Kris Hall: Julien Bonnard and the God Kings

Card-driven wargames have become a popular sub-genre of wargames in general, and some wargamers don’t seem to want to play anything but card-driven games.  There are several card-driven games on the ancient world in development or about to be published (including Spartacus by John Firer which should appear in December or January), but none delves deeper in time than The God Kings, a game of truly ancient empires.  Julien Bonnard, the designer of the game, recently answered my questions about The God Kings.

Kris: Is The God Kings your first design?  What drew you to the subject of ancient history and warfare? 

Julien: The God Kings is indeed my first design. I have had a passion for History in general and the Ancient Near East history in particular for a very long time, and also for the history of writing. I am fascinated by the cuneiform symbols, and by the complex and advanced civilizations that spawned it. I can remember the first time I visited the Assyrian gallery of the British Museum, with its impressive sculptures! I was in awe!  Combined with my affinity with the history of warfare throughout the ages, The God Kings was the next logical step! 

Kris: What is the relative complexity level of the game?  How long will a game take to play?  How many players can the game accommodate?

Julien: The game is not complex, about the same complexity as Hannibal versus Rome. If you know how to play this game, you can learn The God Kings’ rules in a very short time! A start up aide will surely be packed with the game for HvR players, highlighting the differences between the two games.

The elements I added to adapt accurately the system to the Near-East period have been kept deliberately simple, in order to keep down the playing time and make the game easy to play.

The God Kings will have a wide range of playable times, between literally less than 30 minutes for the introductory scenario “The battle of Kadesh” to about 6 to 8 hours for the whole 4-player campaign, with scenarios with a playing time from 2 to 4 hours.  For more information, please see the description of the scenarios (question 8).

Kris: What is the time-scale of the game?  It seems to span centuries.  What changes did you have to make to accommodate the scale of the game?

Julien: Each turn represents about 20 years. With a total of 12 turns, it’s nearly 250 years of Ancient Near East history that are simulated! Of course, to take into account this passage of time, the leaders of each kingdom, the monarchs, stay in play for one to three turns. Some monarchs can die earlier, if he has a successor for the turn.

Another system I used to model the natural expansion of each empire over the course of 20 years of campaign is the reorganisation at the end of the turn. The armies of each empire must be replaced in its own kingdom, and its army is restored fully. This prevents the definitive elimination of a player while keeping the course of the game on rather historical tracks.

Kris: Can you give us some examples of the event cards in the game?

Julien: To name but a few, The Epic of Gilgamesh, which sees the King trying to imitate the mythical hero; several invasions by Barbarians, such as the Elamites and the Gasga; many revolts too; The God King event, allowing you to replace a King with his Successor; Population migration; Oriental Cruelty; the building of the famous Ziggurats, the oriental pyramids; the flood of Utanapishtim and many more! I will of course provide historical explanations about every card in play.

What is marvellous with the Card driven system, invented by Mark Herman, is the possibility to really immerse the players in the spirit of a period, without submerging them with lots of additional rules!

Kris: How different are the various empires in the game?  Do they each have their own strengths and weaknesses?

Julien: The various kingdoms of the game are differentiated first of all by the quality of their monarchs. There are more than 40 included in the game!  Each power will have its Napoleon and its not-so-good rulers, and the players will have to make the best use of them all. 
In term of troop quality, there are no great differences. The Hittites (for their early use of iron weapons) and the Assyrians (for their discipline) benefit from a slightly better rating for their infantry.  Each Empire will thus have access to warriors units, chariot units, mercenaries and the Royal Guard. 

Kris: I see that the map consists of a long corridor of spaces stretching from what is modern-day Turkey to the Persian Gulf with a string of spaces dipping south through what is modern-day Israel and into Egypt.  It looks as if a player whose kingdom is located in the center (near what is present-day Syria) could have other players attacking him from all sides.  Have you seen this happen in playtesting?

Julien: At the beginning of the game, a powerful kingdom dominates the Near-East. This kingdom, the Mitanni, is now nearly forgotten but it was once a major power in the area. The player controlling the Mitanni begins with his whole army, and a vast Empire situated in the middle of the map to protect against the greed of the other empires. He will have to play with finesse in order to keep most of his kingdom, while making ways for the other kingdoms to fight with each other, notably the Hittites and Egypt, for he cannot be everywhere!

During the mid game, the Mitannian player has to switch to Assyria, keeping his victory points of course. This simulates the breakdown of this kingdom and the emergence of a renewed major power, Assyria!

Kris: Can you tell us a bit about the combat system of the game?

Julien: The combat system mostly uses the system seen in Path of Glory and Thirty Years War, with some modifications. The most important is the role of the Chariot units. This era saw the emergence of the power of the chariot, which became the real queen of the battlefield.
To simulate this, in The God Kings, I gave to the Chariot Units both a powerful but dangerous capacity. They can try to deliver before the main battle a charge to inflict casualties on their enemy. A roll is made considering the tactical capacity of the leader (from 1 to 4), modified by the capacity of the enemy leader, and the superiority in chariot number. If you succeed this roll, your chariots may strike once before the battle begins, inflicting casualties which will not participate in the main fight. The Chariot units can then fight normally with the infantry units.
Whatever the result of the roll, if a charge was undertaken, the penalty is that at least half the casualties suffered must come from chariot units. It makes them a deadly but brittle weapon.
Another interesting twist is that for the battle, you compare the respective tactical skill of the enemy leaders, and the difference can be used by the player benefiting from a positive die roll modifier either to reduce the roll of your enemy, and/or increase your roll to inflict more casualties.

Kris: Will the game have multiple scenarios?  How many different empires make an appearance in the game?

Julien: The God Kings will have several scenarios:

• The battle of Kadesh (a 1 turn introductory scenario)
• The Campaigns of Thutmosis III, the Napoleon of the Antiquity (2 turns, 2 to 3 players).
• The Assyro-Babylonian Wars, for 2 players, from the 8th turn to the end of the game (12th turn).
• The Rise of the Hittites, the campaign beginning at the 7th turn, about the middle of the game, for 2 to 4 players.
• The God Kings, the full campaign for 2 to 4 players.

Five empires are represented in the game, New Kingdom Egypt, Hatti (the Hittite empire), the Mitanni, the Babylonian Kassites and the Assyrian kingdom.

Kris: I see that Mark Mahaffey did the map for the game.  How did Mr. Mahaffey come to be involved?

Julien: I had noticed for some time the work of Mark Mahaffey, in particular the beautiful work he had done for MMP’s Warriors of God. I really wanted to see what an artist of Mark’s talent could do with The God Kings. So I contacted him and the project proceeded very quickly. Mark showed a great enthusiasm for the game, and produced the unique and beautiful map you can see now on the net. I had the idea of showing the map as if on a cuneiform clay tablet. Mark convinced me that this sculpture-like graphic would definitely be a never-seen-before look at an area in the world already widely represented in a lot of boardgames.  Mark should normally do the whole graphics for The God Kings, a very satisfying fact for me.

Kris: What was the biggest difficulty you had designing the game?  What are you most proud of in the design?

Julien: The greatest difficulty I had was making sense out of the chronology of the whole period. Historians use numerous and very different chronologies, with discrepancies which can be quite huge (some 50 to 70 years for the same event!). I literally spent days pondering on these variations, tearing my hairs in disgust! Then, I approached the problem differently, and made sure that each monarch was in play at the same time that other famous kings of his age. For example, Ramesses II will be able to meet once again his nemesis of Kadesh, the Hittite King Muwatalli! Another difficulty was to find reliable sources on the dynastic lines of the Hittite and Mitannian Kings.

The battle modelling was also a subject of brainstorming, for we do not know for sure how they took place exactly.

In fact, a lot of things are not very well known about this age, and The God Kings is my vision of these troubled times, a work I am proud of.

Other systems I am quite happy with are the chariot charge, giving to these units a unique flavour.

Also, the end of turn reorganization, with the replacement of the players’ armies (with their losses replaced) in their own kingdoms: with this very simple rule, this makes certain that no player can be eliminated definitely, while making sure that no historical aberration will take place. I believe that in a multiplayer game, this is important to ensure that each player can be assured to stay in play for the whole game and have a chance to win until the very end, which is the case in The God Kings.

Another idea I am proud of is the possibility to activate neutral armies. For example, in the Assyro-Babylonian wars scenario, the neutral Hittite army is deployed and can be activated by either player with the right card. It simulates the fact that their war wasn’t taking place in a power vacuum, and the intervention of the Hittites is possible, but potentially dangerous for both players!

Kris: How did Compass Games come to pick up The God Kings?  When is the earliest that gamers could expect to see the game published?

Julien: Things unfolded very quickly. About three weeks ago, three days after I opened the game’s folder on ConsimWorld and Boardgame Geek, I was contacted by Neil Randall, a person for whom I have a great deal of respect, and who proposed to submit the game to Compass Game for publication. After a friendly vassal and skype meeting, he decided to support the game. I exchanged mails with Ken Dingley, and very quickly, we agreed on the publishing of The God Kings by his company, Compass Game!  A lot of things happened in a short time and it’s like a dream come true for me!

The goal for the shipping of The God Kings is July-August 2009. The project is already well advanced and if everything goes right, we should be on schedule.

Kris: What future games would you like to work on?

Julien: I have several projects in various states of advancement, both historical and fantasy.
My most advanced project is The Atlantean Wars, a boardgame depicting the savage and antediluvian wars between the mythical civilisations of Atlantis, Mu and Lemuria. I am quite happy with this design and I think that it could be a bridge between the Wargaming and boardgaming communities!

On a more historical theme, I am about to begin my work on a game on the Carolingian Empire. The Wars of Louis XIV interest me too, and I would like to do a follow-up game for The God Kings on the end of the neo-Assyrian empire, and maybe on the growing of the Persian Empire. I have also some ideas on a game depicting the political conflicts of the between-the-wars era in Europe.

On a fantasy theme, I have several ideas that are wandering in my head about a game on a revolution on Mars, opposing the settlers against an oppressive terran empire, using strong inspiration from the American War of Independence, and the Russian Revolution. Another design I would like to do is a global war opposing various factions in our solar system… I have also some idea about the invasion of our planet by hostile aliens and last, but not least, a kind of an eco-game, in which mankind must face Gaïa, the Earth in fact, trying to get rid of it, while evolving enough to make peace with her.

Well, I think that I better get to work if I want to do all that!!!

As a conclusion, I would like to thank Ken Dingley and Neil Randall for giving me the chance to publish my first game, and Mark Simonitch for allowing me to use the Hannibal versus Rome system!

Kris: Thanks for the interview.

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