PAWS Spring DBA 2020 Cancelled

Bowing to the inevitable, we have now taken the decision to cancel the PAWS Spring DBA 2020.

The planned theme of Armies and Enemies of the Hittite Empire, 13th century BC (1300-1201 BC) will now be used at the PAWS Summer DBA 2020, planned for 27 June.

PAWS shutdown

In view of the latest government advice we have decided to cancel all PAWS meetings up to and including Easter Saturday April 11th.

The next scheduled meeting after that would be the Spring DBA on April 18th. We will decide on whether that will go ahead in the coming weeks.

PAWS Spring DBA & Coronavirus

Due to his wife’s health (and to a lesser extent his own) Lindon has decided that attending DBA tournaments (including our own) would not be wise in the current Coronavirus situation. The immediate affect of this is that he won’t be able to provide lifts from the station for people planning to arrive by train etc.

Added to this, the current news about impending isolation for the over 70s may mean I won’t be able to attend and run our tournaments.

If we do decide to cancel, we’ll use the same theme for the next scheduled PAWS tournament.

PAWS Spring DBA 2020

The 2020 PAWS Spring DBA will be held on April 18th at Fort Cumberland, Portsmouth.

The theme is Armies and Enemies of the Hittite Empire, 13th century BC (1300-1201 BC)
Allowed armies:
I/4 c Hurrian or Nairi Army
I/4 d Gasgan Army
I/6 b Midianite or Amalekite Army
I/18 Minoan or Early Mycenaean Army
I/19 Mitanni Army
I/20 a Ugarit Army
I/20 b Other Syro-Canaanite Army
I/21 a Kassite Babylonian Army
I/22 a New Kingdom Egyptian Army
I/24 a Early Hittite Empire Army
I/24 b Later Hittite Empire Army
I/25 a Middle Assyrian Army
I/26 a Achaian Army
I/26 b Trojan Army
I/28 Sea-Peoples Army
Allies must be chosen from the same selection of armies.

We will be using a new format for the PAWS Afternoon DBA tournaments in 2020. We will still divide players into 2 groups with a random draw, but there will only be 4 rounds within the groups. These games will be increased to 50 minutes playing time plus 10 minutes turn-around time. Scoring will be as before.

Everyone will then play the fifth “play-off” round (so everyone will get 5 games). These games will be played to a conclusion rather than being scored.

In this final round, first place from each group will play The Final to determine the tournament winner and runner-up. Second place in each group will play-off for tournament third and four positions, third place in each group will play-off for tournament fifth and sixth positions and so on.

We also plan to start an hour earlier, with booking in from 12:00 to 12:20 so that the draw can be held and everyone ready to start by 12:30.

Meeting dates for early 2020

Our planned meeting dates for the start of 2020 are as follows.

January 18th
February 8th & 22nd
March 7th 21st & 28th
April 11th, 18th & 25th

Note that April 11th is Easter Saturday so we can see if there is enough interest for a meeting that weekend nearer the time.

Provisionally, we will plan to have the AGM on January 18th. The number, format and dates of PAWS DBA tournaments will be decided then.

PAWS Winter DBA

The date for the 2019 PAWS Winter DBA has now been confirmed as 14th December 2019.

The theme is the Later Crusades in the Eastern Mediterranean 1201-1300 AD

For a list of the allowed armies, please go here.

SOA UK DBA League Update

The 2018-19 SOA UK DBA League scores have been updated ahead of the final qualifying tournament, The English DBA Open on October 27th 2019. The scores of the top 25 players are shown at 2018-19 Scores.

This year’s league is very open, with the possibility of any of the top 5 players being able to take the title in just over a week’s time.

Winter DBA Theme

Matthew Bennett (winner of the Autumn PAWS DBA) has come up with a theme for the 2019 PAWS Winter DBA. It is…

Later Crusades in the Eastern Mediterranean 1201-1300

for the full list of allowed armies, see the Winter 2019 theme page.

As usual, this will be held at Fort Cumberland, Portsmouth UK. Start time 1PM GMT.

The only thing to be decided now is the date, as Pompey’s football team will be playing (creating heavy traffic in the area) on our original proposed date of 7 December. The options are now 30 November or 14 December. If you are intending to come, please indicate which date(s) you could make it in the Fanaticus poll at http://fanaticus.boards.net/thread/2249/paws-winter-dba-2019

Dates for July to December 2019

Pompey’s fixture list for 2019-2020 has been published, so the PAWS dates for the rest of the year have been set.

But first, one of the meetings previously announced for July has been cancelled. The meeting on 13th July will not now take place as we don’t expect enough players to turn up. So there will only be one meeting in July 2019, on the 27th.

The remaining meetings will be on those Saturdays when Pompey do not have a Home fixture, as follows:

August 3rd, 17th & 31st
September 14th & 21st
October 5th, 19th & 26th
November 9th, 23rd & 30th, and
December 14th

This means that the 2019 Autumn DBA (Armies and Enemies of the Sassanids in the 6th Century AD) will definitely be on September 21st as originally planned but we will have to move the Winter DBA, originally planned for December 7th, forward or back by a week.

We still plan to hold the English DBA Open 2019 on Sunday 27th October.

Dates for May, June and July 2019

There will only be one official PAWS meeting in May 2019, the Late Spring DBA tournament on 18th May. Details on the tournament theme page.

After that, the official PAWS meetings will be every 2nd Saturday throughout June and July, namely June 1st, 15th & 29th, and July 13th and 27th.