TDG: Bretwalda
Transcript
Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the discriminating gamer. You know, I
I'm sorry, Cody, but I can no longer perform your transplant surgery.
Why didn't you tell me sooner?
I wanted to, but I didn't have the heart.
Ladies and gentlemen, today we're going to go ahead and take a look at Brett Walda from Fallon Games.
In Brett Walda from Fallance Games, one of four players take on the roles of various factions in medieval Ville England as they compete for land territory. They fight battles, they deal with those pesky Danes, and they hope to gain the most doubts to gain victory. Now, there's a lot of great videos out here. I'm not going to get into the weeds of how you play. I'm just going to give you a basic overview of gameplay and then tell you what I think. Now, players are going to go ahead and choose their faction. There's different kind of color-coded [snorts] areas for your faction on the board. You're going to have your own player board. You're going to have a number of figures. Now, you're going to have kind of your king and queen figures. You're actually going to choose um with a various card which king or queen you're going to choose for that game and that's going to give you certain abilities as the game go forward. You're going to choose your ruler. You're only going to use one of them, the king or the queen. Uh you're also then going to have kind of um nobles and knights and your surfs. I don't recall the exact names for them, uh the medieval English words for them, but that's just what I'll call them in the uh uh overview. Now, I know in the if you did the game found, they also have bishops, but if you don't have bishops in the game, you don't need to worry about them. Essentially, what you're going to do is you're going to set your um ruler up in your home territory with your um any other figures you've got there. You'll also set up a number of neutral figures in white around the board. Now, you also have a season track. You're going to put out cards that match the certain season face down. You'll reveal those at the beginning of every season, and they'll kind of tell you what's going on, what specific events are in play for that season. Now, you're also going to get some chronicle cards. You get three at the beginning of the game. You choose two. You'll have opportunities to do more as the game goes on, but essentially the chronicle cards are
secret objectives that you can use to score doucks. Douts are the victory points in the game. So, you're going to go ahead grab a couple of those that you will um attempt to score over the course of the game. The game plays out over several different phases. You got your season phase, your action phase, and your priority phase. Now, during the season phase, you have this track where you have shuffled and laid down the appropriate season cards. Uh during spring season, except for the first one, you can actually draw a new chronicle card, provided you don't have one. Now, during summer phase, you're going to have raids by the Danes. The Vikings are coming and you're going to decide, but essentially, you kind of have a bidding mechanism that goes on here that allows you allows the winner rather to decide to draw cards and decide from those cards what part of Britain the Danes are going to attack. So, you kind of want to bid high there in order to get that done. Now, the when the Danes come, they're actually going to pillage certain areas. They they'll kind of try to expand and and take over lands and combat may ensue. And more on that later. Now, in the fall, you're going to go ahead, you're going to do another kind of bidding mechanism. This time, what you are doing though is trying to bid individual um territories that have either Danes or neutrals in them. You can bribe them to go after your enemies and cause problems. Now, when winter rolls around, you're going to have to feed your troops, your pretty much everybody but your ruler, you have to feed. And so, what you're going to do is make sure that you have enough food. And I'll discuss how that comes along later.
And you you pay food for your different units on the board. Now, once you've resolved the season phase, you're going to go to the action phase. Now, there are four different actions you can do during the game. And the first one is development. Now, when you do development, you can actually, first of all, get a kingdom tile. These are special tiles that you put on your player board that will give you kind of enhanced abilities, enhanced actions, let you do some other interesting and fun things. But critically also, you will able you'll be able to build buildings. Now, some of these buildings like you build a grainery, you can get more food from a region. You can if it you're at a port, you can build a uh a port that can allow you to trade food for gold. You can also get a uh kind of a mead house where you can actually get more lordship cards. These are going to be important for combat. And you can get an abbey. Abbies will allow you to collect more uh money from taxes with that action. Now, the next action you can do is collection. Now, as I say, some areas you can collect and get taxes from, and then some areas produce food, and you can collect food from those territories. So, with the collect action, you're kind of building up your stocks of both gold and food. Next, you have the feared action. And the feared action allows you to recruit troops um from from your areas. It also allows you to upgrade units. Now the you know the more upgraded a unit is the better dice it's going to roll in combat. But also too like your surfs, they can't really move. They're kind of stuck in one place until you upgrade them and then they become more mobile and more valuable as the game progresses. Finally, you have
movement. Now with the movement action essentially you can move units from one space to another. You can move your units around the board in this way. Now, this is important because you're trying to find the spaces on the board that have the ds on them. The ds are going to be uh your victory points at the end of the game. You keep track with that with a uh score track on the side. So, here you're actually moving your units into areas with ds, but you may encounter neutrals and you may encounter your opponents and you may encounter those pesky Vikings. And when that happens, you're going to go to combat. Now, when you go to combat, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to play lordship cards. Most lordship cards you can play before the battle. They may give you distinct advantages in that battle. Then you're going to look at the kind of dice that that particular unit rolls and they roll may roll combinations uh combinations of different dice. So you're going to go ahead and you're going to roll the dieice and both the attacker and the defender will roll the dice simultaneously. Now the dice will give you pictures of swords and shields. And so it's simple. The swords inflict wounds. The shields defend. So you take a look and you see how many wounds you've inflicted beyond how many shields the other side has and that's how you determine exactly how many wounds are assigned. Now when you're assigning wounds, you must assign wounds to units that have already been wounded. You can't spread it out. So that ensures that some of your wounded some of your units are more likely to die in combat.
Then you remove any casualties. Now at this point either side can choose to retreat. Now, if you don't retreat, if both sides decide to stay, you go to a second battle round. Essentially, you conduct another round just like the first, and then whoever is left wins. Essentially, um if both sides still have troops there, the defender is considered the winner. But otherwise, whoever is left standing wins, they can claim that territory for themselves. Now, there is also some cards. Some of the lordship cards will let you interrupt that sequence a little bit, but critically at the end of the battle, both sides are going to draw one lordship card. Now, you also have sea battles. You can purchase ships. You can fight Danish ships or or each other ships. And they they occur very similar to similarly to land battles. And then, of course, as I say, you're not just fighting each other. You're also fighting these neutrals. You are fighting Danes as well throughout the course of the game. But critically, as I say, throughout the game, you're trying to get hold of these lands that have ds or complete your chronicle cards, which have ds on them.
Now, if at any point of the game, you claim eight doubts, you instantly win the game. Or if at the end of any season, if you have seven dalks, then you win. Brett Wald, we'll get back to the review in just a moment. I want to take a minute to ask you to check out my other channel that is Cody Carlson, PhD, where we talk about history, books on history, military history. I even post some of my uh lectures for my classes on there. Please check that out. Please subscribe to that channel. And now back to the review. All right, ladies and gentlemen, Brett Walda. This is a game from Fallon Games that is of course set in medieval England. And first of all, there's a lot more going on here than what I just discussed in the rules overview. Uh there's a lot of nuances here, especially like with with bidding and kind of manipulating the neutrals and the and the Danes, which is a big part of the game. Uh so I just gave you an overview. Bear in mind there's a lot more going on here. And yet this game is not overly complex. I didn't feel like it was particularly hard to learn uh to play this game. We got into it relatively quickly. So the game is a dudes on a map game. And you know, as far as that goes, it it delivers. It gives you what you want with the with the feeling of trying to move and take over places and conducting wars and raids and stuff like that. So, it it really works on that level. But first of all, the production uh the production is just fantastic. I think it's a beautiful box. I think the artwork here is just this beautiful medieval artwork. Um I think the board
looks great. I I really am a big fan of the aesthetic of this game. And two, I like the the minis. They really bring a lot to it as well. It just it's a good looking game to have on the table. and I really appreciate that. But this idea of just a dudes on the map game, as I say, it functions very well. But what is really cool here is in addition to just basic ideas of movement and combat and and certainly running your economy, which is a big part of the game, uh I must confess I really really like the systems here whereby you can choose where the Danes are landing. You have a bidding system to choose where the Danes are landing and then you have this bidding system in the autumn to actually manipulate these neutrals and the Danes to get them to go and cause problems. So in effect you are fighting wars by proxy in a lot of this game which is very fun.
I really really enjoy that aspect and I and I say that as a person who is not generally the biggest fan of bidding in games. It's not my favorite mechanism. Um you know sometimes it it works well. I liked it in Game of Thrones, the board game. Um, but here it works very well and I really like what you can do um in those actions both in the summer with the Danes and in the fall with the um manipulating the neutrals and the Danes. It's it's it's really quite fun and interesting. It's a great area control game. It's a great game of knowing, you know, oh, we we're both close to this DAP. We'll probably come into conflict at some time. And then, as I say, you can use some of these neutrals or the or the Danes to kind of occupy your your your neighbor while you try to move in and grab it. I think combat here is a lot of fun as well. I enjoy the combat system. I always like combat systems that let you roll kind of different strength of dice. Now, these are all d6s, but of course, some are more likely to score hits than others. Some are, you know, better at defense. Um, my only criticism about this part of the game is the the die colors are all kind of uh muted. I wish they were a little bit brighter, you know, as it is. Some of the some of the colors that show you what what die you're rolling versus the actual colors of the dice weren't spot-on, you know? I mean, one we couldn't couldn't tell if it was orange or brown or whatever. But anyway, it's a very minor complaint. Uh, this game is fun. You know, I love dudes on a map games like this. I've
always enjoyed games like this quite a bit and this has some really fun mechanisms. It's got a great theme. I love the fact that you over the course of the game are watching the board grow and change as you're putting buildings out there, but you're also getting the development tiles on your own personal board. I love games where you can see a board evolve and I love that aspect of the game. This game is, I think, great fun. Um, frankly, one of the best of the year. I really enjoyed it. I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to give Brett Walda a nine out of 10 on the Cody scale. Uh, I I you know, if you're like me, I think you'll really get a kick out of this game. Thank you once again for joining us today on The Discriminating Gamer. As always, we'd ask you to please leave a comment for us here on YouTube, on Board Game Geek, on Facebook, on X. We'd love to hear from you. And please subscribe to all of our social media outlets. I'd ask you to go ahead and give a thumb to this video on YouTube. And please, please, please, we would ask you to subscribe to this channel. That means a lot. Now, if you really do like what we do on this channel, I would humbly ask you to click on my other channel that is Cody Carlson PhD where we talk about history, military history, books on history, fun stuff like that. I even put up some of my lectures on that channel.
It would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to that channel as well. And again, if you do really like the content here on the Discriminating Gamer, I would humbly ask you to click on the super thanks button and leave a tip. You know, a lot of people ask me why I have so many pictures on my patio door. I like to take screenshots.
I've been helping groundce.
I'm sorry. Guess there's no collection. I'll take it back. And I have
the bank was reading. I can't do two things at once.
Oh, that'd be like a great crime noir novel title. The bank was reading.