VIJAYANAGARA: THE DECCAN EMPIRES OF MEDIEVAL INDIA, 1290-1398 Interview: Saverio Spagnolie

 

Vijayanagara is the first game in the new Irregular Conflicts Series. with gameplay inspired by GMT’s COIN system, players will take on the asymmetric roles of the Delhi Sultanate, the Bahmani Kingdom, and the Vijayanagara Empire, navigating event cards and unique action menus as they contest to write themselves into medieval Indian history. Players will rally local amirs and rajas to their cause, construct epic temples, forts, and qasbahs, and battle for supremacy over the Deccan plateau.

The rules and images shown here are not final

You can find it in P500

1-Who are you and your favourites wargames?

My name is Saverio Spagnolie, I am an applied mathematician and an aficionado of games of all types. I’m writing on behalf of our design group composed of Mathieu Johnson, Cory Graham, and Aman Matthews, and developer Joe Dewhurst. Picking a favorite game is like picking a favorite movie, they are so distinct in what they offer it’s hard to say! Force me to choose and I’ll start rattling off wonderful games which first come to mind, Maria, Sekigahara, Navajo Wars, Falling Sky, CC: Europe. I don’t necessarily need a direct historical narrative to enjoy a game, I love a good Tigris & Euphrates or Inis and I’ve played thousands of hours more of chess than any of these in my life. That said I’ll tell you what left the biggest impression on me last year though was David Thompson’s Soldiers in Postmen’s Uniforms. Took me a long time to work up the courage to learn and work through it, and I don’t think I’ll play it again. I was astonished with the enormity of what he was able to convey with the artform in that work.

2-Why did you decide to do this game?

Vijayanagara is a game about the rise of the Bahmani Kingdom and Vijayanagara Empire and the decline of the Delhi Sultanate in 14th century India. You play as one of these three factions, competing for territory and influence across the Deccan plateau of southern India, while Mongol invaders threaten the Delhi Sultanate from beyond the Hindu Kush mountains to the north-west. The game ends with the arrival of the Mongol warlord Timur and the sack of Delhi in 1398, although the Delhi Sultanate player can avoid this historical defeat if they prepare well enough.

The game was born during the first Consim Game Jam in 2020, one of many brain-children by the trio of Fred Serval, Joe Dewhurst, and Shaun O’Keefe. During the contest we were tasked with recycling the map and pieces from a COIN game. With Gandhi, another game in the COIN series, already sitting elegantly on the table during the contest it dawned on me that previous eras in Indian history were almost completely absent from the hobby. Then it was a matter of figuring out which period would be most natural to cover. There was an ‘aha’ moment when the puzzle pieces fell into place and a skeleton for the game emerged in terms of factions, motivations, and narrative arc. The game won the contest, and along with the encouragement the judges Jason Carr, Morgane Gouyon-Rety, and the COIN father himself Volko Ruhnke, we felt confident enough to take a serious run at creating the game. Joe Dewhurst joined up to develop, and it’s been a labor of love ever since, we really poured ourselves into this project.

Weaving in some of our favorite features about the COIN series was very natural to us including the sequence of play, the particular style of engaging with historical events, and ever-present potential for negotiation. But theories relating to counter-insurgencies represent modern perspectives on modern conflicts, and didn’t suit the model that we had developed for the game. Rather than Support/Opposition and Control axes speaking to the state of a given region at a particular time, more pertinent to 14th century India were the Tributary statuses of smaller kingdoms. And so, along with two other games with a similar-but-different relationship to the COIN series, A Gest of Robin Hood by Fred Serval and Cross Bronx Expressway by Non-Breaking Space, the Irregular Conflicts Series (ICS) was born!

3-Can you talk about the mechanics?

The mechanics of the game will be familiar to those who have played a COIN game before. The game is organized around Event cards representing important personalities or occurrences during the 14th century in India. Here’s an example:

The Delhi Sultanate under Sultan Mohammad bin Tughlaq temporarily moved its capital from Delhi to Devagiri and renamed it Daulatabad in 1327 in order to shorten its reach into the Deccan plateau, home to wealthy, smaller kingdoms like those of the Yadavas, Kakatiyas, Hoysalas, and Pandyas. This would turn out to be a major blunder for the Tughlaq Dynasty, upsetting the elite nobles of Delhi who were forced to uproot themselves in the process. The political fallout would, after a sequence of increasingly violent events, result in a fissure in the Delhi Sultanate and the rise of a breakaway faction which fashioned themselves as the Bahmani Sultanate.

The top of the card shows flags for the three playable factions in the game. In order of their appearance here, the Bahmani Kingdom, the Delhi Sultanate, and the Vijayanagara Empire. The factions, in that order, get to choose an action provided that they are Eligible to play on this card. The Sequence of Play on the board looks like this:

 

The Eligible faction whose turn is up can choose any of the remaining options, perhaps choosing basic Commands or special Decrees from their own Faction-specific menus, or carrying out either the Unshaded or the Shaded Event text on the card. With this Event card we see that the Bahmani Kingdom can choose to carry out this event in a manner which is very punishing to the Delhi Sultanate, as it should be!

Moreover, we see on the card that the faction which selects this event will “Stay Eligible” for the next Event card too. 2/3 of the Event cards in the game have this “Stay Eligible” feature which really keeps the game moving along at a quick, punchy pace.

During the game this sequence of play is periodically interrupted by Mongol Invasions that threaten the Delhi Sultanate and present opportunities for the Bahmani Kingdom and Vijayanagara Empire, and by Succession crises that afford a limited range of free actions to each player.

4-How the different factions work?

The three playable Factions have different ways of measuring their scores, and at the end of the game the faction with the most points wins. The Delhi Sultanate’s score is given by the total Prosperity of its Tributary Provinces, plus an endgame bonus depending on how well the Sultanate manages to fight off Timur’s invasion. The Bahmani Kingdom’s score is given by the Prosperity of its Independent Provinces plus the number of Forts it constructs throughout the game. Similarly, the Vijayanagara Empire’s score is given by the Prosperity of its Independent Provinces plus the number of Temples it constructs throughout the game. The Bahmani and Vijayanagara factions have additional points that they can win by spreading their Influence in the Deccan, whether by economic or military means.

The Provinces in the game all start out as Tributaries, and the game is a struggle to wrest independence from the powerful grip of the Sultan in Delhi. Fortunately for the two nascent kingdoms in the south, Delhi has additional problems to attend to, in particular, the repeated invasions of Mongol armies from through the mountain passes in the northwest.

The factions each have different basic Commands and special Decrees which are relevant to what they are trying to achieve in the game. Here is the menu for the Vijayanagara Empire.

 

The basic Commands allow the faction to Rally new allies (Rajas, rulers of the numerous small kingdoms throughout the Deccan), Migrate into new regions, Rebel from the Sultan and cease tributary payments, and to Attack. Migrate and Attack offer additional opportunities to enhance the Influence that this faction has in the Deccan, while reducing that of its rival, the Bahmani Kingdom.

The special Decrees available to the Vijayanagara Empire are to tax, which is only possible once the Rajas of Vijayanagara have cast off the Delhi Sultanate and formed their own independent regions, to Build new Temples which confer benefits to rallying and to taxation, and to Compel new allies into service. Depending on the current Deccan Influence enjoyed by the Vijayanagara Empire, they may also be able to have their new allies perform some useful work against their rivals.

5-Scenarios and/or length of the game?

There is one scenario in the game. A first game will take just over two hours, a third or fourth game will take about 90-120 minutes. Having now played about 200 games I think Mathieu and I can play a full game in about 30 minutes if we don’t go off on a four-hour design tangent. It was very useful for testing and balancing the game to be able to play so many games due to its short length.

We are currently wrapping up our last efforts on the game. Mathieu is putting the final touches on a lot of the artwork like the map, which I think is just beautiful. And a number of us, Joe Dewhurst in particular, have been polishing off something that I’m pretty excited about, three Non-Player bot factions which can sit in for any player, even halfway through the game when someone needs to leave the game early. And two bots can sit in to give a player a solo experience as any of the three playable factions. Each bot is run with a single sheet and four cards, here is a sneak peek of the Non-Player Bahmani Kingdom’s sheet:

6-Do you have another game/project in mind?

Vijayanagara will be our first published game as designers. We fell in love with the topic and the creation of the game, but we also fell in love with the artform itself. It will be hard not to set out on another such adventure. I don’t even remember what it is like to fall asleep without first working on the game for two hours with Mathieu and passing out at 1am! I have started to push another idea along which I find fascinating, but I’ll hold off on talking about it until it is pulled down from the clouds and is affixed to the table more securely.

Thank you for the interview, Josue. We remain very excited about getting this ‘rumble in the Deccan’ onto tables fairly soon!