Compiled below you will find the fourth through sixth installments of an ongoing design diaries series from Border Reivers designer Ed Beach. (The first three installments can be found in the previous article 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

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Border Reivers Design Diary #4: Cattle & Sheep & Horses, Oh My!

Already in our design diaries the various livestock represented in Border Reivers have been mentioned several times. Let’s dig a little deeper into the exact roles each of these three animals played, both historically and in our game.

Cattle changed hands frequently during the Reiver period. Faster and more compliant than sheep, they were easier to seize successfully. Over a thousand cattle were stolen in some raids, especially during the Ill Week period right after Queen Elizabeth’s death. We therefore consider them to be the most “liquid” of the border livestock currencies and your Cattle tally in the game is your treasury you may spend to purchase items. You’ll spend Cattle when putting cards in play in the Summer Phase, when hiring extra raiders from your Allied Families, and maybe even to pay off a bully if you get blackmailed. At the end of the game every 2 Cattle in your possession score you 1 VP. Two breeds of cattle are explicitly mentioned in the game, the Galloway Cattle that arose on the Scottish side of the border (first picture) and the Chillingham Cattle (second picture) named after the town in the English East March.

Sheep were also stolen by the hundreds in the raids of the 16^th Century. Knowing that they are slightly less mobile than cattle, our Sheep serve as proxies for the farmsteads dotting the countryside of each march. As we saw in the previous entry, unprotected Sheep are left standing on the game board; whereas Sheep protected by the stone walls of a Bastle are placed down on their side. The number of Sheep in your march is a direct reflection of your economic strength, much as the square key control markers down on the board play that role in a game like Here I Stand. Each Fall you’ll check that you have a sufficient number of Sheep in play to support the Horses and held cards you will be carrying into Winter. Your yearly income in Cattle is also a direct product of the number of Sheep you have in play. At the end of the game every 2 Sheep in your possession score you 2 VP. (The Border Cheviot and Scottish Highland sheep depicted in the game are shown in the third and fourth pictures).

Finally we get to the most powerful of the livestock: Horses. The reivers rode a now-extinct breed of horse, the Galloway Pony, as depicted in the sketch shown in our fifth picture. Born and raised in the unforgiving climate of the borders, these reliable steeds were acclimated to the long treks over rugged terrain expected of a Border Reiver mount. Their closest modern relative is the Fell Pony (picture 6). In the game each Horse you maintain represents more riders you can put in the saddle. Therefore each Horse you send in support of one of your attacks provides one extra combat die. You can lose Horses when reivers are captured in a Raid and just as easily regain a Horse by breaking reivers out of Gaol. At the end of the game every 2 Horses in your possession score you 3 VP.

NEXT TIME: We start following the seasonal cycle of the Borders with a look at where each turn starts — the Summer Phase.

Border Reivers Design Diary #5: Recruiting Wardens and Reivers

A game of Border Reivers is divided into three turns, each representing a progressively more deadly segment of 16th Century Border history. Each turn is sub-divided into four seasonal phases. The first such season is Summer, a time when the border was quiet as the livestock grazed scattered across the fields of the region. Each of the three Summer Phases introduces a new deck of 42 Summer Cards that players draft from to strengthen their defenses and power up their attacks. Each of the six players is randomly dealt an initial hand of 7 cards. To minimize down-time, players simultaneously choose one of their cards to draft and all players reveal their choice in unison (I was initially exposed to this mechanic in the game 7 Wonders, so you might be familiar with it from that). Players add or subtract Cattle as required by the cost of the card they just played and then pass the 6 cards they did not choose to a player sitting next to them (to the left on Turn 1; to the right on Turns 2 and 3). Players then repeat the drafting with their new incoming hand of just 6 cards – and this repeats until only 2 cards are available to choose between. In this final draft, players play one card and discard the other. With experienced players each Summer Phase can be completed in just 10 to 15 minutes.

Cards played during this Summer Phase are divided into three types: Recruit, Play and Hold. We’ll dive deeper into the Recruit cards first, focusing on two of the four cards that can be recruited: Wardens and Reivers. In the first picture you can see the current (playtest) version of a player mat, what the game calls your “Family Sheet.” There are five boxes near the bottom of the card that are sized to hold one of the Recruit Summer Cards face up (the green box in the middle identifies this as the Hume Family Sheet so it is not covered up by a recruited card). In this diary entry we’ll just worry about the purple (Warden) and black (Reiver) boxes.

Although each player is representing the head of a dominant family from the Borders, there are dozens of other families that played equally significant roles. In fact, the vast majority of truly notorious figures in reiver history were not from one of the families “in charge;” these scofflaws would often be from a family like the Armstrongs, Elliotts, or Scotts who were known to change side as necessary to best serve their interests. With that in mind, the game is set up so the alignment of famous historical characters with the players changes every game. And that’s the purpose of these family sheet slots that hold the various Recruit cards; this sheet is showing you the “dream team” of reiver personages that are currently working on your behalf in the game.

So we’ll start with the simpler Recruit card, the Warden, and we’ll use Henry Percy, 6^th Earl of Northumberland as our example (see second and third pictures to see what he looked like in real life and then his playtest card). Henry Percy led a life of misfortune which all started when he fell head over heels for Anne Boleyn, becoming her betrothed in 1523 without the permission of either Percy’s father or the king, Henry VIII.  As any student of Henry’s wives knows, the planned marriage was never allowed to proceed — Percy’s place in Tudor society took a sharp downward turn from there. Nonetheless he was reasonably effective in his role as a Warden of the Marches. We can see from his card that having Henry Percy as your warden gives you an extra Defense Token (see diary entry #3) which with its “2” values grants you two extra defense dice wherever it is placed. He can be quite useful, especially since he comes in on Turn 1 so can help you in defense three times. However he is not so powerful that it costs you any Cattle to put his card in play (hence the empty white space to the left of the purple title box).

Reiver cards are a bit more involved and more powerful. Let’s look at a Turn 3 Reiver from the Scott family, Auld Wat of Harden, the very reiver whose wife told him the cupboard was bare by serving him his spurs on a plate instead of dinner (see fourth and fifth pictures to see a turn of the century oil painting of him and his playtest card).  Auld Wat is extremely effective, giving three bonus attack dice on Raids and Feuds, two on Gaolbreaks, and a mighty four extra dice in Battles. Since he comes from the Scott family, shrewd players can draft both him and his family, providing one bonus die for attacks in either Middle March. The only downside to Auld Wat is the cost to play him (4 Cattle) and the fact that he enters play on the third turn (so you’ll only get to benefit from all those extra dice in your Turn 3 attacks).

NEXT TIME: We will look at the other two types of Recruit cards (that are just as important as Reivers and Wardens), namely Offices and Allied Families.

Border Reivers Design Diary #6: The Political Game – Offices and Allied Families

Last time we looked at how you recruit key historical personages to fight for your cause in a game of Border Reivers. However your “dream team” lineup must also include some strong allies, both in the political sphere (as measured by your Notoriety in each March) and on the field of battle. So this time we’ll talk about the other two types of cards you can recruit that are instrumental in establishing your political game: Offices and Allied Families. These two types of cards are also placed onto your Family Sheet, but this time down at the bottom (see Figure 1). You can add one Office and one Allied Family immediately. Then there is a flexible slot that can hold either type of card, but only starting on Turn 2.

Let’s look at Offices first. A little wealth went a long way on the border, and if you remember in our game wealth is always measured in Cattle. One thing you could do with that financial strength is buy yourself (or one of your good friends) into a position of authority. Offices will always cost you dearly in Cattle, from 2 to 4 of them to put each Office into play. But you are rewarded by gaining a special ability and usually some Notoriety each turn. In the second and third pictures you will see Jedburgh Abbey (a ruin since the Scottish Reformation) and the corresponding Abbot of Jedburgh office. This Turn 2 office must be held by one of the Scottish players and it rewards the holder with the ability to put an extra card into play at the end of each Summer Phase. You’ll also be able to add 2 Notoriety into the Scottish Marches each turn. That’s a general principal of the Offices: they let you add Notoriety to build up your reputation in various marches but always limited to the appropriate side of the border.

An Allied Family is also a big help and when a family joins your cause it means extra riders to send out on raids.  Therefore a family gives you both bonus Attack Dice and Notoriety.  Since many of the border familys’ homesteads straddled the border, they often had connections in both England and Scotland. You’ll find that the Notoriety from an allied family is also geographically limited but this time to only the eastern marches, or the middle ones, or the western ones.

The fourth picture below shows the Scott family card. Notice that it is not playable by the Kerr family (the player in control of the Scottish Middle March). That’s because the Scotts and Kerrs were in a continual state of feud during the riding times, each vying for control of that Scottish March. So this “Not Playable by” condition means the Scotts are going to be working for one of the other players. With both Notoriety and Attack Dice that can be used in the Kerr’s march, these Scotts are actually a great way to assert yourself against those nasty Kerrs!

The final two pictures in this entry show one of the most famous Scott family reivers: Walter Scott, 1st Lord Scott of Buccleuch, known to history as “Bold Buccleuch” for his daring mission into Carlisle Castle to break out Kinmont Willie (Carlisle Castle and its formidable defenses were featured in our second diary). That’s such a famous incident in border history that ballads have been sung about it and this reiver earns the exalted “5” rating for Gaolbreak attacks (no one else in the game is above a “2” for Gaolbreaks). Now Bold Buccleuch is a Reiver card, not an Allied Family, so why am I talking about this now? Well do note that he gains an extra die whenever you have both Bold Buccleuch and the Scott family in your retinue. So that’s another perk you can gain from recruiting Allied Families with care. There are many such pairings so lining up these members of your team properly gives you one more thing to consider when deciding which Summer card to play next.

NEXT TIME: We have now covered all the Recruit cards that fill up your Family Sheet, so let’s move on to the Play cards – ones that are resolved immediately (typically to let you build things out on the map).

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Previous Article: Border Reivers Design Diaries #1-3: The Marches, Anatomy of a March, and Defending Your March