Below you will find the seventeenth and final installment of an ongoing design diaries series from Border Reivers designer Ed Beach. (The previous installments can be found here.) He regularly publishes design 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. Ed is also about to start a sample solo game of Border Reivers within the Reivers and Reformers Facebook group, so sign up for that group now if you want to contribute to the board of players competing against the new solo game system (or just watch the action). Enjoy! -Rachel
Border Reivers can be played with anywhere from 1 to 6 players. The game was originally designed for either four or six players, always with an equal number of players running marches on each side of the Border. However, we found quickly that two and three-player games also work quite well simply by allocating one English and one Scottish family to each player and asking them to maximize the total score of their two families. Although it might seem strange to have a Scottish clan in league with English compatriots from across the border, such alliances occurred frequently during the period — when loyalty to kin and honoring of feuds always came before riding out in defense of your nation. And the gameplay of trying to sneak cards past an opponent to get them into the hands of your ally across the border has proven to be extremely interesting.
What I was not sure was going to be possible was a Solo version of Border Reivers. The game includes cards drafted in secret, hidden deployment of mobile defenses, and attack targets selected and revealed simultaneously. These are all mechanics that are aided by having live, human opponents. However, I do appreciate that the GMT community has an active audience for Solo games, so I kept experimenting with ideas for solitaire play. And now, four months after Border Reivers went up for initial preorders, I am happy to say that the game also includes a robust system for Solo play. Let us review how it all works.
Solo Border Reivers
The Solo game builds off the basic setup for four players with the Scottish and English West and Middle Marches in play and populated with their usual assembly of Sheep, Horses, existing Feuds, and Reivers already captured and in Gaol. The Solo player chooses any of the four families from those Marches: Fenwick, Dacre, Maxwell, or Kerr.
The design goal for this solitaire version of the game is to confront the player with decisions that mirror those they would have in a game with live opponents. So, the sequence of play, game mechanics (such as how to resolve combats), and components remain remarkably consistent with the multiplayer game. The only new components are 10 Summer card replacements for events that needed their effects adjusted, two solitaire play aids (the Solo Sequence of Play instructions and a sheet to hold Summer Cards drafted by the opposing players), and a set of counters that allow random determination of a Farm Region. We will see examples of these updated components in a minute.
Solo Mode Summer Drafts
All turns in Border Reivers begin with the Summer Card drafting phase. In a 4-player game you see 22 different cards (7 in the initial hand, then 6, 5, and 4 before you start seeing hands of cards for a second time). You draft 6 of those into play to support your goals. Solo Reivers has much the same setup with you seeing 21 cards and receiving 6 of those each Summer. This is accomplished by dealing three cards at a time to the Solo player. You draft one of those cards while giving up the other two to the opposing players. Let’s look at an example set of cards you might have to make a drafting decision on in Turn 2 of a Solo contest.
The leftmost card, Wheel-Lock Pistols, is a fabulous card to amplify your results in a Battle or Feud since its effect (rolls of “4” are now hits) gives you a 50% chance of hitting instead of the usual 33% (and if you play the right Target card in combination with it you can jump up to 67%). So certainly Wheel-Lock Pistols is a strong contender for the card to keep from this hand. However, looking at the banner across the bottom of the other two cards (where the solitaire information is always printed) yields the costs of giving away Scots’ Dyke and Tower Houses. Namely that our opponents with gain 3 Notoriety and add 3 Permanent Defenses to the map (as well as having the Scots’ Dyke defensive marker go into play). So we can take Wheel-Locks, but we enhance the defenses of our opponents and give them an edge in the Notoriety game. That’s the basic quandary you face repeatedly in Solo Reivers – what you fail to draft is going to make your opponents stronger. Can you afford to take the hit in those two areas to gain the benefit you desire in the third? Maybe we should draft Scots’ Dyke for a Notoriety boost instead (but only if we can afford to give our opponents +2 to their Attack strength)?
As cards are passed to the opponents, they are stacked in piles by category on the solitaire play aid mentioned earlier (and shown at right) to allow you to easily track your opponents’ gains based on the cards you have forfeited. All three of your opponents share the same display; the boosts from these cards are split among them later. Once and only once each Summer you must pass on taking any card and move the full set of three cards to the Discard Pile, removing them for play for the moment. It’s a great move to take if you are running out of Cattle to spend and see a lot of strong cards that you don’t want to fall to your opponents. Alternatively, you might be looking at a set of weaker cards and you don’t want to waste one of your precious six card drafts on any of these options. Regardless of the reason, it’s an extra wrinkle to consider when you look over each group of three Summer cards.
Solo Mode Unique Cards
As mentioned, 10 of the existing 126 Border Reiver summer cards are replaced with unique versions for Solo play. These new cards share the same name and cost as in the multiplayer game, but their effects are unique here in solitaire play. Two examples are shown below; note how the effect when you play it for your own purposes is listed first, followed by the effect when given to the opposing players at the bottom of the card. As evidenced by the two sample cards I included below (Double Cross and Blackmail), these are often some of the nastier cards that directly weaken or steal from opponents. Watch out if you give one of these cards to the opposing players; something of yours is going to be affected immediately, and not in a good way!
Solo Mode Autumn
When card drafting is complete, the game moves into the Autumn Phase. Like in the multiplayer game, this is a time for housekeeping and preparing for the Winter raiding season. Cattle income is received, Random Events are drawn, and defenses placed. In a Solo game you also spend the Autumn going through the stacks of cards that accumulated for the opposing players on the solitaire play aid. One at a time you go through each stack to see how many Permanent Defenses, Sheep, Defense Tokens, Notoriety placements, and Bastled sheep you have given up. Random draws from bags of cubes or counters help you determine exactly where each is placed in an opponent’s march without having to consult anything complicated like a flow chart or bot. The remaining Autumn calculation is to look at the total value of the Attack cards given to opposing players and divide by 3 (since you have three opponents). That total represents the Base Attack Dice that all three of your opponents will roll on each attack targeting your March or when they join a Battle.
Solo Mode Winter
The Winter Phase is one where we do change the Sequence of Play from the standard multiplayer game. In that contest, two rounds of combat proceed in an exact sequence, mostly driven by following reverse order of the current VP standings. However, in the Solo game I wanted to add some unpredictability. That’s where the Target Cards come in. Each Winter two random Target cards are selected from each opposing player’s deck of such cards – plus the Solo player adds his two selections. Then these eight cards are fully shuffled and drawn one at a time to ensure maximum surprise with each selection.
A sample Target card is shown at right for the Maxwell player. The English West March (EWM) is the target here, so if you were playing the Solo game from the Dacre/EWM point-of-view this Raid would head your way and target your most vulnerable Farm region. On the other hand, if you were playing as one of the other three families, this attack would be ignored entirely (damage the Opposing Players do to each other is not modeled in the Solo game).
Other target cards are more flexible, such as the Maxwell Reiver card shown at left. This card can normally target any player – and thus in Solo games it always targets you, the human player. You can see that this can lead to some nasty surprises: during some turns you’ll have to fend off as many as 3 or 4 attacks; other turns will be quieter. It’s important to be ready at all times with your defenses.
Victory Targets
So how do you evaluate your success in these Solo games, especially if the attacks between the other players are not explicitly resolved? Easy, by computing a score for yourself in exactly the same way you do in any game of Border Reivers. Then you can take your total and look in up to see what victory level you have achieved. A poor performance and you’ll sadly end up with the Ill-Drowned Geordie rating. But in a stellar outing your score could even reach our highest rating: that of “Kinmont Willie”. After all, Kinmont Willie Armstrong was the most famous reiver of all time, so having a game in honor of him is the best possible outcome for any aspiring reiver lord.
Previous Articles:
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
Border Reivers Design Diary #16: Add Traits for an Extra Round of Drafting
Author: Ed Beach
The links to the previous articles don’t seem to be working.