Review: Breizh 1341

 

 

2022 Charles S. Roberts Best Medieval Wargame Nominee

 

Laurent Gary's Breizh 1341 (Shakos, 2022) is a small, fast-playing game about the War of Breton Succession, itself a relatively short and geographically constrained campaign woven into the broader tapestry of the Hundred Years’ War. The game is deceptively simple mechanically, but it rewards good planning and execution. Breizh 1341 is as tactically challenging as it is visually engrossing. But I’m getting ahead of myself; let’s just dive straight in.

 

Appearance

Shakos understands the importance of presentation. This shines though in the elegant consistency of the Conquerors series games, and that same consideration is here in spades. Breizh 1341 is a small box game – 9” by 7”, 2” deep – with a landscape aspect and an illustration of a siege in progress on the cover (I posted an unboxing of the game already, so check that out if you’re interested). It’s not what I’d call travel-size (at the size of a trade paperback, Nuts! Publishing’s Combat Rations games better fits that bill), but it wouldn’t take up a lot of room in an overnight bag. The box is solid, the lid fits snuggly, and the moulded plastic storage tray accommodates the components and (un-sleaved) cards very well.

Set up at start of game. The French begin in control of Trégor (Castle Guingamp and
a Partisan present), and with a head-start (another Partisan) on gaining control of
Saint-Brieuc. The English control Nantes (Castle Guérande and a Partisan) and
two troops in place to besiege another Castle. The game also comes with a
deck of eight Area cards for a variant rule allowing random
starting areas for each side. 

The board is small (about 17” by 12”, and mounted), and represents the Breton peninsula, divided into eight areas, each with a varying number of castles. Each castle has a rating of 1, 2 or 3. This represents the defence value of the castle during a besieging action. Control of castles in a given area is part of the equation for establishing who controls that area.

The board also includes a turn track (with handy mnemonics reminding the players of the cards played in each turn), and card places marked along the long edges (also proving reminders of varying cards played during turns. The map is thematically reminiscent of maps from the time without slavishly trying to replicate their appearance – function in this case triumphs over form. All in all, it’s attractive and usable, and works as a focus for the outcomes of the game.

The game uses a combination of counters and wooden pieces. The counters are mostly administrative – the majority are control markers for castles or areas – while the wooden piece represent the “human resources” at play. Cubes represent soldiers, while cylinders represent Partisans, the administrative infrastructure that ceases and maintains control of an area for one or the other player. To claim control of an area, a player must both hold a castle and have a Partisan present. If both players meet the requirements, then whoever has the highest number of castles and Partisans combined claims control.

Sample cards: an English Event card (right) and a Special Event Card. Event cards may
be played for the Event (if matching the playing faction), or for an Order at the bottom
of the card (while most cards offer all four options, some only display three orders).
The Special Event cards must be played in the round they are drawn; the Special
Event is executed first, and will affect both sides, then the phasing player can
play one of the listed Orders.

There are enough control counters for the areas and for each level of castle, and no more. These are each printed on both sides, with a blue border on the front and a red border on the verso, to indicate French or English control. There are other tokens as well; a Turn marker, three Highwaymen markers representing roving bands of unemployed mercenaries making their way in an area (and n turn making it ungovernable by either side), and a single chit marked with a +2 on both sides – this is a reminder token related to a single card event which may or may not come up in the game, but it’s nice to see such attention to detail.

Where the game really shines, though, is in its cards. There are several types of cards. The Event Deck is made up three parts, each consecutive part being added to the remainder of the deck at separate stages of play. The cards can be played for in exchange for an Action or, depending on the card, for its Event’ each card is bordered in royal blue or vermillion, indicating which player can use a given card for its Event. The event will have a game effect, accompanied by a brief description of the historical event portrayed (and a unique illustration drawn from historical sources) These events are mostly of acute significance to the War of Breton Succession, and they make up the bulk of the players’ hands in each round. There is a deck of ten Special Event cards. From the second turn on, each player draws a Special Event card that must be played as one of their cards in that turn. This guarantees each of the events will occur through the course of the game. These events are more pan-European in nature; events from the Hundred Years’ War influencing the local conflict, or natural incursions on the affairs of Man, like the Black Death. These events will affect both players, usually adversely, but the player playing the card gets a consolation prize of performing an action from those listed at the bottom of the card after the Event has been executed.

French (left) and English Personality cards. These are retained until used, and offer 

assistance in the execution of some orders.

Finally, there are two decks of eight Personality cards. Each turn, along with their due event cards and, after the first turn, a Special Event card, the players draw a Personality card from their side’s deck. The Personality cards fill a different role in the game; these are played for an advantage in a given situation, like offering a +1 to a battle die-roll, or placing a free Partisan unit somewhere on the board. There are two more Personality cards in each side’s deck than will be drawn in a game, so you can never count on a particular card appearing in a game.

All in all, the game is a joy to look at; in fact, I’d take a little time when you first get it to go through the cards and just soak up some of the history sewn into them, so it’s not so distracting when you play your first game. Nicolas Triel was the artistic director for Breizh 1341 (wrangling contributions from a few dozen fourteenth century painters, sculptors, and stonemasons). The finished product presents all the hard work he put into its creation – Breizh is both exceptionally beautiful and eminently playable.

The white cards represent non-playable events, events
that occurred during the War of Breton Succession but
had little or no influence on the outcome of the war.
These may still be played for their available Orders.

Play

Breizh 1341 plays out over six turns. At the end of the sixth turn, whichever player controls the majority of areas is the winner; if the players each hold an equal number of areas, the game ends in a draw (unsatisfying for some, but there you have it).*

For the first turn the entirety of the First Epoch deck (fourteen cards) is dealt out, and the players each draw a Personality card. The English player starts, and the players take turns playing cards from their rather large hands. At the play of the last card, the remaining cards in the players’ hands are gathered, barring any unused Personality cards. These, and the Second epoch deck (twenty-two cards) are shuffled together to make up the deck for turns two through five. Each turn, unused event cards are returned to the deck, which is then reshuffled. From turn two, each player receives one Event card, plus another Event card for each area they control – as mentioned previously, control is established by both controlling at least one castle and having at least one Partisan in the area – plus one Special Event card (which MUST be played for its event in the turn it is drawn), and another Personality card from their side’s deck. In the sixth and final turn, the six Third epoch cards are added to the deck, which is shuffled and dealt out in its entirety between the players.

Near the end of Turn 2, England has secured Castles in Vannes, Saint-Malo & Dol and
Rennes, but have only gained control of Rennes (by rallying a Partisan there). The
French player is about to play a white "non-event" card for a Besiege order. Unlike
the other orders, that only allow their action to take place once in one area, any
number of sieges may be attempted with a besiege order, so long as the
required numbers of troops are available for each siege attempt. Once a
siege has been attempted, the troops involved are removed
regardless of success, then the next is attempted.

With the play of a card, the phasing player may enact the event on the card, if factionally appropriate, or choose one of the actions on the base of the card. The choice of actions is usually to Recruit (place up to three troops in an area or areas on the board, though some multiple card events will allow recruiting four or more plus a die-roll value in troops in a single action), Rally (place a Partisan in an area), Besiege (use your troops in an area to besiege a castle in that area), or Fight (roll the three-sided dice and take a number of your opponent’s troops off the board equal to the result rolled), though some events will limit the available actions.

Having troops on the board allows you to perform a Besiege action. A single besiege action will allow you to attempt to take as many castles as you have troops to use in a siege. The castle rating – 1, 2, or 3 – represents that location’s ability to resist a siege.  At least one troop block is required to perform a siege. The target number for a successful siege is the Castle’s strength plus 2 (representing overwhelming force, and resolution of the siege involves the phasing player to roll the die and add the total number of besieging forces to the result. If a player besieges a 1 strength Castle with a single troop cube, they will need to roll a 2 or a 3 on the die to be successful. If successful, a marker of the player’s colour is places over the castle, and the phasing player moves on to the next siege until all are resolved, Troop pieces are removed form the board as sieges are resolved whether or not the siege was successful. A turn represents roughly a campaigning year; at the end of each turn, any troops remaining on the board are removed.

If there are ever more than five troop blocks in a single area with representation of both sides, a battle ensues. This happens immediately and will occur independently of any other unresolved actions. Each side counts the number of their troops in the area and adds the result of a dice roll (a Personality card may be used to raise their total as well, if available), and the player with the higher overall result is the winner. The difference in the two resulting numbers is established; if the differential is two or lower, each side loses one troop; if the difference is three or higher, the defeated side loses half their force (rounding up), while the victorious faction loses half the defeated side’s losses, rounding up. At the resolution of the Battle, if the total number of troops from both sides remains above five, the players battle again, and again until the total is sufficiently low. Battles are a costly but sometimes useful tactic to frustrate the opponent’s plans in an area.

This game ended in a draw. At the end of the game, France held control of Léon, Trégor,
and Saint-Brieuc; England held Nantes, Rennes, and Cornouaille. After changing hands
several times through the course of the game, Vannes was brought to a stalemate, and
the presence of Highwaymen in Saint-Malo & Dol would have made that area a draw
had it not already been a stalemate, with France and England each having three
assets there (Castles and Partisans). 

The events described on the Event cards are, in the main, playable by one side only (there are about four Event cards that have a shared red/blue border, allowing use by either player). The English player may play a French Event card, or vice versa, but only for an action listed at the bottom of the card. While not an optimal play, using an opposition card for an action can remove a particularly good card from play, if no better alternatives present themselves.

Personality cards may remain in a player’s possession until played. There is no benefit to retaining them until the end of the game, so it is best to use them as an opportunity arises, or to retain them for an edge in an upcoming play. With consecutive games you begin to get a feel for when their use will be appropriate.

Play is constrained, particularly in the middle in the game, by the number of cards each player can play. In the first and last (sixth) turns each player plays five cards, but only three cards in each of the four middle turns. Hand size is constrained to one card plus one for each area controlled, plus a Special Event card, but unless you’ve already lost the game, you’ll always have enough cards to fill the slots. In the middle turns, each player’s options are further constrained by those Special Events, some of which can play havoc with the intentions of both sides in one fell swoop. These constraints force the players to think of each turn as a campaign. Everything you want to achieve has to be done in the three acts of a turns card-play; you can’t set things up for the next year, because over the non-campaign season, everyone goes home and holes up for winter; the next turn is a completely new campaign.

The way unplayed cards are recycled is interesting and adds intrigue to the card-play. With each turn, the unplayed cards from the previous turn go back into the mix. This makes for a whole extra set of tough decision-points, gambling on a potentially helpful card returning to your hand in the future or letting that opposition “Recruit Six + Die Roll” event fall into your opponent’s hand instead of removing it from the game as a Rally action. Also, in your first game (maybe your second) it’s easy develop a tunnel vision and get caught up securing real estate – Castles – to shore up the areas you hold at the expense of expending to taking new territories. Its better to get a foothold in multiple areas early on than to turtle on what you have – your opponent will run roughshod.

Breizh 1341 offers an intense gaming experience in a relatively short time. It’s a little like Twilight Struggle (GMT Games, 2005) in that, having gained some familiarity with the deck, you know that certain events are likely to come up, and if they’re not in your hand they’re likely in your opponents. And like Twilight Struggle, it’s definitely a game for two players. One could conceivably play both sides, but it would lose much of its magic with foreknowledge of the cards both sides could or must play; better to find an opponent and introduce them to the game’s particular pleasures.

 

Appraisal

More than many games cast during the turmoil of the Hundred Years’ War, Breizh 1341 is a game of operational combat in the service of personal ambition and broader international politics. It’s a microcosm of many of the themes that mark the broader European conflict of the period. There is a genius in Breizh’s simplicity. This also makes it a perfect introductory game for non-wargamers. With blocks and pard-play it feels like an aggressive Eurogame, but for my money this ticks enough wargame boxes to qualify.

Looking back over the previous section, my description of Breizh’s game-play reads rather dryly, but you have to keep in mind how quickly – analysis paralysis notwithstanding – the game plays out. The mechanics are relatively simple and, some may argue, repetitive – each turn you are essentially trying to gain territory aand hold on to previous gains – but the card-helps create an unfolding narrative of the see-sawing fortunes of the stalwart French and their interloping English cousins. It really is a rich play experience, far richer than my fairly stilted description suggests.

A big plus for Breizh is the speed of play. Our first game took about an hour and a half, but as I explained in the playthrough write-up, we were learning it on the fly. Subsequent games have clocked in at an hour pretty much on the mark. After about a half-dozen games, it still offers a challenge and doesn’t feel repetitive. This may change after twenty or more games, but I think games like Breizh are designed to fill the same gap as Paulo Mori’s Blitzkrieg!: World War Two in 20 Minutes (PSC Games, 2019) or GMT’s Lunchtime Game series. As a filler-game after a long afternoon session, or an evening’s respite from worldly cares, Breizh 1341 meets my requirements; brief, drenched in history, and offering a gripping, satisfyingly rich experience.

 

* After beating my brother-in-law quite convincingly in our first two games, our third came to a draw (three areas each), which T found hard to reconcile as he held half again as many castles as me. I don’t think he truly accepted the result.

 

 

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.

-----

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.

Stripped Down for Parts: Shakos two-fer, Part II – Breizh 1341

 

 

Charles S. Roberts Award nominee: Best Medieval Wargame, 2022

 

I completely missed the initial release of Laurent Gary’s Breizh 1341 (Shakos, 2022; which should be said, Breizh mille trois cent quarante-et-un, if my high-school French holds up). The first I heard about it was when the game received a Charles S. Roberts Award nomination for Best Medieval Wargame (the award went to Almoravid: Reconquista and Riposte in Spain1085-1086 (GMT Games, 2022), Intrigued, I tried to find a copy, but to no avail – I don’t know how big the initial print run was (or even if it was originally released in an English language version – I might have struggled with a French copy), but it had seemed to disappear from all shelves by the time I looked.

So, it was a happy day when I learned that the crowdfunded release of Rex Britannorum (Shakos, 2025 - you can get a peek at this one here) included Briezh as an add-on option. (Backers could also add another harder-to-find title, Saladin (Shakos, 2022), but my game budget wouldn’t stretch quite that far at the time.)

Breizh 1641 is a taut, fast and fun game. I have played it once already, which is something I try not to do before I write up an unboxing post, but there it is. I’ll try to write this objectively, leave as much of the play commentary as I can for the after-action report. Also, some of the photos I too didn’t come out well enough to include here, and I wanted to get this up to the blog quickly, so I’m just going with what I have; I’ll include more photos in the AAR.

Breizh 1341 is a small box game. The box is 18cm by 22cm (about 7” by 8 ½”) and 5cm (2”) deep, and of a quite sturdy construction. The cover illustration evokes a castle siege, very much a theme in the game. The cover also features a cocarde tricolore logo sporting a banner reading “Historie de France”. I don’t know if this is an initiative among French game companies to promote learning history through ludic pursuits, but that would correspond with a note in the rulebook to parents and teachers regarding the game’s value in presenting historical events and themes through the game. I hope this is part of a broader initiative.

The box back, with a nice representation of the game components.

The back of the box offers a short description of the historical situation; in April of 1341, Duke John III (Fr. Jean de Montfort) died without an heir. There were two contenders with arguably legitimate claims on the duchy; Jeanne de Penthièvre (translated to Joan in the English edition), the niece of John III and wife of Charles de Blois-Châtillon, and John of Monfort, half-brother to the duke. This resulted in the War of Breton Succession, which in turn became a chapter of the Hundred Years’ War. Also included is a brief explanation of game play.

The game infographic tells us the this is a two-player game (at time of writing, T and I have played just one get to know you game of Breizh, but I could tell from this that the game wouldn’t be nearly as much fun playing two-handed solo), That a game should take about forty-five minutes to play (I’d agree with this, I think – ours took closer to an hour-ten, but we backtracked through a couple of mistakes and were constantly referring back to the rules – but having got our heads around the game, I think our next run at it will be well under an hour), and it’s recommended for ages fourteen and up.

The rulebook. Glossy, but remarkably still readable under down-lights.

The rulebook is roughly A5 in size, printed on a sturdy-weight of high-gloss paper, and runs to 24 pages. Of these, there are only nine pages of actual rules, with the first three pages devoted to a cover illustration and introduction, the following six covering the components, a short glossary of terms used, and a set-up guide. There is also a five page historical background essay, and the back cover offers a Game Sequence Summary and a brief breakdown of Actions.

A sample of the rules. While the font is a tad small, it its still very readable, and
the illustrations are clear and informative, complementing the text.

The rules, of course, were originally rendered in French, and while these read like a translation, it is a good, clear translation with none of the little ambiguities that pop up sometimes; as I mentioned, we’ve played one game thus far, and there was a lot of referring back to the rulebook as we played, but points of order were easy to find and quite comprehensible.

The game board. For such a compact play area (and such large counters) the board is
remarkably comfortable to play on, with no feeling of crowding or clutter.

 
The play area is a map of mid-fourteenth century Brittany, divided up into eight regions, and marked out with various castles and fortifications. It comes mounted on a sturdy board and is both attractive and functional. It incorporates the play area (the map of Brittany), a turn track, and places marked on the top and bottom edges for the cards played in each turn to be placed. The turn track reminds the players of the number of cards to be played in each turn (five each in turns one and six, three each in turns two through five), and this is reflected in the placement presentation (with the final two positions marked in a lighter hue). The Castles are all named for their historical analogues, and given a value of one to three, representing the difficulty posed in laying siege to each, a crucial action in the game.

Inside the box; two decks of cards, two sets of wooden tokens and a nice three-sided
 die. Of course, being a Shakos game, time and thought has gone into
how to best present and store all the components.

The game comes with two cellophane-wrapped decks of cards. It might be my imagination, but these feel like the nicest cards I’ve ever seen, even in a Shakos game. The decks are divided into Event cards and Personality cards, with some extra cards added, which I’ll come back to.

The Event cards are divided into four groups; the First, Second and Third Epoch decks (defined by the presence of one, two or three ermines in the top left corner of the card), and the Special Events deck. Most of the Event cards exhibit either a red or blue background; these cards may only be used for their event by the appropriate faction, red for the English, blue for the French. Some cards show a white background. These hold no game-function event and can only be used and for the performance of an action.

Each player also has their own deck of Personality deck to draw from. One Personality card is drawn each turn, and can be carried over from turn to turn. Each offers some kind of benefit for the player in a given circumstance; they can be used in the appropriate situation to, say, add a point advantage in a Fight, or allow the recruitment of extra Partisans.

None of the photos I took of the cards came out clearly enough for this presentation, so
here's a shot from our first game. On the left is a Special Event card (black background),
which had to be played in the turn it was drawn. On the right, and English Event card
(clearly, from the vermillion background) from the Second Epoch deck that I used for
the event, much to the chagrin of my opponent.

Finally, there is an eight-card Special Events deck. These cards present event happening in the broader European context. In the hand-building phase of turns two through five, each player draws one of these cards into their hands. Each Special Event card must be played in the turn it is drawn.

All of the cards in the game are quite remarkable to look at; each features an extract from a contemporary painting and a reference to an actual individual or event from the conflict or the broader Hundred Years’ War, while the Personality cards feature a stone memorial or funerary statue of the individual in question, The backgrounds to the cards are rendered like draped satin in the colours of the belligerent forces. The whole effect is quite stunning; it comes as no surprise that Nicolas Treil was the headline artist involved in the preparation of Breizh 1341 (the game credits list Treil and Lisa Fix as being responsible for the graphic design, but does not distinguish duties).

This covers the cards used in the historical game. But thew folks at Shakos don’t believe in giving you just a standard setup. A short note at the end of the rules explains the other cards not otherwise represented. These ten cards allow the players to randomly pick a starting location (by selecting one each of eight cards representing the eight regions of Brittany) as an alternative to the historical starting positions, as well as a pair of cards which offer asymmetric – but balanced – starting strengths on the ground in their respective starting locations. It’s a small thing, but it’s a nice touch, and an elegant way to increase the game replayability with very little overhead.

There are two types of wooden tokens will be familiar to anyone who has played Shakos game from their Conquerors series; the pieces come in a red and blue matching the card themes quite well, and there are two types, with twenty of each in each colour. The little cylinders represent Partisans – these are indicative of one or the other side’s supporters within a region – and the cubes represent Troops, the levied soldiers and mercenaries that the sides engage for campaigning. Any Troops on the board at the end of a round leave (presumably to go back to their farms and workshops, or the professional troops’ winter quarters), while the Partisans persist from turn to turn; these, along with controlled Castles, help establish and maintain dominance in a given region through the course of a game.

The counter sheet, showing the French side of the Castle and Region markers.

The game comes with a single punchboard of counters. These are a nice size (about 22mm) and are quite thick, very easy to deal with on the board. The counters are pre-rounded and punch out neatly (no centre-nubs). The majority of the counters are control markers. These are used to indicate control of the Castles on the map as each is taken or exchanged in besieging actions. There are enough counters to cover all of the varying strength Castles on the board. Other counters indicate which side has control of a region at the end of each turn (both the Region and Castle control markers are double sided, indicating French control on one side and English on the other). Other markers include Highwaymen counters, an hourglass turn marker, and a +2 counter used in a single card event function that may only rarely get played, but which struck me as a nice little detail and indicative of the thoughtfulness that has gone into the creation and development of Breizh 1341.

Randomness has its place in this game, but it is restricted in its scope by the choice of a three-side die (actually a d6 with two faces each of 1, 2, and 3). Tempering the hand of fate in the way limits how much the players can rely on their own good fortune. It still provides room for cruel disappointments and happy accidents, but the game rewards careful planning and strategic consideration.

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A post on how Breizh 1341 plays will be forthcoming. Not to give too much away, I can tell you that game play is very smooth and quite logical once you get your head around Breizh’s idiosyncrasies; it’s a CDG, but it doesn’t do things in a way typical to CDGs. It is definitely its own game, and is a better experience for it.