Description

Introduction

You are the Bretwalda, rulers of Anglo Saxon England. It is 400AD and Britain is on the brink of a power vacuum as Rome looks to leave these shores and defend her empire closer to home. Foreign invaders, like the Picts, Scots, Vikings and Saxons, will take advantage and claim this land for their own. Romano-British rule is coming to and end and we are at the dawn of the Anglo-Saxon era. You must defend the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy from these foreign invaders and quash the rebellious Britons. But history is written and there is an ever looming threat. In 1066, William Duke of Normandy became king of all England and ended the Anglo-Saxon era once and for all. Can you make this land your own before the Norman invasion?

Seofan, the Anglo-Saxons board game, is a game for 1 to 4 players. You progress through the game from 400AD to 1066AD. Your Bretwalda will travel the seven kingdoms of England along roads like the great Fosse Way, Ermine Street and Watling Street, seeking to control towns by building forts (to exercise your military might), monasteries (to convert the pagan settlers), mints (a source of wealth), and burhs (Anglo-Saxon settlements of power). You will use warriors, missionaries, farmers and traders to settle and defend the kingdoms, and resource cards to fund your settlement, your armies, your church and your economy. Each turn your Bretwalda can take actions to travel the seven kingdoms, to enact great battles, to convert pagan settlers, to trade, and to build your realm.

Game events will be throwing unexpected surprises at you as you proceed through each decade, like the legend of Arthur, the writings of the Venerable Bede, the Viking invasions, the revolutionary laws of Aethelberht, Offa and Ine, or the glorious coronation of King Alfred the Great. These events may be your saviour, or they may signal your downfall. All the while, rebellious uprisings can cause the level of civil unrest to rise. Can you conquer and control the seven kingdoms before the level of civil unrest explodes, and rewrite history by building a permanent Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman invasion of 1066?

Overview of Gameplay

The game can be played solo or co-operatively, with 1 to 4 players.

The game board shows a map of the seven kingdoms of England (Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Sussex, Kent and Wessex), and the towns of those kingdoms in which you will settle, battle, trade and rule. These towns are linked by roads along which the players (and invaders!) can travel.

Each game turn is broken into distinct phases. In the Draw phase you draw resource cards from a resource deck into your hand. In the Actions phase each player has 4 actions which they can use in a variety of ways: they can spend resource cards to place red, green, yellow and blue blocks (representing warriors, farmers, missionaries and traders) across the towns of the seven kingdoms; they can build mints, forts, monasteries and burhs; they can travel the map from town to town, repelling invaders and rebels (represented by black blocks); they can trade or crusade or appease local unrest, and progress through the game by adding a decade to the game calendar. During the Conflict phase you resolve battles between your warriors and the pagans. During the Rebellion phase you draw cards from a rebellion deck, which determines in which towns the locals are rebelling against your rule (and more black blocks appear). Finally, in the Progress phase, you can advance the game time through the seven eras from 400AD to 1066AD, and an event card is drawn to re-enact real events from history on the game board. You can choose to progress more slowly, giving you more time to build and settle and defend the realm, but when you do the level of civil unrest will rise too. As you progress through the game you progress through time, and real events from history will throw up surprises - some good (like a great coronation feast), and some bad (like a mutinous group of mercenaries).

To win the game you must control all seven kingdoms. To control a kingdom you must repel, defeat, convert or settle all black blocks in the kingdom and build one of each type of special building (fort, monastery, mint, and burh). This allows you to place a celtic cross in the kingdom and cement your rule. The special buildings can only be built by settling your warriors, missionaries, farmers and traders in the towns on the game board. You must do all this before the level of civil unrest rises (through out of control rebellions and invasions) and before the Norman invasion of 1066.