Love of Picts

[Imperial Dave]

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/lifestyle/6301140/aberdeen-university-gordon-noble-digging-for-britain/

Not a bad vocation..

[Nick Harbud]

Fascinating.  Reading this article, I have just realised that the game design (or at least, the initial set-up) for the boardgame Britannia is wrong.  At the start of the game's Claudian major invasion, the Picts occupy most of present day Scotland with the exception of Strathclyde (Brigante kingdom), Orkney and Shetland (held by the Caledonians). Mons Graupius is invariably fought against the Picti rather the Caledones.

The obvious solution would be for the Caledonians and Picts to swap places, or even have the Picts appearing around game turn 3, but I have no idea how this would be implemented in practice, or what it would do to the game balance.

Anybody have any thoughts on this little conundrum?

[Imperial Dave]

I will have to get my Britannia set down from the attic to address this!

[Andreas Johansson]

Fascinating.  Reading this article, I have just realised that the game design (or at least, the initial set-up) for the boardgame Britannia is wrong.  At the start of the game's Claudian major invasion, the Picts occupy most of present day Scotland with the exception of Strathclyde (Brigante kingdom), Orkney and Shetland (held by the Caledonians). Mons Graupius is invariably fought against the Picti rather the Caledones.

The obvious solution would be for the Caledonians and Picts to swap places, or even have the Picts appearing around game turn 3, but I have no idea how this would be implemented in practice, or what it would do to the game balance.

Anybody have any thoughts on this little conundrum?

I vaguely recall the designer musing about a change along those lines to be incorporated in a possible 3rd edition of the game.

(Four versions of the games has been published already, but the Gibson and Avalon Hill versions are virtually identical rules-wise, as are the Fantasy Flight and Plastic Soldier ones, so a future version with significant rules changes could sensibly considered a third edition.)

[Imperial Dave]

I have the first edition

[DBS]

I have often wondered - we will never be able to tell for sure - whether either Agricola's, or Severus', genocidal campaigns contributed to the emergence of the Picts, whether one views them as spreading themselves from a small enclave or ethnogenesis from existing peoples in the area.

[Imperial Dave]

It will have obviously had an effect on their development but to what extent I am unsure like you

[Jim Webster]

It is inevitable that people will drift into abandoned areas that are worth having

[Imperial Dave]

or even marginal areas

[Jim Webster]

Yes you see a flow of people in and out of marginal areas depending on climate, taxation, and relatively hostility of the neighbours

[Imperial Dave]

Marginal land could be by definition...have this its not worth it for us

[Jim Webster]

Marginal land could be by definition...have this its not worth it for us

You see it in the Roman Empire, land fell in and out of cultivation because of tax levels etc.
In North Cumbria you see land move between pastoral and arable depending on how the climate changed and changed back
Then you get borders where the area was kept 'empty'

[Imperial Dave]

I wonder if some of it was 'kept' as buffer land or no-mans land also for a period of time

[Jim Webster]

It's probably easy enough to do, just have troops ride through it every summer, burning buildings, driving off livestock and enslaving anybody you catch.

[Imperial Dave]

pretty standard stuff then