Rebellion: Britannia Interview: Daniel Burt and Maurice Suckling

 

Claudius’s invasion of Britain in 43 CE was a military success. However, as a series of rebellions demonstrates, this military success was not so much the end of the story but rather the beginning. The British tribes were unruly, and even when defeated in large pitched battles, they did not cease antagonizing Rome nor, indeed, each other. For the British tribes, expansion seems not to have been an overriding concern, but they nevertheless were engaged in a struggle to survive in an environment dominated by Rome. Survival might mean battle, but it might also mean finding other ways to protect or encourage trade, agriculture, crafts, or sites of ceremonial importance. In the midst of this strife, the island of Britannia provides the perfect arena for players to champion one of four factions as they compete to establish or reclaim their foothold on the land.

The rules and images shown here are not final

You cand find it in P500

1-Who are you and you favourite wargame/s?

My name is Daniel Burt and I work at the University of Oxford, where I have been involved in a number of research projects, including a project funded by the Wellcome Trust that looked at using board games as tools for public engagement with research. Outside of work, I have been a budding hobbyist game designer for longer than I care to say, but am delighted to finally have a design that is being published. My favourite wargame is Dune (the Avalon Hill original, or the more recent Gale Force 9 reprint), which also happens to be my favourite board game of all time. It’s hard to get regular play, sadly, due to really needing six players. My tastes lean more into Eurogames, meaning I am the medieval European farmer foil to Maurice’s warmonger, and I also very much enjoy the cut and thrust of an 18XX.

My name is Maurice Suckling. I’ve been a budding hobbyist board game designer for as long as Daniel. I’ve spent 24 years helping to make video games - usually as a writer, narrative designer, audio director, or consultant of some kind, although sometimes in other roles. Some of the best known games I’ve been involved in are Civilization VI, Fortnite and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. I’m also an assistant professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Upstate New York, where I teach and research on storytelling in games, and historical simulations as part of the Games Simulation Arts and Sciences program. In 2018 Worthington released my first board game, Freeman’s Farm: 1777 and three other games have followed for the same publisher since then. Hmm…my favourite wargames - that rather depends on all kinds of things - number of players, playtime, my mood, amongst them - but certainly some perpetual favourites are anything in the Quartermaster General series - especially the 1914 game, Twilight Struggle, W1815. Games that have been intriguing me most recently are Atlantic Chase, Hiter’s Reich, Napoleon Returns: 1815, Verdun: Steel Inferno, The Fog of War and Star Wars: Rebellion - as well as lots of Brian Train’s (vast) catalogue. Daniel’s tastes certainly extend deeper into Eurogames than my own, but there’s still plenty of overlap - I’m especially drawn to games that attempt to model or represent non-kinetic conflict - like political or social dimensions of history, and the kinds of mechanics we often see in Eurogames are now often being blended with more conventional wargames mechanics.

 

2-Why did you decide to do this game?

Rebellion: Britannia is the evolution of a design that was originally submitted for the inaugural ConSIM Game Jam, which was organized by Fred Serval in October 2020. Maurice and I have known one another since school days, have been gaming together for decades, and have collaborated on a number of game designs in the past. Maurice, fresh off the back of his Charles S. Roberts Award success (for his Chancellorsville: 1863, in 2020), asked me if I would be interested in joining him as a team, I agreed, and our game made the final three. GMT encouraged us to develop the game further, and it grew from an expansion (of sorts) for Pendragon into this new design.

3-Can you talk about the mechanics?

The mechanics for the game are pretty simple. This is a CDG, so each card contains clear instructions on how to use the actions it offers the player. Each turn you will play a maximum of 2 cards, if you prepared a strategy card on your previous turn. The game features elements of traditional wargames, such as area control, battle, supply considerations, and so on, but also attempts to model other considerations, such as trade, politics, ceremony, and crafts. As the Briton tribes are competing against one another, and yet must also consider the actions of the Roman occupying forces, there are mechanics that encourage a degree of cooperation between the tribes, but at the same time may impair them in other ways, should they choose to work together. On a turn-by-turn basis, each player is essentially attempting to make use of the cards in their hand and the emergent board state to secure as many Victory Points as they can, and at the same time prevent their rival players from maximizing their scoring potential. Each tribe will score VPs in differing ways, which is expanded on in the next question.

4-How the different factions work?

Factions in Rebellion: Britannia are asymmetric in much the same way as you find factions in games in the COIN series or Root, for example. As this game contains some “dudes on a map” (or should that be “druids on a map”?) DNA, each faction has common actions in their deck that allow them to do things like raise forces, move around, and engage in combat, but all factions have a number of unique cards that are only available to them. Such differences reflect thematic differences between the historic factions.

The Romans are primarily interested in extending their control of the province, building settlements and forts, and controlling regions. They are, perhaps, the most traditionally wargame-like of the factions, but must also consider levels of tension amongst the tribes, and engage in diplomatic actions where necessary, and have cards in their deck that allow them to pursue such options.

Of the Briton factions, the Silures are perhaps the simplest, as they are essentially constantly belligerent and in opposition to Rome. However, as with all of the Briton factions, engaging a Legion in combat is going to end badly for you, so guerilla warfare is the order of the day. Being the most warlike of the Briton tribes, the Silures have lots of cards that relate to raids, ambushes, and resistance, and score their VPs largely through combat and military activity.

The Iceni begin the game as friends with Rome, but events may transpire that result in Boudica becoming the faction leader - at this point they essentially about-face into direct opposition with Rome, and will score VPs by burning anything Roman that gets in their way. Balancing this potential change of game state is one of the interesting elements of playing this faction.

Like the Iceni, the Brigantes start the game as allies of Rome, and their focus is even further in this direction than the Iceni. They will be encouraging Romanization of the regions, and will even lend military forces to Rome, and such actions will be a major focus of how the faction scores VPs. However, as with the Iceni, there is a chance that events will mean that this faction also becomes extremely hostile to Rome, so careful balanced card play is advised, as things may pivot quickly.

Whether a faction is an ally of Rome or not, they are still competing against both Rome and the other Briton tribes for VP, and so they will also want to keep an eye on how Rome is doing - expanding, of course, will be good for their friends, as it keeps the other tribes down, but they won’t want them to be expanding too much, as they will run away with the game. These sorts of considerations add another interesting consideration to inter-faction play. Also, as the game can be played solo with any combination of AI-controlled factions, it should be possible to get a taste of all of the different approaches, even if you are a solo gamer.

 

5-Scenarios and/or length of the game?

The game has one single scenario, which essentially depicts Britain between the years of 49CE and 69CE. It features four factions, with Rome alongside three major Briton tribes, all of whom rebelled against Roman occupation during this period: the Brigantes, the Iceni, and the SIlures. The game can be played by 1 to 4 players, and all factions can be used as AI-controlled bots - these can be mixed and matched as the player chooses. The first game should take around 10 minutes to teach, and games generally last between 60 and 90 minutes.

6-Do you have another game/project in mind?

We both have a number of other individual projects on the go at the moment, and we also have some ideas about other scenarios that would work with this ‘Rebellion’ engine, or with variants of it. We have a list of possible projects that include everything from Agricola’s campaigns in Caledonia through to the Norman Invasion of Sicily by way of the Boer War and the Zanj Rebellion. If things go well with Rebellion: Britannia we hope that at least a couple of those would see the light of day, and we are very interested to see where the engine takes us and how it can be developed, especially once the wider community has cast their expertise over it.

Daniel here - I’m finishing up two prototype designs with an eye to sending them to publishers for consideration in the autumn. The first is themed around the Wars of the Roses, and is an area control game based around a card tableau, its working title is Loveday 1458. The second is a dogfighting game that takes bits from games like X-Wing: The Miniatures Game and combines them with Subutteo and Flick ‘Em Up style gameplay. This is a light tabletop wargame, tentatively titled Fingertip Aces.

Maurice here - I also have a game about the 1914 July Crisis - the diplomatic crisis that spawned the First World War which is being published by Worthington and will be on Kickstarter soon. I have a game about the Cold War now in testing. I also have a game about Elizabethan spies and another game in the same series as Freeman’s Farm and Chancellorsville in development.