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 2023, 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.

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

There have also been no really seismic shifts in relative popularity between any of the rulesets in recent years, 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. 

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

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)

2024 Kegworth Codgers Midweek Challenge: Runners & Riders

 We now have a near-full list of Runers & Riders for the upcoming Kegworth Codgers Midweek Challenge ADLG competition, with a rather astounding 32 players finding time from their busy retirement and part-time work schedules to attend plus - I believe - one chap who was so desparate not to miss out on a couple of days in an unbranded Premier Inn-equivalent motel just off the M1 that he's booked 2 days holiday to play too.

The event is themed for Kegworth's great transport links and proximity to the Fosse Way, inspiring a Roman Roads theme of "armies valid in the period when the Romans were building roads across the Britain, 43-407AD" and that has resulted in a pretty decent spread of options, with 21 different lists represented including 7 Roman armies and a further 7 hailing from outside the Roman sphere of influence.

In a week and a bit therefore the mighty halls of the Kegworth Hotel & Conference Centre will echo to the sounds of warfare, as the battle is joined to see who is the Codger of the Year 2024.  

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It's all Greek To Me!

 Back in February of this year, when the weather was chilly and damp (unlike this balmy almost-May Springtime we're getting in the UK right now...?) I headed off to Athens to take in some local gastronomy, hit a few museums, drink some local beer and wine, attend a Greek Super League football match ... oh, and play a bit of ADLG at a "Crusades" themed event held by the Strategikon Club in Athens too!

The gaming parts of this epic weekend saw a rather unusual Later Crusader army take to the field, based around the army commanded by Richard The Lionheart ("Coeur du Lion") at Arsuf and other rather defensive battles, taking on a variety of Feudal opponents across 5 games over 2 days. 

This saw a wall of well protected Crusader spearmen, supported by crossbows attempt to lure successive opponents either to their doom in a vain and futile charge, or to stunning success as the enemy rode down the quivering Crusader sergeants at lance point!

In all cases the action was epic and brutal, and (of course...) the post-game criticism from Hannibal was even more so! 

In a post-event coda, these reports also feature a video walk-through of the Athens Archeological Museum (with some stunning Mycenean stuff), the Greek Military Museum (from antiquity to the near-present day) and a pop-up museum with relics and remains from the decisive battle of Charonea, where Philip established Macedonian control over the Greek peninsula with his defeat of the other Theban-led City States. 

All of the reports, including the usual captions and nonsense are now posted on Madaxeman.com

Beachhead 2024: The Seleukids ride forth!

 In a vain attempt to avoid repeatedly misspelling "Seleucid" I've just created a set of 5 video battle reports from the recent Beachhead competition in Bournemouth earlier this year. 

These feature a mostly-Victrix 28mm Seleusid army taking on the Indians, Camillan Romans, Galatians, Dacians and finally the Early Imperial Romans in 5 pretty brutal and full-impact battle play-through videos.

At this event neither me nor any of my opponents seemed keen to muck about, so the end result is a lot of closeups of 28mm troops in push-and-shove close quarters combat - what's not to like eh?!

You can see the first video by following this link - the others all follow on in sequence.

 

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 

  

Alicante 2024: The Battle Reports

 With far too many competitions in quick succession this January/February I'm going to be dropping a number of YouTube video battle reports over the next few weeks - with 6 reports from Alicante hitting the airwaves first!

These 10-15 minute videos see a Mithraditic army taking on the Warring States Chinese, Hittites, Hebrews, Alans, Kushans and Epirote Pyrrhics in the narrated reports which you can either watch on this website or on YouTube.

Pull up a chair, cast your YouTube to the Big Screen and enjoy my flailing attempts to steer this legendarily "lesser than the sum of its parts" army into battle in sunny sunny Espana !