Auckland Wargaming Club

The AWC’s roving gamer in the UK, Ben Hill, conducted the following ‘e-interview’ with the Field of Glory writing team at the beginning of December (2010), the answers to the questions are from the whole team of writers who are involved with FoG.

1. Has FoG evolved the way or ways you thought it would when writing it?

Yes very much so. We seem to have a broad following of clubs, social gamers, historical re-enactment players, campaign players and competition players. We wanted to create a set of rules that would appeal to different audiences and that seems to have happened. It has been great to see the quality of the entire FoG series that Slitherine has put together and that together with the Osprey art makes the books a great read.

Equinox will run at the Freeman's Bay Community Centre in central Auckland on the 19-20 March 2001, and is hosted by the City Guard. Primarily a Fantasy/Sci-Fi event it also includes Ancients (FoG) and World War II (FoW). The venue includes shops & a cafe.

Early Bird Registration before 30th January is $35 and go into a draw for a $50 Games Workshop voucher. Otherwise Registration from 31 January to 03 March is $45. Entry & Registration to the tournament closes on 03 March 2011.

Competitions being offered:

The Christchurch Wargames Club is starting to publish details on-line for the Nationals in Easter 2011. Player packs look to be available for several fantasy systems as well as 15mm DBA and 15mm DBR. For more information See Here.

Events being offered are: Warhammer Fantasy Battle ; Warhammer 40k; War of the Ring; Lord of the Rings; Flames of War; FOG; DBA; DBR; DBM (apparently not DBMM); Bloodbowl; & Warmachine. No scales specified, except 15mm for DBA & DBR, so unclear exactly what scales are being played for the Historical (Ancients) rule sets (but sounds like 15mm only)...

Today MEDBAG had its biggest event to date; that said, it involved as many participants as the event at NSWC, and there were even as many games; however, this time they were themed, which added a good deal of interest to the event. There were six of us, and Andy provided the armies (with a few Gallic warbands from John, as Andy’s were double-based)...

Read More at AWC member Mark Davies Hesperiana Blog...

The second 'Postcard' from AWC Member Ben Hill at the Derby Convention in the UK.

Can I just say two words, Wargasmic Retail! This is one of the biggest trade shows/competitions in the UK. Salute (April) and Warfare at Reading (later October) are bigger but I ain't seen nothing like this before. I would estimate 30 or 40 trade stands with everything from haystacks to 54mm plastics. Gripping Beast, Musketeer, Magister Militum, Donnington, Hasslefree, Adler, Front Rank, Baccus and many more plus a bunch of retail outlets and web shops selling all sorts of different things including figures by unit or even individuals.

Postcard from the Derby World Teams FOG Championship - 2 & 3 October 2010 at Derby University - from AWC member Ben Hill.

This was the convention and competition I was looking forward to since arriving in the UK. I was just hoping that my game play would not be distracted by the retail opportunities in the other hall! More on the trade stands in the next postcard.

Why ME? Since the international success of The Lord of the Rings movies, New Zealand has been identified (rightly or wrongly) in the eyes of many as the home of Middle Earth. MEDBAG is a site dedicated to keeping people around the world informed of DBA and HotT activities in New Zealand.

DBA is quite popular overseas, where its small scale and quick play time allow enjoyable one-day competitions, where six games can be comfortably played. These can be themed to a period or have some sort of campaign mechanism. The liveliness of the DBA community is attested by their Fanaticus Website. In New Zealand the game is quite strong in the South Island, with a number of DBA competitions in recent years in Timaru and Christchurch. It's also a rule set that is being offered at the IWC next February and has 17 players already registered.

AWC Member Ben Hill reports in from Oxford, UK, on the local wargaming scene there:

Herro AWC,

In March this year, my wife and I moved to Oxford in the UK. We will be here for a several years while my wife does genius things that I do not understand, similar situation to my wargaming.

I miss the AWC and its excellent members not to mention my Romans and newly painted ACW army. However, with England being the home of toy soldiers I have an excellent opportunity to buy buy buy. With that in mind, I visited the Foundry in Nottingham on July 23 for their open day with Sean (who was visiting the UK). Firstly, Nottingham has very few trees, no men in tights, no sheriff, and maid Marion had no teeth but she knew where St Mark’s road was luckily.

Auckland's City Guard Tournament happens third week of March. It will include a small Ancients tournament - FOG (Field of Glory) at 650 points on 6'x4' tables with 2 or 3 generals. There will be a reduced amount of terrain due to the small tables and smaller deployment areas. The standard sized measuring sticks used in Auckland for 28mm FOG will be in use. Tournament is planned to be 4 games, with possibly 5 if games are concluded speedily.

There are only 8 slots available for this tournament (due to a table resourcing issue) so it's vital to sign up ASAP if you are keen. Currently there are 5 confirmed entrants so just 3 remaining openings. Registration is $40 and closes Friday 05 March.

I gave up DBMM at the start of the year. Had a few too many games where, as a result of army matchups, terrain, weather or time of day, one side had an edge before the first pips were thrown. Just did not suit my (emphasise my) preferences - so I played the other game this year instead. However, Benny pushed for DBM240 games, and having 2 games on a club day, or 3 games per day in a competition seemed to offer a way around my problem - one game might be a bit dull, but the next one good.

This is exactly what I found. At the comp, my middle game was not that enjoyable (I attacked an encamped enemy in pitch black with 3 hours till sun-up and my magic night-vision allowed me to avoid his KnS and attack the softer bits of his army to win), but the other two were good well-balanced games (admittedly both Free Company vs. Free Company which naturally balances play).

The tournament in Auckland used the latest draft of the DBMM v1.1 rules. There was a nominal theme (blatantly plagiarised from an event in the UK earlier this year) which asked players to base their armies around a film or TV series. This resulted in some interesting army choices, although a number of the more 'hard core' players paid only lip service to the theme and chose highly geared armies that ensured the rules were given a reasonably thorough workout.

A successful DBMM240 “Armies of the Movies” tournament was played at the AWC on the 6 December 2009. A full report will follow elsewhere, meanwhile here are some photos of the event and some of the armies involved…

Note: No Spartan Rhino’s were harmed in the making of this Photo Gallery!

With all lists now in and checked it is time for the first round draw to be revealed. The usual 'nearest historical date' pairing, but slightly modified to avoid the North Shore boys being paired against each other. Some good reference material, some perhaps not so good and then there's Cam's........................

1. Al Donald (AWC) - Early Hoplite Greeks 479BC (Reference: Movie "300" - what else?!)2. Andrew Fergus (AWC) - Thracians 200BC (Reference: French TV doco about "Seuthès l'Immortel, les Secrets d'un Roi Thrace" - The Immortal Seuthès; secrets of a Thracian King)

Our friends down at the North Shore Wargaming Club (NSWC) look like they have been sneaking in some DBMM240 practice for the tournament this weekend...

Three games were played at the NSWC's first November meeting and another 4 games at the following meeting (this weekend just passed) - sounds like some serious preparation down at the NSWC! Check out the NSWC Site for the results...

I've finally got my act together and written up the DBMM240 conditions for the 6 December 2009 tournament. Please have a read and get back to me with any (sensible) questions. It should all be straightforward as I've simply tried to tabulate the important variations into one document, trying to reconcile any inconsistencies in the process. The major exceptions are Baggage and Terrain.

Romans (both Early & Late Imperial and Hun Allies) and Seleucid & Alexandrian Macedonians with Scythians, Galatians, and more, from the collections of Nick Buckby, Glen Tibbles, & John Moher - these photos are from a large DBM 'Mega Game' (about 650 AP) in November 2001 that also involved Auckland Wargamers Philip Abela; Gerard Lelieveld; and Greg Simmonds:

The club is organising this to be run on 06 December. This is, of course, the AGM date so entering is a way to have something to do if you've nothing else planned. Doors will open at 8:30 for a 9am start with three 2.5 hour rounds through the day. The first round will finish in time for the AGM formalities.

NOVEMBER UPDATE: ASB Stadium, Kohimarama (same place as 2009), Sat 20th to Sun 21st Feb - just a note that the BattleCry website is live and we are taking registrations for our 2010 events. There is a registration form, very simple, to pre-register your interest in a particular tournament.

NOVEMBER UPDATE: ASB Stadium, Kohimarama (same place as 2009), Sat 20th to Sun 21st Feb - just a note that the BattleCry website is live and we are taking registrations for our 2010 events. There is a registration form, very simple, to pre-register your interest in a particular tournament.

I made mention recently of Conn Iggulden's "Genghis" trilogy (Wolf of the Plains, Lords of the Bow, Bones of the Hills) in a recent club discussion about the movie “Mongol”. I've also recently read a few books by Stephen Pressfield. One is "Gates of Fire", a retelling of Thermopylae in 480BC, which I grabbed from the library having listened to an audio lecture series given by Garret Fagan in which he referred to this book as being quite evocative in exploring the nature of hoplite warfare...