7th September 2019

Saturday evening. Matakishi's. Game night.

Tonight we decided to play another classic board game. This time it was 'Britannia', a game originally published in 1986, over 30 years ago.
Britannia is a historical game of invasion and conquest and when I say invasion and conquest, I really do mean constant invasion and conquest.

In Britannia, players do not play a single nation or tribe or whatever. Instead they play a colour and each colour has 4 nations of varying size. Each colour will have 1 nation that benefits from a 'major invasion', this explained later.

Britannia is played over 16 rounds and centuries of time. The game starts with the Roman invasion (So around 43 A.D..) and end with the Norman invasion (Around 1066 A.D..).
Even though each player has control of 4 factions, the factions do not appear at the same time in the game. They appear when 'historically appropriate' in various turns throughout the game.

What's in a game?

• Game board: A board that has a map of the UK, split into 37 different ancient regions.
• Tokens: There are lots of tokens, lots and lots of tokens. Tokens for each of the different factions, tokens for leaders, tokens for population expansion.

How's it play?
The rules for Britannia are relatively simple. The complexity comes from the interaction with the other players.

Before the game begins we have set up. Each player chooses a colour and is given all the relevant tokens for that colour, the play begins.

• Players do not take turns in the traditional sense. Instead the game dictates the order in which the factions act (Not the players) in a round. Obviously not all the factions act in all of the turns.
• The first thing a faction does is calculate population increase. The faction accumulates 1 token for each 3 areas that they control (Some areas that are considered 'difficult' and only count as a 1/2 for population.). Extra tokens are distributed into areas the faction already controls.
• Second comes movement. Most tokens can move 2 spaces (But when tokens move, they cannot leave 'empty' areas.). Thus placement of tokens is important to expansion.
• Combat is next. If tokens end their movement in the same space as an opposing faction, then combat ensues. During combat, both factions roll a number of 6-sided dice equal to the size of their force. Every result of 5+ eliminates and opposing token. Some factions are tougher than others, they eliminate enemies on a 4+ and are only eliminated on a 6! If combat takes place on difficult terrain, all tokens are only eliminated by a 6. Finally if after the 1st 'round' of combat, no one side has won, tokens possibly have the choice of retreating to a friendly area.
• Finally, overpopulation is calculated. The amount of tokens a faction has on the map cannot be more than double the number of areas that faction controls. Excess tokens are removed from play.

That's a basic overview of the core rules. But there are rules for Roman forts, rules for leaders, rules for sea movement and rules raiding etc.
One other thing worth noting are 'major invasions'. Each player will have a faction that has a major invasion at some point. A major invasion means that the relevant faction gets to turns in a row.

Endgame
Britannia is played over 16 rounds. Scoring occurs throughout the game, but not on every round. In fact not all the factions score at the same time, some factions score on entirely different rounds.

Additionally, when scoring is carried out, different factions score different points for controlling different areas of the board. Which means that different factions may have different priorities. However quite often opposing factions score points for the same regions, invariably pushing them into conflict with one another.

After all the rounds have been completed, points are tallied and highest score wins.

Overall
Britannia is a wargame and as such is very confrontational. It's a game that charts the historic invasions and conquests of early Britain. It turns out there were a lot of invasions and conquests! Players will more or less be in constant conflict with other players and there's no way to avoid it.

Combat is a key component in Britannia: Luckily, the basics of the rules are simple to remember. Mostly players will be looking into how to expand into and hold high scoring areas and this drive most of the game's conflict.

Asymmetrical rules make Britannia interesting and quite unique.

I like how the asymmetrical factions give different players advantage at different times. So for example; whoever has the Romans will gain an early lead, but after that they will have smaller factions appear.
Combined with the asymmetrical scoring that gives different players different objectives means that the end score is always unpredictable.

I do have a couple of minor criticisms of Britannia.

Britannia should only really be played with 4 players. Sure you can play with 3 or 5 players, but it's not optimal.

Britannia can take about 4 hours to play, so it requires quite a time commitment. I guess a millennia of invasions of Britain can't be played out quickly!

But these small criticisms aside; Britannia is an involved but entertaining game to play, provided you don't mind a game about conflict with other players.

31st August 2019

Saturday evening means gaming at Matakishi's

​On this evening, we decided to indulge ourselves in an old classic; 'Kingmaker'.

History lesson; Kingmaker was orignally released in the mid 1970's. It was republished in the mid 1980's, but since then has not been in print!

Kingmaker is set during the 'War of the Roses', a time of civil war and strife in 15th century England.
Player's take the role of factions attempting to grab power for themselves. This is done by acquiring a member of the royal family and having them crowned as King (Or Queen I guess?).

What's in a game?
All the components in Kingmaker are 'old school', but they are all perfectly acceptable.

• ​Board: The board, as you would expect depicts England. It shows settlements, cities and castles, as well as forests, road, rivers and regions. This includes the English Channel and Irish Sea.
• Crown deck: A deck of large cards that is used to represent various assets that a player controls. These include titled and untitled nobles, positions of authority (Such as being a Bishop.), military resources, ship and ownership of cities.
• Event deck: This is the smaller deck of cards, used to determine different events such as the spread of disease and the outcome of battles. More is explained later.
• Counters: Lots of counter to represent lots of things.

How's it play?
The basic premise of the game is accumulate power and resources use them to acquire a member of royalty and have them crowned as king.
Set up
At the start of the game, each player is given a number of Crown Cards to represent their starting resources.

• Nobles are very important because the other resources are assigned to them. These can be titles, soldiers etc.

Then play can begin. Actions occur in the following order.

• First things first; the active player draws an Event Card and deals with it. It could be a card to keep and use later. Or it could be an event that occurs immediately such as plague in a particular city (Any resources of any player in such an affected city would lose those resources to the plague.).
• Movement is next; all of a player's nobles are represented by a counter on the board. Counters can move up to 5 'spaces'. This can be cross-country, by road (Or if you have one, by ship.). A player's nobles can move independently or they can join up and move together. Generally it's prudent to combine forces into a single stronger, less vulnerable force.
• Combat; combat can occur if some or all of the active player's forces end their movement in the same space as an opposing player. In which case the active player may attack the forces of another player. Combat in Kingmaker is simple to resolve, but quite detailed in its implementation. Firstly, players decide which of their nobles (And their armies.) they will commit to the battle. This will give each player a 'combat strength'.  The attacker compares their 'strength' with that of the defender, this will take the form of a 'ratio' Then a card is drawn from the Event Deck, this will give the battle a 'ratio'. If the ratio between attacker and defender meets or beats that on the card, the attacker wins. The ratios on the Event Cards go from 'evens' to '4-1'. Thus if the card reads 'evens', the attackers strength must at least equal the defenders, if the card reads '4-1', then the attackers strength must be at least four times the defenders to win. Additionally, if the Event Card displays any names of any nobles who participated in the battle, then that noble and all cards assigned to the noble are discarded, this does not alter the outcome of the battle. Finally, the Event Card may display 'Bad Weather', in this instance the battle is postponed.
• Parliament: In certain circumstances, a player may call a parliament. In this case, nobles may be forced to attend (Or may attend voluntarily.). Basically, when parliament occurs, the head of the parliament will dole out resources to all attending nobles.
• Coronation; crowning a king is a properly bloody affair. There are 2 possible 'royal lines' (Or families.) that can lay claim to the Crown. To begin with, a player's 'candidate' must be 1st in line of succession of their family, any other royal ahead of them must be 'taken out of the equation'. Secondly, all the possible candidates from the other 'line' must also be 'removed'. When this is done and some other conditions are met, then the candidate is crowned.
• Draw a Crown Card: The active player draws a Crown Card as the last thing they do in a turn and uses it as they see fit.

Endgame
Once a player crowns a member of a royal family and all other potential threats have been eliminated, then that player has won.

Overall
​Kingmaker is a classic and no doubt about. But it plays very differently to most modern games, particularly 'eurogames'.
Kingmaker is very confrontational, with lots of conflict between players, military and political conflict. This is not everyone's cup of tea.
But it's also a game of sometimes biding your time and avoiding confrontation. When you're outmatched, then you're outmatched.

Talking of conflict. I have to mention that I really like how battles are resolved. I like that if you significantly outnumber you opponent, you are nearly always guaranteed winning the battle. But you always risk losing your nobles, even if you win.
It means you can't really risk going into battle frivolously. It also means that you need to think about how you distribute your forces to your nobles and how you put those nobles into battle.

So I think that Kingmaker is an interesting game to play.