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)  

UK Ancients Competition Scene - 2019 year-end update

With the dammed election noise and nonsense now over (for some of us...) the really interesting surveys and polls are now able to be released, including my now-almost-as-traditional-as-sprouts snapshot summary of how widely played the leading basket of rulesets each are amongst UK Ancients competition players right now.

These December stats only cover the UK "player universe" numbers for competition players across the 7 most popular Ancients mass-battle rulesets. The data is drawn from competition results that I've found published online - so if I wasn't able to find it, it's not included.

The measurement period is all events held in the UK in the last 12 months - or, more catchily, the 2019 calendar year. The only exception is the very last event I'm aware of, the Tradeston club's traditional post-Christmas 1-day ADLG competition. I've included the 2018 edition in the 2019 numbers basically so I can get this out before Christmas and forget about the blog for a bit over the festive break!

One additional important factor which has become increasingly significant in recent years is the number of overseas players taking part in UK competitions, such that non-UK players can now make up as much as 10-15% of the 'UK' pool of players for some rulesets. To give a clearer picture of what people in the UK are playing I've therefore split out the numbers to show the numbers of both overseas players and "UK-based" players, giving a clearer indication of who in the UK is playing each set.

The more detailed annual analysis will again be out in a few months, but as of today the headlines for how many people have played what at competitions in the last 12 months are as follows:

Total Player Numbers  (UK based players / UK+Overseas players):

1.   ADLG     189 / 210
2.   DBMM   73 / 84
3.   DBA        67 / 68
4.   TTS!        64 / 66
5.   MeG        61 / 71
6.   FoGAM   48 / 48
7.   DBM       43 / 45

Net Change 2018-2019  (UK based players / UK+Overseas players):

1. TTS!       +36 / +36
2. ADLG     +28 / +30
3. DBM       +6 / +6
4. DBA        +3 / +3
5. MeG        -1 / +6
6. DBMM    -7 / -4
7. FoGAM   -11 / -11

New Players first seen during 2019 (UK based players / UK+Overseas players):

1. TTS!       43 / 43
2. ADLG     41 / 48
3. MeG        13 / 20
4. DBA        12 / 12
5. DBM        8 / 8
6. DBMM    5 / 7
7. FoGAM   2 / 2

Players who appeared in 2018 but not 2019 (UK based players / UK+Overseas players):

1. ADLG       23 / 32   (UK player pool churning out this year = 12% of current UK total)
2. DBMM     16 / 20    (22%)
3. DBA          17 / 17   (25%)
4= FoGAM   14 / 14    (29%)
4= MeG        14 / 15    (23%)
6. TTS!         7 / 7        (10%)
7. DBM        4 / 4        (8%)

Ruleset Details

ADLG

ADLG remains the most widely played ruleset by some margin, with 35 events (yes..) held in the UK during the year and a player pool that topped 200 (if you include overseas players) for the first time. Despite it now being almost 5 years since ADLG was first introduced to the UK, player numbers increased in the last 12 months an even faster rate than in 2018 with a net increase of 30 comfortably topping the net increase of 19 last year. 41 new UK-based players joined the circuit, offset by 23 who dropped out (a fall in attrition rate compared to last year when 30 dropped off the circuit between 2017-2018). A handful of lapsed players returning to competitions rounded out the net increase. The proportion of players who took part in just one event also stayed flat at 38% year on year.

Since the first UK ADLG event at Roll Call in April 2015, 251 different UK-based players have entered at least one competition in the UK, and have been joined by 41 overseas-based players as well. 77% of this all-time UK player universe remained active on the UK circuit in the last 12 months.  

DBMM

The size of the DBMM player universe across all UK events dipped a little in 2019 with overall participation down 4 year on year. counting internationals (a few of whom took part in the new London GT team event), or 7 based just on UK attendees alone. As is usual with DBMM, a number of players returned to the circuit after a break as well to offset the in-year attrition which saw 16 UK-based players not return after featuring at events held in 2018. The proportion of players who took part in just one event also stayed pretty much flat at 36% year on year, with the one-day events in Milton Keynes and Guildford contributing many of these players to the UK pool.

DBA

DBA has continued its recent trend of increasing UK player numbers in recent years, ending the year wit 68 separate players taking part in the 12 events staged across the country. DBA however also continued to see a relatively high rate of churn of players joining and leaving the circuit for such an established ruleset, with almost 1 in 4 players joiing or leaving in the last 12 months. 31 players took part in just one event, representing almost half of the UK pool of DBA players - one of the highest ratios for any of these rulesets, but which given the wide geographic spread of DBA events is perhaps not surprising. 

To The Strongest!

TTS! lept into the limelight in 2018 as a result of, erm, staging more than just one event over the course of the year. The five events staged ranged from Glasgow down to London and across to Cardiff, and clearly tapped into a significant and previously unfulfilled demand for TTS! events amongst the 'social' player universe in the UK.

The end result was a universe of 64 UK-based competition players, of whom an astonishing 43 had never played in a TTS! event before this year. 7 out of the 30 who entered the 2018 TTS! Worlds in Chalgrove however failed to reappear on the expanded UK circuit in 2019, giving a "since these records began" universe of 71.

MeG

The number of people taking part in one of the 18 MeG events held across the UK in 2019 increased by 6 over 2018, driven entirely by increased numbers of international travelling to the UK, most notably at the MeG World Championships and Britcon. The UK-based players was almost unchanged at 61. Almost a quarter of all players churned both in and out during 2019 and 25 players took part in just one event, placing MeG firmly into the almost-weirdly-standard 35-40%-ish range against this measure.

Since the first UK MeG event held at the BHGS Challenge in 2016, 89 different UK-based players have entered at least one competition in the UK and have been joined by 14 overseas-based players as well. 69% of the all-time UK player universe remained active on the MeG circuit by attending events held in 2019.

FOGAM

2019 saw 15 players dropping out of the AM circuit after trying V3 in 2018, and 2 new players entering their first FoG event (each with a single appearance as part of the same doubles team at Burton). 12 players (exactly 25% of the FoG universe) took part in just one event making FoG the only set to deviate noticeably from the "just over a third play only once" norm in this respect.

Following the introduction on FoGAM V3 in January 2018, 62 different UK-based players have entered at least one V3 competition in the UK. 77% of these remained active in the last 12 months.

DBM

Numbers for DBM lept upwards this year by almost 15%, or more precisely 6. That gave DBM a total of 45 competition players in 2019, with 8 new players mostly from the handful of clubs where DBM is played competitively were persuaded to enter competitions - often at events hosted by their own clubs. Only 4 players dropped off the circuit, a couple returned after a break and - of course - a near-textbook 39% of players entered only one event. The 2 regular overseas-based players continued to appear in UK tournaments in 2019.

The Conclusion

In summary as 2019 draws to a close these 7 popular Ancients rulesets have attracted 549 UK-based players and a further 42 international visitors to make 591 different players in total taking part in a UK Ancients competition in the last 12 months.

That total is almost 100 up on the prior year count of 496 (although the addition of TTS! to these numbers does accounts for two thirds of this increase alone).

That also still represents an 80% share across the 7 most popular UK Ancients competition rulesets for the "Barkeresque" concept of one unit = one base, although to be fair TTS! isn't really a DBx derived set in the same way that DBM, DBA, DBMM and ADLG all are. 

So, numbers on the up, international visitors on the up, but even so the near-30-year-old DBx engine is still going strong as 2020 hoves into view!

(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)

Who's Playing What - the 2018 update

If "once a year" can possible be counted as "fast", here is my annually updated "fast becoming a thing" analysis of the relative popularity of various "competition" Ancients sets in the UK taken as a snapshot right now.

For those of you who remember this stuff from last year (and the year before) the key thing is that this is based on actual, observable factual numbers of players taking part in events in the UK - well, those events that have a web footprint of some sort anyway.  

That means if your local meta, your friendship circle, your local game store or even your Wiccan coven plays something different that's fine - this is just a count of those weird people who enter competitions.

And there's certainly been plenty going on!

As of today we are just at the end of Year 3 of L'Art de la Guerre as a competition set (it first appeared at Roll Call 2015, with its' first "full season" in 2016), there is a new version of FoG Ancients on the tabletop, MeG is just a few weeks away from its' second anniversary, DBA appears to be having something of a second (third? tenth?) wind right now and - of course - DBM and DBMM are still chugging along too.

Well, how does that all look today when you add it all together, shake it about a bit and pour it onto the page? 

Let's have a look shall we...

DBMM

Last 12 months: 18 events, 86 Players, 264 entries

The excellent DBMM rankings website at http://partridges.org.uk/rankings/ has been running at full steam for the last couple of years making the task of capturing all players and games much easier.

Last time around there had been 17 DBMM events in the previous 12 months, featuring 84 different players, including a 5-strong overseas contingent  (Irish players at Britcon 2016) which meant the UK-based pool was made up of 79 active competition players - unchanged from the previous year.

In the 12 months just gone that number of different players has crept up a smidge from 84 to 86, and the number of events has also increased by 1 as well, making a calendar of 18 different competitions for DBMM. So far, so same. What has changed noticeably however is how many entries there have been, as whereas last year the 84 players made 296 entries, this year that's dropped by over 10% to 264.

This slowdown in "keen" participation is mirrored by a corresponding increase in the number of "very occasional" players, as 37 of the 86 UK DBMM'ers only entered a single event in the last 12 months - up from 32 "one-timers" in the previous year, and even fewer the year before that.

The slightly more committed souls who play in 2 events each year account for a further 14 players, leaving just 35 individuals who are playing in 3 or more UK DBMM events each year.

Looking specifically at who those 37 "very occasional" DBMM players are, it's also rather likely that a significant proportion of them are experts at mastering roundabouts (but are possibly scared of motorway driving) given that 18 of them made their only tournament appearance of the year at an event held within 10 miles of Milton Keynes. Another 9 did not venture outside the city limits of Reading to enter an event, which further underlines the continued importance of the WAR and MKWS clubs to DBMM numbers in the UK.

The Milton Keynes 1-dayer is now by far and away the biggest event on the DBMM calendar, with 36 entries, followed by Warfare with 32 (across its two 6mm & 15mm periods).

Last year I had a graphic showing the stability at the top of the "enthusiasm" pile for DBMM and nothing has really changed since then, with the most established players also being the keenest - in fact, no single player who started playing DBMM after 2012 entered more than 3 events in the last year. In DBMM the "old lags" of the circuit are the enthusiasts, and the "newcomers" appear to be mainly those who are dipping in and out.

The current stats also cover the second year after an updated version of DBMM (and all new lists) were published - with almost no change in the overall number of players and a 10% slide in event entries it would however appear the lure of new lists has not encouraged more people to enter events in the UK DBMM community.

As last year, the overall DBMM picture remains one of stability, with only a handful of players picking up DBMM to replace the handful of annual dropouts in each of the last few years. If it weren't for the two highly localized Reading and Milton Keynes club-based clusters of players who tend to appear at events organised by their own clubs, the national DBMM scene would however be significantly smaller.

FoGAM

Last 12 months: 13 events, 79 Players, 253 entries

In May 2017 FoGAM had just seen a year of steep decline, dropping from 140 players down to just 97. With a new, "faster" version of the rules out at the end of last year (and list books still coming out as we speak) the good news for FoG is that the rate of decline seems to have slowed significantly, as 79 players took pat in one of the 13 UK FoGAM events held in the last 12 months, for a total of 253 total competition entries - pretty close to the same total entries as DBMM, but achieved across 4 fewer events.

However, these numbers straddle two editions, so the real question for FoG AM is how the shift from V2.0 to V3.0 is going? Well...

• Since January 1st 2018 there have been 6 FoG V3.0 events, attracting a total of 49 players and 94 entries

• The same period last year saw 7 events, 68 players and 112 entries under FoG 2.0

• The answer to why this happened is mostly "Scotland", as the Scottish club circuit has migrated pretty much entirely to ADLG (with a wee smidge of MeG being played in Perth) meaning that the "Schiltron" event dropped out of the FopGAM rankings taking with it 8 unique players and 15 entries from the FoGAM stats this year.

Looking further forward to events coming up in the next few months, more existing V2.0 players will reappear on the FoGAM scene as well (based on current signups for future events).  By Britcon this will see the UK FoGAM total player pool reach a minimum of at least 54 players. The return of the Northern League as a FoGAM event after a short hiatus may also help drive active player participation up as well.

That V3.0 total of 49 includes 7 (yes seven!) new players who have appeared in the rankings for the first time so far this year - pretty much all from the Wessex club(s) who hosted a V3.0 event in February - so FoG is certainly picking up some more new players with V3.0 underway. 

On the flip side, there are still 30 players in the current "last 12 months" pool who have yet to play a V3.0 event, and quite a few of them have already appeared at events playing other rulesets - whether they stick or twist with these new rulesets is of course yet to be seen. 

With 17 players still making up half of all competition entries the core group of FoGAM players are just as keen as ever, but on current trends my guess is that FoGAM V3.0 will end the year with something in the region of 60-odd active UK players - arguably comparable to the current DBMM pool if the "MKWS/WAR" bastion of "local-events-only" players was to be adjusted out.

Mortem et Gloriam (MeG)

Last 12 months: 13 events, 61 Players, 185 entries

Last May MeG was fast approaching it's first full year of UK events, with 31 different players taking part in one of the 5 MeG events held in the 11 months since the release of the ruleset in mid 2016.

Since then the number of UK events has increased significantly with 13 competitions being held in the last 12 months. Unsurprisingly the pool of active players has also increased accordingly in the same period, led my a big intake in mid-2017 which saw the total pool of active UK players hit the 50 mark by last year's Britcon.

8 months later the rate of influx into the MeG scene appears to have calmed down a little, with the UK MeG player pool peaking at 65 earlier this year. It now sits on 61 active players entering UK events in the last 12 months (including 2 overseas players) - these 61 have racked up 185 competition entries between them. 

As one might expect with a still-new ruleset, currently 24 of the 61 players (39%) have only taken part in 1 event so far, and a further 15 only playing in 2 events in their MeG careers to date - hardly surprising with many of these only starting playing MeG competitively this year. 

MeG also appears to be succeeding in attracting many of it's players from outside of the traditional pool of Ancients gamers - which might be linked to the relatively high proportion of these "toe in the water" 1-2 event players, as many of them will need to collect and paint whole new armies to take part in MeG events.

The top tier of active MeG players however is made up of a small number of very, very active players, including many of those who got in at the ground floor as part of the initial "playtester" group. 

9 of the 11 playtest pioneers are still very much leading from the front, and still chip in with almost 1/3 of all UK competition entries between them in the last year. Put another way, if you entered a UK MeG event in the last year you had almost a 1 in 3 chance of meeting one of the original playtesters in any given round of any UK event - so if you need help with learning the rules, your opponent may well be perfectly placed to assist!

2 years on from it's launch MeG now boasts a very similar sized UK pool of players to that of the current FoG V3.0 circuit, although a significant proportion of players still at the "dipping their toes in" stage with only 1 or 2 event entries to their name. By comparison the UK ADLG circuit had reached 114 active players and 307 entries by the time it reached the 2-year mark in it's UK evolution.

  

L'Art de la Guerre

Last 12 months: 28 events, 162 Players, 499 entries

A year ago ADLG had just overtaken DBMM and FoG to become the biggest UK competition ruleset with 122 players taking part and making 331 entries in total across the year.

One year on and it's still gaining in popularity, adding 40 new players to the UK circuit to total up 162 players and 499 event entries in the last 12 months - more than DBMM and FoG combined. 

Part of this has been driven by the emergence of a number of regional mini-circuits in the South West, London, North East and most recently across Scotland, which has resulted in a potentially social-life-destroying 28 separate events taking place across the lengths and breath of the UK in the last year.

The size of the UK ADLG circuit is however somewhat inflated by the large number of overseas players who are now regular visitors to these shores to take part in ADLG events. In he last 12 months 19 separate overseas players drawn from all across Europe and further afield entered a UK ADLG event, with even more are set to arrive and be added to that number via the ADLG Worlds at the forthcoming BHGS Challenge this June - an increase of 11 on the previous year's total.

There are also 68 "occasional" ADLG players who only making a lone event appearance in the ADLG rankings - 42% of the total, or 32% if you strip out the overseas contingent. 

This may sound like quite a lot, but is pretty much identical to the equivalent numbers for other rulesets, with 43% for DBMM, 39% for FoGAM and 39% for MeG. Of these, only DBMM has a meaningful number (7) overseas players to impact these percentages, with just 1 overseas player for FoG and 2 for MeG.

The Central London Wargames Club remains a hotbed of ADLG contributing 22 players to the rankings. CLWC however only hosted one of its' usually popular 1-day events in the past 12 months, and so the number of CLWC club members who appear in the pool as a result of attending a CLWC event this year is just 6 out of the 22. Competed to the impact of the MKWS and WAR clubs and their local events on the UK DBMM circuit, and now also the Wessex club in FoG 3.0 the importance of CLWC members to the ADLG circuit is now therefore relatively low. 

Other Rulesets 

DBA

Last 12 months: 13 events, 65 Players, 186 entries

DBA has been undergoing something of a renaissance in recent years with a growing competition circuit and more new events taking place as well.

In the last 12 months 65 players have taken part in at least 1 DBA event, making up a total of 188 entries, meaning that DBA currently sneaks in just ahead of MeG to claim the prize of being the 4th biggest UK mass battle ruleset as of today - again off the back of 13 events throughout the year. 

25 players on the DBA circuit have only entered one event - that proportion of 38% placing it pretty much in line with other rulesets.

The full-year total for 2017 was 56 different players, so DBA is seeing a very solid increase in popularity as well so far this year. 

DBM 

Last 12 months: 9 events, 40 Players, 130 entries

DBM sits currently on 40 players in the last year entering events in the two geographically spread DBM hotspots of East and West England - these numbers are practically unchangd from last year.

Each of the 9 events normally attracts about a dozen players to reach a total of 130 event entries across the year, with the Themed West Country event at 21 being the biggest day out on the circuit.

Of the 40 current players, 17 make an appearance in both halves of the country leaving 9 only ever playing on tables which are as flat as their surrounding countryside, and a further 14 who's mid-game cup of tea always comes with a scone and some jam. 

Swordpoint 

Launched by Gripping Beast at the end of 2016, initially it seemed as if it might attract a following but based on forum posts there are only likely to be 2-3 UK events this year, with a UK player pool of maybe 20-30.

Others - Armati, 7th, 6th, Impetus, TTS, War & Conquest

From what's available online, none of these other rulesets support significant numbers of player or events throughout the year in the UK.  Simon Miller's To The Strongest may have the largest single pool of players with around 30 attending their main annual event, whilst 7th has a small circuit of 3 events (but failed to gather support to add a 4th earlier this year). 

Even in aggregate these sets would however fail to trouble the engravers of the "most popular competition ruleset" trophy.

The Summary:

The good news is that the number of Ancients events, and the numbers of players entering them is continuing to rise as the continuing uptick in the numbers of people playing new systems is outstripping the ongoing meandering decline in players for other more long in the tooth rulesets.

DBx-based games are also still by far the most popular with almost 75% of all UK players choosing a "single-base, single unit" system in preference to "multi-base unit" rulesets. 

The table below shows the current direct comparisons between the leading sets:

	Players	Change	Players 3+	Players (2018)	Events	Total Entries	Average Field
ADLG	162	+40	92	115	28	499	18
DBMM	86	+2	35	62	18	264	15
FOGAM	79	-18	36	49	15	253	17
DBA	65	+3	40	50	13	186	14
MeG	61	+30	22	39	12	185	15
DBM	40	-	21	19	9	130	14

• Players - different players entering a UK event in the last 12 months

• Change - net change in previous 12 month period

• 3+ events - number of players who entered 3 or more events for each ruleset

• Players 2018 - number of different players to enter an event this calendar year (included as a benchmark for FoG 3.0, which started in January 2018)

• Events - number of competitions throughout the year.  Where one event includes multiple pools they are counted as different events

• Total entries - count of entries at all UK events 

• Average field - average field (doh!)

Here's another FoG Rule idea

This idea came up in conversation this weekend. When testing for losing a melee you have the option to take a +1 on the Cohesion test ... but if you do, you also take a -1 on the corresponding death roll. Neat huh? (Elephants & some others excepted..)

What do you think of my Disrupted markers?

These downloadable FoG markers are the latest value-added bonus available from this site. If you like - or dislike - them please comment below. You can buy the actual figures from Donnignton, who now go by the name of Ancient & Modern

Field of Glory Wargame Rules

Played another game of Field of Glory last night, with my Selikids against Carlos' Dominate Romans. The FoG Army list I used will soon be published on my website here.

The game was a test of whether legions could be beaten by a combination of pikes and elephants - and yes, it can be done! Its a tight interaction though, but as long as the pikemen dont lose the first round, they can grind down the legion... just.

I lost one 12-strong pike block, but crunched 2 blocks of legionaries. I could have tried to keep the pikemen alive, but my general; had gotten into the wrong position and was unable to help them out ... doh!