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Divine Right | ||||||||||||
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eroes scour the land in search of magical treasure, kings lead armies in search of conquest, monsters emerge from beneath the earth in search of mischief. These mainstays of high fantasy have inspired a lot of games, but Divine Right is one of the best-known and least-seen. Originally released in the 1970s by TSR, publishers of Dungeons & Dragons and pioneers of the role-playing game, this board game was last printed in 1979, becoming little more than a memory—until this deluxe reissue.
Divine Right's structure is quite simple. A board map shows the continent of Minaria, containing 15 kingdoms and numerous occult points of interest. Each player is the leader of one of the kingdoms, which range from human nations through trolls, elves and dwarves to the bizarre Eaters of Wisdom and the wicked Black Hand. Each kingdom has a king or queen who leads armies and fleets to attack neighboring kingdoms, with strategy largely based on utilizing or bypassing Minaria's many rivers (depending on whether you have fleets or not) in order to surround, besiege and plunder enemy cities. Meanwhile, a random event each turn can rebuild units, unleash plague or cause allies and mercenaries to appear or disappear.
Points are scored by plundering cities and capturing or killing enemy kings. The player with the most points by the end of turn 20 wins.
A huge number of extra rules give the players more options without changing this basic structure. The first and most important one is diplomacy. Each kingdom has a diplomat who can be sent to kingdoms not played by a human player and attempt to bring them into the war. The kings of these non-player kingdoms have randomly generated "personalities" that determine when and to what extent they will join in. Diplomats can also be used to sway enemy non-player kings back to neutrality, to duel enemy diplomats and to assassinate kings.
The other extra rules are all optional, and cover magic, barbarians, pirates, the living dead, flying armies, random events and too much else to cover here. They're included in PDF format on a CD-ROM along with huge amounts of history, commentary and strategy.
A few fun hours of classic war
Divine Right's rules systems are very self-contained, making them easily learned, and also very luck-based, meaning there's always a chance that a long shot will pay off.
In combat, for instance, players roll dice and the high roller wins, eliminating enemy armies equal to the difference between the two rolls. Only when one side hugely outnumbers the other is this significantly modified. As a result, a good roll can change a player's luck in an instant. A king present on the losing side has a chance of dying in battle, so even someone outnumbered two-to-one has a chance of killing the enemy king and knocking him out of the game.
The diplomacy rules have a similar effect. A relatively routine occurrence is for one player to make a few good diplomatic rolls, spend several turns gathering a huge horde and marching it against the enemy, only to see enemy diplomats sway the allied kings back to neutrality, diminishing the horde to nothing without the decisive battle ever being fought.
Players must therefore learn to take immediate advantage of good fortune while it lasts. No one is ever so far ahead or behind as to make the game predictable; even if players are eliminated from the board, they can come back as a not-yet-played kingdom without being at much of a disadvantage. This same quality, however, can be frustrating for those who like to be rewarded for careful strategy, as the fickle fortunes of war can tear any plan to shreds in a turn or two.
The game's one major flaw is the rule book. For such a streamlined game, Divine Right's rules are quite tough to read at first, since they seem more geared toward settling arguments between experienced players than teaching first-timers how the game is supposed to flow. Once one player digests the rules, however, others can be taught quite easily. A more minor flaw is that the graphics are not quite as good as one might expect from the $50 price tag.
So Divine Right is a fun, random sort of game, easy to play as board wargames go. Definitely a fun way to spend an afternoon or evening with friends.
The number of players has a large impact on the flow of the game. With six players, everything is in constant flux and alliances rise and fall every turn, while two players is like having a swordfight on stilts: Each player is always preparing a devastating blow but can never quite get in position to actually swing. — Bob
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