The competition is open to teams of two players or single players, using armies of 450pts in total.
Each team may field any number of substitute players as long as one of the opening registered team members takes part in one of the rounds after the opening round.
The rules to be used are DBMM ver 1.0 . (The organisers reserve the right to issue sanctioned amendments at their own discretion).
PDF download of the March 2009 Version 4.1.4 of the DBMM Commentary file available at DBMM site at www.dbmm.org.uk
All current DBMM rules are to be used, including those for weather and time of the day.
EXCEPT (Time of the day only if both teams agree)
The valid armies are to be found in the DBMM army list book 1, 2 or 3 and WRG DBM book  4, 2nd edition, except as modified below.
As with other competition of this nature, players are required to supply their own terrain in accordance with their chosen army.

Players will share a COMMON SET OF DICE to be supplied by the attacking players. The defender chooses combat dice first.

Admission to the Northern League is at the sole discretion of the organisers and their decision on all matters is final. An application to enter the Northern League denotes acceptance of these rules.

Also by playing in the Northern League you give the organisers the right to keep information about you and your team, (this will not be passed on to any body out side the NL), except for round results which are passed on to the BHGS or DBMM.org.uk for adding to the ranking points.

Each team must use one of the 3 classes of armies over the 5 rounds, and also one of your armies must only have irregular and or regular allied generals, (e.g. so you cannot interchange your pip dice from command to command).

Games will be between 3 and 3 1/2 hours long depending on the venue at the time of the round.

Also this year we will be using the WHISTLE STOP RULES to end games see below.

"Whistle Stop": "Time" is called at a semi-random time, within 5 to 10 minutes either side of the published finish time. When "Time" is called, the game stops IMMEDIATELY and the result at that point is calculated, except that if in any bound combat has started (ONLY shooting or hand-to-hand) that bounds combats are all resolved.

The key advantages are that it largely removes the highly artificial "Last bound suicide attacks" where you can safely commit elements (especially generals) knowing the opponent has only one, or maybe no more turns. It also makes it harder to use "slow play" to stretch out the last few minutes to prevent the opponent getting in more bounds. It also speeds up collection of results by organisers, allowing a speedier turnaround between games. In terms of "fairness" between attacker and defender, it could be argued that any given player will defend/attack about 50% of the time anyway irrespective of their initial aggression factor given the math’s involved in combining of your and your potential opponents aggression factors, plus the aggression dice in determining who is attacker.

ARMIES LISTS MUST INDICATE

1. The Player’s Name’s

2. Which army class it is, which book it is from, it's list number and its date and variant used.

3. Troop type, individual value, number of elements of that type used and total value.

4. The different commands and which troops they contain, including baggage.

5. Each command ME level and army demoralisation ME levels.

All army list and entry fees must be submitted 15 days before each round of the competition date and must be on the Northern league competition entry form if sent by post or by e-mail using Microsoft excel or Microsoft word documents only but not Word 2007 or Excel 2007 unless saved in 2003 format.
Submission of inaccurate, incomplete or poorly laid out and late lists will be penalised.

The Restricted troops rules:

Each team must use one of the 3 classes of armies over the 5 rounds, and also one of there armies must have all non-pip swapping irregular and/or regular allied generals in the army,

(e.g. so you cannot interchange your pip dice from command to command).

Restricted troop types are elements of :-

All Knights, Cavalry(S), Camelry(S), Light Horse(S), All Artillery, War Wagons(O) & (S), Expendables and All Elephants.

Armies to be in three classes:-
1. Class 1 army = must include 220AP up to 450AP of restricted troops types

2. Class 2 army = must include 100AP up to 219AP of restricted troops types

3. Class 3 army = may include no more than 99AP of restricted troop types

All C-in-C's, Sub-generals and Allied Generals element who are of a restricted troops type DO NOW count in the restricted troop type total. The +25pts for Brilliant generals and -75pts for Inert generals do not count as resticted points even if it's Brilliant or Inert general does.

Army classes are further re-classed by size and general:-

4. A Class 3 army with Inert General  or  more than 110 ME's is re-classed as a Class 2 army.

5. A Class 2 army with Inert General  or  more than 110 ME's is re-classed as a Class 1 army.

6. Class 1, 2 and 3 armies of 110 ME or less and do not have an Inert General are not re-classed.

SCORING SYSTEM

The DBMM 25-0 scoring system is used as per the DBMM rule book.

BONUS VICTORY POINTS (BVP)

Winning players of all three rules systems who have broken there enemies army and are of a lower class army than the enemy will receive bonus victory points as follows

A Class 3 beats a class 1 army it will receive 5 bonus victory points (BVP),

A Class 2 beats a class 1 army it receive 2 bonus victory point (BVP).

1. Class 1 army is the superior/higher army

2. Class 3 army is the inferior/lower army

Only Finnished games may gain Bonus Points, games ended by time being called do not.