Britannia: Strive to Become King of England in This Battle Game for Control of Britain [BOX SET]

by Avalon Hill

Product Details

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• ASIN: B001AKHFJS
• Item model number: 873
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #676,470 in Toys & Games (See Top 100 in Toys & Games)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Product Description

CONTENTS: ? 256 Die-Cut Counters ? 22"x24" Mapboard ? Rules Booklet and Historical Notes ? 17 Victory Point Cards ~ "Britannia is The Avalon Hill Game Company's new multiplayer game about the 1000 year history of the birth of Britain. Play begins with the Roman invasion of 43 AD, and ends with the last great invasions by the Norwegians and Normans in 1066. Each of the sixteen game turns represents about 85 years. Each player controls several nations, not all of which are in play at the same time. While a nation exists, you must attempt to score as many victory points for it as possible. Points are scored for controlling areas in Britain, eliminating the armies of other nations, for killing enemy kings, and for having the leader of your nation proclaimed King of England. The player who has scored the most victory points for all of his nations is the winner..."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good game, March 18, 2011

By 

M. Fonseca "carmarthen" (Thunder) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Britannia: Strive to Become King of England in This Battle Game for Control of Britain [BOX SET] (Toy)

This classic AVALON HILL game, in truth, is still in print, because Fantasy Flight Game has republished it, of course with new cover, new design, better rule book, etc, but all of this approved the author of the game himself, who explains the little differences between Avalon Hill's version and Fantasy Flight version. They are very few.

BRITANNIA is, indeed, a difficult game to play. But that does not mean the experience will not be a pleasant one.

The dificulty arises from the fact that there are a lot of exceptions and foot notes to the rules of the game. These exceptions were clearley designed to portray history in a more accurate way and add to the flavour of the game. It works, but as a collateral effect I'd say it's almost impossible to play BRITTANIA, at least the first two or three times, without making totally inadvertent rules errors while playing.

The game was really designed with four players in mind, with three or five player it gets clearly unbalanced.Maybe it was pressure form the publisher to try to sell to a broader audience, I don't know. Anyway, this ia a personal opinion, maybe people playing with other number thatn four players will find it efficient also.

It's indeed a time consuming game. Rarely it ends before fours hours playing.

The game components are totally adequate, nothing fancy, but fundamentally operational. Game board very beautiful. Rule book is well designed and with good examples.

This is a war game through and through, but with clever and fast combat resolution mechanics (based in D6 dice) and without thousands of complicated playing pieces that keep stacking upon each other in a hexagonal board. Of course, since there are dice involved, luck plays a big part, and a whole carefully planned strategy may be destroyed by a sequence of two or three bad luck dice rolling. But you can easily regain it by good dice rolling when defending... What I say is: with a lot of battles solely resolved by dice rolling, no matter how good a strategist or historian you are, luck is a strong factor in BRITANNIA.

In general, it's no wonder it's one of the few out of print Avalon Hill games that managed to get new life with another publisher. It's exciting, gorgeous to look at and informative.