State of Play: Breizh 1341

 

 

 

This was our first outing with Breizh 1341 (Shakos, 2022).  I’d read some good things about Breizh, but I didn’t know what to expect. We have been leaning into shorter games of late, and this certainly fit the bill.

(Contextual note: we played Breizh for the first time the same day I put up the unboxing post. I was keen to try it out, and ran through the rulebook just the once before setting up (I refer you to the last section of the AAR).)

Partial starting set-up; the players each start with a Castle, The French player begins the
game with two Partisans, one each in Trégor and Saint-Brieuc, while the English player
 (as the aggressor) starts with one Partisan and two Troops in his home province of
Nantes (not pictured here, but the partisans are the little cylinder pieces and the
Troops the cubes; these will be familiar to anyone who has played a game from
Shakos' Conquerors series).

The box is small, about 9” by 7” and about 2” deep. It needs to be that deep to accommodate all the cards and wooden components and the little four panel A3-sized mounted map. I don’t want to dwell too much on the components – you can have a look at my unboxing post for that – But I have to reiterate just how gorgeous the whole package is. The map is rendered in muted tones that make the bright red and royal blue pieces pop. The cardboard markers for castle and area control are also quite nice, and a good size for manipulating during play. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As is our tradition of long standing, T played the French and I took the English. Breizh runs on its cards. There are three decks of Event cards, two decks of Character cards, one each for the two sides, and one small deck of Special Event cards. Each deck has its place and purpose, which we’ll unravel as I describe the game.

Breizh 1341 is based on the War of Breton Succession, a local conflict that knotted a few threads in the greater tapestry of the Hundred Years’ War. To win the game you must gain control of eight areas that comprise the Breton peninsula (which could lead to a sudden death victory before the natural end of the game), or to control of a majority of the areas by the end of the game.

A real-estate boom at the end of turn two, with waterfront properties proving popular.
If you have the troops available, you can conduct sieges at multiple locations with a
single Besiege action. It's not enough to hold the Castles, you also have to have
a Partisan present to exert control over the area. But Castles are cool.

On the face of it, Breizh can seem a little fussy, but it is an elegantly simple game with a surfeit of moving parts. The game is played over six turns, and this is where the genius of the design is revealed; The first and last turns require five cards plays, while the second through fifth end after just three cards per side. There are reasons for this, and along the top and bottom edges of the board are helpful reminders of the card limits, with five card-places marked, the first three in a slightly darker tone.

As mentioned, the Event cards are divided into three decks, appropriately referred to as the First, Second and Third Epoch decks. Then there is the Special Event deck. The first and last turns require the players to play five cards; turns two through five are tighter turns, allowing the play only three cards each. The Event cards can be played either for their event (if the card’s colour corresponds to you team) or for an action – Recruit (place Troops on the board), Rally (place a Partisan), Fight (remove some your opponent’s Troops) or Besiege (use your troops to try to take a Castle).

At the beginning of each turn, starting with the first, each player draws a Character card from their deck (each of these represents a significant individual from the time of the war). These aren’t used as action cards like the Event cards; instead these offer support for one or two actions. They can only be used once, but unused Character cards can be carried over from turn to turn.

One play in to turn two, and too many cards (see Mistakes were made below). We
rectified this after this round. Not the two ermine symbols on the top-left corner of
the left-most card, signifying it as a Second Epoch event. The second card from
the left is a Character card, while the black background card already played is
a Special Event card, The Truce of Bordeaux.

The first turn represents the preparation period of the war, when both sides sought a victory in the courts so as to not have to resort to war, the whole time shoring up support among the old families of Brittany and further afield. The number of cards you receive in each subsequent turn is informed by the number of areas you control at the end of the current turn, so establishing a real estate portfolio is the key requirement.

In the first turn, each player draws a Character card, then the First Epoch events are dealt to the player in the deck’s entirety. Montfort (English) has the initiative in turn 1 and go first. At the end of the turn, the remaining First Epoch Event cards are collected and shuffled into the Second Epoch deck to make up the deck for the next four turns. At the end of each turn, any unused Event cards are collected and huffled back into the deck, ready for the next draw. The number of Event cards drawn is in subsequent turns is one plus a number equivalent to the number of areas under your control, plus a Special Event card (there are only eight of these, so they will all come out through the course of the game). Both players will have at least enough cards to play a middle turns; if you only have two Event cards in your hand at the beginning of the turn, you may have already lost the game.

The French player, having ejected the English Partisan from Léon, lays siege to
St-Pol-de-Léon, and to Carhaix in Cornouaille for good measure. The number
superimposed on each Castle is its defensive value.

As mentioned, in each of the middle turns, the players each draw a Special Event card, The events in these cards mostly reflect things that happened in the greater European sphere, outside of Brittany, but had significant influence on the local conflict, such as the Truces of Calais and Bordeaux, and the Black Death. These cards must be played in the round they are drawn (though they can be used for an Action rather than their event (see below)). This further restricts the number of camp-friendly Events you can play in these middle turns to two, making each decision-point that much more crucial. Breizh is a game you simply can’t play turn to turn, which, with our first try, was exactly what we ended up doing. Both our games would have benefited from some strategic focus. (We still had fun with it though – we never go into a “learning’’ game too seriously).

The final turn represents the culmination of all your planning (or highlights your lack thereof), and as such, offers the same freedom of action as the first turn, but with one difference; the deck is prepared as in previous turns, but the Third Epoch deck is shuffled, then placed on top of the draw deck, so that the Third Epoch Events (of which there are just six) guaranteeing their availability in the final round.

Our game came down to the final round, but I’d managed to maintain an edge in area control. With his last card, Raoul of Caours, T took an English partisan out of Nantes, robbing me of control of that province (a vindictive move, as Nantes was my home territory), but it was too little, too late. I still controlled five areas to his one. It didn’t feel like a true victory because it was a learning game, but I’m confident of handing T his hat when next we return to the game.

 

Mistakes were made

Well, just a couple of mistakes. In our first game, I had misread the rather clearly stated instruction regarding relinquishing all Event cards in each player’s hand at the end of the turn, then shuffling these unplayed First Epoch Event cards into the Second Epoch deck to create the deck for turns two through five. The second turn was played with cumbersome hands; no real harm, except that it was counter to the intent of the rules. And awkward. This was rectified for the third turn and thereafter.

The end-state of our first game. A bit of a trouncing for the French,
but they'll be back, I'm sure.

The other thing was a misunderstanding early on about what constituted control of an area. We (well, I) went into the game thinking it was all about the Castles, where in fact you can only claim an area when you both possess a Castle and have a Partisan active in that area (if both have a claim, control goes to whoever has the most Partisans, then who has the most Castles; if it’s even-stevens, nobody can claim control of the area). We sorted this out going into the third turn as well.

Okay, there was one other thing I didn’t pick up on until the game was over. We both played all of the Special Events for the Event, which probably hobbled us evenly for the most part, when we could have used them for an action. I did get a small advantage playing the Black Death event which requires the removal of half (rounding up) of each players Troops and Partisans. T had a lot more Troops on the map, and an odd number of Partisans (he was dangerously close to taking an unassailable lead), so the plague hurt me, but it hurt him more.

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So, that’s Breizh 1341. I can’t wait to try this out again. It’s such a neat little game, rich in the history of an event I knew next to nothing about. Every choice feels consequential; this feels like a much bigger game than the footprint would suggest.