Below you will find the sixteenth installment of an ongoing design diaries series from Border Reivers designer Ed Beach. (The previous installments can be found here.) He regularly publishes new design diaries and other updates on the “Reivers and Reformers” Facebook group, so if you would like to read those as they are released you can do so here. Enjoy! -Rachel
Our previous entries navigated through a full game of Border Reivers, from the very first cards being drafted in the initial Summer Phase to the scoring wrap-up during the final Spring. There was plenty to discuss (15 diaries worth!) so the standard game has plenty to keep players engaged through numerous plays. However once players feel that they have mastered play, there is an additional Advanced Rule that can be added to spice things up. That addition, Traits, is what we’ll discuss with this article.
Those familiar with some of my earlier designs (such as Here I Stand) know that I’m a fan of some asymmetry between player positions to enhance a game’s historical feel. Border Reivers is the closest I’ve ever come to designing a game with balanced positions, but even here I’ve thrown in some special nods to the history that provide a slight advantage to one player family or another.
Examples include:
- The towns of Carlisle (in the English West March) and Berwick (English East March) were both walled towns. Carlisle was widely considered the most difficult gaol to break out from due to the added security of the town walls (making the historical escape of Kinmont Willie even more remarkable). Therefore, in the game Gaolbreak defense dice are increased by 1 if the player is defending a Gaolbreak attempt against one of these two towns.
- The most famous feud between border clans was the running battle between the Maxwells and Johnstones of the Scottish West March. With that in mind there is a special rule preventing the Maxwell family player from ever recruiting the Johnstone clan as allies. Some of the other player families were less prone to these all-out clan wars, so they avoid such a limitation in the card set.
- Hadrian’s Wall ran through the English West and Middle Marches but was already a thousand-year-old ruin at this point. There’s a card in the deck that lets players from either of these two Marches steal masonry from these Roman ruins and use it to protect their farmhouses. (Shhh, don’t tell future archaeologists if you play this card!) However, players administrating other Marches can’t use that event since those ancient stones are nowhere near their farms.
- In a six-player game, one English player and one Scottish player are in “Middle March” positions meaning they are passed Summer cards by another Englishman (or Scot) sitting to their left or right. Since some cards are only playable by English (or Scottish) players, that means players in Middle March positions only get first access to such an “English-only” card if they are dealt it in their initial hand. In any other case they are only seeing it after another countryman has passed on selecting it.
The good news is that none of these nods to accuracy have affected our balance data in any significant way. Based on the bullets above it would look like the Scottish West or Middle March positions might be the toughest to play. And yet those two player positions have won 5 of the last 11 games I have recorded in my data base. The fact of the matter is that it is experience with the game that matters far, far more than any specific player position; the wins in my data base are dominated by the playtesters with multiple games already under their belt.
That all said, I’m well aware what a crafty bunch of historical gamers gravitate toward GMT Games. I’m confident that Border Reiver players will find all these historical nuances over time and develop slight favorites among the families. To solve that problem the game comes with six Trait cards (the text-only playtest version of these is shown in Figure 1).
So what are these for? Well Border Reivers is a card drafting game, so why not add another (initial) round of card drafting? With Traits in play, players — in random order — get to choose a single item as their first-choice selection, either a Trait or a specific family. Players then proceed through a two-round snake draft continuing to select either a Trait or a family. In the second round of drafting, you’ll have to select a Trait if you have already chosen a family (or vice versa). This gives players access to all the families, even their most preferred, but potentially at the cost of losing out on a Trait they particularly favor. For tournament plays of Border Reivers, this Trait Advanced Rule will always be in play.
NEXT TIME: In our final entry we’ll talk about games of Border Reivers with less than 4 players. They play quickly and face you with twice as many decisions as the standard game, so it’s something you’ll want to try!
Border Reivers Design Diaries #1-3: The Marches, Anatomy of a March, and Defending Your March
Border Reivers Design Diaries #7-9: Play Cards, Hold Cards, and Summer Strategy Analysis
Author: Ed Beach
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