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Scottish Border Reivers Board Game is Up for GMT P500 Preorder

Border Reivers P500 (GMT Games)An interesting looking new game tackling Scotland during the 14th and 15th centuries is available for P500 preorder at GMT Games. Designed by Ed Beach, Border Reivers places up to six players in the roles of March Wardens as each attempts to raid and plunder their neighbors while trying to also keep the King’s peace. The game is for two to six players (best with four or six), ages 14+, plays in about two to three hours, and currently carries P500 pricing of $59.00; expected retail MSRP will be $89.00.

From GMT:

For two hundred years, war waged back and forth across the border between England and Scotland. From Stirling Bridge to Bannockburn, the battles are famous, as are the protagonists: William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, and Edward I, Hammer of the Scots. By 1482, the unfortunate town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, once the richest port town in Scotland, had changed hands thirteen times. By the time Henry VIII ascended the throne of England in 1509, the fifty-mile-wide stretch of rolling hills and stunning vistas that straddle the border had seen decades of hardship and atrocity.

Yet still the hardy families living on these frontier lands persevered. Unable to count on crops surviving until the harvest, they subsisted primarily on the livestock they could shepherd in the fields near their homesteads. When supplies ran low, raiding to steal what they needed from their neighbors was often the answer. Perhaps no Border story is more famous than the wife who served her husband his spurs on a plate: a clear sign that it was time for him to go raiding if he wanted to see his supper.

Raids were often carefully planned operations with several border families uniting to steal livestock from a common foe in Border Reivers Prototype (GMT Games)the dead of night. Cattle and sheep were the likely targets, often with hundreds of these creatures being stolen in a single raid. The reiver’s goal was to herd their quarry to safety before the retaliatory “hot trod” pursuit could catch up and force an engagement.

To combat this constant hostility, England and Scotland established the system of March Law. Each nation divided its border lands into an East, Middle, and West March with each of these six territories administered by a Warden responsible for keeping the peace. The Wardens were drawn from the most powerful families on the Borders, clans of great renown that could put upwards of a thousand men in the saddle in times of need. The March Law would have succeeded too, but for the fact that these same great families were usually the ones best equipped and most inclined to raid their neighbors. And thus the cycle of looting, raiding, and feuding among these families would continue for another century, throughout the reigns of both Henry VIII and his daughter the Virgin Queen Elizabeth.

In Border Reivers, each player rules over one of the Marches as leader of one of the six major riding families of the border: Grey, Fenwick, Dacre, Maxwell, Kerr, or Hume. Your goal is to increase the wealth and fame of your clan throughout the reigns of Henry and Elizabeth to end the century as the most famous Border Reiver of all time. Players gain VPs from successful combats, amassing large herds of livestock, and by elevating their Notoriety above the other players in the regions of the map.

Jeff McAleer

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