Joe Oppenheimer  - Feb 5, 2009 6:48 pm (#26592 Total: 26752)  
"They say you should never dip you pen in company ink, but I'm 
glad I dipped my pen in your ink." - Pineapple Express 	 

Campaigns of King David

>Can you give a brief detail or two about the various systems in the
game? I haven't played one of his games in years. 

It's by Rob Markham and seems to be a successor to his Soldier
Kings/Soldier Emperor/Soldier Raj system but with some nice improvements
(no more rolling sixes to hit). 

The game is for two to five players (Judah, Philistines, Aramea, Tyre,
and Moab) plus there are several small non-player neutrals. 

The most unusual system is the sequence of play. There are chits for the
various phases (Event, Build, Action, Resource, and Harvest) and you put
these in a cup and draw out 12 with the first six being displayed face
up and then next six hidden until mid-turn. Not all chits will come up
in a turn and the mix of chits and their order will vary. This means you
may get fat and rich from multiple havest and resource phases before
having to pay mainenance in the Build phase, or you might go broke if
you have few harvests and two back to back Build phases. You also can't
be sure how many Action phases you will have until half way through the
turn. 

There are random event markers as well and these run the gamut from acts
of God that stop other events, to secret tunnels for sieges, ambushes
and enhanced weapons in combat, alliances with minors, and even the Ark
of the Covenant. 

It's a guns and butter game and with multiple players there is a strong
incentive for diplomacy since you can't survive fighting everyone at
once. 

The combat system is also unique. While combat units are marked with
combat and movement values (like so many games since Dan &I were playing
in my parents house) what really matters is unit type. Phalanx units
(this seemed a misnomer for the time period but clearly they are well
armed and trained spearmen) roll a ten sided die in combat. Chariots
roll a ten sider in clear terrain and an eight sided die in hill
terrain. Infantry units roll an eight sided die, and militia roll a six
sided die. You add up all the dice rolls plus the combat strengths and
get a loss number (obviously you're more likely to hurt the other guy if
you're rolling bigger numbered dice). The losses are satisfied by
flipping steps of units that match the sidedness of the dice they roll.
So a phalanx can flip to absorb ten hit points while a militia will only
absorb six hit points when flipped. Combat is exciting, bloody and
potentially surprising because of the event markers. 

There is also siege where each unit rolls a six sided die and the city
fires back with a ten sided die per level of fortification (1-4). There
is no retreating back into cities so you dispense with some of the
confusion that comes in area games that have cities within areas. 

It's a pretty cool game. It does take a little while to get into
although the rules aren't very complex. With the right group of players
in the right spirit it is a lot of fun.