Slitherine

The runners and riders are up on the BHGS site for this weekends Challenge at Ascot.
http://www.bhgs.co.uk/

In brief

13 Shooty Cav
9 Shooty foot
7 Kn types
6 Swarm types
4 Sp
3 Cav (non shooty one IMO particularly barking)
2 Pike
2 IF
3 odd balls, Hussite, Numidian, Norse Irish

so which one is barking? The Moldavians? Could be a clone of our winning army from Oxford.

I daren't say as I think I may have inspired it. I put Moldovans down as shooty cav though. Don't know ET's empire very well, so be warned a lot of the above is a rough guess. Those down as Knights normally have some. e.g. Aragon may not have many and could be an IF/Sp army I suppose.

The Lombard army looks fun though

An odd breakdown by club. If taking clubs with 3+ members appearing.

Reigate 8: 7 shooty armies, 1 Armoured spear,
MAWS 5: 4Cav/Shooty, 1 Kn/Armoured Spear
Wycombe 3: 2 Shooty foot, 1 armoured impact foot
Pinner: 2 Dom Rom, 1 Ottoman (all manouver armies, but armoured Dom Rom and Shooty Otts)
Halifax: 3 all Medieval but different


So it looks like the club you play in makes a huge difference to what you play with

Hi Paul

Can I just clarify how first round pairings are done. I understand pairing family members or members from the same club is avoided. Do you then seek to pair opponents as historically as possible in the first round or will it be totally random?

Cheers

Rob

Family pairings are barred throughout. Club pairings are avoided in the first two rounds. Given that, the first round is random (except a seed cannot play another seed). That is IIRC as it is sorted out by the draw software. After that it is Swiss chess except you cannot play the same person twice.

Paul

Don't read anything into the Halifax choices. Rob owns only two armies so his choice is limited. I have picked Hussites because I like using them. I expect I would do better with another army, but it might not be as entertaining. Adrian usually goes with something he will enjoy using as well.

Re the Reigate Shooty armies:

I've always liked the Persians from a history POV and it was my first wargames army. I could never get it to work in DBM (too many armies it really did't like) but it has a fair chance in FOG and I've enjoyed using it in the 2 comps I've used it in so far.

Paul and Nik both have WOTR armies that they painted and used under DBM. It seems a bit less random under FOG (in DBM it was a case of random chance of unrelaible ally or bad weather).

I liked the look of the Ilkhanid I played against at Britcon so used it down the club a few times - a good army but a bit too subtle for me However, jason's been giving it a go recently and seems to enjoy it.

Not sure what the plan is from Ray, Terry and Simon.

G

Yikes.
1) How did I get to be a seed. Oh well glad I am not alleggic...I think.
2) It will be fun to return to Challenge after a 6 or 7 year absence.
3) Seeing the R&R i do wish i had brought my Dailami.

And how did Terry and Simon avoid being a seed?

Dailami were my weapon of choice, until I realised that I only had a month to paint (and buy) them. shame really.

Just spotted a thread where it says commanders should be on 40 by 40 and not 40 by 30. Are most people taking theirs on 40 by 30 and will this be an issue?

Rob

hazelbark wrote:Yikes.
1) How did I get to be a seed. Oh well glad I am not alleggic...I think.
2) It will be fun to return to Challenge after a 6 or 7 year absence.
3) Seeing the R&R i do wish i had brought my Dailami.

And how did Terry and Simon avoid being a seed?

Seeding is done on the current (well end of March and as yet unpublished) UK rankings. Overseas players are often seeded out of courtesy

I think that Pete Reilly's Ancient Britons may be a good choice.

Personally I just wish I could play FoG and FoW at the same time

hammy wrote:
Seeding is done on the current (well end of March and as yet unpublished) UK rankings. Overseas players are often seeded out of courtesy

Well how many beers can I trade my seeding for? I'll probalby get paired versus Simon or Terry for my troubles.

hazelbark wrote:

hammy wrote:
Seeding is done on the current (well end of March and as yet unpublished) UK rankings. Overseas players are often seeded out of courtesy

Well how many beers can I trade my seeding for? I'll probalby get paired versus Simon or Terry for my troubles.

Well as only about 1/4 of the field are seeded you could get either of them in round 1 if you were unseeded anyway

A plan! A plan!

Look I'm just their for the beer. According to Nik, I end up with a red hot poker up my ar*e. So it's going to be a good weekend whatever happens.

I'm not sure why I chose WOR, but in fairness it has started a bit of a trend. I think I was the first one from Reigate to declare my intention to use it at the challenge.


Ray

p.s I remember now. Dave Madigan said that MF Bow were cr*p and I just took it as a challenge.

p.p.s On the basis that I haven't won a game with it he's probably right!

Never let the facts get in the way of a good moan.

In fact why don't you get Dan to play Graham Evans and THEN Simon Hall. That should keep him occupied for weeks.

Hopefully he won't return the favour at the IWF's

dave_r wrote:Never let the facts get in the way of a good moan.

In fact why don't you get Dan to play Graham Evans and THEN Simon Hall. That should keep him occupied for weeks.

Hopefully he won't return the favour at the IWF's

Well as the draw is random and Simon is not seeded we could get a repeat of the Hall Evans round 1 game that happened in IIRC 2006

Perhaps we need to adjust the draw software to be gentle with furriners

Matt will hopefully be altering things but I seem to have confused the list checker again I am using the Late Ottomans and not Catalan,Lynda has them
David

Robert241167 wrote:Just spotted a thread where it says commanders should be on 40 by 40 and not 40 by 30. Are most people taking theirs on 40 by 30 and will this be an issue?

Rob

I think most people have them on 40x40 these days. As long as they are obvious it won't matter (neither would round BTW, ignore the silly people saying it will be ) - the problems arise if you cannot spot what is a commander base not whether it is 40x40 IMO.