Blood on the Sands - a game of gladiatorial combat

What BotS is. Blood on the Sands is a game of gladiatorial combat featuring intense one-on-one duels. It produces dynamic, narrative combats that move around the arena and that do not simply devolve into a static dice-rolling fest. The game requires only six miniatures per player, a hex grid playing area, gladiator sheets, some dice and some tokens; making for a pretty low buy-in for a game. It employs a dice pool mechanic that enables players to have a sense of direct control over their gladiators’ actions, including manoeuvring, managing endurance, and both defending against and attacking their opponents. In its current form BotS features six historically researched gladiator armaturae or classes, the hoplomachus, murmillo, provocator, retiarius, secutor and thraex, but there are of course others in development. The distinct armament of these classes has been carefully considered in the design of BotS. Why does a murmillo wear one short greave? Why does a thraex wield a bent or curved sword? Why does a retiarius wear next to no armour? These are the types of questions that were considered when designing the game. It can be played as a simple pick-up game or as part of a longer campaign where you manage a stable of gladiators.

What BotS ain’t. Blood on the Sands is not a miniature skirmish game with lots of figures in play at the same time. A player will control one figure only. Yes, one figure. The game concentrates on trying to replicate historical gladiatorial combats traditionally fought between a single pair of gladiators. What about the arena battles in the movie Gladiator? Sure, those things may have happened on occasion to deal with large groups of criminals or prisoners, but that is not gladiatorial combat, that is a mass execution. Regardless, those types of battle are outside the scope of BotS and would be better handled by other rulesets. What about animals? Nope. Animal combats or hunts were the realm of the bestiarii, men trained specifically for the task of fighting and killing animals. They would have erroneously at best have been considered gladiators, as gladiators fought only gladiators. So BotS neither caters for large all in brawls or the killing of animals.

So Blood on the Sands is a game with just two figures on a hex grid? Is that going to be fun? You’ll just have to take my word for it until you can try it out for yourselves.