We are always looking for new games to play in our house. All of our kids love to be able to choose a game and have us all play together. We were recently introduced to Kings of Israel which is a Christian board game.

{Disclosure: I received Kings of Israel for free in exchange for my honest review. I was compensated for my time. All opinions are my own. See my full Disclosure Policy for more information.}

Funhill Games has created a biblical board game called Kings of Israel.

In Kings of Israel you are placed in the role of one of up to four prophets tasked with building altars, destroying idols and removing sin from the various cities throughout Israel.

While many board games have you in competition with your rivals, Kings of Israel has you working together with the other prophets to achieve your goals and push out sin. This is a nice change of pace in our house. Instead of fighting against each other, we all get to work together for a common goal.

Another great feature of the game is that while playing you will also learn more about Israel, from the geography to knowing more about the kings and prophets.

Play Kings of Israel

Funhill Games has done an excellent job of laying out the rules to Kings of Israel. While the set up and play flow are a little more complex than some games, using their detailed instruction manual, and video demonstration (see video below), we were able to get up and running.

I would definitely recommend this game for teens and above, although we did have our 8 year old playing as a “helper” to one of the players so she could be involved and learning too!

Another way to adjust the game play level is by using the easier game play as detailed in the instruction manual. We stuck to this method so that our younger players would have an easier time participating.

In Kings of Israel your goal is to get rid of the sin in Israel and build altars to God. One of your main goals is to destroy the idols. If you don’t do this swiftly they multiply like crazy!

You win the game by obtaining a set number of altars (this is based on the number of players). Besides winning, there are also multiple ways for the game to end due to loss. If the game ends by your team running out of sin cubes or idols, or by Assyria destroying Israel, then the prophets (you) lose.

Game Flow

I found that having the bullet list of the Game Turn Order handy was a big help in keeping the game moving.

Each round has 4 phases:

1. King’s Godliness Phase: During this phase, if a bad king is reigning over Israel, the players must draw a Sin & Punishment card, which means bad things occur in Israel because of evil or in response to evil. If during the reign of a good king, the starting player receives a Blessing card.

2. Sin Increases Phase: Location cards are drawn and sin increases at each revealed location. This can possibly cause idols to appear or sin to spread further if sin increases at a location with an idol.

3. Prophets Work Phase: In this phase each prophet gets to use four actions to accomplish their goals. They may use their actions to move, remove sin or idols, draw resource cards, build an altar, make a sacrifice at an altar, or to give resources to another player. A prophets may also play Blessing cards at this time if they have them. In expert mode, after all the prophets take their turn, the false prophet takes his turn.

4. End of Round Phase: The starting player changes to the next player and the timeline token moves down to the next king chronologically. In easy mode, any player who had made a sacrifice that turn then draws a single Blessing card.

Purchase Kings of Israel

From now through 4/16/15 Funhill Games is offering a 20% discount for Kings of Israel when you purchase on Amazon using the promo code KINGSPRO.

For instructions on where to use coupon code on Amazon reference image below or click here for instructions on Amazon.com.

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