Who Played What? - the 2024 Edition

 

With Storm Darragh having been battering the country, what better time to crack open an early bottle of egg-nog and play with some spreadsheets to churn out another edition of my reasonably regular end of year update on competition attendances across a number of widely played Ancients 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 2024 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 2024 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 30-80, 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 2022, 2019, 2018, and 2017. 

So with those qualifications out of the way, onto the 2024 data.

Total Player Numbers 

(UK based players / UK+Overseas players): 

1. ADLG    172 / 184       (2023: 178/186)     (L'Art de la Guerre)
2. MeG       77 / 82           (2023: 78/87)         (Mortem et Gloriam)
3. DBA       65 / 67          (2023: 64/64)         (De Bellis Antiquarius)
4. DBMM   57 / 71          (2023  : 59/73)       (De Bellis Magister Militum)
5. TTS!      55 / 55         (2023: 52/52)      (To The Strongest!)
6. FoGAM  41 /41           (2023: 35/39)         (Field of Glory Ancient & Medieval)
7. DBM      37 / 38           (2023: 40/41)         (De Bellis Militarium)

ADLG has again comfortably retained the top spot in terms of popularity, seeing almost 20% more UK-based competition players than the next two sets combined. MeG has retained second place, and a resurgent DBA has laid claim to third place, moving ahead of what is now a fairly static DBMM figure, with TTS! now only a gnats todger behind.

At the other end of the scale the two "free" sets, FoG and DBM are still locked together with around 40 players per year each - less players than attend some of the larger individual events in the calendar for other sets.

This gives an on-trend total of 504 UK-based players across these 7 rulesets, almost bang-on the 2023 total of 496.  This rises to 538 including overseas entrants, compared to 532 in 2023.   

Total number of entries made 

1. ADLG      729    (2023: 727)
2. MEG        326    (381)
3. DBMM    226    (263)
4. DBA         241   (220)
5. FOG         240    (204)
6. TTS          171     (100) 
7. DBM        164    (166)

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, both negative and positive. 

Of the fallers, the MeG circuit lost a handful of smallish 1-day events from its calendar this year, with 19 events running in 2024 compared to 22 last year. Likewise DBMM's decline in participation coincided with the calendar being shortened by 2 events compared to 2023. 

TTS! in comparison added 4 new competitions this year, going from 8 to 12 at the same time as seeing participation increase at their existing events too.  FoG delivered a fairly steep rise in aggregate participation off the back of an unchanged calendar, and DBA actually managed to record a solid increase in numbers while running 1 less event than in 2023!  

New to Each Circuit this year

(UK based players / UK+Overseas players):

1. TTS!        19 / 19
2. MeG        16 / 16
3. ADLG     15 / 20
4. DBA        15 / 17
5. DBM        3 / 3
6. DBMM     3 / 3
7. FoGAM    2 / 2 

A very marked split can be seen between "active" and "legacy" rulesets in terms of ability to attract new players to the competition circuit this year, with the newest set on the list, TTS! heading the leaderboard in terms oof new UK-based recruits this year.

The new-player count for TTS! was however matched by the number of non-returnees, generating almost 40% churn among the player base year on year. Both DBA & MeG also saw a similar outcome, with churn levels in the region of 20-25% of what were essentially flat player numbers across 2023-24.  Conversely DBM, DBMM, FoG and ADLG all saw their churn levels running at 10% or less, although across rather differently scaled baselines. 

Ruleset-specific commentary

ADLG (L'Art de la Guerre)

ADLG remained the most widely played Ancients competition ruleset across the UK in 2024, even after losing 2 competitions (and 6 players) from the circuit compared to the previous year. Taking the Covid-affected years out of the equation, ADLG has now been competitively played by 170-180 UK-based players every year since 2019. 

The 12 international players who came to the UK to play ADLG last year were again within the now-normal range, which has seen anywhere between 8-23 overseas visitors coming to the UK in any given year since ADLG first started being played here. This year 20 first-timers appeared on the UK ADLG circuit, with 5 of these also being overseas-based.

58 players (33% of the total pool) played in only 1 event this year, with a further 25 only appearing twice to put an aggregate total of 45% of the UK ADLG circuit in the "casual competitor" category this year - including all of the overseas visitors. Looking just at  UK players nudges these percentages down a little to 28% and 42% respectively.

15 players accounted for 25% of all of the 729 competition entries made in 2024 (a total essentially unchanged from the 727 recorded across 2023), with 39 players making up half of the aggregate annual field.

The 36 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 30 - still more than 50% greater than any other circuit. Only 2 players managed to make it to even half of this total, giving ADLG players potentially the most diverse mix of potential opponents at any given event compared to any other ruleset.

10 of the 36 ADLG competitions were held in the 25mm/28mm scale, the rest being 15mm events. Were these 10 larger scale tournaments to be treated as a circuit in their own right, 28mm ADLG would be a bigger circuit than both FoG and DBM, with 55 ADLG players (52 UK based) wheeling out their big toys at least once per year.

Three 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 50 across 15mm & 28mm this past November - also exceeding the full-year UK-wide pools of players for at least 2 other sets. 

DBMM

The size of the DBMM player universe across all UK events is essentially unchanged between 23-24, leaving the UK-based total a little short of 60, locking-in a recent fall in numbers that coincided broadly with the Covid break, before which annual turnout was usually in the 70's-80's.

With 14 overseas players in 2024 DBMM also sneaked ahead of ADLG to record the most international competitors of any ruleset last year - although it is possible that some of the players listed as "international" on the DBMM.org rankings site are in fact now UK based.

Of the 17 DBMM events to take place, 7 failed to reach double figures of attendees (although combining the two parallel periods at Roll Call changes this to 6 events out of 16), which contributed to an overall 14% tailing off in the total number of entries across the year, from 263 last year down to 226 in 2024.

6 players made up 25% of all entries, with 16 making up half of the aggregate field. 26 players (37%) only entered one tournament, and 53% only entering one or two events this year, although this was skewed by the large number of overseas players. Taking all overseas players out of the equation changes these figures to 30% and 47% respectively, marking very little actual change from prior years.

3 new players joined the MM-playing ranks this year, joined by a number of returnees - one who had previously last entered a competition way back in 2011!

DBA

DBA has really picked up the pace in the last couple of years, and with 67 players across 14 events is enjoying having the biggest pool of players since I started looking at competition results back in 2016.

DBA always seems to be able to draw in new players, and 2024 has been no exception with 17 new faces appearing on the circuit for the first time (including 2 visitors from Australia - presumably packing their DBA armies in hand luggage!) to a calendar of events where the average attendance was also a healthy 17.

26 players (39% of the pool) entered only 1 event during the year, with well over half of the UK's DBA players (41 players, 61%) only entering 1 or 2 competitions this year - the highest proportion for any ruleset in this survey. 

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 - the two antipodean tourists excepted of course - as other circuits which run mostly with 2-day events might expect more of their attehndees to stay overnight.   

7 players made up 25% of all entries, with 16 making up half of the aggregate field across the year, with closest anyone came to entering all 14 events being the 4 players who all made it to 10 events each.

TTS! (To The Strongest!)

TTS! greatly expanded the number of events held this year, with a number of "non-competition" events also taking place (which are excluded from these stats to ensure consistency of data sources across all 7 sets).

The 12 events held this year averaged just over 14 participants each, with the calendar-opener in Cardiff topping the list with 22. No-one (quite) managed to attend all 12, but three players got into double figures of attendance, contributing to the 6 most active players contributing 25% of the overall entries and 13 contributing more than half that annual total.

19 players (34%) only entered one event, with 30 (54%) only entering one or two, meaning that the 5 most enthusiastic players between them appeared as many times as the "lest enthusiastic" 30. 

The engagement levels of the 19 new TTS! competitors varied substantially, with more than half of them turning out to at least 2 events, and three of them entering enough comps to make it into the "top 10" of most active TTS! players in the calendar year - quite an unusual pattern compared to the other sets in this survey, where almost all "new" players only make it to one or (at best) two events in their first year.

The 12 event circuit is currently rather "M4/M3 Corridor-ish" focused, with events from London via Bristol and through to Cardiff making up the majority of the calendar. Britcon in Nottingham (now Leicester from 2024) beiing the most northerly destination by quite some margin. 

MeG  (Mortem et Gloriam)

MeG moved away from using a PSC-produced hardback rulebook to a print on demand/PDF distribution model early in 2023, which coincided with UK player numbers rising from 71 to a record 78, and that total was almost matched again in 2024 with 77 UK-based players being seen in the MeG circuit of 19 competitions. A fall in the number of overseas players heading to these shores however meant that overall player numbers fell fractionally from 87 last year to 82 in 2024. 

16 players entered a UK MeG event for the first time in 2024, again almost exactly matching the 15 who debuted in 2023. Last year however 5 of the 15 new players were from overseas, whereas all of the new faces in 16 hailed from these shores, 9 making their first appearances at a single event (one would presume hosted at their local club?).

32 players entered only one event (including 15 of the 16 new faces and ), with a further 16 entering two these 48 ‘least committed’ attendees make up (at 59%) a clear majority of the total pool of UK MeG players this year.  Excluding the 5 overseas players, 43 of 77 UK-based players (56%) still end up in this "casual" category this year.

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 48 combined, with 7 players making up 1/4 of the aggregate entries this year, and 15 players chipping in with over 50% of  entries across the entire calendar.

The polarization into “uber-keen” and “casual” players on the MeG circuit seems to have increased over the last few years, with “single event” player numbers being just 20 in 2022, 25 last year, and now 32 in 2024. Considering just the UK-based players (as overseas players are more likely to attend just one event) this trend becomes even more pronounced, with “one event” player numbers increasing by more than 2/3, up from 17 in 2022 to the 29 recorded in the last 12 months.

Almost all of MeG's events are held in 15mm, with two competitions in 2024 featuring the 28mm MAGNA format (one as part of a team event where 1 player per 3-person team played 28mm MAGNA). In total 12 different players used a MAGNA 28mm army in competitive play this year, with all bar one of these dozen also playing in at least one other 15mm event elsewhere as well.

FOGAM  (Field of Glory Ancient & Medieval)

2024 has witnessed a bit of a renewal for the UK FoGAM circuit, with the 41, all-UK participants marking the highest annual turnout in some years (following on from the rules moving to a free, PDF distribution model in 2022) as this year 2 new players and 4 returnees (who had not played in 2023) more than made up for the absence of any foreign competitors visiting UK shores this year.

Average attendances were also up by a whopping 17%, with a total aggregate entry across the year of 240 (compared to 204 in 2023) boosting turnout from 17 to 20 at each event, with the FiB Teams event again weighing in with the biggest attendance of the year of 31 different players. .  

The UK calendar was stable again with 12 events taking place, and while no-one this year managed a full sweep of attendance, 7 players did turn up at 11/12 of the possible tournaments. Unsurprisingly then, any 6 of these would make up more than 1/4 of all entries to the UK FoG circuit, with 12 players making up 50% of the aggregate field across the year and 21 players (more than half the total pool) attending at least half of the available events.

7 players only attended 1 event (17%), with 10 (24%) attending 1 or 2, the lowest percentage of "casual" participation of any ruleset in this year's survey.

This low "casual player" percentage in part may be due to the increasing geographic concentration of FoG events, with only two of the dozen FoG competitions across the UK now taking place north of Watford.  This Southern bias also no doubt helps the cadre of FoG players who's other main hobby is being "Professional Northerners" to get in some very consistent and top quality whingeing about the "shocking price of a pint" in almost every month of the FoG year.

DBM

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

7 DBM players only attended one event this year (18% of the UK pool), with 13 (34%) only making it to 1 or 2 of the regular schedule of 10 competitions. With 164 entries across the year, the busiest 5 players again made up 25% of the total entry, with 11 contributing half of the aggregate field.

One player managed a clean sweep, appearing at every single event in the year, with 17 (almost half the field) managing to grasp at least half of the opportunities to play competitive DBM during 2024.

DBM is played in both 15mm and 28mm, with 3 of the 10 events being  held using bigger figures, which saw 18 of the 38 UK circuit players taking part.

 The Conclusion (FWIW!)

In summary as 2024 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 pre-Covid numbers.

There have been no really seismic shifts in relative popularity between any of the rulesets in 2024, and very few changes in any other metric either, meaning that we now seem to be in a very stable period with all of these sets being well into their 2nd, 3rd, 4th (or even further!) iterations and editions. With nothing 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)

Competition Ancients in the UK - The state of play, 1 year on

Almost a year ago I wrote a blog post on the relative popularity of various "competition" Ancients sets in the UK, which, unusually for this sort of thing was based on actual analysis of real numbers rather than just a subjective TMP-esque mumble of personal preference and "down my club we think this...".

At the time, FoG Ancients was the largest set by some distance but had declined from it's peak of a few years previous, the popularity of DBMM had been flat for some time and a new set L'Art de la Guerre (which you'll have seen on this site no doubt!) was just finishing its first full year of being played in the UK.

Well, how does that all look now, and what's changed in the UK competition scene?

DBMM

A year ago it proved a little tricky compiling accurate data for the numbers of entries for DBMM events, however since then the truly excellent DBMM rankings website at http://partridges.org.uk/rankings/ has been revitalised and updated and seems to have gotten back on top of capturing pretty much everything that happens in the UK DBMM-wise.

Last time around the total number of DBMM competition entrants in the previous year stood at somewhere around 90 players - including 11 based overseas - entering 17 different events (counting those events with both 25mm and 15mm periods as one).  The total number of entries stood at 326, or 314 excluding the overseas players

In the last 12 months that number hasn't really changed appreciably, with 17 events again making up the calendar featuring 84 different players. This year just 5 players based overseas have played in UK events basically representing a smaller Irish contingent at Britcon 2016, leaving a UK-based pool of 79 active players - exactly the same as a year ago. The total number of event entries was 296, down fractionally on the prior year.

The mix of "core" and "occasional" players is also a pretty much the same, with 17 players (21%) making up half of all event entries across the year (compared to 18-20 last year).

The number of UK-based players taking part in just one event has remained about the same, with 27 this year vs 25-30 last time around. 4 overseas players also took part in just one event in the last year.

Of the 27 UK-based "unique" players, 13 of them appeared at the Milton Keynes 1-day event - the biggest single pool event in the calendar with 33 players - highlighting the continuing importance of the Milton Keynes club to the DBMM community in the UK.  A new 2-day event held in Guildford also was added to the DBMM calendar in the past 12 months, drawing another large field of 18 players, of which 4 were also "uniques".

When Milton Keynes is combined with the 5 rounds of the Northern League and the 1-day event in Central London, one-day events make up almost half of all DBMM events staged across the year, contribute over 1/4 of all event entries (86), and are the only places you will come across players representing over a quarter of the entire UK player pool.

This period represented the year immediately following the introduction of a new version of DBMM and also a new set of lists - however with no appreciable change in player numbers or participation levels in this period it's hard to say whether this has helped or hindered the DBMM community either way.

That is not to say that over the past 5 years the DBMM community hasn't seem any churn of players coming in and out - far from it as this table shows:

	Current	2016	2015	2014	2013	2012
Total Players	84	82	83	92	96	97
New this year	6	19	9	14	11	N/A
Did not return	N/A	4	20	18	18	12

• New this year means players who did not appear in a tournament in the previous year
• Did not return means players who did not appear in a tournament in the following year

Consistently more players have dropped out of competition DBMM every year for the last 5 years than have taken it up as a competition game, however most of this churn is at the lower end of the "enthusiasm" grading - for core competition players what is clear is that the DBMM community is very, very stable.

To illustrate this more clearly I was able to create the following graphic by ranking players by "number of events participated in" for each of the last 5 years, and then colour-coding the placings into 20-wide bands (1-20, 21-40, 41-60 etc). The paler the cell, the more active the player.

Each row represents a different player, and each number represents where the player would rank in term of "number of events entered" for each year.  In this graphic, "Player 1" - the most active player in the year to date - has also been the most active player in 2016 and 2015, and was the 2nd most active player in 2013 and 2012. Quite what happened in 2014 is a mystery....but I guess Arsene Wenger would still consider 4th to be a successful year too!

With the banding of colours very consistent across the years, the graphic highlights how the 20 most active current players have also been the most active players every year for pretty much the whole of the last 5 years.
By the time you get outside the 'top 40' for any given year the number of events entered falls away to just 1 or 2, so it is probably fair to say that the national competition scene is essentially made up of the top 40 or so active players. Only 5 "new" players have picked up DBMM enthusiastically enough to join this core "active" group since 2012, and all are still found at the lower end of the "Top 40" participation chart.


FoGAM

In May 2016 FoGAM was the biggest ancients set by some margin, with 140 players taking part in 16 events and making a total of 422 entries between them.

In the past 12 months these stats have seen a significant change, with the total number of active players falling by almost 1/3 to just 97, including just three overseas players.  The total number of event entries has also unsurprisingly declined by a similar amount, falling from 422 to 308, leaving FoGAM only now marginally larger than DBMM in the UK.

Of these 97 active players, 40 were "uniques" who entered just one event during the course of the year and a further 17 entered just two meaning just over half of the player pool are currently "occasional" players.

Unlike DBMM, the FoGAM circuit doesn't have a "Milton Keynes One-Dayer" event driving up the number of "unique" competition players and overall player numbers, with the Schiltron competition in Scotland contributing the most FoGAM "uniques" with 7.

21 FoGAM players between them made up just over half of all event entries, entering more than 7 events each throughout the year - the same as a year ago. This core group represent an identical proportion of the (smaller) overall player pool compared to a year ago, and the same proportion as seen in DBMM too.

A year ago FoGAM was already clearly on a downward trajectory from its peak back in 2012 of 250+ active players, and from these stats this trend has clearly continued.

This table shows overall player numbers in the last 5 years:

	Current	2016	2015	2014	2013	2012
Total Players in UK Competitions	93	137	156	193	235	250
New to the circuit this year	3	9	16	31	42	N/A
Did not return after this year	N/A	49	41	59	81	59

• New this year means players who have not previously appeared in any tournament in any previous year in the period 2012-17
• Did not return means players who did not appear in a tournament in the following year

Over the past 5 years FoGAM has seen a significant shedding of players, with very few new players joining the circuit - unsurprisingly this trend really gained pace in the years immediately after the debacle of the initially non-printed V2.0. With the rules now hard to come by, the conveyor-belt of new players has largely dried up. This also means that more new players have picked up DBMM (competitively) than FoGAM  in the last 3 years, by 34 to 28 - an effect largely attributable to the impact of the Milton Keynes 1-dayer (which is strongly attended by players from Milton Keynes club where DBMM is the dominant ancients ruleset) on the DBMM circuit stats.

I've also pulled together a similar graphic to the DBMM one to show how dynamic (or static) the ranking by "number of events participated in" has been over the last 5 years. Because FoGAM has a bigger pool, I have banded the colour-coding into 30-wide bands (1-30, 31-60, 61-90 etc), again with paler cell meaning more active the players.

Each row represents a different player, and each number represents where the player would rank in term of "number of events entered" for each year.  In this graphic, "Player 1" - the most active player in the year to date - has been creeping up the activity rankings steadily over the past 5 years, having only been the also been the 12th most active player in 2012.  Once you get outside the Top 30, players are taking part in 3 or less events per year, and anyone outside the Top 60 is generally only entering 1 event.

The Top 30 most active players have, like in DBMM but with a handful of notable exceptions mostly been the Top 30 players throughout the last 5 years, but the amount of new blood coming full-throttle into the UK competition scene is also greater than seen for DBMM - possibly showing again the distorting effect of the hyper-local Milton Keynes 1-dayer and Northern league attendances on the stats for the DBMM competition circuit.

The core group of FoGAM players appear to still be just as active as they ever were however, and with every event on the circuit being a two-day affair the level of commitment by the active player group is still pretty strong.

Quite how this will be impacted by the arrival of yet another new edition is still to be seen - if the DBMM experience is anything to go by, the answer is probably "not a lot", but the FoGAM experience might suggest otherwise.

L'Art de la Guerre

A year ago ADLG was very much the new kid on the block, with only 8 events having taken place in the first year of the ruleset appearing at UK competitions, at which 84 players featured making just 136 entries between them.

12 months on and the picture is rather different - in the last 12 months 18 separate events have been staged, with 122 players taking part making 331 entries in total - giving ADLG the largest calendar of UK events, largest active played pool and largest number of event entries of any mainstream mass-battle ancients set in the UK today. With a large international player community it is also perhaps not surprising that more overseas players have taken part in UK ADLG events (7) this year than for any other ruleset as well.

The shorter game-time of ADLG makes it especially suitable for 1-day events, with three games possible in one day and so unsurprisingly the UK ADLG calendar currently includes 8 one-day competitions, one more than those currently staged by the DBMM circuit and with only 1 ADLG round of the 5-round Northern League included in this count compared to 5 for DBMM.

25 players make up half of all competition entries - perhaps weirdly, again an identical proportion to that seen for the other two rulesets - with 60 players having only taken part in one event across the year.

The pattern of appearance of "uniques" in ADLG is more akin to that seen for FoGAM than for DBMM, with no stand-out event contributing such a significant proportion of "uniques". This total of 60 "uniques" is still materially higher than in DBMM or FoGAM, but is not entirely unexpected given that ADLG numbers are still growing year-on-year.

The recently-held Roll Call has been the single biggest contributor with 11 new ADLG players appearing there for the first time followed by 7 at the inaugural round of the Northern League and a further 7 appearing at the only event held in Scotland in the past year, Sighn-Dubh.

Central London Wargames Club is a particular hotbed of ADLG and has hosted two 1-day events in the past 12 months and this alone could reasonably be expected to skew these figures. However out of the 122 players currently in the UK pool, only 8 are CLWC club members who's appearance in the rankings is attributable to these two events alone. This means that CLWC's two ADLG events are making a smaller contribution to the ADLG player pool than MKWS' 1-day DBMM event makes to the size of the UK DBMM player pool.

One other notable aspect of the ADLG circuit is the large number of 25/28mm events being staged. The "big toys" format had nearly died out in the UK for most of the other rulesets, with at best 1 or 2 events having a sub-tournament alongside a larger 15mm competition, but ADLG seems to have captured the imagination of players with 25mm armies, presumably because the lower unit count makes them easier to collect and paint, and also means the table is less cluttered than for other mass-battle 25mm sets. As many as half a dozen of the ADLG events held in the past 12 months have been in 25mm scale.

Other Rulesets 

A year ago I also looked at DBM and DBA - both were smaller player pools and circuits than any of the above sets, with around 50 players each and 8-12 events staged. Looking at the tournament listings for both sets, they appear to be relatively unchanged and so it's fair to assume that with no major upheavals in either community both are doing much the same as before.

Mortem et Gloriam (MeG) is this year's new kid on the block, having had it's first (technically a "playtest") event at the BHGS Challenge last June and so is coming up to close on a full year of events.

So far there have been 5 MeG events staged - 3 singles, 2 doubles - all held as part of existing multi-ruleset competitions, attracting a total of 31 different players, 13 of whom have appeared only once.

The total number of competition entries so far has been just 68 (less than half the total racked up in the first full year of ADLG) with the 8 players who took part in last years initial "playtest" event making up almost half (29) of those entries. This picture will continue to change with 8 new players already signed up to play at either Britcon or The BHGS Challenge later this year (but a similar number from this year's events not yet signed up to return). Basically it is still very early days to draw any meaningful conclusions as to what impact, if any, MeG might have on the mainstream of the UK mass-battle Ancients competition scene.

Swordpoint is the new mass-battle set from Gripping Beast launched at the end of 2016, and from what is posted on their forum it looks like they have held 2 events so far, with 18-20 players at each. There are at least 2-3 more events planned for the rest of the year. Currently the player pool stands at 30 unique players after 2 events - the same size as MeG already - with only 8 of the 30 having done both events. The pool size is certainly set to increase based on the already-published list of entries for Warfare (11 players as of today) and so it is possible that by the end of this year Swordpoint and MeG will both be neck and neck in terms of player pool, number of events and number of entries.

The Summary:

The good news is that the number of events, and the numbers of players entering them is - overall - still slightly increasing, as the uptick in people playing ADLG (plus a little bit of MeG) is now more than offsetting the continuing decline in numbers of FoGAM participation, whilst DBMM continues to chug along at much the same level as it has done for the last few years - although with an arguably slightly shrinking pool of highly active players.

Independent of any single ruleset, the most notable top-level trend would seem to be the increase in numbers and importance of one-day events across the UK circuit, most notably for ADLG but also for DBMM. The one-day format is clearly easier to get a pass-out to attend, but is also easier to organise, so the emergence of a series of new, mostly 1-day ADLG events in the SW and SE of the UK to mirror the Northern League has contributed greatly to player numbers and participation levels overall.

On this basis, if the new supposedly "faster" format for FoGAM v3.0 allow the FoG community to shorten game times down towards 2.5 hours and therefore get onto the one-day-event bandwagon, it could well end up doing more to redress the ongoing decline in support and participation for FoGAM than anything "new" inherent in the rules themselves.

Competition Ancients in the UK .. the state of play

Recently, with all sorts of new rule systems coming onto the market and perking up player interest it appears that the UK Ancients competition circuit has been undergoing a bit of a renaissance (geddit?).

Rather than just rely on gut feel, I've pulled together some stats for the rulesets covered in the main "BHGS" series of events (edit 2.6.16 plus the DBA circuit), as these are (I believe) the rulesets that have most takeup in competitions right now. This does unashamedly mean the focus is on mostly 15mm events - so all of the various iterations of WAB and it's derivatives are not covered, but unless I'm missing something I don't believe any of those sets are supporting the same sorts of numbers of players or events throughout the year as the ones I looked at.

The data I did use was collated from several sources - the current BHGS rankings for FoGAM and L'Art de la Guerre, plus the DBMM rankings page  (edit 2.6.16 plus the UK DBA rankings) and finally John Graham Leigh's DBM results page, all to look at how many people are playing each system in competitions across the UK.

The main (and I believe fairly safe) assumption is that these sets of rankings & results capture pretty much all of the competitive games played in the past 12 months in the UK across these 5 systems. I also then shared this with the veritable king of stats analysis in UK gaming, Martin from Vexillia who did some validation and additional analysis (thanks Martin!)

What I looked at was numbers of players, number and size of events, and then also how much does each set appear to depend on a "core" of very active players, and finally also how long is the "tail" of occasional players in each ruleset.

So, what's the state of play?

DBMM 
Currently the dbmm.org.uk site shows results from 17 events held in the UK, although there are a couple more which haven't made it onto the site. Two of the events Roll Call & Warfare) have two DBMM periods running in parallel on the same weekend - usually 15mm & 25mm.

As of today the data available suggest that there are between 80-90 players who have entered a UK DBMM event in the last 12 months. This does include 11 players listed as "non-UK", who between them represent 12 competition entries (ie they all entered one event, apart from one person who entered two events this year). Most of the "overseas" players are from Ireland, so whether that’s technically abroad in MM terms I’m not sure...

If we settle on 80 UK players (netting out 11 overseas) they generated between them some 326 event entries (or 314 counting UK players only) in the past 12 months, giving an average of just under 4 events entered per player.

4 of the DBMM events were small(ish), with 10 or less players entering. There were also 5 rounds of the Northern League, which is nominally a doubles event but where the majority of "teams" in each round are usually single players. Each NL round had between 10-13 players at each one-day event making up 8-10 "teams". The 4 "small" events include two 25mm competitions that ran alongside larger 15mm events.

The 4 "small" events account for 37 of the total UK entries.

Other DBMM stats:

• It looks like around 35-40 people entered just 1 event - if however you strip out the effect of overseas players this means 25-30/80 UK players played in just one event last year (35%)
• 18-20 people made between them half of all UK competition entries. 
• The average DBMM event attracts about 18 UK-based entrants

For some events information on who played is patchy so the total number of games played is correct, but the stats for how many players, how many play in 1 event, and how many make up 50% of the total pool of entries will probably be a smidge off.

Going back to 2012 and using the same dbmm.org.uk database (see FoGAM analysis below for why 2012 is relevant) the UK DBMM scene appears to have been pretty much the same size with 97 players entering 21 UK competitions (of which 9 were 1-day events), and making up 359 total entries - of these 13 were overseas players, all of whom entered just 1 event. 22 players made up half of all competition entries in 2012 (not that different to today) and 34 players, including the 13 overseas players, entered just one event, again a similar number to today.

The current stats are for the period immediately prior to the recent rollout of an updated version of DBMM, which common sense suggests will result in an increase in competition entries. Whether this brings lapsed players back into the pool, or increases the number of events that existing players attend will be interesting to see.

FoG AM
The FoGAM rankings currently includes results from 20 events, but this reduces down to 16 if you count Roll Call, Reading and Britcon where multiple FoGAM themes are offered at the same event.

As of the latest rankings there were 140 FoGAM players who took part in at least 1 event last year. It looks as if only 3 of these were non-UK-based, and all of them only entered one event each so unlike for DBMM this will be largely immaterial for player numbers overall.

These 140 players generated 422 event entries in total - an average again of just over 3 events entered per player.

Only 3 of the FoGAM events featured less than 10 players. These were Roll Call 25mm, running at the same time as a 15mm event, and both PAW events, where 15mm and 25mm events were also offered together on the same days.

• 57 people played just 1 event (Burton Doubles accounts for 12 of these) - again almost exactly the same as DBMM, at 39% of all players. 
• 29 people (out of 140) made up half of all competition entries - 21% of the player pool
• The average event has a whopping 26 entrants (counting 2-period/theme events as one event)

These numbers are substantially down on the total from 2012 (the oldest set of rankings on the BHGS website) when the number of players reached over 250 and the "events entered" was in the region of 630, but is still substantially more than any other ruleset. Back in 2012, 46 players made up half of all entries to events, however perhaps significantly the number of  players who entered just 1 event that year was a massive 129 - meaning that over half of the entire pool of players were only "occasional" competition participants. This net reduction of 72 in the number of "occasional" players means that the drop-off in these one-off entrants accounts for almost 80% of the decline in overall player numbers.  

With a new version of FoGAM in gestation currently there is again the potential for a resurgence of interest in FoG. The key differences to the DBMM community are that FoG has both a wider current active player base, but also a "keener" core group of highly active players who on average enter 7.2 events each per year - the highest number of events entered for any ruleset by the core groups of players.

DBM
The DBM circuit is concentrated in two areas - Norfolk/Essex and the South West of England, and almost all of the 10 events last year took place in those two locales. Many of the events are doubles, but single players often enter these events too. 2 of the 10 events had less than 10 entrants. The DBM community continue to release small incremental amendments to the rules, and also have adopted the newly revised DBMM army lists for competition use, and so a degree of freshness is regularly injected into the circuit.

On the DBM circuit I counted 52 players in total appearing in last years results, making up 149 event entries (including doubles where each player is counted separately). Apparently one of the players does live in Finland so I'm told, but in the absence of a huge Finnish DBM community I guess he can count as UK-based! The 2 small events attracted 17 players across the two events.

• 20 players played just 1 event (40% of the player base - almost identical to the other rulesets)
• 12 players made up 50% of all competition entries (24% of the overall pool) 
• The average event has 15 entries (although this is skewed upwards by a greater proportion of doubles events on the DBM circuit)

DBM retains a relatively small, yet loyal following and with 52 players the overall pool of players is perhaps surprisingly not really that much smaller than for it's newer cousin DBMM. Stripping out the '1-event' entries reduces the pool of "active" players down to 32 - again not a million miles away from the 40 for DBMM.

The core 12 players who make up half of all tournament entries take part in an average of 6.2 events each per year (out of 10 possible events!!), but still represent a smaller proportion of the overall DBM universe than the equivalent group do in in FoGAM.

ADLG
L'Art de la Guerre is the new kid on the block, having been widely played for just under a year and so the rankings currently include results from just 8 events. There are as many as 8-9 further events scheduled for the rest of this year, so by the end of 2016 the UK rankings will be more directly comparable to those of other rulesets. Some events are now also included on the international rankings site, which has over 350 active players this year entering events across the globe

84 players currently appear in the UK rankings, including 4 overseas-based players (and one who is about to emigrate to Portugal!). They are otherwise all French, and have all played in 1 event each in the past 12 months.

These 84 players are more thinly spread than in other rulesets, making 136 competition entries in total. Only one event featured 10 or less players, which was the 2015 Challenge - the oldest event in the rankings currently - however as of today 18 players are signed up for the 2016 Challenge which will replace the 2016 event in the rankings in a couple of weeks.

• 52 people have played in just 1 event (including 4 overseas)
• 24 people currently make up half of all competition entries (30% of UK-based players). 
• The average ADLG event has 17 entries.

These stats are still showing a ruleset in its infancy, however the overall number of UK-based players who have entered at least one ADLG event so far has already overtaken both DBMM and DBM, and with an average event size of 17 it seems more than likely that the size of the UK competition circuit for ADLG will also surpass that of both the DBx rulesets by the end of this year too.

DBA (added 2/6/16)
Bill MacGillivray has now kindly sent me the UK DBA Championship standings, which means DBA can be added to this mix. Most of the DBA events are one-day competitions, but with the shorter game length of DBA they will often have the same number of rounds as a 2-day event for the more "big battle" sets listed here.

The DBA numbers are based on the final 2015 season standings, so are slightly out of sync with the other sets of results. So far this year numbers appear to be almost exactly in step with 2015, with a couple of new events on the circuit as well in the Midlands and North of England. A new version of DBA 3.0 came out last year which is likely to have rekindled player interest so overall 2016 numbers might well end up being higher.

The 2015 season included 15 events, all stand-alone competitions, and including 4 in Portsmouth. The biggest event had 18 entrants, the smallest 6, and 3 of the 15 had less than 10 players, the cutoff to be considered "small" in this analysis.

In total 49 players took part in at least one DBA event last year, and these players between them made a total of 176 competition entries. This level of participation is great than for both DBM and ADLG currently, and if "small" events with less than 10 entries are stripped out of the numbers the gap with DBMM also shrinks, putting DBA in third place behind FoGAM and DBMM as the most actively played ruleset, even though it has the smallest overall pool of UK-based players.

• Just 15 (30%) DBA players took part in only 1 event - the lowest proportion of 'occasional' players for any of these rulesets. This may well be down to a combination of predominantly one-day events on this circuit, and the geographic concentration of DBA players in a few specific areas.
• 10 players made just over 50% of all competition entries - at 20% of the total player pool this is comparable to FoG but lower than the other 3 sets which have more directly comparable sized pools of players.

The stats for DBA in general show a very keen and stable core of active DBA players taking part in a consistently supported circuit of events, with a proportionally shorter "tail" of one-off players as well. The DBA numbers also include 2 players who both entered 14 out of the 15 events in the calendar year and who therefore represented 16% of all competition entries between them - well done chaps!

Interesting times - but still also pretty good times too for Ancient gaming, with over 1,000 entries to UK competitions over the last 12 months across these 5 rulesets alone.

With all 5 sets having something "new" going on in terms of rules updates and new lists (or, in the case of FoGAM, having updates on the horizon) there is also plenty happening to keep each community interested in their particular set, which only really leaves the possibility of over-familiarity with the same pool of players as being likely to dent numbers.

Even with the decline in numbers for FoGAM and DBMM over the past 4 years, the emergence of ADLG as a mainstream set, plus the introduction of new versions of all the other sets may mean that by the end of this year the UK will be back to pre-2012 levels of participation in Ancients events again.

Footnote:

As another relevant comparison, the equivalent headline numbers for FoG Renaissance are;

• 101 players in the last 12 months (6 overseas)
• 300 competition entries (exactly!)
• 21 players make up half of all entries
• 46 players only played in 1 event

These numbers would place FoGR in second place behind FoGAM in terms of popularity, ahead of all of the other Ancient rulesets on both of the key metrics of player numbers and competition entries (if it was an Ancients set of course...!).

Wargamers Calendar

You can now add a self-updating UK Event Calendar to your own Wargame Website or Blog by linking to the one on this site. Its dead easy, and adds some useful and constantly refreshed content to any website. click this link to get your own version on your site or blog.