Don't Tell Him Pikes!

Albion1 · Post by **Albion1** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 10:33 am

The usual 25mm Ancients competition at the Plymouth Wargames Convention will be a FoG tournament.
650 points - any army from the first 7 books. With the proviso that no pikes or knights are to be used.
the event is on the weekend of January 31st/February 1st. Hopefully all the usual suspects will be able to attend and new competitors would be very welcome.
Regards,
Andy C

nikgaukroger · Post by **nikgaukroger** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 10:42 am

Albion1 wrote:
With the proviso that no pikes or knights are to be used.

Odd restriction if you don't mind me saying

Albion1 · Post by **Albion1** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 10:54 am

Don't mind at all.
The thinking was that so many armies in recent 25mm tournies seem to be pike armies, which can be powerful at this scale.
We felt it would be nice to encourage more variety.
As for knights - some round these parts think them too powerful. I don't agree but I suppose restriction adds a certain flavour to the competition. We did not go for a chronological theme as we thought that may prevent some players from entering.

PyrrhicVictory · Post by **PyrrhicVictory** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 3:38 pm

If you wanted to limit the number of pike and knight armies, just limit the tourney to Legions Triumphant, where there are no knights and very limited pike. Having an "open" tournament but limiting unit types does sound rather unfair. It seems that you may be cutting off your nose to spite your face by cutting your pool of potential players.

Redpossum · Post by **Redpossum** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 4:52 pm

Come ON, guys. You want some cheese with that?

Stick to your guns, albion. I think it's perfectly reasonable of you to set up your tourney any old way you please. There's nothing says you have to do things the way others do them

nikgaukroger · Post by **nikgaukroger** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 5:30 pm

Albion1 wrote:Don't mind at all.
The thinking was that so many armies in recent 25mm tournies seem to be pike armies, which can be powerful at this scale.
We felt it would be nice to encourage more variety.
As for knights - some round these parts think them too powerful. I don't agree but I suppose restriction adds a certain flavour to the competition. We did not go for a chronological theme as we thought that may prevent some players from entering.

Fair enough

OhReally · Post by **OhReally** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 3:06 am

Epic fail.

How about no light horse? Those can be annoying.

I know, how about a tournament with no figures. That would be a blast!

Albion1 · Post by **Albion1** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 12:19 pm

I know, how about a tournament with no figures. That would be a blast!

Its an idea - the winner of the game would be the player with the most/best positioned terrain.
May get a bit boring after a while but at least you get to play everyone in the tournament each day - twice!

Actually I didn't anticipate this type of response

It was an idea and I am open to suggestions, neither myself nor anyone else in our club will be playing that weekend, so we have no axe to grind. We are probably going to be running a 15mm open tournament too.
Therefore to add a bit of differentiation we came up with the no pikes/knights ideas for the 25s. We thought this would exclude less people than a one book theme. Open to all suggestions though and while I still think no pikes would encourage a more interesting diversity, I am not unduly bothered, one way or the other, about the knights.
All comments are welcomed, all players are welcome, even Georgians (if they leave their pikes behind

)
Actually I was in the Dahlonega region of north Georgia for a week last year. Great place.

OhReally · Post by **OhReally** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 12:45 pm

Albion1 wrote:I know, how about a tournament with no figures. That would be a blast!

Its an idea - the winner of the game would be the player with the most/best positioned terrain.
May get a bit boring after a while but at least you get to play everyone in the tournament each day - twice!

Actually I didn't anticipate this type of response It was an idea and I am open to suggestions, neither myself nor anyone else in our club will be playing that weekend, so we have no axe to grind. We are probably going to be running a 15mm open tournament too.
Therefore to add a bit of differentiation we came up with the no pikes/knights ideas for the 25s. We thought this would exclude less people than a one book theme. Open to all suggestions though and while I still think no pikes would encourage a more interesting diversity, I am not unduly bothered, one way or the other, about the knights.
All comments are welcomed, all players are welcome, even Georgians (if they leave their pikes behind )
Actually I was in the Dahlonega region of north Georgia for a week last year. Great place.

I think maybe there are allot of pike and knight armies at your tournaments because there are allot of pike and knight armies in the books as well.

Between Rise of Rome and Immortal Fire just count up the # of armies that are pike heavy. Look at the # of knight armies between Swords and Scimitars and Storm of Arrows. There is a reason you see allot of these armies, it's because there were allot of these armies...

hammy · Post by **hammy** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 12:57 pm

OhReally wrote: I think maybe there are allot of pike and knight armies at your tournaments because there are allot of pike and knight armies in the books as well.

Between Rise of Rome and Immortal Fire just count up the # of armies that are pike heavy. Look at the # of knight armies between Swords and Scimitars and Storm of Arrows. There is a reason you see allot of these armies, it's because there were allot of these armies...

Possibly but pike do seem rather prevalent in 25mm tournaments.

There are several possible reasons:
Pike are really good in FoG
Because pike were really good in DBM most 25mm players have armies with lots of pike
There are a very high proportion of lists with pikes in them in the published lists

Of these the first is not particualrly true. Pike are OK but have been anything but dominant so far in 25mm comps. The Swiss that won at Britcon was an early version with no pikes at all.
The second could be true, lots of people with 25mm armies seem to have pikes
The third is becoming less true as more books are released

My only fear for a no pikes no knights tournament is that unless you bring Romans you could be in big trouble. There is very little other than pikes or knights that scares Mr legionary.

johno · Post by **johno** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 10:02 pm

FOG is effectively our ruleset of last resort, since I wasn't prepared to run any DBM or DBMM, and Albion1 was prepared to run FOG. The other option was to abandon the 25mm Ancients competition altogether, and use the space for the much better supported WarHammer Fantasy and WarHammer 40K competitions.

Back on topic: As Albion1 has said, we are open to suggestions - this is our first time of running a FOG competition, and we haven't seen enough of other people's efforts to have a clear idea what works and what doesn't. Clearly, we have heard that Pikes and Knights dominate, especially in the 25mm game.

So if you've taken part in an event that you thought worked well, tell us about what worked and why.

nikgaukroger · Post by **nikgaukroger** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 8:34 am

johno wrote:
So if you've taken part in an event that you thought worked well, tell us about what worked and why.

Is that just 25mm events you're on about?

johno · Post by **johno** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 5:36 pm

Nik: we are committed to a 25mm event (this will be our tenth), but I'd expect anything that worked well in the area of list restrictions etc to work well in either scale. Am I being naive in this?

Albion1 is the prime mover, since I didn't want to run a DBM/DBMM competition, and (having only played three games, and not been terribly enthused by it) didn't feel qualified to run a FOG one, either.

I know he is considering a 15mm competition as well as a 25mm one, but I'm not sure if the final decision has been made on that.

I do wonder how I managed to get myself involved at all, actually: I "retired" from the committee in 2005, after 20 years as Secretary and show organiser...

johno

nikgaukroger · Post by **nikgaukroger** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 6:55 pm

johno wrote:
Nik: we are committed to a 25mm event (this will be our tenth), but I'd expect anything that worked well in the area of list restrictions etc to work well in either scale. Am I being naive in this?

Well so far all the comps I've played have either been themed by book or open to all the lists published to that date and, IMO, both styles have worked well with no real dominance of troop types, just of good players

I've only played 15mm so far though so that may be a caveat. I don't know much about the "big boys toys" scene but it does seem to me that armies with good close combat troops such as knights and pikes are common as previous rules appear to have meant that combat happened quite quickly and dancing around was less possible and this may be why 25mm comps see so many of these troop types even under a different rule set.

I would, however, say that if you think restriction X will make for a better competition amongst the players you expect to attend than go for it - enjoyment of participants is paramount IMO. I'd just be slightly concerned that the majority of armies people will have without these troop types will be Romans.

johno wrote:
Albion1 is the prime mover, since I didn't want to run a DBM/DBMM competition, and (having only played three games, and not been terribly enthused by it) didn't feel qualified to run a FOG one, either.

I know he is considering a 15mm competition as well as a 25mm one, but I'm not sure if the final decision has been made on that.

I do wonder how I managed to get myself involved at all, actually: I "retired" from the committee in 2005, after 20 years as Secretary and show organiser...

johno

Its because the number of people willing and able to get their fingers out is limited and so the same faces appear againa and again

BTW if it wasn't the weekend after Godendag I'd be tempted to come along whatever restrictions you put in, however, after a trip to wales another the following week to Plymouth is a bit too far ...

OhReally · Post by **OhReally** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 7:05 pm

johno wrote:Nik: we are committed to a 25mm event (this will be our tenth), but I'd expect anything that worked well in the area of list restrictions etc to work well in either scale. Am I being naive in this?

Albion1 is the prime mover, since I didn't want to run a DBM/DBMM competition, and (having only played three games, and not been terribly enthused by it) didn't feel qualified to run a FOG one, either.

I know he is considering a 15mm competition as well as a 25mm one, but I'm not sure if the final decision has been made on that.

I do wonder how I managed to get myself involved at all, actually: I "retired" from the committee in 2005, after 20 years as Secretary and show organiser...

johno

My concern is that if you have people who are not super experienced in FoG then they should not be putting huge restrictions on what can be taken. Eliminating all pikes and knights are going to cause more problems than keeping them will and you are going to drastically alter the balance of the game. Besides I've not found pikes or Knights to be super troops by any stretch. I would worry more about drilled/armoured/superior or elite/bow swordsmen supported by hordes of light horse.

Pikes have limited frontage, are usually average and suffer horribly by losing a cohesion level or any bases. Being shock troops they can be enticed to break out of battle lines as well and charge when they would rather sit home.

Knights are typically undrilled, prone to charge when you don't want them to and lose many of their bonuses when exposed to terrain, or against spears and pike. They are also very brittle and expensive.

Albion1 · Post by **Albion1** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 11:48 am

My internet access is a little sporadic so I have not been able to read (or respond) for a while.
You may be interested to know a discussion is now taking place internally and we are still not entirely sure about the 25mmm comp format. The competition will definitely be held however. Four months to go so a final announcement will be made soon.

Nik wrote BTW if it wasn't the weekend after Godendag I'd be tempted to come along whatever restrictions you put in, however, after a trip to wales another the following week to Plymouth is a bit too far ...
That is a problem we regularly find, many moons ago, we found that, after winning the Nationals the previous year, not enough people would be willing to travel here when we ran the competition. Therefore the members of the Plymouth Club ran the event in Weston-Super-Mare! The only way we could get a sufficient number of competitors to take part.
We are always mindful of that, so really don't want to put off anyone, if we can help it.

Lance wrote My concern is that if you have people who are not super experienced in FoG then they should not be putting huge restrictions on what can be taken.
I wouldn't call myself super experienced but I was a play tester and have been playing regularly since well before publication. Ideally I'd like to see a Themed competition but fear that would prevent many players playing as I suppose they would have fewer armies in 25mm which are far more expensive for one thing.
The discussion continues.
For future reference - certainly not this year - what do people think of a competition with a large date range, eg Any BC army allowed?
One day I'll work out how to get quotations inside those nice grey boxes which others use

OhReally · Post by **OhReally** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 12:33 pm

Albion1 wrote:My internet access is a little sporadic so I have not been able to read (or respond) for a while.
You may be interested to know a discussion is now taking place internally and we are still not entirely sure about the 25mmm comp format. The competition will definitely be held however. Four months to go so a final announcement will be made soon.

Nik wrote BTW if it wasn't the weekend after Godendag I'd be tempted to come along whatever restrictions you put in, however, after a trip to wales another the following week to Plymouth is a bit too far ...
That is a problem we regularly find, many moons ago, we found that, after winning the Nationals the previous year, not enough people would be willing to travel here when we ran the competition. Therefore the members of the Plymouth Club ran the event in Weston-Super-Mare! The only way we could get a sufficient number of competitors to take part.
We are always mindful of that, so really don't want to put off anyone, if we can help it.

Lance wrote My concern is that if you have people who are not super experienced in FoG then they should not be putting huge restrictions on what can be taken.
I wouldn't call myself super experienced but I was a play tester and have been playing regularly since well before publication. Ideally I'd like to see a Themed competition but fear that would prevent many players playing as I suppose they would have fewer armies in 25mm which are far more expensive for one thing.
The discussion continues.
For future reference - certainly not this year - what do people think of a competition with a large date range, eg Any BC army allowed?
One day I'll work out how to get quotations inside those nice grey boxes which others use

I hope the tournament is a great success. Good luck!

philqw78 · Post by **philqw78** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 12:36 pm

Lance,
You're just showing off now putting a huge quote in

OhReally · Post by **OhReally** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 12:44 pm

philqw78 wrote:Lance,
You're just showing off now putting a huge quote in

In all fairness I'm PMing the guy on how to do a quote, so cut me some slack!

hammy · Post by **hammy** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 1:18 pm

OhReally wrote:
philqw78 wrote:Lance,
You're just showing off now putting a huge quote in

In all fairness I'm PMing the guy on how to do a quote, so cut me some slack!

Don't listen to Phil, we love you really Lance

To be honest working out the best way to use the forums is not easy and it is good of you to PM Albion1 to help.

I think Phil is just grumpy because he wants to be the number 1 seed for Roll Call and I haven't told him one way or the other if he will be

Don't Tell Him Pikes!

Don't Tell Him Pikes!

Re: Don't Tell Him Pikes!