Britannia (board game)

Britannia

Box art for Britannia Second Edition
Publication date	1986 (1986)
Genre(s)	strategy

Britannia is a strategy board game, first released and published in 1986 by Gibsons Games in the United Kingdom, and most recently updated in late 2008 as a re-release of the 2005 edition, produced by Fantasy Flight Games. It broadly depicts the wars in, and migrations to, the island of Great Britain in the centuries from the Roman invasions to the Norman Conquest.

Britannia was selected among the anthology Hobby Games: The 100 Best and is ranked by members of the Board Game Geek site in the top 350 of over 10,000 ranked games.Britannia has spawned a subgenre of wargames characterized by epic time scales with players taking the part of multiple tribes or nations over the course of the game.

Britannia is a 3-5 player game that takes about four hours to complete. Primary rules are for four players using the counter colours, but there are variant scenarios for three and five players, as well as a 3-player shorter Game and several short 2-player scenarios. Each player controls several nations.

The game begins with one army in each area of Britain, with each part of the island occupied by different nations: the Belgae, Welsh, Brigantes, Caledonians (representing the distinctive Broch culture) and Picts. A force of Romans begin in the English Channel and are the first nation to move. Through their superior fighting power and mobility the Romans will come to dominate most of the board, but eventually the Roman Empire will withdraw their forces from Britain completely, leaving behind just the scattered Romano-British. Meanwhile, throughout the game, further nations arrive from across the seas: the Irish and Scots, and later the Dubliners, from the west; the Norsemen from the north; the Saxons, Angles, Danes and Norwegians from the east; the Jutes and Normans from the south. All of these nations will compete with each other, as well as the existing nations, for turf. Some nations will be destroyed, and the recurring theme in Britannia is that nations will rise and fall. However all nations will make their contribution to a player’s Victory Point total and eventual victory or defeat.