God of Battles is my fantasy mass battle game and was released by Foundry in 2013. It is a tabletop figure game, designed to be played with 28mm fantasy figures such as the vast range produced by Foundry themselves.
Game play focuses on commanding an army rather than the minutiae of what length of spear each individual warrior has. It has simple rules that allow you to concentrate on what you want your army to do, not which sub-paragraph of the rules you need to argue about to do it. However, in my normal style, I have hidden a considerable amount of tactical depth and tricky decision making under this apparent simplicity.
As well as all the basics of building armies and how to move and fight across the battlefield with them, God of Battles contains rules for miracles, weather, scenarios, camps, baggage trains, varying terrain and 10 complete army lists with over 20,000 words of background. It is a complete product in a single volume.
Articles on Quirkworthy
I am happy to discuss any element of the design and game play. So far I’ve written up the following articles. Suggestions for other topics that would interest you should be added to this thread.
FAQ
- Living FAQ – includes corrections for some layout errors as well as being a place for you to ask any rules questions you might have.
Designer’s Notes
- What’s the Difference? – looks at what makes GoB different from the rest, why it’s the ideal game for me, and whether a game needs support.
- Basing – explains the lack of basing restrictions in GoB and why this is not as exploitable as you might imagine.
- Picking an Army – examines the way the army lists are constructed and how armies are chosen.
- Which Armies to Include? – looks at what the overall aim was for the range of armies and then briefly discusses each one.
- Formed and Loose – discusses formations used in the game and how they impact tactics and army selection.
External Resources
If you know of a good GoB site, review, article that isn’t listed here, please let me know.
- FaceBook: if you want to chat with other gamers about your battles, your armies or anything else GoB, there is a God of Battles FaceBook group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/538792446160791/
Quirkworthy 
Curious if you have designed what’s on the other side of the mountains yet and have plans for more armies or races that live their or is it open to interpretation.?
The game was designed to be a stand-alone volume with all the armies you’d need to play. Of course, new scenarios would be fine, but could be an article or free download. No more books were planned.
At a very late stage in the proceedings I was shown a load of concepts for an 11th army and we discussed the possibility of an expansion volume that would have moved the background story on a couple of years. However, there were at least three other projects that they wanted me to do before that so it was never discussed in great detail.
At that point the Foundry management was changed and the whole company reorganised.
I’m not currently working on any new projects with Foundry.
So, if I do anything it would be as a fan rather than anything official. If you want to do something to add to your games then by all means go for it!
foundry seem to be supporting the game a little more now. I managed to order the orcs and orcling raptor riders I wanted though £4 a figure for raptor riders made me stick to one unit
Are you in any discussions with the new management?
My copy arrived yesterday and I gave it a read last night. When I read the moral rules, I know I was hooked. Isn’t it funny that sometimes all it takes is a game mechanic, even a minor one, to get you excited about a game. As a designer, do you have moments like this?
Can totally agree with you their.
Was curious if you have formula for points system with GoB as would like to look at expanding army lists somewhat, but thought would be better to query first before pouncing on at Foundry..
There is a formula, but it’s not something that I’m comfortable making public. Talk to me at the next open day about it.
Hey Jake,
I’m applying serious thought about getting into a fantasy game, and this one draws my attention due to your role in creating it. However, other than your name, I struggling to find reasons to get it.
By that, I don’t mean that what I have seen is putting me off, but rather, I can’t find any proper information about the game.
For example, when Dreadball was launched we had a tonne of giblets to wade through to get an understanding what what we were buying. With GoB.. not so much?
Any chance you can do a gameplay video or something?
There is a chance, and it is on my large list of things to do, though it’s not likely soon. It’s complicated by not having a video camera.
I’m told that there is a review of God of Battles in issue 364 of Miniature Wargames magazine, and that might help. There’s also the Facebook group which has some little battle reports on as well as lots of folk who are happy to talk about the game and answer questions from a neophyte’s point of view.
Of course, there are also the articles on this site, linked above. What did you want to know that wasn’t covered there? Anything in particular?
Hi Jake,
Thanks for your reply. A video would give me impressions into:
1. How rolls to shoot/wound/save or their equiv might work
2. Do units take visual losses, or adopt the strange KoW ideology of keeping units vsually at 100%
3. What types of unit are available, other than melee and ranged infantry
4. How Morale works (something I’ve read is very special)
5. The depth of the game – for instance, is it too shallow like snakes and ladders, or too massive like WhFB or somewhere between
etc
Basically a video would be as close as I could get to a demo game without being able to play a demo game 🙂
Cheers
A video would be cool. At some stage I’ll try my hand at that. It’s another skill that would be interesting to explore.
For the time being I can answer some of this simply and it also prompts an idea or two for more designer’s notes articles. In brief:
1) Units have an attack and defence value which is the number they need to roll on each dice to hit/defend. This is fixed. When a unit attacks, shoots or defends you work out how many dice to roll based on the type of formation and the number of models remaining in the unit. This is very simple as it will either be one dice per model, half that number, or half that again if hit in the flank.
2) Units lose models as they die, getting smaller as they are attritted. I like this visual degradation. When a unit is reduced to 4 models it is removed entirely (unless it has the Unbreakable special rule).
3) The whole gamut of unit types appears, from light, medium and heavy infantry, both missile and melee, to light and very rare heavy cavalry, to chariots, monsters, war machines, heroes, priests, etc. Units can also be modified by unit enhancements.
4) A unit never breaks as such, instead the morale rules tie in with the casualty rules. When a unit has to take a moral test (called a Test of Courage – TOC) it rolls two dice. For each point it fails a model flees from the unit and is removed. When the unit is reduced to 4 models or less it ceases to be effective and is removed.
5) I’d say it is somewhere in between. That is the sort of point it was designed to sit in. There are lots of tactical variations and choices between the 10 armies listed in the book, but the application of them is all done through the same simple rules set. The bulk of the complexity is not in terms of rules, but in terms of how you apply those rules. The rules themselves are only a small fraction of the whole book. Most of it is the background and army lists.
At the weekend we had one chap who had never played before in the tournament. He had picked up the game by part way through his first scrap and held the eventual winner of the tourney to a very close battle in his final scrap of the day. A strong player, sure, but also an illustration of how simple the rules are to pick up mechanically.
Cheers Jake,
Couple of other questions:
How big is the battle area you play on?
Are there any plans for a campaign system?
Cheers
4×4 foot for a smaller (24 point) game, and 6×4 for a 36 or 48 pointer. if you wanted to play even bigger then an 8×4 or 8×5 for that.
Working on a campaign system.
Any news on the campaign system. Happy to play test. I have a small groups of players who are current learning the rules with aim for a campaign for early 2015
This game sounds like a lot of fun and with it being kinda open to use models I have makes it more interesting. As I own all the Mangic games and enjoy them all I think I would enjoy this games just from playing your other games.
However, on the US side of the pond I can’t find anyone who carries it. This kinda sucks…why can’t I just get digital like KoW? ARGH! Maybe someday.
Bill
I had a word with the chaps at Foundry. At present your best option is either contacting them directly or going on eBay. Foundry have an active eBay store and this would give you the assurances of Paypal, etc.
I don’t know whether they’ll be releasing a digital version. Not heard anything about that.
I went to their ebay site but for the life of me I could not find the rules. I searched the ebay site itself and still nothing. I will see if there are others that might jump in with me and if so then we can do an order to Foundry.
I’m just a rules kinda guy…if I see or hear of a good set I try and pick them up weather or not people play it with me…this one is just kinda hard to get a hold of.
Thank you for the response and I’d take any other advice as well.
Have a friend going over the pond in April. Might just find out where they are headed and see if he can help me out. Pi think he’s headed to Scotland though..
Bill
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Flyte-of-Fantasy?_trksid=p2047675.l2563
http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/our-ranges/gob/god-battle/ rules sets
This is the link I believe your after…
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/God-of-Battles-Jake-Thorntons-Fantasy-Mass-Combat-Wargame-Rules-/230989813539?pt=UK_Toys_Wargames_RL&hash=item35c810d723&nma=true&si=1ork1j29fPpnCASnAnuou7g4Pug%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
As someone who came back into the hobby, GoB is the main one that one took up and took a real interest in. Rules are smooth with some cleverly thought out mechanics which work on a practical level. Really recommend this rule set and the fact that miniatures are flexible in what you use makes in great to convert and twiddle with the look of one army.
Might be worth seeing what Foundry charge for overseas postage, as they used to very reasonable. Never know get a bunch of you interested and set up a league and order a few copies.
Pingback: No God of Battles Day in March |
Would you think that heavy cavalry, like orcs on boars or armoured knights, could be emulated by taking Bison Tribe as allies?
Or did you deliberately drop heavy cavalry as an option for A Good Reason™?
I thought people might be interested to know that Foundry currently have the God of Battles rulebook on sale at 50% off. Not sure how long the sale is on for, but it’s only just started. http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/our-ranges/gob/god-battle
Thanks for the heads up.
Hi Jake
I see that there are dryads and a tree man in the photos. Did you ever stat these out and what army did they belong to?
BTW I used to read white dwarf in the 80s. It’s sad to see what it became.
David
Hi Jake,
I hope you (and the readers) are having an awesome Xmas and festive season!
I was wondering what suggestions you or the readership would have in regards to fielding new unit types and races. I don’t mind using high elves or mantic elves (I have a box somewhere..) as sea elves, etc but it would be great to be able to accomodate some of the wacky war machines and units that I want to field but which just don’t particularly fit anything in the book or are list restricted.
Any suggestions (I appreciate your formulae are proprietary..) would be appreciated. I was thinking of being conservative at first by making any new war machines or special units mirror the functional abilities of a like listed unit but jacking the cost up slightly, restricting movement if needs be and throwing in a specific ability that has a random/roll element with a chance of backfire.
When will Foundry release the rest of the figures for this game? I’ve been waiting for the fabled sea elves for a while now. Support for this game has been abysmally slow from Foiundry. Are there any downloads for the cards and QRS?
As has already been mentioned, Foundry are often able to supply things over the phone which haven’t made it to their website. I’ve got a few heads from WK’s sea elf range, and they’re very good. However, I know that he’s recently sold some of his ranges to Macrocosm, so they may turn up under that brand instead.
And yes, Foundry have been slow with GoB. I suspect that this is because they inherited it from the previous management team and it doesn’t really fit their new plan for the company.
Thanks Jake.
And are there any downloads of the cards available?
You can get all the sea elves already. Just phone foundry
Cheers.
If your after sea selves also try http://whiteknightminiatureimperium.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/seal-elf-conversion-bits-greens.html as he does some nice bits.
Thankd mattadlard.