One of the most interesting and important things about the game of Dragon Dice is the building of armies and working out strategies on how to use them against the large variety of opponents, each with their own varying special abilities.
Unfortunately, working these out for yourself only becomes possible after extended periods of playing the game during which time, a lot of would-be players seem to give up, believing that it is not worth the effort.
Building an army is not just a simple matter of picking a few dice that look pretty and splitting them into 3 piles and rolling them in a game where your opponent or opponents have done likewise, expecting to kill everything with whom you decide to pick a fight. It is a process of understanding all the different races’ special abilities, how the vast array of spells help each of them, how to use the various types of dragon and dragonkin to assist you and hinder your opponent(s), choosing suitable terrains and minor terrains to work with you, and a whole lot more, simply to take possession of two terrains at the same time (not to kill off everyone else, as new players seem to believe).
In addition to these areas of knowledge, a player has different types of tournament that can be played which include, but are not limited to:-
- Single Race Battles – One race exclusively against another.
- Mixed Race Battles – Each combatant uses whatever dice from whatever race they want to use.
- Nature v Death Battles – Armies containing units with the Death element against the armies not containing the death element.
- Multiplayer games – Including all the above.
- Doubles – Armies assisting each other against other multiple armies
- Monsters only
- Many more
Because of its sheer magnitude and complexity I feel that a helping hand is needed for anyone new to the game who wants to just ‘get going’ and come back to the important bits once they understand what they are doing.
In order to illustrate the tactics of the game in action, I will be producing a number of Play Test Armies which will be used in the demonstration battles.
As these armies are produced, they will be published as pages on this site so that players can use them in their own battles to test out strategies with new armies that they have built. I am hoping that readers of this blog will assist me in this by offering their own ideas and tactics.
To set the ball rolling, I have produced four armies as a ‘template’ for others to copy and had another supplied by a friend. They can be found here:-
What do I do with these?
These armies have been constructed as opponents for you to try out your own compositions. Each time that I produce a new army and set of tactics, I play them against these to see how they hold up. If they are beaten by these, then I know that I need to scrap them or tweak them and try again.
I have tried to make them as varied as possible within the limitations of some pretty coloured pieces of plastic and a set of rules.
My Armies
The Coral Elf Army #1 – Uses Missile, Manoeuvre and Reserve magic to attempt to capture the home and frontier terrains.
The Dwarf Army #1 – Uses Melee and brute force to get its home terrain and then a bit of magic and manoeuvres to win the battle.
The Firewalker Army #1 – Makes use of Racial Abilities, coupled with vicious magic and dragon summoning to create mayhem and generally wear down opponents – my favourite army for a fun night.
The Lava Elf Army #2 – Uses Missiles coupled with Magic and racial abilities in a toxic mixture to destroy the opposition forces. These guys do not take prisoners.
The Undead Army #1 – Uses the idea of a very mobile Undead force as a surprise attack, especially against races that rely on units in the DUA to use their abilities. This lot should be hard to wear down due to the spread of health within the army which allows maximum use of stepped damage.