Kingmaker

Every year, the town of Xenia. Ohio has four sets of elections. In each set of elections there are 3 districts with two candidates from each district vying for a council seat. You have the power to deliver votes; in return you will be rewarded handsomely, but only if the candidate wins the election. You must choose the best candidates to win.
Equipment (For 4 players)
24 candidate cards
Victory point chips
Tablet for recording votes
Bonus cards
Board with 3 districts, each district has 2 slots for candidate cards (one on the “left” side of the district and one on the “right” side of the district.

Game Play
Round 1:
A. The 24 candidate cards are shuffled and the top 6 are drawn and placed in order (left to right) on the board.
B. Each player can deliver 10,000 votes. The players secretly allocate the votes to the candidates (to no more than one candidate per district).
The candidates are all unique and differ in the following ways:
1. Popularity: How many votes the candidate will get without any outside help from the players
2. Generosity: Some candidates will offer more points for helping them win (See below)
3. Some candidates will only give points to players who provide the most votes. Some will give the same number of points to any player who helps them. Some may only give points to the top 2 players.
4. Some candidates require a minimum of votes or you will not receive victory points.
5. Some candidates offer you little or nothing for their votes. But if they lose and you help their opponent you can lose bonus cards (see below)
C. The votes are added up and each player gets 5, 3 or 1 point, for delivering the most, second most and third most votes, respectively for each winning candidate.
D. If a player helps wins an election, there are 2 bonus cards. The first bonus card is a district bonus card. This card allows the player to allocate from 2-4 thousand additional votes in that district only in future rounds. These cards are cumulative.
The second bonus card is awarded only to a player who provides the most votes to a candidate. This card will give the player more victory points in any future election in which the player supports this winning candidate.
E. At the end of the round, the losing candidates are discarded and winners stay in the same place. The 3 empty slots are filled from the deck.
Rounds 2-4 are played in the same manner, but the number of victory points is doubled for the second round, tripled for the third round and quadrupled for the last round. Any bonus cards handed out the last round are worth one victory point, but have no other value.
After round 4, the player with the most victory points wins!

A resource-rich planet is colonized and there is a bulging new economy to manage. 4-5 players compete as members of a trade commission, enacting mining and trade regulations to best serve the colony and themselves. Mostly themselves. OK, just themselves.

Components:
Modular board (1 piece for each character and a central connecting board) showing which resources can be mined where
Colored dice indicating locations, type, and level of mines for each player
Numbered influence cards (ten each, numbered 1-4)
Contract cards
Resource tokens (5 types)
Victory point tokens

Setup:
Players select a character and its associated board, tokens, and character card (which may have a special ability). Characters vary in which resources they most easily access. The boards fit together with a central communal piece to make the full board.

Players choose one mine on their board to start at level 1 and one at level 2.

Three starting contracts are in play: Trade any four resources for one of any resource, upgrade a mine for three of its own resource, and trade five of any one resource for 1 VP.

Play phases (simultaneous):

Influence: Each player draws two influence cards. Reshuffle the discards as necessary.

Produce: Mines produce resources according to their type and level.

Vote on contracts: Contract cards are revealed (one less than the number of players). Each player secretly plays influence cards under at least one contract.

Resolve vote: Votes are counted. The highest voted contract is added to the active contracts, the lowest is discarded, and the remainder are shuffled back into the deck. Used influence cards are discarded. Resolve immediate effect on winning contract.

Trade: trade resources and influence with other players or with bank at contract rates.

Build: Build or upgrade mines (at contract costs). New mines must be adjacent to one of the player’s other mines. Score 1 VP for reaching mine levels 3 and 6.

Contract cards are the heart of the game. Each has a game effect and an immediate effect. The game effect may alter building costs, resource exchange rates, and voting procedures. The immediate effect is a reward (or penalty) to the highest vote-giver. For example, players may vote for an undesirable contract to get an important immediate effect, or vice versa. Players may also vote a small amount for something they need later to avoid it getting discarded. Some contracts offer advantages that only trigger if certain resources are in play, forcing players to form loose alliances. A new contract replaces any old contract with the same icons; these icons will manage balance and ambiguity.

Game end: A player wins if she ends a round with 15 VP and has the most VP. Otherwise, the game ends when the contract deck empties and the player with the most VP wins. Resources break ties.

It’s All About Trust

No of Players: 3-6

*In a country with indirect elections, every member of the Parlament can be important. Can you get their support and become the next president? And will you hold to your promises? *

Components

150 meeples, (6 colors, 25 each) 60 Government cards 12 Loyalty Cards (6 letter A, 6 letter B) 2 Tokens (1 letter A, 1 letter B) 1 Election bag

Setup

Each player takes 12 meeples from one color. Choose randomly candidate A. Then, each other player can become candidate B (starting with the player to the left of candidate A). If nobody accepts, the player to the right of candidate A becomes candidate B.

Development

The game goes for a number of rounds twice the number of players.

After deciding the candidates, reveal Government cards equal to the number of players. These are the rewards for the president and his cabinet. There are three kinds of Government cards:

30 Approval cards:

actual Victory Points, ranging from 5 to 7;

15 Rigging cards: ranging from 2 to 4,

meaning how many meeples the owner can take from his supply;

15 Money Cards: ranging from 2 to 4.

They can be used to recruit (paying immediately 2 for each meeple and keeping the card until the end, but not using it) or to buy votes during election – reducing the votes from the other side by 1 for each 1$. In this case, the winner parties keep their Money cards. The opposition parties lose their cards.

After the rewards are revealed, the candidates campaign. They can offer any combination of rewards, future support, etc, in exchange for the votes of the other parties. Then, every party cast secretly a number of its meeples in the bag election and chooses one of the loyalty cards, meaning in which candidate it’s voting – it can put money cards at this moment too, but not revealing its values. After the meeples are counted, the cards are revealed. The candidate with most votes become president. Every 3 meeples not used during election grants 2 victory points for its owner.

After the election, the president split the rewards among him and his supporters as he wants – but nobody can receive more than 2 rewards. Only in the last round he has to keep the promises made during campaign. The rewards that he doesn’t distribute are discarded. For each Rigging or Money Reward distributed, the opposition parties receive 1 meeple (a bad government can be a stimulus to the other side).

Then, a new round begins. The president can be reelected only once. If it was second term or he does not want to try reelection, the player to his left can step up – and so go on.

End of Game

In the end, each player loses meeples equal to half the money he/she has (the party expels the corrupts) and sum up the rest with its victory points. The player with the highest result wins.