In a fit of enthusiam for Dominion of the Spear, I thought it would be an ideal engine for a participation game at a show, specifically to highlight the genius of Alexander the Great by fighting his major battles in quick succession. The players would take on the role of Alexander in each of three battles. Many thanks to Tim for the title!
I'd originally planned to fight Granicus, Issus, Gaugamela and Hydaspes but after some reflection, thought that might be a bit much for a short session, so in the end I decided to just focus on Alexanders battles against Persian and ignore Hydaspes.
I spent a fair bit of time looking at existing scenarios for these three engagements, and lightly modified some of the standard DotS orders of battle. The main changes to the standard Macedonian army were to give them one Elite Armoured Pike and one Armoured Hoplite for the first two battles, and then upgrade those to two Elite Armoured Pike for Gaugamela. I kept the standard two cavalry units (one being the elite armoured Companions) also included a fifth unit of Peltasts as the optional suggestion for armies with only four units, which also added an extra Persian unit.
This gave the Macedonians more of an edge over the standard OB, but generally players need a positive experience with a bit of jeopardy for a decent participation game.
I did custom OBs for the Persians for each battle, and used the deployments in Peter Sides book to lay them out. Granicus featured a cavalry heavy Persian force, with their unfortunate mercenary hoplites tagging along. Issus was lighter on cavalry and included two units of Kardakes and Darius himself, while Gaugamela went back to massed cavalry supported by archers but also Scythed Chariots and the Immortals.
Granicus playtest. Macedonians have their Companions, Thesssalians, one Pike, one Hoplite and some Peltasts. Persians have two cavalry, one horse archer, two foot archers, mercenary hoplites and some random Persian foot. The Persians are deployed as historically, with the first line consisting of cavalry.
The first run through was a disaster! The Companions were routed on their first encounter with the Persian cavalry, and to add insult to injury, the Pikes were routed by the second Persian cavalry unit without loss. After that the Macedonians were rapidly rolled up and it was game over. Oh dear. The odds of that happening are approximately 1:250, but it does show that Alexander can lose, despite his super powered army.
My plan if that happens during the game is just to commiserate the player and move onto the next battle, having outlined the historical result.
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I gave it another run though, once again with the historical Persian deployment, but this time I put the Thessalians in reserve and packed the Macedonian front line with the Pikes, hoplites and the Companians. For activation I'm letting Alexander choose the order of activation (he is Alexander the Great after all), but having all three sectors fight to keep it quick.
This run through went much better for the Macedonians, the mass of Persians (they have seven units) fell like flies, the only Macedonian loss being their hoplites. This picture above was the decisive moment when the Companions found themselves unopposed and conducted an outflanking attack on the mercenary hoplites which routed them, and this then allowed the Pike phalanx to outflank the last Persian archers and wipe them out without loss.

The Persian army was utterly wiped out, and as in real life, the mercenary hoplites had been encircled and destroyed. OK, that is looking good, and at a very opportune moment, Shaun Travers posted some of his ideas about tweaking DotS, including the very sensible idea that melee infantry shouldn't be allowed to mutually annihilate each other. I'll borrow that. I was also pondering how best to treat the Macedonian light infantry, originally I put them in as melee infantry without any bonuses (which makes them more like DBA Auxilia) but actually I think they work better as Light Missile infantry, particularly based on their use at Issus.
Anyway, I did a few more playtests to try out some rules tweaks, scenario balance and most importantly, timings.
Granicus again. For this run through I'm making all melee combat hit on a 4+ basic roll, with the caveat that melee infantry can't mutually annihilate and I'm also treating the Peltasts as missile infantry. Same sort of setup as last time. It was probably not a good idea to put the Macedonian hoplites up against the Persian horse archers...
But they got away with it. Rather a one sided first round, three Persians down to no Macedonians. The Persian archers and infantry are now in the line. Alexander is facing infantry archers, but the Macedonians are armoured.
Another wipeout, the entire Persian front line is destroyed without loss, leaving the mercenary hoplites to be encircled and destroyed at leisure. irl Alexander executed all the ones he captured pour encourage les autres.
Issus, the Persians are more infantry heavy here and have an infantry heavy front line with Kardakes flanked by archer units. Alex led with infantry to clear away the archers.
The Persian left flank archers were defeated by the Peltasts (historically the Macedonian archers worked their way through the hills on the flank) and more Kardakes filled the gap. The rest of the infantry combat was inconclusive. The archers vs hoplites all missed, and the Kardakes vs Pikes both hit but using the 'no mutual annihilation rule' this became no effect.
The deadlock broke next turn. The Peltasts were defeated by the Kardakes so Alexander moved up on the Macedonian right. In the centre the pikes defeated the Kardakes and the Persians put in one of the cavalry units, while on the right the Macedonian hoplites overcame the archers who were replaced with the mercenaries. This was probably an error and the Persians should have put the mercs in the centre, but Alexander was controlling the battle sequence in each sector.
Armoured elite heavy cavalry against a Persian infantry rabble? No contest, Alex broke the Persian left. Parmenio had defeated the Persian cavalry in the centre first, forcing Darius to commit his last cavalry reserve there. Over on the right the hoplites kept pushing and shoving to no effect.
On the following round this allowed Alexander to outflank the Persian cavalry (2+ to rout), and the potential for Paermenios pikes to outflank the mercenary hoplites (3+ to rout).
And so it came to pass that the Persian line was outflanked and wiped out, leaving Darius no option but to flee.
Finally we have Gaugamela. Alexanders army has upgraded its hoplites to a second pike unit. His heavy infantry were all pretty good by now. The Persians have lots of fun stuff, two units of horse archers and scythed chariots in the front line (which also include around a dozen elephants), in reserve two units of cavalry, infantry archers and an actual unit of Immortals, with Darius himself. In the real battle there were also tens or even hundreds of thousands of other soldiers/camp followers lurking somewhere to the rear, but irl they contributed little so I left them off.
Alex has put the Companions and Peltasts against the Persian horse archers, with a pike block against the scythed chariots.
Disaster! While the Peltasts take out the horse archers, the other archers take down the Companions on a lucky six. the Scythed Chariots break the pikes.... the unfortunate order of combat results means Alex ends up putting the reserve pike block on his left and the Thessalian Cavalry in the centre. Not ideal. The only bright spot is that the Persians have put their cavalry against the Macedonian peltasts.
The Peltasts take down the horsemen, but the Thessalians are routed by the Persians. The Persian cavalry in the centre can make an outflanking attack from there but wont get any bonuses.
Phew! The pikes rout the horse archers and the Peltasts see off the Persian archers. Darius has to commit the Immortals on the Persian right.
Alexanders luck runs out. Parmenios outflanking attack rolls a '1' and the ensuing Persian attacks destroy the Peltasts, leaving the Macedonians with just one unit and defeated. Oh well.
I ran the entire battle sequence through twice and it took around 15 minutes to resolve all three, including the time to shuffle the units around between engagements. Out of a total of 15 individual battles, the Macedonians have lost three battles, so definitely have an advantage which is as it should be. The chat to introduce the game, each phase of the campaign and the battle resolution system added another 10 minutes, so the whole thing should run at under half and hour, which is perfect. We can accommodate single players and also groups who want to play as a team.
I'm fairly happy with the revised rule mechanisms, but I've got a couple more tweaks in mind to improve the narrative, avoid some of the frustrations of extreme dice rolling and speed it up. I also need to try it out with some other humans to get some feedback for improvements, tweak some of the text and sort out the toys and supporting props we will need.