Sanctuary Sunday – Border Reivers: Anglo-Scottish Border Raids, 1513-1603 (GMT)

BACKGROUND: For two hundred years, war waged back and forth across the border between England and Scotland. From Stirling Bridge to Bannockburn, the battles are famous, as are the protagonists: William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, and Edward I, Hammer of the Scots. By 1482, the unfortunate town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, once the richest port town in Scotland, had changed hands thirteen times. By the time Henry VIII ascended the throne of England in 1509, the fifty-mile-wide stretch of rolling hills and stunning vistas that straddle the border had seen decades of hardship and atrocity.

Yet still the hardy families living on these frontier lands persevered. Unable to count on crops surviving until the harvest, they subsisted primarily on the livestock they could shepherd in the fields near their homesteads. When supplies ran low, raiding to steal what they needed from their neighbors was often the answer. Perhaps no Border story is more famous than the wife who served her husband his spurs on a plate: a clear sign that it was time for him to go raiding if he wanted to see his supper.

Raids were often carefully planned operations with several border families uniting to steal livestock from a common foe in the dead of night. Cattle and sheep were the likely targets, often with hundreds of these creatures being stolen in a single raid. The reiver’s goal was to herd their quarry to safety before the retaliatory “hot trod” pursuit could catch up and force an engagement.

To combat this constant hostility, England and Scotland established the system of March Law. Each nation divided its border lands into an East, Middle, and West March with each of these six territories administered by a Warden responsible for keeping the peace. The Wardens were drawn from the most powerful families on the Borders, clans of great renown that could put upwards of a thousand men in the saddle in times of need. The March Law would have succeeded too, but for the fact that these same great families were usually the ones best equipped and most inclined to raid their neighbors. And thus the cycle of looting, raiding, and feuding among these families would continue for another century, throughout the reigns of both Henry VIII and his daughter the Virgin Queen Elizabeth.

THE GAME: In Border Reivers, each player rules over one of the Marches as leader of one of the six major riding families of the border: Grey, Fenwick, Dacre, Maxwell, Kerr, or Hume. Your goal is to increase the wealth and fame of your clan throughout the reigns of Henry and Elizabeth to end the century as the most famous Border Reiver of all time. Players gain VPs from successful combats, amassing large herds of livestock, and by elevating their Notoriety above the other players in the regions of the map.

New soldiers Sanctuary get out hello all and welcome to another Sanctuary Sunday Sanctuary yes the day where I try to cover something other than war games but what do we see here this is from GMT isn’t this a war game well well not quite uh this is a game uh designed

By Ed Beach and you might know that name famous for here I stand which I have covered a little bit on and Wars of religion let’s see there’s the Virgin Queen right there yes these are two Hefty games best played multiplayer and when I say multiplayer I

Think these uh hold up to six players maybe um maybe more uh but those are games on the wars of reformation and they are a different take on uh on a on a war game or on the wars of Wars of religion in that they are you know

Asymmetrical and political and but yet there is conflict in there as well so a lot of stuff going on and what do we have here well we have angl Scottish border raids 1513 to 16003 and guess what this is a different perspective and a different take on that uh this isn’t

Your your straightup conflict game as much as it is a lot of other stuff going on and there’s actually kind of a economic component of this let’s take a look at the back of the box and see what we have here you get an example of the board you have

Cards which are going to play a big factor in this game uh let’s get in a little bit closer and see what the synopsis says by the time Henry VII ascended the Throne of England in 1509 the 50-m stretch of Rolling Hills and stunning Vistas that straddled the border between England and

Scotland had seen Decades of hardship and atrocity the inhabitants attempted to subsist by raising livestock but when the supplies ran low raing to steal cattle and sheep from their neighbors was the answer to combat this constant hostility England and Scotland each div Ed the border into an East Middle and

West march with these territories administered by a warden responsible for keeping the peace in border reavers each player rules over one of the March marches As Leaders of one of the six major RI uh riding families of the Border gray finwick D daer Maxwell Kerr

And Hume your goal is to end the century as the most famous border Reaver of all time players gain VPS from amassing large herds of livestock capturing enemy Raiders while acting as Warden and by elevating their notoriety above the other players across the map border reavers normally plays with four or six

Players though two and three player versions are also supported border reavers can also be played solitary using a dedicated solo component playing time for experienced player ranges from 2 hours for the solo and four and four player games up to 3 hours for a six player game so again Mr

Beach is at it again this is a multiplayer game as you can see here you go one two six players uh complexity is low or it’s at three and solitary suitability is at 9 because it does have a solo uh component in here which is uh one of the reasons I

Picked this up and I picked this up uh from the GMT end of year sale I don’t know if it’s the holiday sale the fall sale the end of year sale but uh in that sale uh they offered up you know 50% off and uh I end up

Picking this up for uh for 50% off because uh I think it’s a good value there’s a lot of content in this box which you get to see the bits there’s a lot of wooden bits in here uh but a lot of cards and counters and uh Mountain

Maps om my and so there’s quite a bit in here and I like uh Ed Beach’s different perspective on things I mean his his here I stand is in in my opinion but I’m not alone in this opinion is a masterpiece it’s one of the best

Multiplayer games uh of of its time and and still today and so uh I don’t know if this is going to live up to that because this is a different kind of game but that’s what I like like it’s a different kind of game but enough of all

That let’s get inside this box and see what we have in store for us right now there’s been some content on this I’ve been watching some of it um and so uh uh I I I I I I really don’t know fully how to play the game yet but I

Have been watching some of the playthroughs some of the content and uh and that’s eventually you know after seeing some of that and some of the unboxings I decided what the heck I need to pick this up because it looked interesting I said I like the solo

Aspect and I like you know there’s not a lot of well I don’t know of any games that’s covering Anglo Scottish border raids but more specifically there’s not a lot covering this kind of period and the battles or the disputes between uh England and Scotland during that time

Period so sorry about that that was my fingers not the box so nice thick sturdy GMT box got to love that and I got to move my here I stand and Virgin Queen out of the way otherwise I I’ll run out of board space here or table space so

Here are the rules this is the solo rule book so you have a solo rule book you have a multiplayer rule book you have a historical book God you got to love all that paper and I think we out of books so this is the solo

Rules which I will uh I’ll probably go through these first because uh I don’t know my son’s coming home for the holiday so I might try to get this break this out with him but um I’ll probably end up with the solo rules so we have uh

27 pages of rules but there’s the the back end is the key index looks like there is a playthrough here so there’s example of play that starts on page 22 so rules themselves look like 21 Pages for the solo rules and this is you know typical GMT dual column highlighted areas boxed important

Notes images throughout you can see some notes here as well highlighted areas but 21 pages but quite a bit of uh images and examples it looks like in here and then again there’s a full playthrough at the end so that is the solo rules yeah so that’s that’s the so let’s

Look at the multiplayer here the multiplayer rules we have the score sheet both of them have there’s a solo score sheet and then there’s your regular score sheet again this is again not your uh not an average war game there’s victory points to be had here uh

27 pages for the multiplayer rules and again there’s a playr in here as well example plays on page 21 imagine that same as last one and then uh there’s advaned rules on page 20 so about what 19 pages of rules for the multiplayer and again a lot of images

Some notes there’s some component notes there here’s setup sequence of play you got some Seasons here we got summer autumn and Winter I don’t know if I saw a fall there that’s Autumn right don’t know about spring here’s Spring right here and then end of game scoring on 19 and then there’s the advanced rules so that’s the rule books then you have a historical rule book this is uh 16 pages

With some pronunciation I God do I need that I butcher everything so there is the pronunciation guide so cool deur so I deur I already mispronounced that so there you go learning something new every day here’s the Border history timeline that’s kind of cool I like that kind of a sucker for

Timelines here’s the royal families wow this is cool you got the map gazetter so this is going to talk about some name places around there here’s the designer notes here’s some books to read oh my God got I got some homework cool so nice historical guide

There now we have some player AIDS here nice thick backing and paper here this is a tack Dice and then sequence of play so I imagine there might be six of these one two 3 4 five and six there we go there’s sequence of play so you got little player raids here

For up to six players cool then we have oh this is a thicker player this is a player board I would imagine solo sequence of play so uh guess you can’t play finwick if you’re playing solo unless they have it on all the backs so this is a the

Finwick board you got their hry there and some places for cards and sheep keeping track of your sheep and horses and hand size and the number of sheep you have is going to tell what your horse limit your hand size and your cattle income is so again there’s kind of an

Economic system to this game these are just uh single sided so I guess you can’t play finwick solo maybe maybe not oh here we go you got something this is a posing players draft sheet interesting so maybe there’s card drafting in this game too how Euro can you get there’s another

Solo sequence to play so I guess you can play finwick after all all right there’s Maxwell hum and then you got the solo play a huh so you can’t play uh well maybe you might not be able to play uh Hume then solo I don’t

Know I’ll figure it out here is the card decks so this looks possibly to be a table hog because there’s a lot of especially if you’re playing six players this is going to take pick up a lot of space cuz these are offboard uh player AIDS or actually need

To be uh offboard tracks here’s the victory track then we get to some counters and uh there only two counter sheets but we have pre- rounded cattle and uh inre increments of one and five so they’re kind of a currency there got these little tiny uh counters here tiny counters and these have

Some Farm region interesting what’s this on this front here okay different uh different locations there it looks like here’s some larger counters those look kind of cool right there those look like defenses or buildings or something castles some of them are castles we got some horses

There cool so not a lot of counters but some interesting ones here’s the mounted Maps we’ll save that or the mounted map we’ll save that for later oh cubes and dice a lot of dice some cards here quite a bit of cards let’s get the let’s get the uh

Let’s get the good bits out first so we’ve got a bag of cubes good size cubes different colors we’ve got uh sheep good bag of sheep I’ll do that before I go to bed H sorry bad um horses so cool you got some meeples there and you thought this was a war

Game all right so here are some little cards we got a deck of that we’ve got a deck of turn one turn two and turn three let’s look at the little cards first here and see what we have in these right here get these started don’t get me started here we

Go and these are good quality GMT cards so what do we got here we got traits and then you know you got the different uh different factions the different families okay so you get this let look at the traits first since those maybe go among can go to any one of them Renown

Ruthless graier tireless Royal appointee and Beyond reproach it’s cool okay we got then these are the different family I wonder if these are unique to them or if they’re just they all have Reaver and these same ones they might end up with all these H I don’t

Know that looks definitely oh these are events so we got some events hidden in there too so these are the family cards then you have these events here looks like they roll some dice Mary Queen of the Scots cool all right now let’s look look at these turn one cards

Here let’s let start all three of these so if any of you have played this as I said I’ve seen some content on it looks interesting I’ve even seen some solo content on it that’s what kind of sold me on it the fact that I could play

This uh solitire although it looks like looks like a little bit of setup I mean with all this sideboards and boards and bits and meatles and what have you there’s a lot to this game so which kind of is not my ideal source for a solo game if I have

To spend a lot of time setting up then um I I don’t really like that for solo games as much all right so these are all different things that come in in the first turn Okay so there’s turn one here’s turn two cards but it’s an a unique enough topic

And it’s interesting so I said I need to get this so these are IND different people that come into play depending upon the turn and I think we saw that in the historical book there was some talk about when some of these things come about so that gives you know gives you

Some of the historical Narrative of how this how this unfolds here we go this is turn three stuff all kinds of good stuff in there and I don’t know what the different colors mean but I’ll figure that out all right so we got all this stuff and now I

Got to figure out how to get the board out here because you want to see the board that’s what you came for you came for the board I would imagine it’s it’s a pair of pants setup here let’s see here it is yes it is little bit bigger board mounted fully mounted single

Sided oh so all the different player counts will we played on here but I think you might mark off some territories if you’re not playing with a full player count normally that’s what happens with games kind of like this all right of course there’s really nothing like this

Right um so there you have it um wow nice looking board um uh not laying flat but I don’t think it would take too much to get this to lay flat but you have here’s the Middle March here’s the uh West March uh the the English Middle March

English West March uh Scottish Scottish West March Scottish Middle March Scottish East march God I’m having a hard time I need my coffee with killroy and then the English East march there we go don’t say that fast here’s finwick down here you got some heraldry so you got

Some locations where some of the families I think will be sit you know starting off here’s Hume um interesting and then you know I think you can build up some defenses and there’s markers for that and then there’s also some castles that we saw in there as well so there is some combat

There’s some area control uh there’s going to be you know there’s going to be the the cattle the sheep and and the cattle will be encounters and there’s horses and all that stuff’s going to play into the game as well um um as I said there’s a little bit there there’s

A little bit of combat there’s a little bit of uh of um put the dice to try to Waite that down um economic uh imagine there might be even some political aspects abstracted in this as well so quite a bit going on here we got the turn cards up

Here I mean I’m just putting them out so you can get get a feel for what some of this stuff looks like turn two and then turn three anyway there’s quite a bit in this box that’s another reason why I decided to you know what I’m going to move this

Over here there’s that’s another reason why I decided to pick this up because it looked like a good you know pickup for the topic and the content there’s your cattle right there and there’s all these tracks what do I do with all these tracks that you have oh my goodness all the family

Boards gee many Christmas there’s a lot of stuff in here right here’s your player AIDS got to have player AIDS too then you got your books here historical book uh multiplayer book solo book and there you have it that is all the stuff that you get in box of Border reavers uh

From GMT and designed by Ed Beach uh there’s quite a bit here uh and uh but the rules look as we look through the different rule books they hit right around 20 to 21 pages so you know that’s not that’s not with a lot of imagery and

Notes so that’s not uh that’s not too bad that’s not uh an overly complex game I don’t know if I’d call it a three like they said but um definitely um definitely a meal this is definitely something that that takes a little bit

Of time to get into uh and and as I said the setup is a little bit of a downside for me but otherwise a lot of goodness in this box so anyway that’s what I have for you today on My Sanctuary Sunday hope you’re having a good Sunday if

You’re watching this on a Sunday if you’re watching on another day I hope you’re having a good day there too love to know your thoughts on this though drop them down below and let me know thanks all Thanks for watching