Žižka: Reformation and Crusade in Hussite Bohemia, 1420-1421 Interview: Petr Mojžíš

 

In Žižka, designer Petr Mojžíš (The Bell of Treason) brings Volko's Levy & Campaign series to the heart of late Middle-Ages Europe. The iron Lords of the Holy Roman Empire can withstand even crossbow bolts, and gunpowder is in its infancy. A new army emerges to collide with the seemingly invincible knights: peasants with no training but fanatical religious faith and therefore no mercy.

The rules and images shown here are not final.

You can find it in P500

-Why did you decide to make this game?

I had been thinking about making a game on Hussite Wars a long time ago. But there was an issue. Hussite tactics were very unconventional for the era. Take a look at their battles and you realize they are not following the rules at all. You have a half-blind general Jan Žižka who is one of the few in history never defeated in battle. It is interesting for the story but not so for a game. Will you give him a rating so he is nearly invincible? That is not fun for the players. Also, Hussites apart from very minor victories were never truly defeated by Catholics. Very often scared Crusaders conceded the field even before the battle. I have viewed all this as hard to design in a game in CDG format for example. Then Volko's brilliant Nevsky hit my table. And from that very moment, I felt his new craft would work for Hussites. Feeding armies, Coin motivation, their ever-changing Capabilities, and an option of hidden mats, I knew all that would help me bring the Hussites to the tabletop. That was several months before Almoravid was released.

-I think we all know the mechanics of the Levy and Campaign series. What new mechanics can we find?

The game will follow the custom of introducing several completely new mechanics while preserving a solid amount of rules so L&C players will find it easy to jump into. You will find most of the purely tactical aspects in a standard L&C card play. That brings a few new rules like war wagons assets. You can use them in a fight but not for Supply. The two sides are highly asymmetrical. Hussites need to rally an army of peasants that brings another asset type - Flock. It is a burden slowing early Hussite forces but diminishes later on. Hussites do not follow a feudal system because they think they can change it at least at the beginning. And they must stay in the field to win. Therefore, the handling of their Service is very different from the other games. They can't Tax early, so they must Ravage the churches and monasteries to keep the war machine running. It might not be enough so there is a completely new mechanic to shift Hussite Service. It is in the form of a political-religious minigame using Cause cards. Players familiar with the power struggle mechanic in 1989: Dawn of Freedom will grasp it quickly. During so-called Negotiations, players will play cards representing Jan Hus's teachings, the key Hussite question of communion in two kinds, and the question of the Bohemian King. The result will be the possible strengthening of the Hussite's will to fight. Catholics will try to initiate similar opposing Negotiations to lessen their will. These Cause cards have other uses in the game. The main one is changing the allegiance of towns and royal towns in the country. With the new Open the Gates! mechanic, an allegiance can change swiftly as an army marches to town or by hearing the news of the other towns being sacked.

On the Catholic side, the Crusade is a big event here, even bigger than Almoravids entry in Almoravid. The player has limited control over how many Crusaders will hear the call and join. But usually, the armies will be huge, providing interesting benefits but also causing a logistical headache. With the Crusade mechanic, the Papal Legate from Nevsky returns to make the Crusade an even more fragile endeavor. You may recall he may be Endangered in Nevsky. Here, it means a swift end to the Crusade as a whole. Then we have the special very important Locale - Prague. The Prague town is protected by three hills, two of them with strong Catholic Strongholds. The third one, Vítkov Hill, can be fortified by Hussites who make the siege of Prague a very complicated effort. Imagine what both players can do when you have a single Locale with four different Strongholds that can be controlled by either side. But don't worry, it is not complex from a rules perspective.

 

-Can you tell us about the scenarios?

The current plan is to have six scenarios including a full campaign. There will be also a quickstart scenario for L&C newcomers. There is a short scenario about the time Hussites were no military power and Bohemian Catholics thought they could crush them on their own. Then we have the First Crusade that brings almost all forces onto the map. The fight didn't end with the disbanding of crusader armies, therefore there is a scenario prolonging the fight to the end of the first year. Or you can play from the situation right after the crusade, probably the turning point of the Hussite wars. The Second Crusade was quite a different story. Holy Roman electors decided to launch it on their own not waiting for their king Sigismund of Luxembourg. Therefore, it was an uncoordinated strike from the west and the east. Historically, not only those two crusades ended up as a disaster. The full campaign might follow a different path. It is a game of Hussite build-up when they start with almost nothing. It is a game of conquest when they need to control nearly the whole map to win the game. The Hussite wars continued after the two years depicted, but those two years were crucial as Hussites gained full control over Bohemia.

-Can you recommend a biography to know the theme of the game?

My biggest advantage for working on this game is access to Czech language sources. It is a pity English English-speaking audience cannot get their hands on, for example, a very recent huge Jan Žižka biography by Petr Čornej. It won the "Czech Book of the Year" Magnesia Litera award in 2020. From English sources, I can mention several. To get into the theme, I recommend Žižka's biography "Warrior of God: Jan Zizka and the Hussite Revolution" by Victor Verney. To get an understanding of the Hussite warfare, there is a short but solid Osprey publishing series titled "The Hussite Wars 1419–36" by Stephen Turnbull. And if you want to hear what the chronicles say about the events, I can highly recommend very well commented "The Crusade against Heretics in Bohemia, 1418–1437: Sources and Documents for the Hussite Crusades" by Thomas A. Fudge.

-Do you have any other projects in mind?

I have several, but I don't know what is going to be next. I also don't want to tease anything. My first big project, The Bell of Treason, barely made it over P-500 threshold and therefore is a bit stuck in the production queue. I want to finish at least one of these two games before moving on to the next. I might say that it will very probably be again on some Czech-related theme. I think there is still a history that was not gamified yet and might catch the eye of a broad audience.