Border Reivers

Border Reivers

For two hundred years, war was waged across the border between England and Scotland. By 1482, the unlucky town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, once Scotland's richest port town, had changed hands thirteen times. By the time Henry VIII’ ascended the throne of England in 1509, the fifty-mile stretch of rolling hills and stunning vistas stretching across the border had endured decades of hardship and brutality.

Nevertheless, the hard-bitten families living on these borderlands persisted. Unable to rely on their crops surviving until harvest, they were sustained mainly by the animals they could graze on the fields near their farms. When supplies ran out, the solution was often raids to steal whatever they needed from their neighbours. The raids were often carefully planned operations with several border families joining to steal animals from a common enemy during the night. Cattle and sheep were the likely targets, and often hundreds of these creatures were stolen in a single raid. The raiders' aim was to drive their prey to a safe place before the pursuing reprisal “hot trod” caught up with them and forced them to engage.

To combat this ongoing hostility, England and Scotland established the system of March Law. Each nation divided its borderlands into an Eastern, Middle and Western March, while each of these six territories was governed by a Warden, responsible for maintaining the peace. The Wardens came from the most powerful families of the Borders, clans of great renown that could send over a thousand men into the saddle in times of need. March Law would have succeeded as well, if not for the fact that these same great families were usually the ones best equipped and most prone to raiding their neighbours.

In Border Reivers, each player rules one of the Marches as head of one of the six great mounted families of the Borders: Grey, Fenwick, Dacre, Maxwell, Kerr or Hume. Your goal is to increase the wealth and renown of your clan throughout’ the reign of Henry and Elizabeth, so that you finish the century as the most famous Border Reiver of all time. Players earn profit points from successful battles, by gathering large herds of livestock and by raising their renown above other players in the regions of the map.

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