Game Overview: Brian Boru, or the High King of Area Majority Awesomeness

Brian Boru: High King of Ireland, is a new release from designer Peer Sylvester (The King is Dead, The Lost Expedition) and Osprey Games, which features a unique and interesting blend of mechanisms: area majority, card drafting, and trick-taking.

In Brian Boru, 3-5 players compete to become the High King of all Ireland by fending off Viking invaders, forming political alliances through marriage, building monasteries to increase influence, and gathering support in towns and villages throughout the land. Through trick-taking, players perform actions and strive to outsmart and outmaneuver their opponents in the spirit of the High King of Ireland, Brian Boru.

The game board for Brian Boru has a beautiful, vintage vibe and features a map of Ireland divided into eight different regions with multiple colored spaces representing towns that players are striving to populate and spread their influence. In the center of each region, there’s a threshold number to indicate how many towns most be populated before the town is available for scoring victory points. There are also designated areas surrounding the map for the marriage track, battle area, church area, and claim tokens, which are all key to the gameplay and laid out in a logical order which is appreciated.

Also core to the game are twenty-five large action cards of four different suits: battle (red), church (blue), courtship (yellow) and royal/wild cards (white). Each card has a unique number, unlike most common trick-takers where each suit has the same breakdown of values on all of the cards.

Kudos to Irish artist and illustrator Deirdre de Barra for her lovely illustrations which make Brian Boru a real pleasure to look at, both on the table and on the shelf.

Brian Boru is played over a series of rounds depending on player count. In 4 or 5-player games, you play four rounds, whereas in a 3-player game, you only play three rounds. Each round is divided into four phases: preparation, draft, action, and upkeep.

In the preparation phase, you reveal a new card from the Viking deck and place the corresponding number of Viking raider tokens in the battle area of the game board. The Viking deck has cards with invasion strengths ranging from nine to thirteen, which represents the number of tokens you place in the battle area for the round.

After you’ve placed the Viking raider tokens, you reveal the top card of the marriage deck and place it at the top of the marriage track. The "Princess of Denmark" is always the final (and juiciest) marriage card, so during setup you shuffle the other marriage cards and place a number of them face-down on the "Princess of Denmark" card so that there’s one per round and the "Princess of Denmark" card is at the bottom.

In the draft phase, you shuffle all the (25) action cards and deal each player a certain number of cards, again, depending on player count. Then players draft their hand of cards, keeping two, passing the rest of the cards left, and repeating until they have the same number of cards they were originally dealt.

When playing Brian Boru for the first time, it’s not obvious how to strategically draft for the game, but the action cards are designed such that you’ll still have decent options, regardless of which cards you end up with. Before you start drafting cards on round one, I think it’s important to mention to new players that the action phase has trick-taking elements to it, but it's not a game where winning more tricks is the key to winning the game. Thus, it’s usually better to have a variety of card options (colors and values) and not necessarily just go for the highest value cards you can get.

In future rounds and future games, when you grasp how the game can play out, it becomes way more obvious how important the draft phase is. Also, the more experience you have playing Brian Boru, the harder and more thinky the draft phase becomes. After you’ve drafted your hand of cards, it’s time for the main event – the action phase.

In the action phase of Brian Boru, players resolve a series of tricks using the action cards they drafted in the draft phase. The tricks are always led by the player who currently has the active town marker. At the start of each trick, the player with the active town marker places it on any town that doesn’t already have a disc on it, distinguishing it as the active town. Then that player plays a card from their hand that either matches the color of the active town or is a royal (wild) card. In clockwise order, each other player plays any card they’d like from their hand, regardless of the color or value. Even though you can follow with any card you’d like, there are definitely reasons to play or not play certain cards at certain times.

The player who played the card with highest value matching the color of the active town (including royal/wild cards) is the winner of the trick, and all other players lose the trick. Regardless of who won the trick, each player then resolves the action card they played, one at a time, starting with the player who played the card with the lowest value, and continuing in ascending order based on the card values played.

The action cards are laid out such that there is a primary action at the top of the card, and secondary actions on the bottom of the card. The players who lost the trick choose and perform one of the secondary actions, whereas the player who won the trick performs the card’s primary action which always, at a minimum, involves taking control of the active town.

Action card examples

Each primary and secondary action shows one or more icons which players resolve from left to right. Every action card has a secondary ability which allows players to gain money and then optionally spend five coins to expand into a new town that is directly connected by a road to a town they already control. This can be expensive, but it’s a great way to get more of your influence discs out if you’re unable to or choose not to win tricks.

Each of the main (non-wild) action cards also give players options to make progress in their respective areas of the game board:
---• The courtship cards (yellow) help you arrange political marriages by allowing you to advance on the marriage track.
---• The battle cards (red) are used to fight Vikings by allowing you to take Viking raider tokens from the battle area.
---• The church cards (blue) are used to gain favor with the church by placing your discs in the church area.

Marriage track

A key thing to note about the marriage track is that no two discs can end their action on the same space. So if all players are at the bottom of the marriage track, and in the same trick, two players play courtship cards that allow them to move three spaces up the marriage track, whoever has the lower numbered card is going to perform their action first. If they end up taking a secondary action because they lost the trick, and they choose the marriage track action, they’re going to occupy space three on the marriage track. Then later in the trick, the other player goes, and they get stuck a space behind since the third space is already occupied. The timing of when you play which particular action card is extremely important in Brian Boru, but it also leads me to explaining another option available that keeps things interesting.

For each of these specialized action areas (marriage track, battle area, and church area), the amount of action icons dictates how many times you can do something for by default, but you can always spend any number of coins to do more of that particular action (two coins per addition). In the example I mentioned above, if the player who played second had a few coins to spare, they could spend two coins to go up four spaces, instead of three, and be ahead of the player who's occupying space three.

Similarly, when taking Viking Raider tokens, you can spend money to take more, and when placing your discs in the church area, you can also spend money to place more. When I explain the upkeep phase, it’ll be more obvious when and why you might want to pony up a few extra bucks to boost your action, in addition to when and why you might want to play this card or that card.

A tempting trick w/ active town marker in 6-VP Northern Uí Néill

The winner of the trick gets to place one of their discs on the active town which is great, because after all, Brian Boru is an area majority game rewarding players with scrumptious victory points for regions they have the most influence in. Another perk of winning the trick is that you get to choose the next location to place the active town marker. Even when it's an easy decision, it feels like a tough decision. You could be thinking about the implications of winning or losing the upcoming trick and control of the corresponding active town. You could be trying to avoid playing a certain colored card even though you want to place the active town marker in that particular color town space. You could be trying to purposely bait your opponents to fight over a desirable area, while you pull some other shenanigans that they lose sight of. You could be thinking all of these things and more when looking at your hand of cards and deciding which region and which town to place the active town marker in. There are so many tough and interesting decisions that stem from placing the active town marker based on the state of the board and the cards in your hand.

Regardless of whether you win the trick or lose and choose to gain money, spend money to expand your influence, or compete at church, on the marriage track, or fighting Vikings, the point is, you will simply be play a card and take an action for each trick. Each action is easy to learn thanks to excellent iconography and straightforward rules behind it.

After a player performs a card action, they discard the card face-down into a common discard pile and the next player with lowest-value card takes an action. Once all players have taken an action, the trick is over. At that point, if players only have one card in hand, then that card is discarded and that is the end of the round. Otherwise, the player who has the active town marker starts a new trick.

At the end of each round, there is an upkeep phase where you work your way around the game board resolving four steps in order: marriage, battle, church, and claim regions.

The player who is highest on the marriage track, takes the marriage card and immediately gains the benefits shown, usually victory points and control of a town in a particular region. Then their disc is moved all the way back to the first space of the track. Then each player gains the benefit shown on the space of the marriage track that their disc is on. This means they are already ahead of the game for winning the marriage card on the next round (assuming it’s not the last round already). The higher you are on the marriage track, the better the reward and the closer you are to winning the marriage card the next round.

Just look at the way Aodhán feeds his horse an apple...who wouldn't want to marry into his family??

Next, you resolve the battle step.If there are no Viking raider tokens in the battle area, the players managed to repel the Vikings. However, if there is at least one Viking raider token, the player(s) with the fewest Viking raider tokens loses a town to the Vikings. What’s worse is the player with the most Viking tokens gets to decide which town is lost. If multiple players are tied for most tokens, then the impacted player(s) choose.

Then the player with the most Viking raider tokens gains a renown token and scores one point for each of their renown tokens and returns all of their Viking raider tokens to the supply. Next, the player or players who now have the most Viking raider tokens each gain one point and return one Viking raider token to the supply. As you can see, this works similar to the marriage track, where the person who does the best, resets back to zero, and other players can gain a benefit and carry over their progress to the next round.

Viking raider and renown tokens FTW

One rookie mistake that we made in most of our first game was almost always taking all of the Viking raider tokens instead of leaving some to let certain players sweat a bit at the risk of losing a town. Once we were a few rounds in, it totally clicked and we all played much differently with that in mind.

Winning the battle step multiple times and gaining a renown token then scoring them all is so juicy, especially in a game where a winning score can often be thirty to forty points. Brian Boru definitely has that element where you want to do many things offensively that conflict with what you may need to do defensively, so you have to make tough choices and sacrifices often.

In the church step of the upkeep phase, you are competing to have the most discs in the church area. If there is a clear majority, the player with the most discs places a monastery which are awesome, takes the active town marker, and retrieve all of their discs. Then the player with the most discs (including ties) gains one point and retrieves one disc. Finally, any players with four or more discs in the church area place a monastery and retrieve all their discs.

Monasteries, besides being cool blue doughnuts around your towns on the map, count as two towns for the purposes of flipping claim tokens and claiming regions. In the example pictured on the left, the orange and green players are tied in Leinster with three towns each since the orange players monastery counts as two towns. Depending on the timing of when the discs and monastery were placed, both players could be preventing each other from controlling those six points.

There are so many benefits to going hard on the marriage track or when fighting the Vikings or in the church scene, but you really can't do it all. Well, you can, but it's incredibly hard to do it all well so you really have to choose your battles. Meanwhile, you can't ignore the area majority scoring.

The final step of the upkeep phase is the claim regions step. This is when players claim regions where they have the most towns. For every face-down claim token on the board, you count how many towns are controlled in the corresponding region, including Viking-controlled towns and monasteries. If the number equals or exceeds the region's threshold number, then you flip the claim token face up. Otherwise, it stays face down.

Claim tokens for each region at the start of the game...desperately waiting to be claimed

For every face-up claim token, check who controls the most towns in the corresponding region. The player with the most towns in the region takes the claim token and places it in front of them. If multiple players are tied for the most towns in a region, the token stays where it is. This means, you must beat another player and take the claim token from them. Ties do not change claim token ownership. Speaking from experience, this is one of those rules that is very important to make sure all players understand before you get deep into a game of Brian Boru.

If there are no marriage cards left at the end of the upkeep phase, the game ends and final scoring occurs. The player with the most most money scores one point, and the player with the active town marker also scores one point. Then all players score one point for each of their renown tokens and all of their face-up claim tokens. For every face-up claim token still on the board, players tied for the most towns in that region score half the number of points (rounded down). Lastly, players score zero to ten points for having their towns in different regions. The more regions you have presence in, the more points you score. The player with the most points winner of the game.

Round 3 of Game 1

At this point, I’ve played Brian Boru three times, once at each player count, and I think it scales really well. I had just as much fun and tension playing with three players as I did with four and five. At the lowest player count, you play less rounds, but you play more tricks per round than you do at higher player counts, so the map fills up similarly. In all cases, there were new players and the game lasted about 1.5-2 hours, but it never outstayed its welcome.

Being a fan of Peer Sylvester’s The King is Dead and Polynesia, I went in expecting to like Brian Boru. Then as I read the rulebook, it quickly became one of those games I was really excited to play, and then even more excited the deeper I got into my first game.

The more games I play, the more I realize how much I love games that have simple rules with a lot of depth and interesting decisions from start to finish. Brian Boru nails this for me. The player interaction is fun, and I expect the tension and thinkiness of it to grow exponentially as you gain more experience and play with more experienced players.

The options you’re presented with from drafting and playing various types of cards is super interesting. It really flips the idea of trick-taking on its head because you want to have options in your hand to lose tricks just as often as you may want to win them, so you have to draft wisely to create flexibility so you can adapt your strategy based on what your opponents are or aren’t doing.

Another interesting aspect to the actions cards is that the lower the card value, the better the primary action is for you if you win a trick with it. If you're lucky, you can hold on to a lower-value card and hopefully get the opportunity to lead a trick late in the round when players all only have a couple cards left in hand. Your odds of winning with a lower number at that point are much higher. When you win with a low number you get some extra perks, whereas when you win with a higher-value card, you often have to pay money. Similarly, the secondary actions are also usually better with the lower-value cards, but the tradeoff is that you'll likely have to take your action before your opponents, giving them time to respond to whichever action you took.

I also really dug how the marriage track, battle area, and church area tied into everything. There are many cool things you can do and there are many advantages to being ahead in each of those areas, while also trying to stay competitive with area majority scoring too. It's a real tug of war at times, but again, I think it comes down to drafting cards wisely and adapting your strategy around your opponents. This is not a game where you can just sit back and do the same thing with the same cards each game. You have to constantly stay on your toes and do what makes sense based on your opponents' actions and reactions.

I definitely recommend giving Brian Boru: High King of Ireland a whirl if you are a fan of The King is Dead or if you dig area-majority games with multiple ways to win besides having the most influence in the most areas. I'm looking forward to playing Brian Boru more and I'll be on the lookout to try whatever Peer Sylvester puts out next!