The Dong Son was a Bronze Age civilization that arose in what is now modern-day Vietnam. Although well-known for their use of large drums in battle. They were not primarily a military power, but instead were more of a religious, cultural, intellectual kingdom, and one that was more known for fishing, nautical exploration and trading across the seas. These strengths are represented by the Dong Son starting a game with a free Level I position on two Cultural Development Display Tracks: Economic-Social and Religious-Intellectual. Additionally, and what a nice choice to have, the Dong Son start each game with a FREE Philosophy: either Legalism or Traditional-Legalism. They also receive a rising number of free additional one to four Disks for Growth each turn.
Quite literally carved out of the jungle, this civilization is immune to ACEA’s Jungle Attrition rule. The Dong Son held sway over the Red River Valley in the northern part of Vietnam well into the early Iron Age. Archeologists have found their drums throughout SE Asia and in what is today Indonesia and the Philippines which provides evidence of these peoples’ seafaring abilities. They eventually succumbed to the mighty Han Empire when they struck from southern China into Southeast Asia. To learn more regarding this civilization, see: Đông Sơn culture – Wikipedia. There are also YouTube videos regarding them.
Players have a choice of three areas to choose as a Homeland (unless the Van Lang [1] civilization is in play, in which the Viet area is forbidden to the Dong Son).
Figure 1: ACEA’s Civilization Card for the Dong Son: This card format should be familiar to those who’ve played either of the other two games of GMT’s “Ancient Civs.” Series: Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea and/or Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East. For more information, see either of these games’ GMT Sites for Rulebooks & other game components.
What’s new with ACEA is the “Build Your Own Civilization” Section, which allows players to modify the Dong Son Civilization through an optional rule and the “Philosophy” Section. When the Dong Son player selects a Philosophy, either Traditionalism, Legalism, or Traditional-Legalism, a white disk is placed over the choice to memorialize it. However, the Dong Son are unique since one of two Philosophies, Legalism or Traditional-Legalism is a FREE selection as they begin an Ancient Civilizations of East Asia game as their counters are initially placed on the Economic-Social and Religious-Intellectual Display Tracks’ Level 1 spaces.
Figure 2: The Dong Son Civilization’s initial placement of disks on ACEA’s playtest map: The “H” small wooden block indicates the Standard Game’s Dong Son Homeland, in this example the Jungle area of Lai Chau (the produced game’s component will be similar to ACME’s Homeland Blocks). Light brown indicates clear Arable areas, dark brown Mountain, light green Fertile, dark green Jungle and, of course, blue represents rivers.
The Dong Son’s immunity to “Jungle Attrition” gives them a defensive advantage against all the main China-area based Urban Civilizations, as well as those north of the China Heartland, who may seek to attack or encroach upon them. This rule compels any non-immune Civilization to remove a disk from a Jungle area, even if it is the only disk occupying it, at the very beginning of every turn’s Reckoning Phase. This disk removal may not be cancelled in any manner whatsoever (e.g. through a Civilization expending a disk from its Treasury).
The Dong Son are well positioned to expand in every direction of the compass… north into the China Heartland’s Fertile areas, or south to secure all of SE Asia, east via Sea to the limits of a Standard Game’s abbreviated map (and beyond that if the full map is being used), or west to the board edge to have potential contact with the off-map Indian and Central Asian Civilizations via their Karma Cards: ah, what potentials there are for them! A game’s other Civilizations may have other ideas about unfettered Dong Son expansion, or simply the threat of it. To successfully deal with them requires a patient, convincing, and constant adroit negotiations as well as some luck with Karma Card draws (which always helps!).
The Dong Son Civilization is a selection for any Standard ACEA Game with 4-6 players.
Next up in this “Meet the Civs” Series is the northern desert based nomadic Xiongnu Civilization.
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Footnotes
[1] The Van Lang are among the 19 civilizations available for players to choose from when playing Ancient Civilizations of East Asia, and will be discussed in an upcoming edition of “Meet the…”
