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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

Thanks for all your posts over the course of the year, here and on your blog! You ushered me and a friend into the world of historicals in general and ADLG in particular, and we're looking forward to ramping up our activity in 2020. Here's wishing you a great holiday season!

 Oryza Sativa wrote:
Thanks for all your posts over the course of the year, here and on your blog! You ushered me and a friend into the world of historicals in general and ADLG in particular, and we're looking forward to ramping up our activity in 2020. Here's wishing you a great holiday season!

Great to hear!! Chances are I'll be playing at Cold wars in March too - but a bit far from LV !