• Designers: Peer Sylvester
• Artist: Deirdre de Barra
• Release Year: 2011
• Mechanics: Trick Taking, Area Majority
• Players: 3-5

Introduction

Brian Boru: High King of Ireland is an area majority game utilizing a trick-taking mechanism as a way for players to earn the right to place their influence onto each city as they vie for control of the Irish countryside. The historical note at the beginning of the rule book proclaims that Brian Boru made his name as a warrior, repelling the Viking invasions, defeating domestic rivals on the battlefield, and deftly married off his various family members to forage important alliances. He also rebuilt many monasteries, gaining him the favour of the church. Are you able to follow in this Irish King’s steps and emerge the victor?

How to Play

Brian Boru: High King of Ireland utilizes a unique trick-taking mechanism to run this area majority game. Each round starts with a draft; all the cards are shuffled and dealt out between players. Each player will pick two to keep, then pass the rest along to their neighbours. Once all the cards have been divvied up, the first round begins. Turn by turn, whoever has the lead player token, places it on a location on the board to initiate a bid for control. They then must play one card from their hand matching the colour of that city.

All other players in clockwise order must then play a card of any colour. After all cards have been played, control for the city is assessed. Whoever played the highest numbered card of the matching colour wins the trick. All the other cards are resolved in ascending order, with the ‘losers’ getting a consolation prize of taking one of the bottom row actions. The winner of the trick gets to take the top row action, which always includes putting one of their discs onto the location that the subject of the bid, and takes the focus token into their supply. Often, the top action will either give you some more actions or coins (in the case of the lower numbered card), or force you to spend money (in the case of the higher numbered cards). If you need to spend money but cannot, you lose victory points instead.

Each of the colours of cards correspond with the three consolation actions around the board. The yellow cards will move your token up the marriage track. Whoever is highest on the marriage track at the end of the round will acquire the suitor of the year, then, they’ll lose all their progress on that track. All the players remaining on that track will earn a small amount of income, as a thanks for their interest in the marriage.

The red cards are all about the Viking invasions. At the start of the round, a Viking invasion card will be flipped up, dictating how many Viking tokens will be invading Ireland. The consolation action on the red cards allows you to take a number of those Viking tokens into your supply. At the end of the round, if there are any Viking tokens remaining in that pool, the player with the most Viking tokens in their supply can place a Viking control token on any location of the player(s) who has the least Viking tokens in their supply. This reduces the value of the location to 0 when determining who has a majority in the region. Regardless of whether the Vikings invaded or not, the spoils of battle are the awarded. The player with the most Viking tokens gains a renown token from the supply, then gain one point for each of their renown tokens in their supply. They then return all of their Viking tokens back to the supply. After that step, whomever now has the most Viking tokens gains one point, and returns a single Viking token to the supply.

The blue cards revolve around the church, allowing you to place your influence tokens into a pool to display your piety. Whoever has the most tokens in this pool at the end of the round discards all their tokens, and gains the first player/focus marker, and a special blue monastery ring, which they can place on any of their locations, improving its value from 1 to 2 (I’ll get to the value in a moment). Then, whomever now has the most discs in the church area gain one point, then remove a singe disc from the piety pool. Finally, should anyone still have 4 or more tokens remaining in the church pool, they gain a single blue monastery ring and remove the remainder of their discs from the board.

Finally, we move to the bulk of the game. Every region is now assessed. Should any region meet the threshold of number of towns (each influence disc counts as 1, and each influence disc with a monastery ring around it counts as 2), the region tile gets flipped face up and handed to whomever has the majority of influence in that area. Each area is assessed, and should a player manage to surpass the influence of a player who is holding a region tile, they gain that tile from that player. If they tie for influence in an area, the tile remains where it is. It’s valuable to be the first one to gain a tile.

Play continues for 4 rounds (or just 3 rounds in a 3 player game), and whoever has the most points after assessing final scoring is the winner!

Review

Brian Boru: High King of Ireland is a very interesting mix of area majority, which is a genre of game I don’t generally like, and trick taking, which is a genre that I do enjoy. I quite enjoyed the choice of playing a low-ish card and hoping that you’ll win the trick, but also being prepared for the likely event that someone else takes the trick from you.

Like many area-control/gerrymandering games, a player can really benefit by earning the majorities in the provinces early, as players who want to wrestle control from them need not only match, but exceed the incumbent’s influence, and the opportunity to do so in Brian Boru feels quite limited. At the start of each trick, the leader will dictate one location to be the field of battle. Then, lead a card. Whoever wins that trick places their influence token down, while everyone else takes their consolation prizes listed on the bottom of the card.

There is a special feeling of push and pull, winning and losing, as it’s the way in which you place influence tokens on the board. Making that that mechanic as the way in which you are able to spread your influence feels quite unique, but also makes it harder to really flip the board state. In our games, one player always managed to gerrymander successfully, having the minimum number of people to take control, then just barely hold onto power, reaping all the rewards while the other players struggled to wrestle control at the same time.

If you can’t usurp control from someone by via trick taking means, there is a mechanic to reduce an opponent’s influence disk to 0 by sending invading Vikings upon their settlement, or you can increase the value of one of your influence tokens via the monasteries, or slide up the marriage track which can earn you points or offer a back-door influence in a region associated with your spouse. All of these actions are consolation prizes, when you lose a trick, instead of being able to put your influence token down, you build towards triggering these special powers. They balance the game and make anything feel viable.

Area majority is not a mechanic that I usually enjoy, it generally leaves me feeling frustrated as every time I try to commit to an area, someone else commits just as hard, and we’re stuck in a stalemate. At the same time, the third player is able to control half the board while I’m stuck in my sunk-cost standoff and end up throwing away good influence after bad. That ‘problem’ still exists in Brian Boru, as the player who takes control of a province first, retains control until someone else has more influence in an area than they do. This heavily benefits getting an early lead on a province, especially when opportunities to place more influence in the exact right location can be few and far between.

I have to wonder how much player skill comes into effect here. There is a draft at the beginning of every round, hopefully allowing you to control what you want to do in a round. If you want to go hard putting out influence disks, take a lot of high cards. If you’d rather focus your efforts on the church and Vikings, take the low cards. One of the rubs is that frequently the consolation prize is almost as good as winning the trick anyway, so you never feel shut out. That said, on a first play, players will need to try and buck the feeling of needing to win every trick.

Brian Boru: High King of Ireland feels like a special and unique game. If offers lots of great decisions and never makes you feel pigeonholed into a single strategy. The gameplay is dynamic, and the trick taking is exciting. It’s a one-of-a-kind mix that makes it a bit of a gem in two increasingly crowded fields. It’s not a game that I want to marry, but it’s absolutely worth taking on a date or two.