Brittania - 9 months later

Back  in August last  year I recieved my Kickstarter copy of the PSC boardgame Brittania and quickly managed to play a game with my good friend Anthony (who also had a copy).  And that was it.  It was a game definitely designed for my gaming group to play during the winter months when we tend to retreat to a warmer room and concentrate on boardgames... but of course 2020 happened and we never managed any of that.  There's a post about that 1st game here

So finally I've managed to get the game out of the box and give the 2 player version (Duel Brittania) a proper outing (we only managed a couple of turns first time round).  I'd never played the game when it was 1st published but it strikes me as a sophisticated version of Risk with Dark Age armies.  What's intriguing is that kingdoms rise and fall as the eras progress with players racing ahead in victory points in some periods before falling behind  in others.  In the 2 player game one player controls various Angles and Saxons, along with the Scots and Irish.  The other player has the initial British kingdoms such as Reghed, the Welsh, the Picts etc and later take command of the invading Norse and Danes.

The full game starts with the Roman Invasion and goes all the way through to the arrival of the Normans.  In the quicker Duel version the game begins in 350CE and ends before the Normans show up.  The Duel map is also simplified and there are some rule changes compared to the full game, although I still haven't worked out how major these are.  

The main difference is that during turn #1 the Romans defend until their turn when they disappear, being replaced with a mix of smaller kingdoms.  In each turn nations receive new armies if they have enough territory to maintain them,  before adding any specific troops and leaders for that era.  So for example the Scots may receive some extra troops and Macbeth in a late turn.  Specific events also happen at appropriate points so Reghed,  for example, were able to construct a Burh or fort at Dumbarton Rock.  Annoyingly for me, Arthur put in an appearance for several nations (I guess everyone thinks they have a claim on Arthur!) and can cause brief mayhem with his powerful cavalry.  Thankfully he disappeared as quickly as he appeared!

I was playing the Anglo Saxon side so began the game as an invader, initially raiding from the sea or from Ireland.  As the game progressed my armies stop raiding and occupy regions and in turn are attacked by new invaders in the form of the Norse and Danes as well as any surviving British kingdoms.  Success ebbs and flows and while it can feel like one player is racing ahead, that can all change in the next turn as the historical dynamics change to suit the next era.

The authors reckon 1.5 to 2 hours for the Duel version but we took a lot longer...to be fair we were rattling through the latter turns though so I reckon we'd be a lot faster next time.

In our game I was very lucky with dice rolls (and Callum was equally unlucky) and I built up a pretty unassailable lead, helped by destroying a lot of the Saxon Shore forts early in the game and gaining extra points.  The map on the final turn actually looked pretty historical with the Saxons holding central and SE England with the Danes in the North.  The Welsh pretty much held all of Wales and there were a scattering of minor kingdoms left although not all necessarily where you'd expect to find them!

The end of the game...
I was red/blue and
Callum was purple/black

The game definitely lived up to my expectations...we both came away with definite ideas about things we'd do differently next time, and its one we'd both replay.