L’Art de la guerre – No Dice No Glory

When in Rome.. Art de la Guerre games at the Club

September 21, 2022 | Matt Varnish | Ancients, Battle Report/AAR, Gaming

by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish” Campbell

I have been blessed to live in Ottawa for a few reasons, but one is the strong gaming community we have here. I think ours is larger than Montreal and is definitely larger than Toronto’s, cities with 2x and 5x our population.

I know back when I played WHFB and 40K back in the golden era (1996-2006) we had a very strong showing of Ottawa-based gamers at tournaments including the Grand Tournament. When my group of players switched over to Flames of War and started hosting tournaments, we organized a decent following and hosted the Canadian Nationals for many years.

Now that I have dipped my toes into Ancients and other historicals (Napoleonics) I find that, yet again, we have a strong following, this time in the form of the Ottawa Miniatures Gamers (OMG) some of whom are consistent Art de la Guerre (ADLG) rankings, players. So, I have started attending club nights which are held typically twice a month, and as luck would have it, their rotation of games had ADLG so I tidied up some of my Romans in 28mm and showed up to get trounced!

Art de la Guerre Tournament Day 2: 28mm Dark Ages Era 200pts

June 22, 2022 | Matt Varnish | Ancients, Gaming

by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish’ Campbell, additional photos by Todd Creasey, Mike Abbott and John Bowen

Day 2 of the OMG Art de la Guerre (ADLG) tournament was 25/28mm and was Dark Ages era themed. We had fewer players but it was also a holiday here in Canada. Victoria Day. Where we graciously asked the Queen if we could be our own country and she said yes, rather than revolt like our southerly neighbors. What better way to celebrate than in the basement playing some ADLG at the club!

All Roads lead to Rome (picking up Ancients)

September 18, 2019 | Matt Varnish | Battle Report/AAR, Gaming

by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish’ Campbell

Wait what? Ancients? Medievals?

I’ll be honest I had ZERO interest in wargaming this period until I started attending HMGS events a few years ago. Every single Cold Wars, Fall-In or Historicon had a lot of tables with ancients being played, and tournaments as well in scales such as 15mm, 25/28mm.

While my only games at the time were Flames of War and then later Team Yankee, I would still walk over and take a tonne of pictures and gawp at the nicely painted armies. What seemed crazy to me was that you could play just about anything and the rules covered it, for example you could have Egyptians vs the Ming Dynasty, Persians vs Aztecs.

As it turns out, my good friend Scott Roach (NDNG author Obsidian23) had boxes and boxes of ancients in his gaming basement, and a deal was struck. I would grab his 28mm Romans, and we could play Hail Caesar as we were already getting into Black Powder (both rulesets from Warlord Games). Then, however, he started talking about DBA, Impetus, To the Strongest, and at the HMGS events they were playing L’Art de La Guerre… Ugh.. what to pick?