Two player Dominion of the Spear

 John A was interested in the possibilites presented by Dominion of the Spear after helping playtest 'Alexander the Brief'. We'd already discussed some options around  deployment and management of reserves. For this weeks Tuesday  game he presented a two player variant!

The mods aren't enormous, but change the game a fair bit - there are players on each side and the initiative roll determines who is the active player. The activate player (only) can initiate combat in one or more sectors. Reserves use fixed sectors and cannot stack, although there is a separate 'reserve phase' at the end of each turn turn when players can shuffle their reserves one square either way. He has also  borrowed my re-roll rule for notable commanders from Alexander the Brief. 

First up was Johns version of Carrhae. Jerry and I were one player team, Tim and Simon the other. Parthians have 3x Horse Archers, 1 x Elite Armoured Cataphract and 1 x melee infantry. Crassus has 3 x Armoured Legionaries and 1 x Ferocious Gallic Cavalry.

Jerry took the lead for our team, and Simon the lead for the other. Things not going too well for Crassus here, down one Legionary and the Gauls. 

The Romans battle back. John had made up a virtual battle set in Powerpoint using Tom Mouats Mapsymbs military symbols font, so we could easily play remotely over a shared screen.

Parthians get the upper hand again.

And having outflanked the Romans, down went another Legion and Crassus ended with his head on a stick. We had a bit of a discussion about outflanking, John thought the free attack was sufficient bonus, but I went through some of the combat modifiers, how the outflanking bonus changes those and we reinstated it.

We swapped sides and did that one again, and the Parthians lost this time. It is all down to the initial wave of horse archers, against whom the Legionaries are even and the Gauls do have an advantage, but if the Parthians roll a lot of sixes, they shoot the Romans down before they can make contact.

Next up was a hypothetical - Julius Caesers planned campaign in Parthia (he was assassinated before this happened). Same Parthians as before, but this time Caesar had a Republican Roman Army, with 2 x armoured Legionary, 2 x Auxilia (melee infantry) and 1 x Cavalry (no bonuses). Caesar was rated as a notable General, so could re-roll one combat in his turn.

I took JC for this one and was defending. The army was a tricky one to deploy, a conservative deployment would have put a Legionary in the centre, auxilia on the wings and the other Legion and Cavalry in reserve to await developments.

But I went with the bold deployment, Legionaries up front, cavalry on the right (I'd completely forgotten they were regular, not ferocious). I put one Auxilia in each corner as they can reinforce frontally or diagonally. It will look nice and symmetrical on the mosaic as well.

And the bold deployment paid off. We trounced the Parthian front line, although JC had to re-roll one combat to finish off the Cataphracts. Wit their centre broken, it was all over for the Parthians - I  managed to roll the initiative, made the centre flanking attack and re-rolled the result to ensure a win. Game over.

We did have a chat at that point about how powerful the re-roll option is, and for lesser Generals than Alexander, JC or Napoleon, just one or two re-rolls per game might be more appropriate. The 'rally' option in the Pike and Shot set is effectively a re-roll, and you only get one of those in the standard rules. 

We set it up again, I took the Parthians and Tim the Romans. Funnily enough the Romans set up in exactly the same deployment (well mirror image, but you know what I mean). Perhaps this will be known as the Caesarian Deployment in future?

I just went boring with the Parthians. Horse Archers up front and Cataphracts in reserve. I stuck the infantry out of the way, they can shuffle over once the Cataphracts are committed.

Well, that sort of worked.... after some bashing, we'd killed a Legionary and the Roman cavalry but lost two horse archers. We'd got some good matchups now though - Cataphracts vs Auxilia and Horse Archers vs Auxilia, big advantages to us. I won't say anything about our levy infantry vs the Legionaries in the centre.... 

The Cataphracts duly routed the Auxilia opposite, and the Horse Archers finished off the other Auxilia. Head on a stick time for Caesar.

That worked really well - it was still very quick, we played four games in just over an hour, but the opposed aspect was good fun. Very much 'mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be corrected' as Von Moltke the Elder would have it. There isn't any reason why you can't play standard Dominion of the Spear as an opposed game of course, and I think that would be rather good fun. 

 I'm not 100% convinced about the all-or-nothing initiative roll, but it is Johns game so I'll go with it. An alternative might be, initiative winner picks one or two sectors, loser picks zero or one. On a draw, both sides pick zero or one, scenario attack goes first.

We also had a chat about what John's ideas for a Horse and Musket variant based on the Ancient set although to a large extent that has been trumped by the publication of various eighteenth century sets already.