Dominion of the Spear

I've been looking for some fast play wargames for quick games. You might remember my five minute fight experiments on my old blog. I also tried the 3 x 3 Portable Wargame but it did not click for me.

Anyway, I recently came across this over at Wargame Vault.

Dominion of the Spear (DotS) allows the player to complete a pre-gunpowder battle in a few minutes. You set your armies up into zones - left, center, right, or reserve. Then you roll attacks vs. adjacent enemies. A hit eliminates a unit. You can then fill in the line with reserves. Repeat until an army is down to 1 unit and has fewer units than the other.

Test Run

I decided to give it a test. Out of the 196 armies listed in the booklet, the Arthurian army caught my eye. So our first test is Arthur vs. Saxons.

Set-Up

The opposing armies:

• Saxons (top) - 3 units of spears and 2 units of ferocious spears (they get an attack bonus)
• Due to the lack of heavy infantry counters, I used light infantry counters to represent the ferocious spears.
• Britons
• top (from left) - spears, archers, and cavalry
• bottom (from left) - spears, cavalry, more spears

The Battle

Each turn, units in the front line fight. Combat proceeds from the attacker's right. In this case, the Saxons are attacking, so I start on the Saxon right (left side of the photo).

• Left - both are melee units so they roll simultaneously. The Saxon ferocious spears hit but the Briton spears miss. The Saxons overrun the Britons.
• Center - Saxon melee vs. Briton archers. Naturally, the archers get first shot. They miss. The Saxons attack and hit the archers. Charging through a hail of arrows, the Saxon spears smash into and rout the archers.
• Right - spears vs. cavalry. Both roll simultaneously. Both miss. A standoff.

The units with hits are removed. Arthur brings up reserves to fill in the gaps.

Turn 2:

• Left - Briton spears hit the Saxon ferocious spears.
• Center and Right - the Saxon spears destroy the cavalry units.

After removing casualties, the Britons have 2 units of spears left against 4 Saxons.

Turn 3:

• Left - the reserve ferocious spears hit the Britons.
• Center - both sides hit. Mutual annihilation!
• Left - Without anyone in front, the Saxon spears could perform a flank attack on the center Britons. But they've already been defeated!

And with that, the Britons fall to the Saxons!

Thoughts

Overall, I liked this game. Here are some reasons.

• It is quick. The above scenario took 6 minutes, including photo time.
• Armies are small - typically 4 to 6 units. Simple to set up!
• At first glance, it seems like it would be boring. There is no real maneuvering; just rolling dice. But using reserves to plug gaps satisfied my desire to move units around.
• I found determining the battle line and deciding which troops to put in the reserve to be a nice mental challenge that makes the game interesting.
• DotS includes 196 army lists from ancient to medieval times!

Obviously, there are some downsides.

• There is really just one scenario - line them up and fight.
• There are no rules for terrain.

I'm OK with these drawbacks. Big ancient battles seem to be of the line them up and fight variety anyway. And often they were fought on flat terrain. Still, I think it may be possible to add some terrain house rules.

Overall, I am pleased with my purchase. They achieve something that I've tried to cook up myself. And I really like the army lists! You may see more DotS battle reports!