Dreamblade is a 2 player Collectible Miniatures Game that is very tactical played on a 5 x 5 dreamscape mat. To win you maneuver your creatures into your any of your six scoring cells. Whoever has the most conquest points wins a turn and first player to win six turns wins the game. Dreamblade is pretty simple and streamlined especially to anyone who has played chess before. There is definitely luck involved with the dice as you roll for damage to either disrupt or kill an opponent's creature. However, there definitely are many meaningful agonizing decisions to be made during all phases of the game. The tension is superb and the replayability is through the roof. I absolutely love Dreamblade and it rocks the grave.



Quick Overview of Gameplay -
- Choose 16 creatures for your warband and put them in your reserves
- Each player rolls a D6 die and the sum determines the spawn points each player gets.
- Whoever rolled higher spawns first then 2nd player spawns
- 1st player does two actions
- 2nd player does two actions
- During actions you can either Shift or Strike.
Shift by moving all your creatures.
Strike by attacking once per cell if there is an engaged enemy.
- Determine Conquest Points by scoring for each cell your creature is in uncontested and 1 point for each creature killed.
- First player to win six turns wins.

Not quite as simple as that but that's the gist of it.
See my Newbie Reference Guide DreambladeReferencev4.pdf 140KB to get more detailed overview.

Starter contains 16 random miniatures (1 rare, 3 uncommons, 12 commons), 8 dice, 1 initiative die, paper mat, rule book.
Booster contains 7 random miniatures (1 rare, 2 uncommons, 4 commons), checklist.

96 creatures are in the base set.

Dreamblade Base Set Miniature Photos huge sized close-ups

60 creatures in each expansion. The first expansion is Baxar's War.
Expansions will be released every 3 months. Next one January 19, 2007.

Dreamblade Baxar's War Miniature Photos huge sized close-ups

The photo galleries above are very similar to faceless ilussion
Just prefer not clicking on each aspect but instead having them on a single page.

official photos from Wizards of the Coast Official Dreamblade Database.

DreambladeReferencev4.pdf 140KB
Dreamblade_Rulebook.pdf 3.2MB

DBM_Color_Map_Full.pdf 1.9MB
DBM_BW_Map_Full.pdf 176KB
Dreamblade_Map.pdf 384KB

Dreamblade_Virtual_Starter.pdf 2.1MB
dreamblade_virtual_booster.pdf 1MB

DBM_Base_Set_Stats.pdf 748KB
3299A_DBMS01_enc_W.pdf Base Encyclopedia 50MB
3298A_DBMS02_enc_W.pdf Baxar's War Encyclopedia 41MB

Almost all these PDF files above are copyright Wizards of the Coast

I got started in Dreamblade by reading about it on boardgamegeek.com and was attracted to it by it having pre-painted miniatures. I can't paint if my life depended upon it. Ok so what I have Heroscape which has cool figures but it's really just a terrain and line of sight skirmish game. So so fun to play but not really engaging as the tactical decisions are not really thought provoking.

Had my lovely wife make the dreamblade players mat on foam board.
Printed out all 96 characters from the base set to play with and refer to the encyclopedia for character abilities.
Use regular dice as 1, 2, 3 are hits, 4 and 5 are misses and 6 are blades.
Played it and absolutely loved it. I like tactical games and abstract strategy games.
True this has dice and there is luck for sure involved but it really hits the sweet spot for me.

01Dreamblade40mmValor.pdf 1.3MB
02Dreamblade40mmMadness.pdf 1.2MB
03Dreamblade40mmFear.pdf 1.3MB
04Dreamblade40mmPassion.pdf 1.4MB

If I had to do it over again I'd probably try the Virtual Starter and Virtual Booster or play it online instead. Regardless I loved the game play and never saw a dreamblade mini in real life till I ordered them.

Side note: I've briefly been taught how to play Warmachine and Warhammer 40K and own Heroscape. This is to me my type of game and those ones are ok just not for me. Some say this plays like Magic the Gathering which I've never seen a card nor know how it plays so I'll take their word for it. This is my first collectible game ever.

Heroscape I plopped more than $300 and it gets hardly any game play at all. Dreamblade I've spent just over $300 and have 2 starters, vinyl mat, 10 base boosters, 16 baxar's war boosters. Sure I still have BattleLore coming but I honestly wonder if BattleLore will have me making as much tactical decisions as this. We shall see.

Maxminis.com has a great interface and you can find opponents online. Helpsection is here.

Vassal also has a Dreamblade Mod you can play an opponent online.

Dreamblade by B.Sturk Play versus AI or two human players on Mac, Linux or Windows on same computer.

For Mac after you download osx.tgz.tar file double click it and it'll unzip to Dreamblade.app which you drag to /Applications.

To add images of figures download either:


artwork.zip 10MB official images which has all except Serrated Dawn (official but never released by WOTC), Twilight and Witching Hour (both fan made expansions)

Dreamblade_Artwork_121509.zip 38MB Magic the Gathering Images which does contain all images for all expansions including Serrated Dawn, Twilight, and Witching Hour

right click on Dreamblade.app and choose Show Package Contents
then create a sub directory called pieces so it'll appear like so /Contents/Resources/res/pieces
after you unzip one of the artwork zip files just copy the artwork directory to /Contents/Resources/res/pieces

To create your own sets you need to make a new text file and copy to /Resources/warbands directory listing the 16 pieces in your warband which you choose in settings (CTRL-C) for you and your opponent. It'll look like this:

Cannibal Pariah
Cannibal Pariah
Zombie Enforcer
Hammerhead
Bloodthirsty Redcap
Heartsblood Temple
Heartsblood Temple
Scarab Warcharm
Heart Thief
Voodoo Manipulator
Thunder Sultan
Whirlwind Dervish
Fleshless Reaper
Baxar the Soulstitcher
Dreadmorph Ogre
Unsated Ragedrake

For those new to the game just read the Universal Head Rules Summary 2 page PDF Dreamblade_v1.pdf 430KB
and remember the following cells conquest point value:
B4 and D2 = 5pts , C4 and C2 = 4pts , D4 and B2 = 3pts, B3 and D3 = 1pt, C3 (middle cell)= 2pts. Just memorize the official game board not hard to do at all and you'll remember this.

Main Links

Official FAQ
boardgamegeek.com Dreamblade Reviews, files, etc.

Japanese
Japanese Translation of Rules, Abilities, Glossary, etc.
above translations in PDF for easy printing dreambladeJP.zip 1.3MB

Sorting by Aspects Valor, Madness, Fear, Passion, Lineage, etc.
Official Database of Dreamblade Creatures
vesivus.com/dbminis

Dreamblade Forums
Official forums
maxminis.com

Updated June 2010

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