UK Ancients : competition attendance stats 2019

[madaxeman]

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!

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



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!

The more comprehensive version of this, with additional stats on things like rate of player churn is available ono my blog at: https://madaxemandotcom.blogspot.com/2019/12/uk-ancients-competition-scene-2019-year.html

[Irregular Wars Nic]

Always an interesting read. Thanks for sharing.

[Tim Haslam]

Mostly 15mm figures and scale?

[bigredbat]

Hi Tim,  TtS! competition is currently entirely 28mm (although I'm very keen to get some 15mm TtS! competition gaming under way next year). I know the ADLG crowd are also gaming in 28mm.

[madaxeman]

Yep

TTS! is mostly 28mm
ADLG has (I thinkl) 12 out of it's 35 events including at least some 25mm (there are a couple of three-player team events where one of the team plays in 25mm)
DBMM has 3 or 4 events where "25mm basing" is used, but the players all tend to be using 6mm armies on 25mm basing conventions, so I'm not sure I've seen actual 25mm armies used
DBM has 2 (or maybe 3?) 25mm events in its calendar [/li][/list]
I think DBA is all 15mm, I've not seen FoG played in 25mm in the UK for some years now, and I don't believe MeG has staged any 25mm events at all.