The much-delayed BHGS Teams event at the London GT is now only a couple of weeks away, heralding the restart of the BHGS' competitions calendar.  

Originally scheduled pre-lockdown, and with the first players signing up all the way back in January 2020 it's been a long road to get here, but we are delighted to report that with a smidge over 100 players signed up to take part in both team and singles events for L'Art de la Guerre, Field of Glory, DBMM, DBM and To The Strongest! we have maintained or increased numbers across all of these periods since the BHGS Teams last ran in 2019, as well as adding a whole new rulset to the roster this year as well.

The most up to date list of runners and riders we have is now online on the BHGS website (although with 2 weeks to go there are bound to be a few more changes along the way - please contact your period list checker if you spot any changes that need making)

All of that means that we now finally ready to present the biggest multi-ruleset historicals competition to be staged anywhere in the UK in the last 18 months (OK, until Warfare in November anyway!) at the LGT in the Lee Valley Indoor Athletics Centre in London over the weekend of 25th & 26th September. 

​We look forward to seeing you there.

Hard as it may be for some of us to remember the heady days of face to face wargaming pre-Covid, the last couple of months have seen competitions and events gradually creeping back onto the calendar across a number of different rulesets which we host at our events.

For the rankings which are hosted on the BHGS website, a flurry of 1 FoGR event and 7 ADLG competitions since lockdown has meant that both of these systems now have updated  rankings featuring results from events held since the ban on public gatherings was lifted at the end of June. 

The ADLG rankings for the post-Covid era currently feature 89 players, 10 of whom have already managed to attend 3 different events since Lockdown restrictions ended, and 7 of whom attended their first ever ADLG event post-Lockdown.

The FoGR rankings include both events held in the last 12 months,  and a small but no doubt perfectly formed 8 players, almost all of whom have a 100% attendance record at every event held in the last year - which we believe to be a new all-time BHGS Rankings record!  

One of the other features of "Lockdown" has been that some of us apparently have used the time to try to sort out our gaming rooms/cupboards/garages/sheds/caves (delete as appropriate). 

As a consequence, a few players have been in touch to suggest/offer/beg to return to us some of the classic "wall plaque" trophies, which many of you may remember as being a mainstay of BHGS events in the late 90's and early 2000's, with the idea that they could be "upcycled" and "re-gifted" to a whole new generation of grateful competition winners in the coming season.

If therefore you (or possibly someone you share a house with...?) would like to burnish your eco-credentials by joining in with this particular recycling project, please get in touch and let us know how many of these historic trophies you'd be happy to now part with, so we can arrange for them to find loving new homes. 

We are sorry to report that, following a short but unsuccessful battle with cancer, Graham  Fordham sadly passed away on the Friday the 9th of July - peacefully, at home with his wife Alison and daughter Tamara by his side, as he wanted. 

Graham was a very popular and longstanding players (and very much one of the true  personalities) on the BHGs circuit for many years, and no doubt many of you will have fond memories of him attending and playing in many of our events across the years - along with Alison and Tamara. As such, we are sure that you will join us in sending our thoughts and prayers to Alison and Tamara and the rest of Graham's family at this difficult time.

The funeral will be held at 2pm on Tuesday the 20th of July, and Graham's family have provided us with details for accesing a stream of the ceremony, so if you would like to participate please contact us and we will forward the details to you.

As Graham was by all accounts not a fan of flowers, the family have set up a page for donations to Hospice at Home through https://www.averilphillips.co.uk/donate-in-memory/ which should be online shortly.

May 2021:

Unfortunately, and despite our best efforts it now appears that we will not be able to stage an edition of Britcon this year. 

Even with all of the positive news in recent weeks, and steady progress along the roadmap to lifting of the current restrictions "Covid uncertainty" has still eaten greatly into our normal planning and promotional cycle for Britcon such that by the time we are likely to have an official green light in mid June, the timeline will then be woefully short until early August.

Even more importantly our venue at Manchester Uni may not be in a position to confirm our booking even by mid June, with the venue management team who handle our booking all having either been temporarily redeployed to support testing of the student population or in some cases furloughed or made redundant. 

Taken together this means that even with the best will in the world we do not see how we can stage an event of the size and quality we would wish to deliver this year.

For 2022, with the Manchester venue still on track to be demolished in the Spring/Summer we have been looking at a number of other similar venues around the country to stage a residential weekend-long gaming event and trade show.

As a result of this process we're now pleased to report that we now have a shortlist of two suitable venues for Britcon 2022, both of which are in Nottingham and both of which are holding dates for us on our normal "2nd weekend in August" dateline. Once Covid restrictions allow (hopefully in June) we will be making site visits to both and signing a contact with one of them as soon as possible so we can start the process of planning for a much more normal Britcon in a new venue in 2022.

For the rest of the calendar, the latest status is as follows:

Bookings are open for the BHGS Teams Competition @ the London GT over the weekend of 25/26th September, where we will be staging competitions for DBM, DBMM, To the Strongest, L'Art de la Guerre and Field of Glory under the BHGS banner.

Updated details for all of these events are now on the BHGS website and we already have almost 100 players signed up at what looks to be a keenly anticipated set of competitions this September - and we very much hope you too will be able to join us in London to start rolling some dice again!

We are hoping to hear back soon from our regular venue for Roll Call to confirm some dates for Spring 2022, and will publish these dates and competition detailsas soon as possible.

We hope to see you at the LGT in September, and in both Cranfield and also in Nottingham next year.

The BHGS Britcon Team

After discussions with our hosts the LGT Organising team we're now pleased to be able to ask you to pencil into your diaries the weekend of September 25/26th 2021 when we sincerely hope to be able to stage the next iteration of the BHGS Teams Competition.

After a succesful first outing in 2019, The BHGS Teams at the London GT was initially planned for early Summer 2020, then postponed first to September 2020, and then again to May 2021 as the full impact of Covid became apparent across the UK.

With the current UK Covid-related regulations prohibiting events on the scale of the LGT still looking unlikely to be lifted before next April at the earliest (potentially giving both organisers and players almost no time to plan with any certainty that the event could be legally staged), the LGT and the BHGS Teams events have now been rescheduled yet again to September 25/26th of next year - by which time we all sincerely hope that it will once again be possible for large numbers of gamers to meet and roll dice across the tabletop.

As part of the BHGS Teams Competition, the BHGS are planning on running the following events: 

• ADLG
• FoG
• TtS (singles, 1-day event Sunday only)
• DBMM
• DBMv3.3 (singles, 2 day event)
• SAGA (provisional)

For each event our current plan is to stick where possible with the themes and formats we were originally planning to run for 2020, however it is of course possible that some of these may well end up being revised, especially should any rules or list revisions end up being released at some point in the next 12 months for any of these sets.  Our intention is therefore to 'officially' firm up periods and themes early next year.

Anyone who originally purchased a ticket for the original dates in May 2020 should already have been contacted by the LGT Organisers to transfer their booking forward or detailing what to do if they can't make the new date. The BHGS are not involved in administration of LGT tickets, so please direct any ticketing questions to the LGT organisers via their website or their Facebook Page. 

It of course goes without saying that all of the above is - still - subject to current Covid-related restrictions being lifted in good time, and that both ourselves, and the organising team behind the LGT will impose appropriate rules on players in order to prioritize the safety of all attendees, and ensure that the event is staged in line with any applicable regulations which may be in effect at the time the event takes place.


The BHGS team are also continuing to look into how we might stage our other events in 2021, and we hope to have more details to announce in the coming weeks.

this In the light of recent Government announcements that the "rule of 6", and other more specific prohibitions against the staging of meetings and other events are expected to remain in force for at least another 6 months across the UK, the BHGS team have taken the reluctant decision that it is no longer feasible to run Roll Call as we had originally hoped next April half term.

With the 6-month prohibition against events and gatherings taking us through to the beginning of April 2021, the BHGS would therefore at best only be able to confirm that Roll Call was going ahead (or not) literally a matter of days in advance of the event itself - an impossible situation for our players, especially those needing to plan travel and accommodation, our organising team and of course our venue the Holywell School.

Even were the prevailing set of restrictions on meetings and events to be lifted earlier than anticipated, we believe it is unrealistic to expect that social distancing guidelines will be eased to the extent that Roll Call - very much a "tightly-packed" gaming experience in recent years - could be staged without a very significant reduction in capacity. This in turn would put the financial viability of the event in question, and would see player numbers across all of the periods we traditionally stage being dramatically reduced to below credible thresholds.

​We will continue to review our plans for this situation going forward, and look forward to a return to staging multi-period, multi-ruleset wargaming events as soon as it is both safe and practicable for us to do so.


​

Rather astonishingly, the BHGS FoGR rankings have just been updated to cover the 12 month period prior to September 2020.

This includes the one summertime 2020 event which managed to sneak in (legally) inbetween lockdowns. 

Earlier this year we announced the rescheduling of both Roll Call (from April to October) and the BHGS Teams @ the London GT (to September). 

Unfortunately the continued restrictions around mass gatherings in place across the UK  now mean that it is not going to be possible to stage either of these events in 2020, and so both will return in 2021.

In the case of the BHGS Teams, current prohibitions against staging meetings and events have recently been confirmed as remaining in place until at least October 1st across the UK, and so the organisers of the LGT have been forced to announced the cancellation of the 2020 edition. All players who have booked for this event will be offered a refund by the LGT organisers, or the opportunity to roll forward their monies to 2021 when the event will again take place (this time over the May Day bank holiday weekend). We're all keen to see the BHGS continue to support this event, which puts historical gaming in the same (large) room as many other non-histporical formats and systems and will be working with the LGT organisers to discussing options for events in 2021.

For Roll Call, redrawing the venue table layout in a way which would allow us to comply with the newly-published social distancing guidelines for staging events would have meant a dramatic reduction in capacity. This would have put the financial viability of the event in question, and would mean that at-best perhaps only 6-8 places could be offered in each of the events we traditionally stage. The BHGS team would also be subject to legal requirements to implement a significant number of other restrictive measures, many of which would present serious challenges for players, the BHGS Roll Call team and not least for the school itself. As such, we have decided that the best approach is to skip 2020 entirely and start to plan for a return of Roll Call at some point in 2021, as part of a wider review of our existing calendar of events.

​

Following the UK Government's announcement earlier this week of a provisional timeline for easing the UK-wide lockdown, it has now become apparent that any easing of social distancing rules in the UK will be a lengthy and gradual process.  

The "best case" scenario laid out this week would still only see limited, socially distanced openings of non-essential leisure facilities by July at the very earliest - a scenario which makes it impossible to envisage how an event like Britcon, which relies upon large numbers of (relative) strangers travelling from across the country to spend many hours in an enclosed space interacting face-to-face with one another from a few feet apart across a gaming table, would be permitted (or indeed would be safe to stage) just a few weeks later in early August. Indeed, at this point in time it is also unclear even if the venue we currently use would even be allowed to open at all.

As a result the BHGS Committee have taken the decision to cancel this year's Britcon. 

The event will not be rescheduled to later in the year, so our next edition will be held in Summer 2021 - most probably in a new venue, as the Barnes Wallis building is (currently) due to be demolished at the end of July 2021.

The BHGS does fortunately have cash reserves sufficient to take the financial hit of cancelling the event and so we will be issuing full refunds to all of our registered players over the next few days. 

We had also delayed sending out any invoices to any of our traders for stand space this year's event, so none of those traders will end up out of pocket either as a result of the cancellation. 

Our next events are at the LGT in September and the rescheduled Roll Call in October, and so if there are any updates on either we will make sure to let you know as soon as possible.

Regards

The BHGS Britcon Team