With competition wargaming pretty much now done and dusted until (hopefully "early") summer across the
UK there's no real reason to delay publishing my once a year analysis of the relative popularity of various competition Ancients sets as unfortunately nothing will change now for a few months anyway.
I also have the luxury of a little more time to delve deeper than usual into some of the nooks and crannies of the stats!
So, whats' been going on?
As of today there are still a good spread of viable Ancients competition sets out there all attracting north of 40-odd players and hosting events throughout the year.
L'Art
de la Guerre (ADLG) has continued to grow for a 5th consecutive year, such that it's pool of
UK-based players is now almost as big as the next 3 most popular sets combined.
ADLG is also driving an increasingly widespread use of 25mm figures on
UK tabletops, to the extent that 2019-20 saw more
UK-based players entering 25mm ADLG events than for any other single (non-ADLG) ruleset at any scale.
To The Strongest! is now neck and neck with DBA as the third most popoular set, and is threatening to chase down DBMM's seemingly locked-in position as the second most widely played ruleset as it continues to pull in (but still churn through) large numbers of new players, even though the number of events for
TTS! still remains far lower than for any other set.
Both MeG and FoG have seen notable falls in the number of players taking part in each circuit this year, with new player recruitment almost entirely drying up for both sets in the
UK. For both however the level of competition participation by the remaining players remains solid.
DBM and DBMM are still both bubbling along at their previous levels, with the venerable DBM circuit enjoying an unexpected growth spurt in player numbers in the last few months.
The Summary:
The good news is that the number of Ancients events, and the level of participation is continuing to rise, although the absolute number of players has remained stable over the last year as a continuing uptick in the numbers of people playing ADLG,
TTS! and DBM has more than balanced out declines in numbers taking part in FoGAM, MeG and to a lesser extend DBMM events.
The tables and charts below show the current direct comparisons between the leading sets:
Total Player Numbers (
UK/Overseas), and amount of change from 2018-19
ADLG has seen the biggest net increase in players over the last 12 months, with
TTS! and DBM also recording smaller increases whilst other sets have lost ground to varying degrees.
The number of overseas players now travelling regularly to the
UK to play Ancients now stands at 48, up from 31 last year and has reached almost 10% of total player numbers - although this does vary significantly by ruleset.
"Market Share" of leading Ancients sets by Total Player Numbers:
DBMM and ADLG players still make up just over half of the entire
UK Ancients competition scene, with the other systems all each hovering in the 7-14% range.
One-unit-one-base systems (
TTS!, and the DBx-based or derived DBM, DBA, DMM and ADLG) have increased their share of the overall player pool noticably in the last 12 months, with 82% of all
UK-based Ancients players now favouring this approach, up from 75% last year.
Trends in numbers of "New" players adopting each ruleset
Looking in more detail at just "new" players (those not seen on each individual circuit before), 5 years after it's English-language launch and even with the core rulebook now out of print for almost a year ADLG still continues to expand it's player pool. In the last 12 months more
UK-based players joined the
UK ADLG competition circuit than the total numbers of players for either FoG or DBM.
The following graph shows the number of "new" players drawn into play each ruleset in any given 12-month period, as measured over the last 5 years, with the starting points for ADLG, MeG and
TTS! being their first appearance in these stats. Over the past 5 years ADLG has also been consistently bringing in more new players in each 12-month period than almost any other ruleset, with around 40-50 new players each year.
TTS! and ADLG between them contributed over of 3/4 of all "new" players to the various circuits this year, although these numbers do also count players dropping out of one circuit and appearing for the first time in another.
(note - differences in 'net change' between this and the previous chart for some rulesets is due to some players returning to competitions after missing the entireity of the 2018-19 season. These players are not counted as "new")
Numbers of Events and Total Entry numbers
Even with overall player numbers flat, the number of entries (each time an individual takes part in a competition) has still continued to rise year on year, and with 107 competitions held across all 7 rulesets in the last 12 months there are sure to be plenty of people out there raring to roll some dice again once the current social isolation rules are relaxed!
5 Year Trend analysis:
This illustrates the change (or not) of overall player numbers (in the preceeeding 12 month period) for each ruleset since 2016, measured at snapshots taken at year-end and in April/May each year. These do figures include overseas players.
For a more detailed look at the individual rulesets
follow this link to my Blog
The Boring Methodology Stuff
As usual, all the data is compiled using actual names and numbers of players taking part in events in the
UK, as published online on a forum or similar. Sometimes I've had to rely on runners and riders lists rather than results, and sometimes I've had to make some assumtions and guesses where nicknames have been used - but generally, given the amount of hard data here any errors shouldn't be enough to skew the bigger picture. I've only covered rulesets with more than 40 identificable unique competitin players in any given year as well, which is why some rulesets don't make the cut.
The other key caveat is - as always - that this is just competition data. What gets played at your club, or even solo in your basement isn't visible and isn't measurable, so this is just a count of those weird people who, pre-social isolation, used to go out into the world and enter competitions held in the
UK.
Last year's analysis ran from May-May, but with things screeching to a halt in mid-March there were a couple of ways to approach this year.
- Run a 10-month "year", from May 2019 to now.
- Run a 12-month "year", from March 2019 to now.
Having chewed it over I finally opted for using a full 12-months, and "double-counting" those competitions that happened between mid March and the beginning of May last year, so attendances at those events count in both this years and last years stats. Neither way would have been perfect, but I felt that any trends are easier to understand and spot if when comparing 12 months with 12 months rather than comparing 12 months with 10 months worth of events and data.
I've also presented the stats in a way which shines a clearer light on the numbers of purely
UK-based players than it has perhaps done in previous years. This is because some rulesets have now started to see very significant numbers of overseas players coming to the
UK to typically take part in one (or at most two) events per year, inflating both total player numbers and also the numbers of 'occasional' players for a couple of the featured rulesets.
With some rulesets now drawing almost 20% of their total player pools from overseas, and others not attracting any overseas players at all last year, without adjusting the numbers to show the impact of overseas players these stats would struggle to give a fully transparent view of what was happening in the
UK ancients community.
Germans can fight other barbarians, but I agree that Romans would make the coolest foe. 