The BHGS team are now working full steam as we head toward our biggest event of the year Britcon (11-13th August) in it's new home in the middle of the UK's wargaming map, Nottingham Trent's University City Centre Campus.

Britcon this year again features a host of one, two and three day events and competitions, including:
Mortem et Gloriam 15mm 5-games 3-day event Fri/Sat/Sun
Renatio et Gloriam 15mm 5-games 3-day event Fri/Sat/Sun

These two events already feature many luminaries of the UK and European MeG and REG scenes such as:
Paul Cummins
Richard Jeffrey-Cook
Philip Powell
Alex Elliott
Simon Elliott
Stuart Thomas
David Parish
Mark Hargrave
DUFOUR Frédéric
Peter Entwistle
Keith Spedding
Benjamin Allen
Jonathan Beach
John Munro
Stephen Stead

If you've not already signed up and are looking for any excuse to avoid doing DIY and/or gardening over this 4-day Easter weekend, why not book your Britcon ticket right now and start planning your army for the event?

The link to sign up is at : https://www.bhgs.org.uk/britcon---how-to-enter.html

Every Britcon entry ticket again includes a £5 trader voucher and also a grab-bag lunch for each weekend day you are playing - saving you somewhere north of £15-25 in on-the-day outlay compared to many other events and venues on the UK wargaming circuit (and also meaning that "queuing for food" isn't going to eat into your gaming, shopping and socialising time at Britcon either!).

The BHGS have also secured a complete block of student accommodation in University Halls, 5 minutes walk from the venue (and next to a Weatherspoons with late night opening) which you can book along with your gaming ticket - our allocation of rooms is already 50% sold out, so if you want to take advantage of this offer make sure to book soon before we run out of rooms. 

Whichever of our events you are planning on attending, we look forward to seeing you across the table later in the year.

The BHGS Events Team
www.bhgs.org.uk

Current "early bird" signups for Britcon this year so far:

Richard   Jeffrey-Cook
Philip   Powell
Simon   Elliott
Alex   Elliott
Stuart   Thomas
Paul   Cummins
David   Parish
Mark   Hargrave
DUFOUR   Frédéric

Yep, schoolboy error. We'd set the overall event capacity to be, erm, "the capacity of the venue" without realising that any "Waitlist" tickets that were reserved would then be included as part of the overall capacity.  Thats now been tweaked 

There's an essentially unlimited number of Waitlist tickets - but of course they only get released if registered players drop out, so only a handful will get released in reality.

Currently there's one wannabe MeG player on the Waitlist.   

Yep, it's being updated as we speak

Just waiting to for full info from the theme organiser about game times, list checkers, umpires etc 

Britcon is now less than 2 weeks away, and with a record-breaking 337 players taking part so far (over 100 of whom are staying with us onsite), and almost 40 traders, demo games and event sponsors at the FREE-to-enter Britcon Trade Show we're looking well set for a cracking debut outing this year in Nottingham, at the Nottingham Trent University Conference Centre in the heart of the Lead Belt.

For this year's MeG event we've currently got the following high quality, stylish and good looking bunch of players signed up, and with more space than we can shake a stick at any additional players (ideally signing up in such a way as to give us an even number!) would still be exceedingly welcome:

Robin   Spence
Laurence    Donohoe
Peter   Cross
Paul   Cummins
Pete    Entwistle
Mark   Hargrave
Lance   Flint
jamie   mayers
Simon   Elliott
Philip   Powell
keith   spedding
Roger   Pitfield
Adrian   Pitfield
Richard   Jeffrey-Cook
Jason   Broomer
Lee   Sanders
Jonathan   Beach
Nicholas   Gaukroger
Alexander   Elliott
Matthew   Haywood
David   Gollop
Jeremy   Howison-Haworth
Stuart   Thomas
Peter   Sharp
Ben   Allen

Details are at : https://www.bhgs.org.uk/britcon---perio ... layed.html

If you are in the Nottingham area and fancy coming down to peruse the trade show, and also take the rare chance to offer your positive and wholesome encouragement to any or all members of this list of notable, well-groomed and all highly regarded celebrity players, the Britcon Trade Show is on 10-4 on Saturday and 10-2 on Sunday and is FREE to enter, with 40 traders, a number of demo and participation games, a well stocked bring and buy as well as free-play gaming tables for you to test out any must-open-now purchases.

Details at : https://www.bhgs.org.uk/britcon-trade-show.html

For those of you considering joining the 22 souls already signed up for Nottingham, a bit of good news in that despite initially telling us last week that we'd already reached the limit of available onsite accommodation at Nottingham Trent, the University have just been in touch just this morning to let us know that they have now managed to find a few more additional onsite B&B rooms to allocate to Britcon attendees.

As a result onsite rooms are now back on sale for the 2-night B&B package.

https://www.bhgs.org.uk/britcon---how-to-enter.html

This can be booked either by scrolling down to the bottom of the booking form and selecting onsite accommodation (click the "£110" dropdown link to see where to select accomodation), or - we believe, if you are a ticket holder (!) - by logging into your personal Eventbrite account and adding rooms to your existing Britcon ticket.

Once this increased allocation is sold however, there will be no more rooms available through the University, and attendees will need to book their own hotels.

The BHGS Britcon Team

Quote from: badhabum on February 10, 2022, 09:32:09 AM
By the way a simple question : when will they decide if they open slots ( if any possible ) or will it only be if someone cannot come and resells it's icket ? Coming from outside UK means I need to be able to travell and have an hotel + some £ ...so just asking

Our main aim at the moment is to try and make sure we have even numbers in each period, so with MeG having even numbers signed up currently it will either be if/when somone drops out of MeG, or (potentially, depending on other periods) if another person joins you on the waitlist for MeG, so we can add 2 players into MeG and keep it at even numbers.

After a 2-year hiatus we're pleased to be able to announce that Britcon will be back again in 2022, taking place at Nottingham Trent University's city-centre campus, conveniently located in the heart of the UK's "Lead Belt" and still in our regular dateline of the 12th-14th August.

The Nottingham Trent venue is much bigger and brighter than before, and will allow us bring all of the gaming onto one floor, extending both the competition space and the trade show and demo game area as well as making it possible for us to run a series of entirely new parallel events alongside our traditional roster of competition periods.

We're also still offering onsite student-priced B&B accomodation and student-priced onsite bars in Nottingham too - allowing our games to run over a variety of different timelines and formats, ranging from the full the "Friday night + 8-8 gaming Saturday + more games on Sunday" timeline, as well as hosting 1 and 2 day events and formats too.

Another new initiative for players this year is that we are now offering everyone "free food".* OK, not quite... but in 2022 all tournament entry fees will include a daily "grab bag" packed lunch (sandwich, crisps, a drink and some fruit), cutting out the need to queue for food when you could be rolling (or buying) dice. We're also keeping the extremely popular Britcon Fiver - where all entrants get a "£5 off any £10 purchase with any trader" voucher as part of their entry fee too.

Nottingham is also well served by multiple transport links, especially for international players who can either fly into East Midlands Airport, or take the Eurostar to London St Pancras and changing there onto the mainline which runs direct to Nottingham. Both the airport and station have regular bus and tram conections to the venue in the city centre, with stops right outside the front door and only steps away from the accommodation block.​

Periods already confirmed for Britcon 2022 include:​

Mortem et Gloriam 15mm 5-games 3-day event Fri/Sat/Sun
Renatio et Gloriam 15mm 5-games 3-day event Fri/Sat/Sun

For more information on individual themes please visit the Gaming Periods Information page on our website  http://www.bhgs.org.uk/britcon---periods-being-played.html

​Bookings are now open for pretty much all of these events on the BHGS website - fear not, we have ample space to accommodate everyone and more this year, so you won't miss out! 

The new venue gives us much more room than we have had in previous years for gaming, traders and demo games, so if you are interested in helping us organise a competition which isn't already covered, staging a demo game or taking trade space please get in touch and we'll be delighted to work with you to try and make it happen.

Onsite Accommodation
In 2022, onsite accommodation will be bookable through the BHGS along with your gaming event ticket. It's not a requirement to book accommodation through us, but if you do we'd really appreciate it, mainly as we are committed to pay for a minimum number of rooms at the Uni as part of our venue contract - but also as we believe it's cheaper, closer and will have a better canteen-style breakfast than any other option anyway!

The COVID Stuff
All attendees will of course be required to adhere to any relevant Covid-related guidelines or regulations which are in place at the time of the event, including any set by the venue or the BHGS. Should the venue and the BHGS determine at any point that it is not possible to stage the event as planned due to Covid-related restrictions, all entry fees will be refunded in full.

Other BHGS Events
We've literally just had confirmation today from our regular venue for Roll Call that they are able to accept our booking for the weekend of 2nd/3rd April 2022, so we'll be contacting our regular umpires and theme organisers in the next week or so to firm up the themes and then will get tickets on sale as soon as we can.

We'll also be back at UK Games Expo over the weekend of 4/5th June with a roster of competitions, with tickets going on sale in the new year through the UKGE website.

Updated details for all of these events are now on the BHGS website - so we very much hope you too will be able to join us next year to start rolling some dice again at as many events as you can find time to attend.

And, of course.. Bookings are now open for Britcon on the BHGS website too. http://www.bhgs.org.uk/britcon---how-to-enter.html

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.

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. Registered players should therefore be seeing email notification of refunds coming through soon, and then the refund amount hitting their credit cards a few days later just as soon as we can work through the admin involved in doing so.

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.

Do let us know if you have any questions which we've not managed to answer here already, otherwise we sincerely hope to see you next year at Britcon 2021.

Regards

The BHGS Britcon Team

The UK-wide adoption of "social distancing" in response to the Coronavirus outbreak has already led to many wargames events being postponed, including some of those hosted (or co-hosted) by the BHGS.

With all of the entries for Roll Call now refunded and with both the LGT and UKGE events resheduled we've been looking at how best to balance our desire to help you all get out and get gaming again as soon as possible against the challenges all of us currently face in terms of making any sort of forward committments while the current - and potentially lengthy - period of 'social distancing' is in effect across the UK.

It's a complex problem, but where we've ended up is with the following (hopefully) clear and simple plan;

The BHGS committment to you is to:
offer as many gaming opportunities this year as we possibly can,
hold open the posibility of running the events we organise for as long as is sensible...
... but also commit to cancel them as early as possible should it become obvious at any stage that any of them are not going to be viable,
continue to offer 100% refunds on any events we operate and then cancel,
continue to offer 100% refunds on cancellations for any individual wishing to drop out for personal reasons, at any time prior to the event taking place.

What does this mean for each individual event ?

Roll Call
We've now secured new dates for Roll Call at the end of the Autunm half term with the Holywell school venue, meaning that this year's event will now run over the weekend of October 24rd-25th.
Tickets will  go back on sale again in a few weeks time once we've sorted things out with umpires and the like.
October is a long way away... but anyway, our latest 'decision date" for Roll Call will be mid September. If there is any risk whatsoever to the viability of the event at that point in time we will cancel and refund everyone again, and look to return in 2021.

In summary we're doing everything we can to offer you as many chances to get some gaming in under a BHGS banner before the end of this year, and we're also making sure we do so in a way which doesn't take any chances with anyone's health and wellbeing - nor with anyone's finances.

We sincerely hope to see you across the gaming table as soon as it is safe for all of us - and the NHS - to do so.

The BHGS Committee

Updated Status of BHGS Events for 2020

The UK-wide adoption of "social distancing" in response to the Coronavirus outbreak has already led to many wargames events being postponed, including some of those hosted (or co-hosted) by the BHGS. With all of the entries for Roll Call now refunded and with both the LGT and UKGE events resheduled we've been looking at how best to balance our desire to help you all get out and get gaming again as soon as possible against the challenges all of us currently face in terms of making any sort of forward plans while the current - and potentially lengthy - period of 'social distancing' remains in effect across the UK.

It's a complex issue, but where we've ended up is with the following (hopefully) clear and simple plan;

The BHGS committment to you is to:

- offer as many gaming opportunities this year as we possibly can,
- hold open the possibility of running the events we organise for as long as is sensible...
-  ... but also commit to cancel them as early as possible should it become obvious at any stage that any of them are not going to be viable,
- continue to offer 100% refunds on any of our own events we plan to operate but later cancel,
- continue to offer 100% refunds on cancellations at our own events for any individual wishing to drop out for personal reasons, at any time prior to the event taking place.

What does this mean for each individual event ?

Roll Call
We've now secured new dates for Roll Call at the end of the Autunm half term with the Holywell school venue, meaning that this year's event will now run over the weekend of October 24rd-25th.
Tickets will go back on sale again in a few weeks time once we've sorted things out with umpires and the like.

October is a long way away... but anyway, as of today our latest 'decision date" for Roll Call will be mid September. If there is any risk whatsoever to the viability of the event at that point in time we will cancel and refund everyone again, and look to return in Spring 2021.

BHGS Teams @ LGT
The LGT has been rescheduled to September 26th-27th

All existing bookings for the LGT have been rolled over to the new dates and anyone who has bought a ticket for events at the LGT should already have been sent an email by the LGT organising team detailing how these changes impact them and what to do if they can't make the new date.

The BHGS will continue to support all of the historical rulesets on offer at the LGT currently under our banner (currently FoGAM, ADLG, MeG, DBMM and DBM)

The BHGS doesn't have any input into the commercial side of the LGT event, so any decisions regarding the staging of this event remain the responsibility of the main organiser.

Britcon 
We're continuing to work on the assumption that Britcon will be able to go ahead on the weekend of 7th-9th August as planned.

If the UK is still operating under "social isolation" at the end of June we will look to cancel the event and refund all bookings in full. If so, Britcon will not be rescheduled and the next edition will be held in 2021.

As of today, the Uni is unable to confirm whether they'll be able to offer "student style" accommodation this year, however Booking.com and other sites are offering penalty-free cancellations on all forward bookings right now, so this is probably a better option anyway if you want to completely de-risk your total cost of attendance.

BHGS Challenge @ UKGE
UKGE has been rescheduled to August 21st-23rd

Yes, this is just 2 weeks after Britcon - but in the interests of creating as many dice-rolling opportunites as we can for as many of you as possible the BHGS remains fully committed to supporting all of the rulesets currently on offer under the BHGS banner at UKGE (currently ADLG, DBMM and FoGAM).

Some of you may be able to make both events, some just one of the two - either way we want to give you every chance we can to get back rolling dice this year.

UKGE's policy is that your booking will lapse and they will refund you automatically unless you tell them otherwise. If you have an existing booking, you therefore need to log onto your UKGE account and confirm that you wish to your booking to be transferred to the new dates before April 27th. The UKGE website is open for bookings on its new dates.

As is the case with Britcon it may be worth using sites such as Booking.com to take advantage of penalty-free cancellation options on accomodation for the UKGE weekend to entirely de-risk your overall cost of attendance.

As with the LGT, The BHGS doesn't have any input into the commercial side of UKGE so any decisions regarding the staging of this event remain the responsibility of the main organiser.

In summary we're doing everything we can to offer you as many chances to get some gaming in under a BHGS banner before the end of this year, and we're also making sure we do so in a way which doesn't take any chances with anyone's health and wellbeing - nor with anyone's finances.

We sincerely hope to see you across the gaming table as soon as it is safe for all of us - and the NHS - to do so.

The BHGS Committee

An Important Message from The British Historical Gaming Society:

As you will no doubt be aware the UK Government has today considereably strengthened its advice in relation to the current Coronaviris outbreak, and is now recommending that everyone in the UK acts to reduce all forms of social contact as much as possible.

In line with these recommendations, and in order to prioritize the health and well-being of all our gamers this year's Roll Call event will not now take place this April.
We will be speaking to the venue in the coming days to see if it might be possible to reschedule Roll Call for later this year however given the uncertainties involved in this, both for the venue and for individual players the BHGS team have taken the decision to issue full refunds (via the Eventbrite platform) to all currently signed up players within the next couple of days.  Please contact us if you do not recieve notification of a refund by the end of this week.

BHGS Events @ London GT
We have also been notified in the last few hours by the main organiser of the London GT event scheduled for June that they too will be following UK Government advice and postponing the LGT event until September 26th-27th. Our current expectation is that all of the historical events running under the BHGS umbrella currently scheduled to run at the LGT this year will also be postponed to this date, depending on umpire and theme organiser availability.

Anyone who has bought a ticket for events at the LGT will shortly be sent an email by the LGT organising team detailing how these changes impact them and what to do if they can't make the new date. The full announcement from the LGT has been posted on the LGT Facebook page.

The BHGS Challenge @ UK Games Expo
The UKGE organisers have this afternoon posted on Facebook that they ae consulting with their venue partners and plan to make an announcement about this year's event on Tuesday 17th March at 6pm, which players signed up are advised to look out for.

Britcon 2020
For the rest of the year, our current hope remains that we will be able to stage Britcon in Manchester at the beginning of August largely as planned, however any decision to go ahead will only be taken if there are significant, positive changes to current UK Government advice regarding social distancing before June of this year.
If it becomes necessary to cancel Britcon, all paid bookings for both traders and players will be refunded in full.

These are challenging times for all of us, but we are sure you will all agree that putting the health of you, your families, friends and colleagues first is far more important than gaming at this precise moment, and it is this sentiment which is informing the difficult decisions we are all having to make at this point in time.

We thank you for your understanding, and look forward to seeing all of you across the table at some point later this year (most probably with several newly painted amies...). 
The BHGS Team 

An Important Message from The British Historical Gaming Society:

As you will no doubt be aware the UK Government has today considereably strengthened its advice in relation to the current Coronaviris outbreak, and is now recommending that everyone in the UK acts to reduce all forms of social contact as much as possible.
In line with these recommendations, and in order to prioritize the health and well-being of all our gamers this year's Roll Call event will not now take place this April.

We will be speaking to the venue in the coming days to see if it might be possible to reschedule Roll Call for later this year however given the uncertainties involved in this, both for the venue and for individual players the BHGS team have taken the decision to issue full refunds (via the Eventbrite platform) to all currently signed up players within the next couple of days.  Please contact us if you do not recieve notification of a refund by the end of this week.

BHGS Events @ London GT
We have also been notified in the last few hours by the main organiser of the London GT event scheduled for June that they too will be following UK Government advice and postponing the LGT event until September 26th-27th. Our current expectation is that all of the historical events running under the BHGS umbrella currently scheduled to run at the LGT this year will also be postponed to this date, depending on umpire and theme organiser availability.

Anyone who has bought a ticket for events at the LGT will shortly be sent an email by the LGT organising team detailing how these changes impact them and what to do if they can't make the new date. The full announcement from the LGT has been posted on the LGT Facebook page.

The BHGS Challenge @ UK Games Expo
The UKGE organisers have this afternoon posted on Facebook that they ae consulting with their venue partners and plan to make an announcement about this year's event on Tuesday 17th March at 6pm, which players signed up are advised to look out for.

Britcon 2020
For the rest of the year, our current hope remains that we will be able to stage Britcon in Manchester at the beginning of August largely as planned, however any decision to go ahead will only be taken if there are significant, positive changes to current UK Government advice regarding social distancing before June of this year.
If it becomes necessary to cancel Britcon, all paid bookings for both traders and players will be refunded in full.

These are challenging times for all of us, but we are sure you will all agree that putting the health of you, your families, friends and colleagues first is far more important than gaming at this precise moment, and it is this sentiment which is informing the difficult decisions we are all having to make at this point in time.

We thank you for your understanding, and look forward to seeing all of you across the table at some point later this year (most probably with several newly painted amies...). 

The BHGS Team 

An Important Message from The British Historical Gaming Society:
As you will no doubt be aware the UK Government has today considereably strengthened its advice in relation to the current Coronaviris outbreak, and is now recommending that everyone in the UK acts to reduce all forms of social contact as much as possible.
In line with these recommendations, and in order to prioritize the health and well-being of all our gamers this year's Roll Call event will not now take place this April.
We will be speaking to the venue in the coming days to see if it might be possible to reschedule Roll Call for later this year however given the uncertainties involved in this, both for the venue and for individual players the BHGS team have taken the decision to issue full refunds (via the Eventbrite platform) to all currently signed up players within the next couple of days.  Please contact us if you do not recieve notification of a refund by the end of this week.
BHGS Events @ London GT
We have also been notified in the last few hours by the main organiser of the London GT event scheduled for June that they too will be following UK Government advice and postponing the LGT event until September 26th-27th. Our current expectation is that all of the historical events running under the BHGS umbrella currently scheduled to run at the LGT this year will also be postponed to this date, depending on umpire and theme organiser availability.
Anyone who has bought a ticket for events at the LGT will shortly be sent an email by the LGT organising team detailing how these changes impact them and what to do if they can't make the new date. The full announcement from the LGT has been posted on the LGT Facebook page.
The BHGS Challenge @ UK Games Expo
The UKGE organisers have this afternoon posted on Facebook that they ae consulting with their venue partners and plan to make an announcement about this year's event on Tuesday 17th March at 6pm, which players signed up are advised to look out for.
Britcon 2020
For the rest of the year, our current hope remains that we will be able to stage Britcon in Manchester at the beginning of August largely as planned, however any decision to go ahead will only be taken if there are significant, positive changes to current UK Government advice regarding social distancing before June of this year.
If it becomes necessary to cancel Britcon, all paid bookings for both traders and players will be refunded in full.

These are challenging times for all of us, but we are sure you will all agree that putting the health of you, your families, friends and colleagues first is far more important than gaming at this precise moment, and it is this sentiment which is informing the difficult decisions we are all having to make at this point in time.
We thank you for your understanding, and look forward to seeing all of you across the table at some point later this year (most probably with several newly painted amies...). 
The BHGS Team 

Folks

As a result of Sharp Practice not proving viable in 2020 we've been able to release additional tickets for a number of periods at Roll Call this year. The dozen or so individuals who had already asked to go onto the waitlist have all already been offered (and have taken up) their places, so the additional places have been opened up to general sale and can be booked using the following link.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/roll-call-2020-april-45th-cranfield-tickets-74026056929?aff=release

We are still discussing with the school whether there is other space we can have, but they have been very reluctant to open up classrooms for us since, well, we left a lot of clearing up for the caretaker the one year we did use the classrooms as well as the main halls and since then they've not been keen to let us expand into classrooms for understandable reasons.

The BHGS Challenge, BHGS LGT Teams and Britcon are all on sale via the BHGS website at http://www.bhgs.org.uk/bhgs-events.html, none of which currently are anticipated to have any venue capacity issues for any ruleset we are currently offering.