Heptarchy and Bretwalda
Twin Variants Based on Ancient Britain

Geoff Bache

Heptarchy

Introduction

(For a build-up of how Heptarchy works, see the article I wrote for the Fall 1996 Movement issue of the Diplomatic Pouch.)

Heptarchy was first played in June 1996, and has been extensively play-tested in the intervening period since then. The background is (roughly) 7th century Britain, but it was mainly intended to be a British variant familiar to those familiar with the British Isles. For this reason, modern town names were used, and the historical political geography only adhered to vaguely as a basis for the game.

The variant is now on the USTR judge , (which is currently running 2 games of it), and there have also been 5 off-judge internet games being run by various people. In December a variant home page was set up, and this has been used to monitor the progress of all these games.

• Anglia (yellow) has suffered from having only 2 neighbours, meaning a solid Cornubia/Mercia alliance has tended to wipe it out. In the games where this hasn't happened, Anglia seems to have been very strong, Doug Alderman in the game Influx being the best of the internet games...
• Cornubia (purple) has, perhaps surprisingly, the best record of all the powers, with one outright win by me in a face-to-face game, and another one looking likely by Danny Mansergh in Hep1 . Notoriously hard to eliminate, and tends to do very well over Anglia's dead body. With the whole of the south coast under wraps, it becomes very hard to stop.
• Ireland (green) has a varied record: very few eliminations, but can be left isolated and cut off from the mainland if it doesn't get somewhere early on. Most successful by attacking Scotland at the start, and building lots of fleets, Chetan Radia has scored an outright win in a face to face game, and is off to a flying start in Wimbledon.
• Mercia (blue) traditionally does well early on, but with such a large border is extremely hard to defend in the middle game against any of its neighbours being strong. Nobody has yet managed a really good game as Mercia, and the casualties are high. Good diplomacy is a must, although the weakness of Mercia is much documented in the comments page, and has led to the interactive development of the later versions...
• Northumbria (brown) has been known to do well over Scotland's dead body, but without the Irish help against Scotland, is quite hard to do very much. I recently managed a win as Northumbria in the game Hep2 , but it's generally reckoned to be a weaker power...
• Scotland (grey) suffers a lot from early Ireland/Northumbria alliances, in a similar way to Anglia, except that it's even harder for anyone else to come to the rescue. If left alone, it does very well, and for this reason tends to become a target. There have been numerous similarly good performances, although a particular one from Dave Lambert in a face-to-face game sticks out...
• Wales (pink) is yet to win, and yet to be eliminated. The impassable area makes it easy to defend, and by sitting on the fence and expanding in all directions, it seems to do very well. No one performance stands out above the rest, but it seems to consistently finish on a high-ish number of units.

The suggestions made

The lack of Northumbrian options was the first point picked out about the board - Scotland is a very obvious target and intervening in the south tends to give the spoils to others. In answer to this, Heptarchy II was set up, basically moving a Northumbrian centre inland to York from Hull, leaving the Northumbrians with more options, and better chances in the south.

But Northumbria still has no way of building fleets on the west coast of Britain, and Mercia's weakness is if anything accentuated by the strengthening of Northumbria. Heptarchy III attempts to redress both these issues, moving a Northumbrian home centre to Lancaster on the West Coast, and adding a neutral in for Mercia to compensate for this. A game has been set up using this board, Beowulf, with some slightly wild rule changes introduced as well for this game (see later...)

The more fundamental problems, however, were pointed out in some detail by Gary Duke: powers having only 2 neighbours can be a real problem, and particularly in the case of Scotland, where Ireland and Northumbria can often have an early kill. Anglia in the south is also a common casualty. Of course, good diplomacy and tactics can mean these countries last long enough to be able to get back, and persuade non-neighbours to be the enemy of their enemy. But it's often reckoned good practice to have at least 3 options for every country.

Then there's the historians. After a while, you get sick of people saying that Birmingham really didn't exist in A.D. 650. I became determined that reading some history books and providing an accurate dark ages variant was a thing worth doing - while the modern placenames seemed to be good in terms of familiarity, they get unsatisfying if you know anything about history...

These last 2 points clearly required a new variant. Enter Bretwalda...

Bretwalda

Introduction

Bretwalda is a very new variant which may not even be finalised at the time of going to press! It is the result of lots of historical research, although I've still used some poetic licence in places where this has failed. It is also attempting to be introduce more adjacency, and to be more balanced.

The rules

I've decided to introduce some different rules in this game, for more flexibility. Basically, there is a third type of unit (U), which represents a fighting force with a collection of boats. These are constructed by ordering a coastal army to "build boats" at the start. This enables powers without a home centre on the opposite side of the country to still get across the seas there. A U, on landing, can simply move inland, by virtue of which it becomes an army again.

This concept has been used before, but I propose to modify it by having normal fleets as well. The large sea areas round the edge of the board are out of bounds to a U, but may be used by fleets to get around very quickly. Each power has at least 1 "port": these are the only places fleets can be built. A fleet can convoy as normal, a U cannot.

The game starts in Winter 620/1, with a set of builds for everyone, as they see fit...

The Bretwalda Map (may be updated in place - at time of writing a few territories need naming...)

The nine powers

• East Anglia (yellow), based in Norwich, Cambridge and Ipswich (port)
• Gwynedd (red) - Caernarfon (port), Aberystwyth and Denbigh
• Kernow (lilac) - Scillonia (port), Tintagel and Exeter
• Leinster (green) - Tara, Cashel and Wexford (port).
• Mercia (blue) - Tamworth, Warwick, Shrewsbury and Gloucester (port)
• Northumbria (brown) - York, Lancaster and Bamburgh (port)
• Pictland (dark purple) - Inverness, Burghead (port) and Abernethy (port)
• Scotland (grey) - Dunadd, Iona (port), Bangor, Tirconnel
• Wessex (dark green) - Faringdon, Winchester, Portchester (port)

So the Picts get 2 ports, to compensate for their remoteness. It is hoped this will encourage interaction further south for the Pictish player.

Bretwalda has never been played before, and I'd very much like to try it out, obviously! It seems Heptarchy has been a relative success, although not totally balanced, there's no hopeless power and no over-strong power. I hope Bretwalda can do as well.

I'll thus open a waiting list for people willing to play test it! If you're reading this, and have some spare time to play, I'd love to hear from you.

Geoff Bache (geoff@willa.demon.co.uk)

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