Auckland Wargaming Club

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.

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.

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.

One of the big challenges facing the club today is the debate in Ancients Gaming between DBMM and FOG. As in many other clubs and wargaming groups around the world at present there is a split between gamers who prefer FOG and those who prefer DBMM - luckily the AWC at least has no odd Ostriches still sticking to DBM (of course there is nothing really wrong with that if its your thing, but its a position causing a 3 way rules-set split of gamers in some areas so doesn't help unify the scene)!