Slitherine

I am considering setting up league play from our store for Field of Glory, so that players can track their win/loss and we can develop rankings within the league. I know this is usually done for FOG in the context of tournaments, but a lot of our players do not enjoy tournament play. So the league would be a sort of method to track your progress and to promote play. I plan to offer monthly prizes for the highest ranked and for other things that would change from month to month, such as most improved, best new battle group, best new camp, etc.

I am looking at some way to weight the scoring so that better players will not just pound on newbies, as is done with chess.

Has anyone else done something like this? Can anyone point me toward some software or sites that might help?

My group hasn't done anything like this, but I think it is a great idea, especially for those guys who don't like tournaments - whether it is because they don't prefer the perceived competitive atmosphere, or the time commitment of playing multiple games in a single day. I'd love to hear about what you come up with or what other players might be doing already. Additionally, are there not plans by Osprey and Slitherine to eventually publish a set of campaign rules for Field of Glory? If so, I would hope that they could be used for league play, just as you suggest. Now that there is light at the end of the tunnel for the complete publication of all the army lists, is there any word on when the campaign supplement might come out?

Peter C

We already do this. We have a yearly competition called the "The Warlord Trophy". Every game played at the club is noted and then at the end of the year there is a playoff between the top four and the winner gets the trophy.

This trophy has been around since 1971, so about 38 years history!!!

See www.maws.org.uk and click on the link for the Warlord Trophy for more details. Including a report of the final of the 1973 competition umpired by a certain Phil Barker!

We run a league every year in Ireland. In the past this has been DBM but now is run as two separate leagues for DBMM and FoG.
One of our FoG players, Seamus McKenna, has converted the Glicko ranking system for use for all FoG games which we play over here. So the results of the first few local competitions were used to create a ranking for players for the initial draw, however, any appropriate system can be used for this.
Thereafter, the league runs using a Swiss chess system using the standard FoG scoring - this means that the better players tend to gravitate towards the top of the table and play each other while the beginners and those with unlucky dice get to play each other near the bottom. There is always some crossover, but all the games are played in a friendly spirit and are rarely hampered by time limits.
We play one game per month and, as it usually takes a few months to get things up and running, we try to get 6 games in per year, with a final being played between the top 4 players at the end of the year.
Players are free to change their army composition between games (although the army and date are fixed).
This year we are playing a theme based on Greece and Rome at war, with 14 players playing in the FoG league.

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the encouragement.

We're actually already running one campaign, set in 1431 Europe. But there are several players who did not have armies/interest in that period. So we are looking for something to bring others into the fold. The league idea works, since it does not interfere with the campaign games. There is no reason you cannot have a campaign game count as a league game, after all.

Dave, I noticed that your group is just using a straight average of the scores, which is certainly the most straightforward way of doing it. But I think there can be two issues:

1) Better players beat up newbies to drive up their scores. This both warps the league and discourages new players. For that reason we will probably try to implement some sort of scoring that is related to your standing.

2) Resting on your laurels. There can be an issue of players who get good scores early and then simply do not play more games, since they are likely to list loss at that point. For example, I noticed, Dave, that for one year the winner played only 5 games while others played 10 or more.

Why not use a squash ladder type thing.

Say you can challenge someone upto 5 above and 3 below (depends how many people on the ladder the number here) to a game. It will stabilise quite quickly and could then run forever.

Just use scores from last 10 or so meetings then no-one can get too far ahead and if someone misses games they will fall, rewarding those that turn up more often.

Limiting the number of games held in the ladder will also mean rapid changes in the ladder if someone had an unusual 25-0 and then it dissappears from their record.

Once the league has been running and settled points could be aggregated by number of positions difference. So if you challenge someone 20% above you for instance you would get 10% bonus points, they would lose 10% of points.

With computers now it would be easy for lot of awards: top of ladder at year end, highest score for year, and some sort of best average, best sportsman, and best bif, er most improved.

Rob,

The Society of Ancients in Britain runs something similar (I think) to what you are looking at. Here is the link to their webpage for this:

http://www.soa.org.uk/championship/

Christopher Anders

Dave, I noticed that your group is just using a straight average of the scores, which is certainly the most straightforward way of doing it. But I think there can be two issues:

1) Better players beat up newbies to drive up their scores. This both warps the league and discourages new players. For that reason we will probably try to implement some sort of scoring that is related to your standing.

There is this, however, since these are all games at the club then if said newbie feels he is getting picked on then he can simply refuse to play! We haven't had a problem with this as often players are testing new armies, or practicing with something a bit different and since nobody is ever forced to play a game then self-regulation has been enough and this has not been an issue.

2) Resting on your laurels. There can be an issue of players who get good scores early and then simply do not play more games, since they are likely to list loss at that point. For example, I noticed, Dave, that for one year the winner played only 5 games while others played 10 or more.

We do have a minimum number of games which is the "average" i.e. your score is always divided by 8 or by the number of games you have played (whichever is higher) to remove this to an extent. However, since these are club games and people much prefer to actually play games rather than sit at home you don't often get this option!