There are 12 rounds in each game of Rebellion: Britannia – unless an automatic loss condition for Rome is triggered (she has 2+ Forts and 6+ Settlements burnt at the same time, or has all 4 Legions destroyed) in which case the game ends immediately.

At the beginning of each round the top card of the Events deck is revealed. Each card has two or three effects, and each of these effects modulate play in a variety of possible ways, either for the turn, or for the remainder of the game:

• Roman supply lines are tested, which could reduce their Cohesion levels.
• Attrition might hit all factions, resulting in unit/Cohesion losses.
• Briton Tension increases or decreases in specific regions.
• Culture tokens are placed in specific regions (I’ll explain this in a bit)
• The weather might be bad, making movement more difficult for Rome and stopping the play of all prepared cards.
• One of the faction’s leaders replaces the existing leader.
• VPs might be modulated.

Here are some examples:

This Event card has two effects:

• Rome has to discard an additional card to play a March card or conduct a Forced Action. Nobodies’ prepared cards trigger this round, but they can be saved for the next turn.
• Each British tribe must lose a Warband from any rough terrain region, and all Legions in rough terrain suffer a Cohesion loss of 1 point.

This Event card has three effects:

• +1 Tension in every region with an unburnt Fort.
• +1 Tension in any Briton home region with an unburnt Settlement.
• If Prasutagus is the leader of the Iceni, he dies and is replaced by Boudica.

There are 18 cards in the full Event deck, but only 12 are ever used in a single game, so it’s not certain which cards will come out each game, and in which order. Since the change in leadership is dictated through the Events deck, and since the leadership has a significant bearing on the approach players may have when controlling a faction, not knowing which cards are about to be revealed in the Events deck can be a big deal. (We’ll look at Leaders in an upcoming blog post.)

But some cards in players’ decks allow for some foresight into the Events deck.

The Roman Strategy card has three effects, all of which function when the card is played. The first effect removes a British stronghold from a region where there is a legion. These strongholds represent hillforts, or other strongholds, such as the one in Mona, and are a means to win VP. The third effect  is another way to win VP, if Rome controls the Corieltauvi region at the moment the card is played. The second effect represents the functionality of Roman roads and the way chains of interconnected beacons allow for the rapid transfer of intelligence. This intelligence, in turn, is represented by the ability to look at and reorder the Event deck.

The Iceni ‘Tribes Gather’ Action card has two effects, both of which function when the card is played. The first effect is a way for the Iceni to move pieces in a way that’s unique – ‘pulling’ pieces (including non-Iceni pieces) towards a specific region, representing both rapid Iceni mustering and the capacity to draw other tribes to their cause. The second effect represents the advantages held by British tribes in the face of strong, and highly visible army in home territory – so we can think of information traveling fast amongst British tribes about the presence of Roman forces. This intelligence advantage is represented by the Iceni ability to look at and reorder the Event deck. 

We’ll show more examples of Event deck cards in the next blog post.

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