First off, this series is being done as a bit of a lark as wargaming has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas so if anyone is offended, please just stop reading now.
On the 7th day of Christmas War Gaming, my true love gave to me…
7 Dynasties Ascending & Declining
In Gift of the Nile, which is a solitaire States of Siege Series game designed by R. Ben Madison that tells the story of the course of the Egyptian civilization covering over 30 dynasties starting with the Old Kingdom in 2,600 BC to the Late Period starting in 700 BC and ending with the intervention of Rome, the action is somewhat driven by the use of 3 different Draw Cups that are filled with chits representing different regional kingdoms called Sepats, the various leading dynasties of Egypt as well as the Gods that were worshipped. At different points in the Sequence of Play, the player will be instructed to reach into and draw forth one of the chits in a specific Draw Cup and then place that in the appropriate spot on the Game Map or The Book of the Dead (Turn Track) and enact its effects.
Each of the turns in Gift of the Nile starts with the Dynasty Phase, where the player will be drawing a new ruling Dynasty Chit from the Dynasty Cup. There are 7 of these Dynasty Chits and they are lettered a-f (yes lower case!) and represent the relative strengths of different rulers. You will notice that the “a” Dynasty is in the middle of a yellow circle while the remaining 6 Dynasty Chits are in a white circle. This yellow circle identifies this Dynasty Chit as the starting Dynasty in the game and the “a” Dynasty Chit will be taken out of the Dynasty Cup at the start of each new Kingdom or after a Dynasty has been defeated by a Khasti Army moving into Men-Nefer but only if the player had a Revival Chit to sacrifice.
Listed on each of the Dynasty Chits are a few key pieces of information that are important to game play. First you will notice that the Dynasty Chits are divided into 4 different quadrants. In the upper left hand quadrant is a King Tut mask that has no bearing on the game and is just there for thematic purposes. That actually isn’t totally correct as there is supposed to be a future downloadable document that provides a variant or optional rule to use with this part of the chits. But in the other 3 quadrants there are various hieroglyphic symbols that represent the Military, Religious and Social Skills of the ruling Dynasty and its Pharaoh. The Dynastic Skills are very important to the player and making sure to tailor your actions for that turn to take advantage of their advantages is key to doing well in the game. Each of the Dynasty Chits have 1 or more of these Dynastic Skills and the better chits, lettered a-d have 2-3 in varying distributions while the e-g chits have just 1 such Dynastic Skill. As this Dynasty Chit draw is random, you will tend to get better chits than the poorer ones more often as there are a 4-3 distribution but sometimes your luck will just be bad and you will continue to draw the worse chits. The good news is that at the start of each new Turn, when the player has to draw from the Dynasty Cup, the Dynasty Chit that was last drawn and placed onto The Book of the Dead and into the current Dynasty Box will remain there until after you draw. If it was one of the worse Dynasty Chits, you will now have a better chance of drawing a good Dynasty Chit as your odds improve as there will be 4 good chits in the cup as compared to just 2 that are worse. Good luck though! This is something that you simply cannot control and just have to grin and bear it.
These 3 Dynastic Skills and the rising and falling of the various dynasties are a very interesting part of the game and attempts to take into account the differences between various historical Pharaoh’s and their skill sets. I really like how it fits into the game design and the administration and execution of this cup is the simplest and most straightforward of the 3 Draw Cups.
Here is a look at our unboxing video:
I was able to shoot a 2 separate playthrough videos of the and you watch those at the following links:
Part 1 – The Old Kingdom (Dynasty 1-10)
Part 2 – The Middle Kingdom (Dynasty 11-17)
I also wrote a First Impressions style post and you can read that at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2024/04/03/first-impressions-gift-of-the-nile-the-rise-fall-of-ancient-egypt-from-white-dog-games/
If you are interested in Gift of the Nile: The Rise & Fall of Ancient Egypt, you can order a boxed copy for $57.00 (Print and Play copy for $30.00) from the White Dog Games website at the following link: https://www.whitedoggames.com/gift-of-the-nile
You can catch up on the posts in this series to date at the following links:
2 Aircraft Bombing – General Orders: World War II from Osprey Games
6 Merry Men Assembling in the Forest – A Gest of Robin Hood from GMT Games
-Grant
The Players' Aid 