Constructing an Army #1 – Part 2

I always think of Dragon Dice as a team game, but played on my own. What I mean by this is that, if you consider your army to be a ‘team’ and have a team-like structure, everything falls into place a lot easier.

In the first part, I looked at the Home Army, the one that I consider to be the ‘Attack’, or front line. These are able to be the aggressors, by virtue of the fact that you have chosen the terrain in such a way as to ensure that everything at this location works in your favour.

In this part, we are going to look at our ‘Defence’ and our ‘Midfield’ and treat them very much the same as if they were a team of any type of field sport.

The ‘Defence’ – The Horde

The Horde army, to me, is the most important army that you have to construct. This is the army that controls the start of the game and immediately has to face one of the opposing armies at their home (most favourable to them) terrain.

For this army we need something that is (a) Fast (plenty of Manoeuvre icons), (b) Robust (plenty of Save icons) and (c) Unpredictable (plenty of useful SAIs to confuse the opposing army).

As we are constructing a Coral Elf Horde Army, we need to look through our Selumari warriors to see what fits the bill. Here is my best suggestion:

As you can see from my photo, my Gryphons get well used, and there is a reason for this. They are one of the best defenders in the game! The Faces are: ID, 4 Melee, 4 Rend, 4 Fly, Ferry, 4 Fly, 4 Melee, Ferry, 4 Fly, 4 Melee or, statistically:

We all know that Coral Elves defend best using their Coastal Dodge ability, where they can count Manoeuvres as saves on a terrain containing the water element. At the start of a battle, you therefore have to hope that one of the opponents has chosen a Coastland, Feyland or Swampland as their home base, if not, your poor Horde Army might all be taking an early bath, especially if they do not win the initiative battle against the other Horde armies at the outset, meaning that they do not get first hit.

If we use the Gryphon, then we do not have to worry about Coastal Dodge, as the unit’s manoeuvre is in the form of ‘Fly’, which automatically counts as saves on any type of terrain.

From the table above, it can be seen that the Gryphon has Manoeuvre, Saves, Melee (thanks to the Rend face) and, something that does not show up here, two faces with the Ferry icon, which allows the Gryphon to fly away from the fight, taking 4 heath of units with it (a perfect ‘save’ for a small army of up to 8 health).

If I employ 2 of these beauties in my Defence, I have a 1 – (4/5)^2 = 36% chance of getting at least one useable Ferry icon every time I roll. The only time that the Ferry SAI can’t be used is during a manoeuvre roll so, if it is used during a first march, it can take up to 4 health of units with it to the terrain where you are going to use the second march!!

These units are therefore, fast, robust and unpredictable, the three requirements that we set out as prerequisites at the start of the exercise.

Trying to find another unit that fits our requirements, I am now going to bring in other races, preferably ones that we have already used so that we can take advantage of their particular racial abilities.

The unit that I have chosen to speed up the Horde is one which complements the Firewalkers that I included in the Home ‘Attack’ Army.

The Faces for the Gorgon are ID, 2 Flame, 4 Manoeuvre, 4 Save, 4 Manoeuvre, 4 Save, 4 Maoeuvre, 2 Flame, 4 Maoeuvre, 4 Manoeuvre. The Statistics for him at a non-fire terrain therefore look like this:

Or, at a terrain with the Fire element where the Flaming Shields racial ability applies, meaning that Saves count as melee, they improve as below:

As we see from the two tables, this guy is very quick and, if he is to be found on a terrain containing the fire element, which is alien to the Coral Elves, his melee comes in useful too, especially as two faces have the Flame SAI, meaning that no save is possible and, very useful against death races, the enemy units are also buried, so do not count toward racial abilities that rely on units in the DUA.

So far we have used 12 health out of our 18 maximum available to us, and we are looking quite robust but, if like me, you like a long battle, the ‘Belt and Braces’ policy comes in useful. Our ‘Goalkeeper’ will be another Eldarim, which allows us to incrementally build our saves with Dragonkin additions using their ‘Dragonkin Handlers‘ racial ability. His faces are: ID, 3 Save, 4 Save, 4 Counter, 3 Manoeuvre, 2 Save

The Counter SAI on this unit is also a very useful deterrent from attack by the opposing home army, as it has the potential to take out 4 health of attacking units with no chance of saving.

We have now used 15 health out of our 18 and have a pretty solid defending army. Just in case of injury, however, I am going to bring in two more medics in the form of Firewalker Sunbursts, which can resurrect any units containing Fire (firewalkers) or Air (Firewalkers and Coral Elves) from the safety of reserves.

We have 17 health at the Home Terrain and 17 at an enemy Home Terrain, leaving 2 health to be used in ‘Midfield’ or, at the Frontier or at another enemy Home Terrain.

In Part 3, we will be constructing our Campaign army and selecting our Dragons, Dragonkin and Minor Terrains. We will then take a look at how we are going to use our army.