Blood on the Sands – a game of gladiatorial combat

Project Blog by BloodontheSands

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About the Project

I've been developing my gladiator game, Blood on the Sands, for over 10 years, on and off. The game puts players in the role of gladiators fighting for their lives in the provincial arenas of ancient Rome. While there are many gladiator games on the market, I was never satisfied with the gameplay, as most quickly devolved into a static dice rolling fest. My goal in designing BotS was to capture the dynamic and fluid nature of historically-based gladiatorial combat, incorporating all the nuances of this deadly blood sport favored by the fun-loving Romans. The mechanics produce narrative-driven combats that move across the arena, requiring tactics, skill, and some degree of luck from players. Here, I hope to share all the work I've completed so far and detail the journey of trying to turn Blood on the Sands into a published product. https://www.facebook.com/bloodonthesands

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Building the Arena - Part 2

May 11 2024

I made the base for the arena walls and bleachers out of proper blue XPS foam, more solid than the the green stuff I used for the arena floor. The Editor's box is made of 5mm foamcore and houses the portae into the arena proper. The arena wall is just some heavy cardstock, cut to size and bent into shape. It served not only to help hide all the sins but to give a nice smooth finish. I was testing the look of the arena here - seeing if it would look grand enough.

The bleachers were made out of white packing foam as they would not see any play and would be covered in as many spectators as I could manage. I used a large oval template as a guide and just kept removing about 1.5cm so the template shrunk each level. Stairs were cut into the bleachers to make the arena as realistic as possible.

Here you can see all the layers of the bleachers from the outside wall.

Building the Arena - Part 1

May 5 2024

To play Blood on the Sands you require a hex-grid board. You don’t need anything fancy, just a simple oval shape with hexes – ideally 11 hexes long by 9 hexes wide.

In saying that although, in my experience, nothing draws a crowd like nice terrain. So for the purposes of running Blood on the Sands at cons and game days I just had to go for something a little more eye catching.

I’ll go through the process I used scratch-building my arena in the next series of posts.

The finished arena in play

The first thing was to print out a hex grid on paper to use as a template. The hex sizes aren't that important for BotS, as long as your minis fit neatly within them.

I pinned down the hex template and then scored over the paper with a blunt tool. It left a pretty good impression in the foam.

With PVA I painted in the hexes individually, a little at a time. I used fairly fine grit and sand to texture. Larger stones would make the minis not sit well and because every hex is used, ideally you want the surface to be as flat as possible.

When the hexes were all textured it was time to address the arena walls and bleachers. I've played enough gladiator type games to know that playing them in a completely enclosed area is just no fun. In a game like BotS where the miniatures move around a lot it becomes a real pain in the subligaculum constantly reaching ove r the model arean walls to move your miniatures. That's why I always suggest a half arena open one one side. Here you can see I've placed the first layers of foam to bring the bleachers up to the hieght of the arena wall.

What BotS Is

May 4 2024

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.

https://www.facebook.com/bloodonthesands