DotS Mania

Looks like I have my first craze of the new year - Dominion of the Spear (DotS).

I wrote about DotS in a recent post. It is a time filler game - one of those games I can pull out and play in a few spare minutes.

Another Experiment

I tried another game of DotS. This time Romans (red) vs. Dacians.

• Dacians -  Battle line: spears, falx (ferocious foot) and archers. Reserve: falx. spears
• Romans - Battle line: legionaries (armored foot), archers, cavalry. Reserve: auxiliaries, legionaries

The Dacians attack. The spears (L) cannot make a dent on the legionaries. The Roman archers take out the falx, and the Roman cavalry rides down the Dacian archers.

The legionaries (L) wipe out the Dacian spears. The reserve falx wipe out the archers, and the spears and cavalry stalemate.

The Dacian spears finally drive off the cavalry, but the falx falls to the disciplined legionaries.

Victory for Rome!

As an aside, I decided to do Dacians vs. Romans because I am making a falx for my LARP.

Future Plans

I've been pondering what to do with DotS and I came up with some ideas.

Campaign?

I've been thinking about using DotS for a campaign but I have not made any decisions yet. Just too many interesting armies!

I'm leaning towards one option - sample games from different eras. Neil Thomas does this in his Ancient and Medieval Wargaming book, which includes battle reports for Kadesh (chariot era), Issus (classical), Badon Hill (Dark Ages), and Agincourt (medieval). I will likely break it out into more eras and use different battles.

DotS Box Set?

I am thinking about doing a separate box for DotS. I know, I just consolidated my gaming materials into a couple of boxes! Ah, the joys of GADD.

If I do this, I would only make 2 armies. Perhaps I can use some of the armies that I have on my consolidation chopping block.

I will need to create some more unit because I don't have enough to represent the maximum number for all the troops types. Here is a rundown on what I have and what I'll need.

• Heavy (melee) infantry - have 3, need 5
• Light (missile) infantry - have and need 3
• Heavy (melee) cavalry - have 2, need 4
• Light (missile) cavalry - have 0, need 6

I'm debating how to handle the cavalry. For MicroBattle, I only made one type of counter and then used markers to indicate if it was light or heavy. I am debating if I should do the same for DotS.

Note that DotS also has chariots, elephants, and camels. I will need to make chariot and elephant counters because my MicroBattle box does not have extras. For camels, I figure I can just use cavalry counters.

I also plan to make markers to indicate elite, armored, and ferocious statuses.