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Cooperative
Kings of Israel is a cooperative game. You are all working together to stop the spread of sin by tearing down altars of false worship and replace them with good worship to God. It sounds easier than it is. Sin can spread quickly anywhere. It is better than most Bible-based games.
One of the games that brought me back to board gaming was the game ‘Pandemic’. I was getting a bit tired of competitive games and thoroughly enjoyed playing a cooperative game where everyone was in it together.
In Kings of Israel, we were working together, this time to stop the spread of sin. Even when we didn’t win the first time, it was still enjoyable and we discussed what we would do differently the next time.
Excellent at Setting a Theme
Kings of Israel is excellent at setting the theme. It is set in the period of the Kings, starting with Saul, David, and Solomon, continuing all the way to the Exile. Some kings are good and many are evil. Better take advantage of the good times while you can!
This game reminds me of the prophets in 1-2 Samuel and 1-2 Kings, always trying to warn Judah and Israel to turn away from sin and in the next moment sin is spreading. If you don’t have time to read all of those books right now, read about Elijah and his battle with King Ahab and Jessibel and this game reminds me of that period. And that is what makes it a good theme-based game.
It is a Good Challenge
It is not an easy game to win (and that is a good thing) Losing the first time as a group only made us want to come back again (and we did). Even if you complete your objective and replace enough evil altars with good ones, you can not completely eradicate all sin. I like that too because if a game can be fun and also include some plausible realism, that helps strengthen the theme and perhaps pass on some moral lesson that doesn’t feel like school. Even if we win, we still want to get rid of more sin!
But that does not come easy. There are cards that come out each year and can play havok with your plans. This makes each game different.
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Preparation Before Playing
For the game-master setup, it can take a whole evening to learn the rules so don’t just open this game up and hope to start playing right away with a group of four. If you prepare ahead of time, the rest of the group will have a better experience. If you do a 3 player self-play game on your own and watch some YouTube How-To-Play videos, you’ll grasp the dynamics better to help teach others.
It will also take some time to get familiar with what all the cards do. If you are the game-master, I recommend reading through each of the cards and figure out what it does ahead of time. This will help move the game more smoothly. If you don’t and have players that are used to monopoly, it could take 3-4 hours. Our first game bordered on 3 hours but we still had a good time.
Cons
The only minor drawback (and it is not this game’s fault) is that there are a bunch of other Bible board games that use Israel’s Geography as the playing board. For that reason, if you have multiple games that do, you may want to consider spreading them out on Bible board game night. 3 in a row might be too much.
Home Rule
If you have played this a couple of times and are getting frustrated that you can’t win or have first time players that will struggle with making strategy choices, then we recommend taking some outer land cards out of the deck. Instead of having 2 cards for every outer land, only include 1 so the spread of sin is not as quick.
Conclusion
Overall this is one of the better games we have come across is you like a cooperative challenge.
During the divided kingdom period when almost all the kings were bad, we were thirsting for relief. Thank you, Jehu!
We felt like the prophets of old, difficult to overcome all the evil, but we endured and even prevailed! We like it, a staple in our Bible board game group.
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