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[dead_mike]

Tips on Army Design

The Fundamental Law

The Fundamental Law of Dragon Dice army design is the foundation from which all successful game play grows. It is this:

In order to win, you must maneuver two terrain dice to the eighth face. Killing and burying your opponent's units is useful only in so far as it makes his armies slower.

The Fundamental Law tells us that victory in Dragon Dice goes to the quick, not to the strong. Consider a contest between 12 zombies (common undead heavy troops) and 12 horsemen (common coral elf cavalry) on flatland terrain.

The undead army begins by attacking the coral elves in melee. The mean melee result for this army is 10. The mean saves for the coral elf army is a pathetic 2, which means 8 of them are killed.

The coral elves have lost two-thirds of their starting force. If they try a counter-attack, the zombies will laugh it off, pitting a mean save of 6 against a mean melee attack of 2. Even so, the remaining four coral elves still have a better mean maneuver roll than the twelve zombies. They could very well win the game after being all but wiped out!

In a real-life game, spells, terrain advantages, and the luck of the dice can cause a wide variation between what is expected from a statistical analysis of the die rolls and what actually happens; however, the Fundamental Law still applies. An army that does not have any mobility to begin with is starting with an incredible disadvantage.

The following table shows the currently-available dice with the highest mean maneuver result per health. A good supply of these dice is essential to building a winning army. They are the most valuable dice in the game, and oddly enough, most of them are common!

Name	Race	Profession	HP	Speed
Dragonne Knight	Scalders	Cavalry	3	0.83
Dragonne Rider	Scalders	Cavalry	2	0.75
Horse-Folk	Ferals	Cavalry	2	0.75
Charioteer	Amazons	Cavalry	1	0.67
Battle Rider	Amazons	Cavalry	2	0.67
Wolf Rider	Goblins	Cavalry	2	0.67
Horseman	Coral Elves	Cavalry	1	0.67
Pony Rider	Dwarves	Cavalry	1	0.67
Runner	Amazons	Light Troop	1	0.67
Wardog Rider	Goblins	Cavalry	1	0.67
Spider Rider	Lava Elves	Cavalry	1	0.67
Wraith	Undeads	Cavalry	1	0.67
Bog Runner	Swamp Stalkers	Cavalry	1	0.67
Marsh Swimmer	Swamp Stalkers	Cavalry	2	0.67
Antelope-Folk	Ferals	Cavalry	1	0.67
Hound Master	Frostwings	Cavalry	1	0.67
Dragonne Tender	Scalders	Cavalry	1	0.67
Nymph	Treefolk	Cavalry	1	0.67
Gorgon	Firewalkers	Ally	4	0.60
Skeletal Steed	Undeads	Ally	4	0.60

Rules of Thumb

The Fundamental Law is only the first and foremost of several rules for army design that are applied by veterans of the game. In this section we'll touch on each of the others.

The Mathematics of Lightning Strikes

If your opponent brings a lot of blue magic to the table, then you can be assured he's planning to use one of the most vicious spells in the game—the Lightning Strike. Lightning strikes cost 6 points of magic, and kill the target unit unless the target rolls an ID or save. The Resistance value of a die is in fact its ability to survive a lightning strike. The key to prevailing against a lightning striker is to bring your units back with less magic than it takes to kill them. For example, if your opponent kills a one-health unit with a lightning strike, you can bring it back with the three-point Reanimate Dead spell. In that case, you're spending three points of magic to his six, a favorable equation. To bring back a larger unit, however, you need to spend more magic points (three points per health). This means that for a two-health unit you're spending six points of magic to your opponent's six, but it's also the case that he may not kill the two-health unit on the first strike. The following table shows the resistance required for a particular size of die to possess a favorable equation (or at least break-even point) against a lightning strike.

Health	Resistance
1	0.00%
2	0.00%
3	33.3%
4	50.0%

Only a few currently-available monster die—Phoenix, Harpies, Hydra, Troll —have a a favorable defense against lightning strikes in all terrains. Two others have favorable defenses in their home terrains—the Coral Giant in coastland and the Swamp Beast in swampland. The Dragonslayer and Dragonhunters also are good at 67% saves against lightning strikes. Dragonlords and Dragonmasters are at 50%, just good enough. All other monsters are just plain lightning bait.

What about monsters that can dispel magic? The Feral Owl-Folk, the Undead Fenhound, the Scalder Will o' Wisps, Treefolk Unicorn and the Dwarven Gargoyle all have a 20% chance of dispelling a lightning strike aimed directly at them. Unfortunately, they all have terrible resistance values—40% for the Gargoyle and Unicorn, 33% for the Will o' Wisps and 30% for the other two. When the chance to dispel magic is factored in, the Gargoyle has a resistance of 52%, the Will o' Wisps 46% and the Owl-Folk and Fen-Hound have 44%. The Gargoyle and Unicorn are barely worth it, but the other three are still lightning bait.

The situation is a much better for rare dice. Only a few dice are really bad. There are 6 rare out of 60 that only save on their ID face. All the rest save 33% or better.

Can anything be done to blunt the power of the terrible Lightning Strike? One way is to bring a Troll or two to the table. When you're rolling for missile, melee, or magic, each troll has a 20% chance of bringing four health back from the dead. Of course, the first time you resurrect a Fireshadow or a Dragonmaster you can expect your opponent to aim everything he's got at the Troll. Another technique is to bring a lot of red magic and hit your opponent's spell casters with Dancing Lights. This doubles the cost of each spell, which makes the math a lot more reasonable. Finally, you can bring a bunch of dwarf mages to the table and use the dwarf racial magic spell Earthen Armor. This not only protects units from Lightning Strike, but many other spells and SAIs which target individual units.

Half a Force is Better Than a Third

Most beginning players divide their units into three more or less equal groups, one for the home army, one for the horde, and one for the campaign army. Veterans put half their strength into the horde, a single one-health unit in the campaign army, and the rest at home. When the beginner and the veteran face off, the veteran will almost certainly get the first turn because his horde is bigger. The beginner will quickly take control of the frontier, but this will do him no good at all because his outnumbered home and horde armies will get trounced.

The reason the horde gets half your strength is that the biggest army you're allowed to start with is one-half the size of your entire force. You want your horde as big as possible because the speed of your horde determines whether or not you go first, and going first is a big advantage. The reason the home army gets the lion's share of the remaining dice is that you can control the terrain on which your home army fights. This means you can tailor the terrain to your advantage, and a bigger home army means a bigger portion of your force gets the benefit of that advantage.

Every now and then a player will try something different. The most common heterodoxy is to leave your home terrain defenseless and pour half your units into the campaign army. This gives both players control of a terrain right out of the starting gate, and the game then hinges on who gets control of the third terrain. Your opponent, however, is fighting in his home territory, with the terrain advantage in his favor. That makes the game an uphill battle for you.

That Old Black Magic

When I first started playing Dragon Dice, I was swept up by the drama of the constant battle between the virtuous forces of Nature and the evil forces of Death. Naturally, I wanted to play the good guys. This was a terrible idea. An all-Nature army must waste valuable spell points to bury enemy dead, and it can't cast Finger of Death or Open Grave. I decided that the idea of good guys fighting for Nature and bad guys fighting for Death was a peculiar insanity of the Northern Hemisphere of Esfah. All my armies come from the Southern Hemisphere, where people have grown past this Nature versus Death nonsense and are more concerned with mineral rights and a good view of the ocean. For example, a mix of dwarves and lava elves makes a very powerful home army for highland terrain. The dwarves get double maneuvers, and the lava elf maneuvers count as saves. You have access to red magic for Dancing Lights, and black magic to help bury enemy dead. In the Northern Hemisphere, these guys are mortal enemies and won't even look at each other. In the Southern Hemisphere, it's no problem. If the Southern Hemisphere ever decided to band together to invade the North, the North wouldn't last a week. It is unlikely this will ever happen, however, as most of the mines in the North have already been overworked, and in the North you can't enjoy an ocean view without also seeing the Coral Elves and Frostwings trying to slaughter each other. It's not a pleasant place to live.


The Safe Approach

There are two major approaches to designing a Dragon Dice army—the safe approach, described here, and the SAI approach, described in the next section.

It takes only 3 points of magic to bring a common unit back to life. It takes 6 points of magic to bring an uncommon unit back to life. This means there is an inherent advantage to common units over other kinds of units. There's another advantage as well: common units are less vulnerable to the feast-or-famine problem with larger units. Monsters are the worst in this respect. If you are rolling a Troll for saves, there's a 50% chance you'll get four saves; there's also 50% chance you'll get nothing at all. An army of four Weasel-Folk has the same mean save result as the Troll—2.00—but the chance of getting a null result from the Weasel-Folk is slightly over 6%. The drawback is that you're almost never going to see the four saves; most of the time (87% of the time, in fact) you'll see one, two, or three saves.

For both these reasons, the safe approach to army design concentrates on building armies out of common units. To use this approach, begin with one of the canonical armies described in The Canonical Armies, or begin with a half-magic, half-cavalry army using races you think would be fun to play. If an army is deficient in a certain statistic, you can generally improve that statistic by bringing in a magic item. The result will generally be an army that produces consistently good results, but never spectacular ones.

The Canonical Armies

The canonical army for a given terrain is nine common cavalry and nine common mages chosen with terrain advantages in mind. When you are designing your home or horde army, the canonical armies are the ones to beat. Their statistics are shown below. Note that in the case of the flatland army, the light Runner is used instead of the cavalry Charioteer. The flatland army has one other difference as well: it uses a missile attack to do its damage rather than a melee attack. Its attack is much less devastating as a result, but it also doesn't take any damage when it attacks.

Result	Coastland	Highland	Flatland	Swampland
Attack Unit	Coral Elf Cavalry	Dwarf Cavalry	Amazon Light	Goblin Cavalry
Spell Unit	Coral Elf Mage	Lava Elf Mage	Feral Mage	Swamp Stalker Mage
Move	9.00/2.65	15.00/4.69	7.50/2.50	13.50/4.61
Save	9.00/2.65	7.50/2.06	7.50/2.06	6.00/2.00
Melee	7.50/2.06	6.00/1.87	6.00/2.00	7.50/2.06
Missile	4.50/1.80	3.00/1.58	9.00/2.35	3.00/1.58
Black Magic	0.00/0.00	7.50/2.06	0.00/0.00	9.00/2.35
Red Magic	0.00/0.00	12.00/3.32	0.00/0.00	0.00/0.00
Blue Magic	12.00/3.32	0.00/0.00	9.00/2.92	0.00/0.00
Gold Magic	0.00/0.00	3.00/2.24	9.00/2.92	3.00/2.24
Green Magic	12.00/3.32	0.00/0.00	0.00/0.00	7.50/2.06
Strike Back	4.50/1.80	3.00/1.41	3.00/1.58	4.50/1.80

The SAI Approach

An army of common units is easy to bring back from the dead and generally immune from lightning strikes, but there is a risk that its attacks will be neutralized by rival armies with good saves. An alternative approach is to make use of special damage SAIs to generate damage that can be directed to specific units or that cannot be stopped by saves. These dice will all be rare 3-health dice or 4-health monster dice, so you'll need some plan for bringing them back from the dead when they get victimized by lightning strike spells or your opponent's SAIs. There are several options.

• Dwarf Wizards. The dwarf Earthen Armor spell allows you to add automatic saves to a unit that will protect it from directed spells and special damage. In addition, dwarves have red magic, which gives them access to Spark of Life, a key rejuvenation spell. Placing three dwarf wizards in an army will give you four points of dwarf magic (and therefore two Earthen Armor spells) 40% of the time. A red sight stone added to the mix gives you a mean result of 9 red magic points when rolling for magic, enough to bring back a 3-health unit.
  
  
• Trolls. Each troll has a 20% chance per non-maneuver roll of regenerating four health. A pair of trolls is able to resurrect at least one monster every three qualifying rolls, and each saves against lightning strikes 50% of the time.
  
  
• Frostwing Magis. Frostwings allow you to drain magic points from an opponent's magic rolls. Three frostwing rare mages yields a mean magic drain of 5 points. In addition, they can use the Magic Drain spell to drain additional magic: each cantrip will yield a two-point Magic Drain.

An SAI-based army tends to be feast or famine. It can lose big, but it's always fun to play.

Certain units have powers so useful that they deserve special mention.

• The Minor Death has four SAIs that kill units who fail to roll an ID icon, making it the deadliest melee unit in the game.
  
  
• The Dracolich provides a nice balance between moves, magic, and saves.
  
  
• The Fireshadow has a family of multi-use icons, including 2 fireminions (4 points of whatever you want), 2 wings (move or save), and a counter (melee or save). In addition, it has a cantrip and a smite. Its only drawback is that it saves poorly against directed damage. Though it produces 2.4 mean saves when rolling for saves, its resistance value is only 40%.
  
  
• The Phoenix saves better than any other unit in the game, and does both special missile damage (Seize) and special melee damage (Smite).
  
  
• The Leopard Rider provides more punch per health than any other unit, thanks to two sets of rend icons that count as both moves and melee hits. The mean melee damage done by the Leopard rider is 3.25, almost as much as a drake (3.60). It is the only unit in the game that does more than 1 point of mean melee damage per health.

The above information was taken from the DDAssist version 3.0.12 help files and modified in an attempt to bring it in line with the current ruleset.

[dead_mike]

Enjoy!
And moderators please feel free to modify the above post where you see fit.


Mike
_________________
As long as we are lucky we attribute it to our smartness;
our bad luck we give the gods credit for.
Author: Josh Billings

[wuxia]

Great write-up. Thanks.
I enjoy reading about strategy. Army construction or individual unit performance. Very good stuff!

[chuckpint]

The movement table was done before Frostwings came out. I've updated to show Frostwings, Scalders and Treefolk as well. The Lightning Strike was showing the results with Lightning Strike costing 5 points. The current spell cost 6, so I've updated all the results shown. Also, Scalder and Treefolk units with Dispel Magic were left out.

Note that black magic writeup is slightly off. It was written when black magic doubling buried units. It is still mostly true, since it costs less black magic (2) vs gold magic (3), to bury a health of units.
_________________
You can never have too many dice.
First Place at the first ever Daemon Dice sealed starter tournament.
Battlefest tied for first GenCon 2012
Single Race Champion GenCon 2008-2009, Sealed Box Champion GenCon 2007,2009,
My collection is 21,500 Dragon Dice, 20,000 Daemon Dice, and others (too many to count).

[dead_mike]

[dead_mike]

[ddicerc]

The original author was Bruce Parrello, who developed DDAssist and maintained a trading and information web site called the Dragon Dice Trading Post. I have some of Bruce's material in its original form on the DDRC site. The DDTP was also the first place you could read parts of Chill Wind, since Joe had been a good customer of Bruce's and his brother Marc contacted Bruce about posting the few chapters he had already written to that point.
_________________
Steve "DDice" Braun
The Diceman's Gaming Pages: http://ddicerc.weebly.com
2014-2015 U.S. National Champion
(Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse...)

[slcobbs]

I took the SAI approach with my Worlds army this year.

I like having big powerful units and you can't beat the Dragonmasters and Dragonhunters for their SAIs and special powers. Which were not included in the write up.

Scott C