So what is Desktop Army Online Wars?

To make things short, let's start with the answer; Desktop Army Online Wars (DTAオンライン決戦) is a game I came up with to play with the figure series, Desktop Army.

Click here for Japanese 日本語はこちら

Now you are either not interested and closing this tab, or want to know how the game goes. Well, here's the rules. 

It's like D&D, you make your own character and compete. The competing part I kept simple as possible so anyone can participate. It's a number comparing game, with the side with the bigger number wins. You do this several times and finally judge which side had the most wins. In Desktop Army world, it's either the Sentinel Glory or the Dragoon. Usually.

Now how to create your character, or more properly here D-phone. Everyone knows how the Desktop Army world goes, right? For those who don't here it is in short. 
It takes place in the near future, where small robots are acting as handy secretaries, just like a smart phone keeps all your schedules. Different from your ordinary mobile device, these Doll-phones, D-phones for short, have emotions, can decide things for you, and talk to you just like a human would. But everything is not perfect. One time a single second was inserted to the global clock to balance out time, and at that second, humanity banished like they didn't exist from the beginning. D-phones now were the ruler of the planet, and they started to protect human civilization and search for those banished human beings. But, D-phones had 2 different providers. One is Sentinel Glory and one was Dragoon. They fight each other to prevent data and civilization from being disrupted, for better infrastructure, for property; just like the humans had done. One big difference, these D-phones are only 8cm tall.

Now finally let's get into the rules of this game. to create your D-phone, you need the following data:
- Name
- Side
- Type
- Stats
Name is self-explanatory so I'll leave that out. Let's start by sides. I will also add in a Japanese translation for each word you might want to know on the bottom of this page.

Sides

So, by now you should know D-phones take 2 different sides; Sentinel Glory and Dragoon. Choose one side you're going to fight for. Although there are 2 exceptions to this. One is the Free Riders. They are out of these 2 sides, and might be bought as mercenaries to fight. In that case, state you are a Free Rider and fighting for one side. Keep it blank if you don't want to take sides. There are also the Black Rabbits, who just wish destruction and chaos. They fight everyone. If you don't have a strong and specific reason, stick with the Sentinel or Dragoon.

Type

This shows the D-phones style of fighting, how it reacts in a battle. Choose from the 5 below:
- Attacker: More aggressive and eager to battle with others, brave and might.
- Searcher: It has good eye sight, radars and can detect enemies before they do.
- Defender: This type has a hard and strong body or shield that protects itself and the others from attacks.
- Interfere: Quick moving, has strong hacking skills, or sends false signals that the enemies cannot decode, you are this type.
- Supplier: Not only bullets and batteries, this type might supply weapons, or even itself to the battle. Tends to have a strong battery for long standing.
One type supports one status. This is the Type Support. See what type supports what status in the following column.

Stats

Now you have your type, lets decide stats. You have total of 31 points to freely spread across the following 5 stats.
- Info: This shows how strong your D-phone can collect information and hack in to others, use information and technology as a weapon. If you are a Searcher type, you gain 1 extra point here.
- Mobility: How quick, how long a D-phone moves determines this stat. If you are an Interfere type, you gain 1 extra point here.
- Fire power: Simple, how strong your D-phone is. If you are an Attacker type, you gain 1 extra point here.
- Endurance: How though your D-phone is and how big of an attack it can withstand. If you are a Defender type, you gain 1 extra point here.
- Battery: How long your D-phone can stay in action without the need to recharge its batteries. If you are a Supplier type, you gain 1 extra point here.
Not all stats need to be filled in, some can be kept as 0 if you wish. But there is not much benefit of doing so if you don't need to. I will explain why.

Giant

Some D-phones are larger than others, like the Wolpertinger and Ganesha. To accurately play these, the Giant rule comes in play.

To create a Giant D-phone, you first decide a Type. This Type bonus becomes "V" for victory, and will win no matter what the opponent D-phone has on that Stat. Then you divide 21 points total to your Stats. The V-Status is a Type bonus, so when the Type bonus is eliminated by a skill, this status will become 0 if no points are assigned.

To become a Giant, you must fill one of the following two conditions:

- With all equipped, your D-phone cannot stand on its own. Or it is lifted by its equipment and does not stand on the ground.
- When measuring, the longest end of the D-phone, equipment included, is over 15cm, or 6 inches. Hight, width, or depth. For reference, the Wolpertinger is over 18cm high, and Ganesha's wings on the lower jet is over 20cm long when measured from left to right.
- The D-phone holds a weapon twice as long as its hight (16cm), or it holds 2 or more weapons longer than its hight (8cm). To have this work, the weapon must be held in the D-phone's hand, and not attached to its back. Alissa/Melissa's sacred weapon and the giant Jabberwock hand must be attached on to her arm that extends from her shoulders. The giant scythe Eva holds can not be measured as 16cm since its bended at the top, but 2 in each hand can be counted.

Civilians

Some D-phones aren't an expert of battling. This is because some are better at singing, transportation, machine maintenance, fashion designing, application development, or any other occupation. To show this by data, the Civilian rule comes in play.

You can use the same stats as above, but only 21 points to assign to all. Your Type becomes "Civilian" and when you loose, the opponent does not gain a victory point. If you win, you do gain a victory point, though. This means a Civilian D-phone is able to "not let the enemy win".

Because you are a Civilian, you do not have any Type Support.

No specific rule exists to become a Civilian. You still can hold a weapon. This just shows "the D-phone possess a weapon but does not know how to use it well or fight with it".

Skills

A D-phone can have special skills or a special attachment to it. Skills are a rule where you can describe that as a data. One skill for one D-phone without much exceptions. You can check all the skills from the link below.

DTAオンライン決戦スキルシステム用スキル一覧

Giants can have 2 skills, or 1 Giant skill. Civilians can have 1 Civilian skill.

Skills are not mandatory. If you wish to play without skills, that is fine too. If you keep your skill blank, this will be counted as Type Bonus +3.

Once you choose your skill, you can rename it with under 20 characters of letters.

When using skills, the priorities are in the order of "Skills that power yourself", "Skills that depend on the enemy's stats", to "Skills that effect others".

How to fight

The game is a simple number comparison game. Compare your stats to your opponents from the top of the list, and whoever wins 3 stats or has the most wins, wins. If both sides have the same number of victories, apply the tie rule below.

Tie rule

If two D-phones can't decide which is grater simply by comparing numbers, the tie rule is applied. First, compare both of the Mobility, and the faster one takes the move. If both Mobility are the same, compare Info to decide who goes first. The one moving becomes the attacker and the other defender, and you compare the attacker's Fire power to the defender's Endurance. If the attacker's Fire power penetrates the defender's Endurance, the attacker wins. If not, switch sides and do that again. If this doesn't settle the game, compare Battery, and that will show witch one stands last. If both Mobility and Info are the same, you attack each other, and the one to penetrates wins by giving more damage. If there is no winner with this, then the game is a tie.

What do you get if you win?

Your side, Sentinel Glory or Dragoon gets a point. The side with more points will win the season. How many times you need to do this or how long will the game go on? Ask the host or decide on your own since you're the one playing the game.

Type advantage

Some types have an advantage to others. If your type is stronger then the opponent, the opponent looses that 1 extra point gained when they decided their stats. The advantage goes as below. Stronger->weaker

Defender->Attacker->Supplier->Searcher->Interfere->Defender->and so on

Purpose

The overall purpose of this game is to understand your D-phone deeper or from a different perspective. Winning and losing is just the game part of it.
Also, I've kept this system simple so any kind of robot like figures are apply-able. Your Gundam (Gumpla), Hexagear, Robot Concert, Megami-device, Frame arms, Frame arms girls, whatever it is, see how they would do in a battle.

Hashtag

To better communicate with others, I recommend using #DesktopArmyOnlineWars when posting. The Japanese for this is #DTAオンライン決戦 so go ahead to use that too if you wish, but use it only for Desktop Army images if possible. I might even change this game's name to #RobotFigureOnlineWars in the future for ease. How do you think? Any questions send me a DM or reply on Twitter @ExtDTA

Japanese translation

Side: 陣営 (Jin-A)
Type: タイプ (Type)
Stats: ステータス (State-ass)
Attacker: 攻撃 (co-ge-key)
Searcher: 索敵 (Saku-te-key)
Defender: 防御 (Bow-gyo)
Interfere: 妨害 (Bow-guy)
Supplier: 補充 (Ho-jew)
Info: 情報 (Joe-hou)
Mobility: 機動 (Kiddo)
Fire power: 火力 (Ka ryo qu)
Battery: 電力 (Den ryo qu)