Compiled below you will find the first three installments of an ongoing design diaries series from Border Reivers designer Ed Beach. 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

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Border Reivers Design Diary #1: The Marches

One of the unique things about the Border Reiver period was that despite decades of lawless raiding and reprisals, out of that chaos was created a custom body of international law that occasionally proved quite effective. This series of March Laws (officially known by the Latin name “Leges Marchiarum”) was first drafted back in 1249, some 250 years before the most active raiding period represented in the game. At that time the knights representing Henry III of England and Alexander II of Scotland decided to divide each side of the border into three “marches”: one along the east coast, one along the west coast, and one smack in the middle. A Warden would be appointed to oversee justice in each of these regions and as necessary they would coordinate with their counterpart across the border to hear grievances at a Day of Truce, usually held in a convenient meeting place right at the boundary line between the two nations.

The first two pictures in this post show those boundaries (and I included the first one, the wider view, so you can see where we are in the British Isles). Several things leap to mind right away. First, the marches are very unequal in size. The western marches are by far the largest and the eastern ones quite small. But the eastern ones lay directly on the main north-south path between Edinburgh and York and thus a number of the major battles in the border wars between England and Scotland occurred directly in these eastern lands. So the relative workload of each of these six wardens was pretty even.

In later posts I’ll go into more detail about the multi-faceted role I want players faced with in the game. For now just realize that I want each player to be both a bad guy and a law man — all at the same time. So the best way to achieve that was to make each player a family who had stepped into the role of Warden of a March. Keeping their march from being overrun by the other players thus becomes an important part of playing well. And if you can achieve that while still stealing blatantly from your opponents – well then that makes you a real contender for most famous Reiver of all time.

So in the six-player game all six marches are in play and each player represents a family that dominated one of these marches for most of the 16th Century. (In a four-player game the two eastern march players are dropped out but the game changes very little otherwise). As you can see from the third picture in this post, deciding which family was dominant in each march was a bit on the messy side.

It was a bit easier for the Scottish marches, since it had to be either Johnstone or their archenemy Maxwell in the west and either Scott or the Kerrs (who were often feuding with the Scotts) in the middle. In both cases I picked the family that had spent more time in the Warden role (Maxwell and Kerr). And then the Scottish East March was always dominated by the Hume family. In England the choices were harder, especially since several of the key wardens were royal appointees by Henry VIII or Elizabeth I and not even members of a border family. But the Greys in the East (the family later responsible for Earl Grey tea) and the Dacres in the west held wardenships several times during the 16th Century. And I decided to represent the Forsters by adding the famed warden Sir John Forster as a card in the game, leaving the English Middle March to be run by the Fenwicks. So our player lineup is set.

NEXT: We’ll look inside a March and talk about the various targets it presents to the other players.

Border Reivers Design Diary #2: Anatomy of a March

In the first design diary, we established that each of our players is responsible for one of the six marches that flanked the English-Scottish Border. As warden, you must defend your lands from all forms of attack. So let’s look more closely at the elements contained in each march and see what threats there will be to fend off.

We start with the first picture in this post, a snippet of the Border Reiver playtest map showing the English West March (guarded by the Dacre player, the orange color in our game). Several elements are common to every march in the game. First and foremost, your family needs to have a castle that they can call their home base. For the Dacre’s (pronounced like the English word “acre” with a “d” added to the front), that royal home would be Naworth Castle (second picture is how it looks today) which sits just on the south side of the Irthing River (while Hadrian’s Wall runs along the northern edge of that same stream).

Thomas, Lord Dacre owns Naworth as the game begins in 1513 and that same year he would go on to lead the English Border Lancers on a victorious charge at the battle of Flodden Field. The Scottish King, James IV, died at that battle and Dacre commented that the Scots “love me worst of any Englishman living, by reason that I fande the body of the King of Scots.” Dacre’s newly found fame allowed him to strength Naworth, building the arched entranceway (“the Warden’s Tower”) just to the right of the oldest portion of the castle, the traditional square, four-sided tower to the left, known throughout the borders as a Peel Tower. In the game your family castle is where the rival players attack if they have a feud against you (as represented by wooden cubes from the other players that are stored in the “Feuds w/ Dacre” box adjacent to the castle).

One other convenience that no proper march is without is a gaol to hold any reivers you might capture. Your gaol is always located in the largest town inside your domain. For the English West March that would be the largest town in all the borders: Carlisle (note the “Reivers in Gaol” box directly adjacent to Carlisle on the game map). With its fortified walls (third picture), Carlisle should have represented one of the securest prisons to hold reivers. But as we’ll find out in a future diary, the most famous gaolbreak in reiver history occurred right from Carlisle Castle. As a fortified town however, Carlisle does roll a bonus die against Gaolbreak attacks, unlike an unfortified town like Hexham, principal town of the English Middle March (see the fourth picture of the still standing Hexham Old Gaol).

So that covers the first two attacks in the game: Feuds and Gaolbreaks. The third is a Battle where you take your mounted forces off to fight alongside your nation’s army (as Dacre did at Flodden). Battles only occur when the appropriate event is drawn (the battle that can occur here in the English West March is the 1545 battle of Solway Moss, shown by the card-sized box on the map that holds that event when it is triggered). Now there isn’t a lot you can do to prepare your March against an entire invading army, but you’ll still find it important to see that you fight well in any battle that occurs in your March to keep your Notoriety high in your home lands.

Finally we have the fourth type of attack (and the most common one): the Raid. These attempts to steal Cattle and Sheep occur against the four Farm Regions in your march. Each Farm Region in the game is typically a separate river valley (or “dale” in usual border parlance).  Here in the English West March those farm regions are valleys of the Eden, Irthing, Lyne and Caldew Rivers.

NEXT: Now that we know what targets are in each March, let’s talk about how to defend everything.

Border Reivers Design Diary #3: Defending Your March

Last time we learned that you would have to be ready to defend your march from three different types of attacks: Feuds, Gaolbreaks, and Raids. Luckily Border Reivers gives you three different styles of defenses and we’ll go through all three of them in this diary entry.

First there are Permanent Defenses. These are the castles and towers that were found all over the Borders (and still can be to this day — I exclusively used sites that can still be visited for the permanent defense locations included in the game). You bring these defenses online by either garrisoning an existing castle (which provides two full defense dice against Raids into either of the adjacent Farm Regions) or by constructing a Peel Tower (which provides just one die). Examples of these defenses are shown in the first two pictures in this post (Hermitage Castle and Smailholm Tower).

Forces posted in such a location were used to intercept passing raiders, especially if they were detected far enough in advance that the “border beacon” network could be activated to warn of the incursion. Anyone else love a good signal fire lighting scene (my personal favorite moment in the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King movie)?

The second option is to provide shelter for the livestock that were the target of the raid. The best way to accomplish this was to upgrade your ramshackle farmhouse into a Bastle. These multi-story stone houses had a ground floor to protect your cattle and sheep and then a steep, easily-defended stair up to the living quarters on the second floor. Black Middens Bastle House from the English Middle March is shown in the third picture in this post. Reiver families would often build clusters of bastles to protect a whole region from raids (though Black Middens still suffered a raid from the Armstrongs in 1583).

Finally, players can develop mobile defenses that are secretly posted at their discretion just before the raiding season is about to begin. Every player starts with two tokens to represent these defenses: their Deputy Warden and a Rumor that there might be defenses (which is just used to bluff your opponents). More of these Defense Tokens are acquired during the summer buildup, the most powerful of which are the Wardens, such as the accomplished Sir Robert Carey (whose token is shown in the fourth picture). Defense tokens with gray backgrounds (Paid Militia is one) must be used in towns to defend against Feuds and Gaolbreaks; tokens with green backgrounds (such as Hot Trod) can be used in Farm Regions.

Now look at our fifth picture; this is a portion of your March ready for the winter raids. The Defense Tokens have been secretly placed so the other players do not know where you have allocated your strongest defenses. Then the final picture shows the March after all the defenses are revealed. Note that Lyne Valley is exceptionally well defended: three defense dice from permanent defenses, four from Sir Robert Carey, and the flipped down Sheep show that even they are protected by Bastles. The Irthing Valley however is completely undefended (no defense token was even placed in the pitchfork and torch box where defense tokens are allocated) and the sheep there are still standing. Unbastled Sheep give extra dice to the attackers! And the Dacres have no defenses against Feuds either since they placed their Rumor token at Naworth Castle.

NEXT TIME: So now you know how to defend your livestock, but why do you care? We’ll cover that next time when we go through the important uses for cattle, sheep and horses.

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