From: torbenm@diku.dk (Torben AEgidius Mogensen) Description: Review of Britannia The game is played by 3-5 players, but is best with 4, which is reflected by there being four colours of counters. Each player represents several different peoples/nations that lived in/invaded Britain from the Roman invasion to the Norman conquest. Each turn represents about 75 years, more in the beginning of the game and less near the end. In each turn each nation increases population, moves and fights. The order is depending on nation, not player, so each player will have several moves during his/her turn. At some turns some nations gets major invasions, allowing them to move and fight twice. Some nations start on the board, but others enter from the sea at specified times. Each nation acquires points and the total is summed up for each player at the end of the game. You can acquire points in several ways. In the beginning of the game most nations get points by killing Romans or destroying their forts. At certain points in the game, all nations gets points for occupying land. Not all land count the same, and most land areas count more for some nations than others. It tends to be so that a nation gets most points for doing what it historically did or tried to do. Most nations gets important leaders at specific times. Other nations often gets points for killing these. Near the end of the game there are points for getting elected Bretwalda or King of England. Some additional special situations gives points to certain nations. Fighting is relatively simple: each piece has a die, both players simultaneously roll dice for all their pieces in an area and count the number of fives or sixes. The opponent loses that many pieces. Fighting continues until one player is dead or withdraws from the area. There are special rules for fighting in mountains and swamps, for Romans, for cavalry and for leaders, but the principle is the same. I quite like the game. Some find that they are too bound to repeat history by the tailored point system. Some don't like the randomness of combat, but I find these minor quibbles. Even within the standard point system I have seen games that turn out radically different, and rarely will two games be exactly the same. The randomness tend to even out over the game, though a few times a fair amount of points (though rarely more than about 4% of the total points accumulated through the game) can be decided by a single die roll. Torben Mogensen (torbenm@diku.dk)