Star Trek: The Dominion War

The Likelihood of getting anything else done before the end of the year is pretty slim. amongst the holidays and festivities I did manage to finish the custom dice and grabbed a mis-printed Romulan fighter hacked at it with a hobby knife and a bit of a judiciously applied scorching with lighter “enhanced interrogation techniques”, and slapped up a crashed fighter terrain piece.

The Forces

The Dominion – 4 squads of Jem’hadar led a Vorta, and 1 Jem’hadar Fighter for Air Support.

United Federation of Planets – 5 Squads of Federation Ground Forces. with several Advantages: 1 ARGO Rover, and 1 Shuttle Craft.

Jokers: Jokers are shuffled into the deck, a Joker allows for the player to deploy a unit to their table edge from their Strategic Reserves list.  The SR lists aren’t published as each player has a finite and other players don’t know who has what and how many of a given Reserve.

Turn 1

The Jem’hadar ran forward, trying to keep cover between them and the Federation. The Jem’hadar Fighter zipped forward and immediately destroyed the ARGO rover. UFP ground forces shot at it with a barrage of small arms fire, scoring some damage, Squad Alpha made a bee-line for the Defense Data Core to start the Data Purge. Squad Delta mounted the shuttlecraft.

Turn 2

Squad Delta utilized the Shuttle’s minimal weapon systems to draw fire from Jem’Hadar Fighter.The Ground forces continued to pelt it with their hand weapons. The Jem’hadar assault squads continued their progress towards the garrison.

Turn 3

The Federation is dealt a Joker, and deploys another Shuttlecraft to the table. Squad Delta, aboard the Type 6 Shuttle, zips towards to the back lines of the Dominion ground forces, hoping to draw the Jem’hadar fighter away.

Turn 4

Squad Delta dismounts the Shuttle behind enemies lines, and are pretty much immediately cut down. The Jem’hadar Fighter follows Squad Delta providing support for the Vorta. The Federation Type 9 Shuttle, unleashes a devastating phaser blast on the Jem’hadar fighter. In a fit of unspeakable luck, the Fighter crashed down atop a squad of shrouded Jem’Hadar troops. Much to Luke’s relief, only 1 warrior was lost. The Jem’hadar Squads finally reach effective range for exchanging small arms fire.

Turn 5

The Dominion is dealt a Joker, and deploys a Main Battle Tank. The Feds lower their Force Gate and start moving out to confront the Dominion Troops, hoping to give Squad Alpha more time to complete the Data Purge.

Turn 6

The Dominion Battle Tank unleashes hell, dropping the Type 9 Shuttle in a single hit. The Type 9, crashes down near the other shuttle, causing no further damage to the field. The scrum at the gate is brutal, and devastating for both sides.

Turn 7

The Dominion get another Joker! realizing the clock is running out, and the Data Purge is nearly complete, Luke deploys another Jem’hadar Fighter. The Battle at the gate continues. The Feds raise the forcefield, the Jem’hadar lower it, ready to charge in a stop the Data Purge.

Turn 8

The Federation gains the luck of the draw, going first and re-raising the forcefield at the gate, giving  Squad Alpha those crucial final seconds to complete the Data Purge.

Scenario 1: Landfall.

The Dominion’s Jem’Hadar forces launch their initial assault on Betazed. A Federation garrison is all that stands between the invaders and control of a critical planetary defense installation. The garrison must hold the line long enough for vital defense data to be purged from the facility’s systems and for reinforcements to be scrambled.

Objectives

• Jem’Hadar:
  • Primary Objective: Capture the control room of the Federation garrison by the end of Turn 8.
  • Secondary Objective: Inflict maximum casualties on Federation forces to weaken future resistance.
• Federation Ground Forces:
  • Primary Objective: Prevent the Jem’Hadar from occupying the control room for 8 turns to secure the defense data purge.
  • Secondary Objective: Minimize your losses to retain strength for future battles.

Setup

1. Board Layout:
   • A 6′ x 3′ table divided into zones:
     • Federation Garrison: At one end of the table, featuring a central fortified control room with a single entrance and two secondary buildings (e.g., barracks, armory).
     • Approach Zone: The middle of the board with scattered cover such as craters, debris, and rocky terrain.
     • Landing Zone: At the opposite end of the table, representing the Jem’Hadar drop zone with jungle-like vegetation and Dominion landing craft for aesthetic.
2. Deployment:
   • Jem’Hadar: Deploy within the first 12″ of the Landing Zone edge.
   • Federation Ground Forces: Deploy within the Garrison Zone, with units stationed in or around the fortified structures.

“There are certainly worse places to be stationed” Pvt. Poht said with his usual bubbling optimism.

“Yeah, but… I dont know..” Elana sighed, “Ive just never been comfortable around telepaths- oh no! I, I, I didnt me anything by it!” She turned frantically to Lt. Garn, her face turning as red as Poht’s was blue.

“We know.” Garn laughed dryly. The Betazed Garrison had taken on a lot of new transfers since the start of The War, and the aura of anxiety around the outpost was thick enough, that even with decades of training to be around unshielded minds, it was was starting to wear on the Betazoids.
Elana opened and closed her mouth repeatedly, desperate to find the words to apologize.

Standing in the common room, another boring day of watch duty ahead, another awkward conversation, one more time she had put her foot in her mouth. Just another glorious day in the corps. That was the moment. Thats when it changed. Thats when it became real.

All the color drained from Garns face, and he vomited on her boots before falling to his knees. Two other Betazoids collapsed.

“By the First House…there’s, there’s so many.. ” Garn’s voice was weak and far away. Poht rushed to the lieutenant, easing the Betazoid on to the ground.

“It’ll be fine sir, we’ve got you” Poht said, pulling out his tricorder. Garn’s eyes widened, unfocused, nearly bulging out of his head.

“I am dead!” Garn shouted. Poht nearly dropped his tricorder at the sudden outburst. “As of this moment we are all dead..” Garn’s voice was frail and weak. ” We go into battle to reclaim our lives. We do this gladly, for…” The lieutenant’s voice drifted away as he lost consciousness.

The lights went dim, and every display began to flash red. In the distance Elana could hear them, the chant of solemn fanatical devotion that would haunt her quiet moments for the rest of her days.

“VICTORY IS LIFE!”

We are currently scheduled to play this game on 12/14/24.

This doesn’t give a lot of time to finish a couple of side projects that I wanted to get done. but Did get started on a set of custom dice. Galactic Heroes rules use d8, d10, d12, but I figured I would do a d6’s as well, just cause.

Base coats and washes down, still needs highlights and refinement.

Below is the printed mini that was designed in the previsous entry. I primed it and did a quick dry brush of white to make the details easier to see on camera.

The Selection of TNG/DS9 era models is rather limited. We have the Modiphius models, as well as a handful from RavenX Studios. Raven X does the best Cardassians & Jem’Hadar. The scale is a bit off, but since they are stl’s its easy enough to play with the scaling and get close enough not to matter.

Sometimes you want that one-off mini. There are plenty of options for commissioning custom minis… but a saturday night at the local Emergency Room is filled with all sorts of things that folks discovered are technically possible…

for today’s option we’re gonna go with quick, cheap, and easy, hoping to get Close Enough.

Enter: HeroForge.

The key to making a HeroForge mini not look like total garbage is setting the height to 8ft tall. If you play around a little bit with the height slider you will notice that the heads and hands scale at a different rate than the body. 8ft seems to be the best balance in my experience to avoid the mini looking like a bobble head wearing mickey mouse gloves.

Work out the pose and clothing that works best for your mini.

When it comes to the gear, look at the gun from as many angles as possible, with an eye for how easy it’s going to be to remove. I picked a revolver, and for the off hand an axe, I chose the axe because of the cloth wrapping on the handle, as I intend to replace it with a Bat’leth.

Blender.

Next we import that STL into Blender.

First we want to select the forehead area, and subdivide it to give us a lot more geometry to work with.

In sculpt mode, just run some lines along the head with the draw brush, then run the crease brush along the edge of those lines. Dont worry too much about being exact, by the time you print that mini out, you wont notice most of your imperfections.

Then is a matter of  matter of just importing a Bat’leth and a Klingon Disruptor stls into your scene, scaling them.

Chop off the weapons, and replace them with the imported ones. fiddling with placement is the part that always seems to take the most time.

Once thats all done, I just select everything and Join it, then export to .stl

From there, Its just a quick repair (there are going to be lots of open faces, and other errors). I just use Prusa Slicer to repair my models, and I need to scale the figure anyways, so I can do both things just fast and easy in Prusa Slicer. I set the Scale to 90%, and export the model as an STL.

from there I can pop it into Lychee or Chitubox or whatever, do my supports, and off to the resin printer.

From start to finish, it takes me about 30 mins. (unless Heroforge is super busy and it takes them hours to get the file ready for download.)

Updated fan sourcebook preview.

This time I even remembered to make it viewable!

Added Minor Factions, and started work on the Vehicle rules & Templates.

Ground Combat Rules now start on page 73.

We have two Romulan Players in the group, and we needed to ensure they had plenty of options for Air Support.

The models we use can be vehicle, or terrain, depending on the Scenario.

We have Reman Scorpions, but we really wanted a Romulan Fighter. We dug around and were finding a lot. Then we stumbled across the Ha’feh Assault Warbird from Star Trek Online. This ship has a lot of the design esthetics we were looking for. Frankly, the Ship doesnt look like a Capital Vessel to my eye: The intakes and rear thrusters, and just a lot of the nuances just look out of place as a Warbird. As a Fighter though? Yes.

I took that design, dropped it into blender and quickly reworked the front end to make it more cockpit-like.

I printed it out, and slapped some basic paint on it. Still some panel lining to do, lots of touch up, but overall the Romulans now have a viable 28mm Warp Fighter to bring to the table.

Preview – The Dominion War

This is a pdf of our fan sourcebook, so far.

Most of this is lore, force organization, tactics, etc. actual rules start around page 66. But this will give you an idea as to where we are headed.

We’ve decided to take on an ambitious challenge: playing through the Dominion War as a 28mm miniatures wargame, using Galactic Heroes, 2nd Edition by Wiley Games. It’s an exciting project, but the sheer scope of what we’re planning has us both energized and a little intimidated!

The Dominion War offers such a rich setting to explore, and we’re aiming to dive deep into it. That means:

• Painting: Bringing a variety of Star Trek factions to life in miniature form, from Federation forces to Dominion shock troops, and everything in between.
• Rules Writing: Adapting the Galactic Heroes system to capture the unique flavor and tactical diversity of the Dominion War.
• Scenario Design: Developing missions that reflect the epic moments of the conflict, while also creating tools to generate new, unpredictable challenges.
• Terrain Creation: Building immersive environments, from war-ravaged planetary battlefields to the cold, strategic interiors of space stations and starships.
• 3D Modeling and Printing: Designing and producing custom miniatures and terrain pieces to add personal touches to our games.
• Creative Writing: Infusing our campaign with story-driven elements, like briefings and lore, to bring it all together.

It’s a lot to take on, but the blend of creativity, strategy, and storytelling makes it worth the effort. We’re looking forward to sharing our progress, challenges, and victories as we bring the Dominion War to the tabletop.

The Dominion War is a conflict of two distinct arenas: the sweeping clashes of space battles and the gritty struggles of ground combat. To keep things manageable, we’ve decided to start with ground battles while working on the space combat rules in parallel.

Ground combat is easier to replicate on the tabletop, especially with a system like Galactic Heroes (part of the Fistful of Lead series) that strikes a great balance between depth and ease of play. Adapting it to fit the Dominion War has been straightforward, allowing us to focus on painting miniatures, designing scenarios, and creating terrain for planetary skirmishes.

Space combat, however, is proving more challenging. Most tabletop systems for space battles adapt rules designed for fighter combat, which doesn’t fully capture the scale and tactics of capital ship engagements. Conversely, the large ship combat systems we’ve explored often become overly complex, bogging down play rather than enhancing it. We’re searching for a sweet spot—something with the simplicity and flexibility of Fistful of Lead but tailored for the Dominion War’s massive fleets and strategic maneuvers.

As we refine the rules for space combat, we’ll continue focusing on ground engagements, building out our Dominion War campaign step by step

As we expand the scope of our Star Trek tabletop gaming to encompass the full scale of the Dominion War, we’ve found ourselves venturing into uncharted territory. While Star Trek provides a wealth of lore, some areas of the Dominion War—particularly its battles and the operational details—remain undefined. That’s where we need to get creative.

Drawing from what’s established in Trek canon, we’ve been fleshing out the untold stories and imagining how these massive conflicts might have unfolded. From the grueling planetary campaigns to the high-stakes naval clashes in deep space, we’re shaping a vision of the Dominion War that captures its epic scale while keeping true to the tone and themes of Star Trek.

Filling in these gaps has allowed us to put our own stamp on the Dominion War while staying rooted in the established Trek universe.