We planned to play Britannia for a long time – in the end, the delivery of Kickstarter with the new edition of this title (the first version of the game was published in 1980’s) was already couple of years ago. However, first pandemic and then backlog of titles to play was always pushing this initiative aside.

Fortunately, during our last “mini-convention”, which we always held around the New Year, there was enough time to finally bring this position to the table. Considering that this is rather longer than shorter game to play, two evenings in a row were needed. But it was worth time invested as we really had interesting experience. Let us now deep dive into it!

The Game

Britannia is a historical Strategic board-wargame that broadly depicts the millennia-long struggle for control of England, Scotland, and Wales. The game begins with the Roman invasion of 43 A.D., continues through the many struggles between Angles, Saxons, Picts, Norsemen, Scots, Irish, and other tribes, and ends with the Norman invasion of 1066.

Britannia allows players to recreate that epic history, reenacting important battles in some cases, altering the course of history in others. The game rules discourage players from making historically unrealistic moves, but also give players the freedom to alter Great Britain’s history in important ways, creating countless interesting “what if?” scenarios. What if Boudicca’s Revolt against the Romans had been more successful? What if the Romans and the Romano-British had repelled the Saxon invasions of the 5th and 6th centuries? What if William the Conqueror had died during the Norman invasion of 1066?

This edition includes over 200 beautifully sculpted plastic miniatures and two ways to play: Classic Britannia (traditional play for 4 gamers on the standard board) and Duel Britannia (faster play for 2 gamers on a new board).

Factions

The key and heart of the game are definitely the factions, and there is multitude of them – seventeen in total. They represent all the tribes, nations or groups who during the one thousand years of history inhabited or invaded the island. Each of players – and there is four of them – will lead separate set of them, having their moments of glory but also quiet periods during the sixteen turns game. What they are? Let us have a look:

Romans, Roman-British, Scots, Dubliners, Norwegians
Brigantes, Irish, Norsemen, Saxons
Welsh, Caledonians, Danes, Jutes
Belgae, Picts, Angles, Normans

As you can see, in case of each player (red, blue, black and purple) you would have some small raiding forces (like Picts, Irish or Jutes) but also very strong and game-changing nations (Romans, Saxons, Angles, Dunes or Normans). What is interesting, is that factions – historically – enter the game gradually, achieve peak of their presence and then either survive or are wiped out. And believe me, the latter happens quite often.

Session Report

Let us move now to the session report. Some information first. The game is long – it was always such, when first designed, and the new edition of classic gameplay is only slightly changed, implementing some errata and balancing mechanics based on players experience. For us it took two evenings to play full scenario.

The whole campaign has sixteen turns, with each roughly 50-80 years long. The Victory Points scoring is only at some specific turns, and each faction has completely different objectives – be it in conquering territory or killing the particular enemies. That makes game fun, asymmetric but also tries to keep the historical narrative more or less intact.

Picture being worth thousand words, let us now immerse ourselves in detailed story of the Britannia during first millennium AD. You would see some interesting twists of fate, unexpected alliances as well as fierce fight for power!

PS. Feel free to click on the images for a zoom-in into details. Enjoy!

Britain 43 AD. You see the split per color among the players and initial factions in play – some Picts, Caledonians, Brigantes, Welsh and most importantly South, namely…
…Belgae (Celtic tribes of southern England) and huge Roman invasion army facing each other!
And so, they arrived and conquered! Almost whole Southern England submits to Roman rule; Welsh people are safe in mountains; some of Belgae (Iceni) survive and submit but Boudica uprising will cause a lot of problems to Lukasz and his legions. The North is stable and simply builds-up the forces.
We jump now to Turn 4 when early, large invasions start to happen! We have first Saxons as well as Jutes in South, Irish and Scots in West as well as Angles in East. Britannia is literally being torn into the pieces!
We are now another 200 years later in Turn 8; the Angles and Saxons divided most of the southern map; Brigantes in the center help greatly my cause. British-Romans (King Arthur) are almost extinct, grouped on one province. Scots try to kick out Picts but have problems with it. Welsh and Caledonians just stand and score points 🙂
Turn 10 and huge progress of Saxons who manage to almost entirely wipe-out Angles. That was I believe one of the game-changing moments of this session. Other parts are more or less stable.
Turn 12 when things really start to heat up; the Danes invasion is huge, multi-turn and numerous. Still, Saxons are resisting and counter-attacking. Belgae from the initial Roman times survive hidden in the marches while Romano-British are almost fully destroyed 😦
Turn 14 – slowly but steadily we are getting to the end of the game; Danes invasion in the center of the England almost kills all Angles, but the presence in the South of Knut and his forces is being drastically reduced. We have also Dubliners entering the fray, significantly diminishing Danes power. In the north, the Norsemen invasion starts – Caledonians will eventually cease to exist.
Last two turns of the game are very exciting; above set-up before Turn 15, with huge army of Wilhelm the Conqueror (Normans) as well as Norwegians converging on the island.
Well, initial fights show that both Normans and Norwegians are smashing through the defenses with ease. Still, there is no battle of Hastings and huge Saxon forces manage to survive initial onslaught. Which backfires next turn as weakened Normans are in many places easy prey for them! And Welsh just score the points.
Final situation on map; a lot of interesting things can be seen – Picts repelled Scots in the North; Brigantes as well as Belgae survived the whole 1000 years! (although both with one province). The Welsh were never in real threat, the Saxons survived the Norman onslaught. Some Danes were also left. Alternative history for sure but not so unprobeable.

Wow, that was something – pretty crazy ride through the whole millennia of British history. Two evenings well spent, with the game for most of us (poor Lukasz) exciting to the last moment. And Saxons surviving till the end of the game which definitely was a recipe for red faction victory.

First Impressions

After that extensive session let me now share my observations and expressions from the gameplay:

  • The game is of course scripted – all the nations appear in the historical areas, with historical forces and have victory points designed for historical achievements. Still, it is up to you how the things will develop, where will you focus and what would be the outcome.
  • There is a great theme hear and you can feel and see how the history of Britain unfolds. I really like the changing fates of the nations, the new ones appearing, some of them being destroyed. This is fantastic!
  • What also appeals to me is asymmetry and different victory points conditions for each faction. This is very nicely thought of. What I do not like, is looking this up all the time on faction sheets 🙂
  • While the game itself is pretty straightforward and does not have too many rules, the set ups for each Turn, the special rule, the knowledge what and where will happen can be a bit daunting and require you to be aware not to do some stupid mistake. Understand me well, that all makes sense and keeps with narrative; however, the result is length of the game and sometimes lagging of the gameplay.
  • While I am usually not very fond of miniatures, here they play nicely, and I like them – although it probably would be good for soldiers figures to be more distinct within one color. Overall, the components are fine and support the gameplay nicely.

You may ask if I regret spending multiple hours on playing the game through two evenings? Definitely not! Would I repeat it? Probably rather focus on Duel and smaller scenarios, which will be more manageable timewise. Still, that was fun to play, and I am glad to see the almost forty year’s old design is still shining!