoted PSC-produced hardback edition helped draw in 25 new UK players to its circuit post-Covid, an increase of 12 on the number of new MeG recruits in 2019. At the other end of the scale FoG's lone new UK-based player in 2022 joined a circuit where 33 of the other 35 UK-based players were already played FoG competitively prior to the adoption of FoGAMv3 back in 2018.

6 year trends in UK player numbers (omitting 2020 & 2021) 

* DBM uses July-July figures for 2015 and 2016 as these were readily available, all other figures are calendar year.  

The clearest trend in the period since 2015 has been ADLG's rapid rise to replace FoGAM as the most popular and widely played rule system in the UK Ancients competition scene. In the 6 years since its launch MeG has managed to establish itself in the "second tier" group, all of which consistently draw somewhere between 60-80 players annually, with FoG now joining DBM in what might best be described as the "legacy" category alongside the small but loyal DBM community, each system being  almost exclusively centred around a small number of clubs. 

Ruleset-specific commentary

ADLG (L'Art de la Guerre)

Coming out of the other side of Covid ADLG has retained its place as the most widely played ruleset by some margin with a record 38 events (yes..) held in the UK during the year. 7 years after its first appearance annual UK player numbers for ADLG appear to have finally topped out to settle somewhere in the 170-190 players band, having first attained this level in mid 2018. 

The huge global following for ADLG (over 600 players took part in competitions held outside the UK in 2022) means the UK's ADLG circuit has always enjoyed a more international flavour than that of any other system, with overseas visitors uaually adding in 20+ extra players over and above UK-based curcuit members each year, pushing the total UK pool close to or just above the 200 mark.

The period 2019-2022 witnessed the launch of ADLG v4 (which English-language distributor North Star called this their biggest Ancients ruleset launch since WAB!), a change which seems to have barely moved the dial in terms of overall ADLG competition attendance.  The 2019-22 net fall in player numbers of 17 can almost entirely be accounted for by the absence this year of 10 players whose sole 2019 outing was at the geographically challenging Elgin one-day event (which did not take place in 2022, but is slated to return next May) and the loss of 4 players who have sadly passed away in the intervening period. 

The absence of the Elgin event also contributed to the proportion of players taking part in just one event dropping materially from 38% down to 30% - another indicator of the maturing of the ADLG player pool perhaps, and also a trend which was seen across most rulesets in this same period as those players who were keen to do so took full advantage of the opportunities presented to get out and play again after Covid.

15 players accounted for 25% of all competition entries in 2022 with 39 making up half of the aggregate annual field. The 38 events held included some competitions some taking place in parallel (in different scales) at the same venue, and with date clashes as well the most events anyone could theoretically have entered in 2022 was 29. Only 2 players managed to make it to even half of this total, giving ADLG players the most diverse mix of potential opponents at any given event seen for any other ruleset.

309 different UK-based players have now taken part in a UK ADLG event since the circuit started in 2015, 56% of whom were actively playing in 2022. In that time 53 overseas-based players have also take part in at least one event on UK shores.  

DBMM

The size of the DBMM player universe across all UK events slipped only a little in 2022 compared to 2019, as the UK circuit slowly ground fully into gear again after the Covid break. Even with a 2-year gap churn remained relatively low with the strong club-based support for DBMM seeing the dropouts largely offset by a trickle of new players and the reappearance of several others who had skipped 2019. 

Total DBMM player numbers have usually hovered in the mid 80's or 90's over the past decade, with 2022 marking the first time DBMM has slipped below 70 UK players since 2008 (according to the excellent rankings site at dbmm.org.uk). However, the fact that the Milton Keynes 1-dayer (traditionally the largest event in the MM calendar) took place in January of this year at a time when much of the UK was operating somewhat under the shadow of Covid, and as a result recorded a dozen fewer attendees than 2019, is almost certainly the key factor in the shortfall.

8 players made up 25% of all entries, with 19 making up half of the aggregate field. The maximum number of events it was possible to enter in 2022 was 16, and 8 players managed to attend half or more of these with the keenest player making it to an impressive 12/16. The proportion of players who took part in just one event also fell slightly to 31% (from 36% in 2019). 

DBA

DBA has seen a decline in unique attendees post Covid, despite staging a 14 events - the busiest calendar for DBA since 2015 - with an also 2015 record-matching average attendance of 16. DBA has historically seen relatively high rates of churn with many players joining and leaving the circuit each year, and that continued with 13 new faces in 2022. With average attendances holding strong,  the %age of "one event only" attendees unsurprisingly fell to just 19, one of the lowest ratios for DBA in recent years.  

6 players made up 15% of all entries, with 14 making up half of the aggregate field across the year. The closest anyone came to entering all 14 events was to attend 12, although 8 players managed to turn up to half of the full circuit this year. Since I started collating these stats in 2015 (with the kind assistance of Dennis Grey and the DBA rankings team), 126 individuals have attended at least 1 DBA event in the UK, 45% of whom played in 2022. 

TTS! (To The Strongest!)

TTS! had its best year even in 2019, and so comparisons with 2019 are always likely to be somewhat unflattering, especially as the biggest event by far in the traditional TTS! calendar (the "Worlds" at Chalgrove) has yet to really get back into a predictable and stable dateline post-Covid, and Glasgow is yet to return at all. Add to that a new version of TTS! in the pipeline and 2022 was always likely to be a challenging year for numbers.

20 of the TTS! players entered only 1 event in the year, with 6 people making it to more than half of the 5 competitions staged, one of whom attended all 5. Since the start of 2018 (when I started collecting data on TTS! events) there have been 98 different players who have attended at least 1 UK event. 

MeG  (Mortem et Gloriam)

The period 2019-2022 witnessed the extensively promoted launch of PSC's hardback MeG rulebook (replacing the "pizza box" ring-bound and much-updated set of 2016-19), and this new format and extra publicity saw the number of UK-based players taking part in one of the 18 MeG events held across the UK in 2022 increase by 9 over the 2019 year-end total, coincidentally exactly matching MeG's previous high water mark of 71 active players (which the system attained over the 12 months prior to April 2019). 

The 25 new players drawn in more than offset the 19 who didn't elect to continue their competitive MeG careers into the hardback rulebook era, with just over 1/3 of these new faces being recognisable from the UK Flames of War circuit - a pathway into MeG which has now been trodden by more than half of the current crop of MeG players.

Just 7 players chipped in with more than 25% of the aggregate entries across the 18 MeG events held during 2022, with 18 players making up half of the total aggregate field. Those same 7 players all managed to enter half or more of the 18 events held, with the most dedicated MeGGer missing out on only one competition in the full calendar year.  17 of the 71 UK-based players only attended one event during 2022 - achieving between them the same number of competition entries as the most active single player!

In 2023 MeG will again see a significant update and change of format, moving away from the PSC-distributed hard copy rulebook to a direct-sold PDF with an option for print on demand. With a series of events using some of MeG's various "lite" rule variants also now being promoted for next year it will be interesting to see how this revised edition, new distribution model, and the new formats for competitive play impact competition attendance across 2023.

Since the first UK MeG event held at the BHGS Challenge in 2016 121 UK-based different players have entered at least one competition in the UK (59% of whom were still playing this year), and they have been joined by 15 overseas-based players in that time as well.

FOGAM  (Field of Glory Ancient & Medieval)

2022 saw a further decline in the AM circuit, with almost 1 in 3 players who played in 2019 not returning to FoG post-Covid as part of a competition circuit that also reduced from 14 to 11 events in the year.  

Just 5 players chipped in with 28% of the aggregate entries on the 2022 FoGAM circuit with 10 making up just over half of all entrants. 16 players attended more than half of the events on the circuit, with two committed FoGGers managing to take advantage of every opportunity to play offered throughout the year. FoG has just adopted a totally free, PDF-only approach for its latest v4 edition as of the end of 2022, and so it will be interesting to see if the version change and new free distribution model has a positive impact on player numbers across 2023.

Of those who have departed the FoG ranks since the end of 2019, 3 now play ADLG, one plays DBMM and one currently plays DBA, the rest not appearing in any other data set. Since January 2017 (when I first started compiling FoG stats) 97 UK players have taken part in at least one FoGAM event, 35% of whom are still playing. 

DBM

Numbers for DBM wobbled slightly between 2019-2022, off the back of a record rise (of +6) in 2018-19, meaning that with some lapsed returnees and a few new players at the events held in 2021 the year on year fluctuations in the DBM figures remain very much in line with those seen in more normal times - unsurprising for a circuit strongly centered around a handful of local clubs.

10 DBM players only attended one event this year, with just 5 players making up 25% of the total entry across the year and a dozen making up half of the aggregate field. One player managed to get to 8 of the 9 events held, with 8 grasping more than half of the opportunities to play DBM afforded to them during 2022.

 Since I started compiling DBM attendance stats at the start of 2017 there have been 59 different players who have taken part in at least one event. 

The Conclusion (FWIW!)

In summary as 2022  draws to a close these 7 popular Ancients rulesets have attracted 474 UK-based players and a further 30 international visitors to make 504 different players in total taking part in a UK Ancients competition in the last 12 months. 

That total is 76 down on the 2019 full year UK player count. Even taking into account the fact TTS! and FoGAM are responsible for 2/3 of that shortfall (both sets seemingly experiencing unique, and not entirely Covid-driven factors influencing player numbers) it appears that there is still a limited degree of "residual hangover" from the Covid hiatus of 2020-21 affecting player turnout at competitions across the UK in 2022. 

Taking those two sets out of the equation a circa 5% fall in unique attendees in this first full post-Covid year is probably not as significant as many might have feared or indeed expected. 

Covid may now seem a long time ago, but we were in semi-lockdown as recently as last Christmas, meaning those events held in the first couple of months of 2022 were being planned and promoted very much under the shadow of Covid, so 2022 was by no means a completely year free of its influence.

My suspicion ("hope"?) is therefore that once each circuit has enjoyed another full, uninterrupted year there is every chance we will be completely back to "normal" again - provided there are no more pandemics of course…. 

(and don't forget, I have similar stats from the end of 2019, 2018, and 2017, as well as an immediately post-lockdown report compiled earlier this year)