ELECTION PARTY — HARDCOPY EDITION

MAKE POLITICS FUN AGAIN

You have the charisma.

You have the policies.

You have photographs you would very much prefer the newspapers not to possess.

Election Party is a satirical party card game about getting elected despite your platform, your personality and the steadily accumulating evidence that nobody in their right mind should entrust you with public office.

Take on a political persona, acquire a collection of policies ranging from the merely dubious to the spectacularly insane, then convince the other players—the electorate—that everything you propose is sensible, affordable, compassionate and absolutely necessary.

Just as you begin to build momentum, the scandals start.

This is the HARDCOPY VERSION: the professionally manufactured physical card game, ready to open and play.

No home printing. No cutting out a hundred cards. No wrestling with a printer that has decided 250gsm card constitutes an act of aggression.

And this particular stock is limited.

The remaining copies are from the pre-order stock and include the Rachel Haywire bonus card.

Once they are gone, they are gone.

Probably.

We are talking about politics, after all.

100 CARDS OF ELECTORAL MALPRACTICE

At the heart of Election Party are:

10 Candidate Cards

70 Policy Cards

20 Scandal Cards

That is a 100-card core game, with the Rachel Haywire bonus card included with this remaining hardcopy stock.

The rules provide the framework.

The cards provide the ammunition.

The players provide the lies.

BECOME SOMEBODY THE PUBLIC CAN BELIEVE IN

Every campaign needs a candidate.

Preferably somebody reassuring, competent and possessed of a functioning moral compass.

You will have to make do with what you get.

The ten Candidate Cards include political specimens such as:

• The Celebrity

• The Social Justice Warrior

• The Dull Moderate

…and seven other aspiring statesmen, demagogues, opportunists and people who have looked at the levers of government and thought, Yes. Those should be mine.

Your candidate gives you a political persona to inhabit.

Lean into it.

A Celebrity may regard fame as qualification enough.

A Dull Moderate can attempt to reassure everybody that nothing terribly exciting will happen under their administration.

A firebrand can promise sweeping transformation until somebody asks how it will be paid for.

There are no miniatures to move and comparatively little hiding behind card mathematics. Election Party depends upon what you say, how well you say it and whether the people around the table find your particular brand of nonsense more appealing than everybody else's.

Campaign.

Perform.

Bullshit magnificently.

THE MANIFESTO FROM HELL

Then you get your policies.

Seventy of them.

The game may ask you to defend such magnificent contributions to public policy as:

• Declare War on Mars

• Expand Drone Warfare

• Fully Automated Luxury Communism

• Ban the Internet

You may approve of the policy.

You may despise it.

You may have spent the previous round explaining why anyone supporting precisely that idea was a dangerous lunatic.

Irrelevant.

It is yours now.

Make it work.

Declare War on Mars?

Think of the jobs.

Space industry. National pride. A generation inspired by the challenge. Defence spending returning directly to hardworking terrestrial families.

There being no known Martian government capable of surrendering is merely the sort of defeatist detail your opponent would dwell upon.

Ban the Internet?

Productivity. Child protection. Mental health. Community cohesion. A bold return to local shops.

Also your opponent's campaign website disappears, which is plainly an accidental benefit and beneath discussion.

Fully Automated Luxury Communism?

Prosperity without drudgery.

Expanded drone warfare?

Modernisation of defence.

The trick is not believing any of it.

The trick is making everybody else believe that you believe it.

For perhaps thirty seconds longer than the other candidates.

POLICIES CAN ALSO BE WEAPONS

Depending upon play, policies may come at random or be pushed upon rivals.

Naturally this encourages thoughtful, constructive engagement with the democratic process.

For example, you might notice that another candidate's carefully cultivated image would sit beautifully beside some monstrous piece of legislation.

Help them out.

Politics is public service.

Hand them the policy.

Then watch them explain it.

Part of the pleasure of Election Party is seeing somebody discover, in real time, an argument for something they would have mocked without mercy a moment earlier.

People are remarkably inventive when humiliation is the alternative.

THEN THE PRESS FINDS OUT

No political career is complete without scandal.

Election Party includes 20 Scandal Cards, involving such minor campaign inconveniences as murder, leaked intimate photographs and ancient offensive social-media posts suddenly excavated by somebody with too much time and an excellent search function.

This is where the aspiring leader demonstrates character.

Or, more usefully, an absence of shame.

You might deny everything.

You might admit nothing while apologising for any offence people may inexplicably have taken.

You might blame a former employee, a hostile newspaper, foreign interference, your opponent, poor record keeping or the regrettable modern tendency to hold politicians responsible for things they have personally done.

Perhaps the information is true.

Perhaps it is false.

Perhaps the problem is not the allegation but the fact that your explanation has somehow made it worse.

Keep talking.

A campaign cannot collapse while the candidate is still confidently insisting that everything is going extremely well.

Probably.

THE FUN IS IN THE ARGUMENT

Election Party works because the cards do not do all the playing for you.

You have to sell the platform.

You have to answer the scandal.

You have to attack weaknesses in rival campaigns without drawing attention to the enormous smoking crater in your own.

A good round can turn into:

A campaign speech.

A hostile press conference.

An ideological argument nobody actually believes.

A desperate piece of rhetorical gymnastics.

Or several adults shouting campaign slogans over one another while somebody attempts to explain why war with Mars represents the only responsible choice.

No degree in politics is necessary.

Indeed, familiarity with how politics actually works may prove depressing rather than useful.

Quick thinking helps.

A straight face helps more.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO AGREE ABOUT POLITICS

Election Party does not require everyone around the table to share an ideology.

Quite the reverse.

Candidates and policies are there to be played, argued and abused.

You may find yourself defending something you hate because the card says it is now the centrepiece of your campaign.

Your opponent may have to champion something you know they actually believe, only to discover that this somehow makes them worse at arguing for it.

The joke is political ambition, rhetoric, hypocrisy, scandal management and that extraordinary transformation whereby an obviously ridiculous idea becomes entirely reasonable once somebody needs it to win.

Left, right, centre, libertarian, authoritarian, revolutionary, conservative or somebody who claims not to be political while holding extremely detailed views about taxation—you can all humiliate yourselves together.

That is democracy.

THE RACHEL HAYWIRE BONUS CARD

The remaining hardcopy pre-order stock comes with the Rachel Haywire bonus card.

This is specific to the limited physical stock presently available.

It is an extra little artefact from the original release and one reason the hardcopy edition is not merely the PDF sent through a printer on your behalf.

Once this stock is exhausted, do not assume that later copies—should there ever be later copies—will necessarily contain it.

Political promises regarding future availability are offered with the traditional degree of reliability.

WHY BUY THE PHYSICAL VERSION?

Because some games feel better as actual cards.

Election Party involves handing policies to people.

Dumping scandals onto opponents.

Looking down at the ideological abomination you have somehow assembled and wondering how the hell you are going to sell it to the electorate.

Physical cards make that immediate.

There is also no preparation.

Open the game.

Gather the players.

Commence lying.

The separate PDF version exists for people who prefer print-and-play, want a cheaper entry point or enjoy performing unpaid manufacturing labour with scissors.

This version is already made.

That means less time cutting and more time explaining why your administration's first priority must be the militarisation of space.

A PARTY GAME WITH TEETH

Election Party works particularly well for people who enjoy improvisation, satire, role-playing, argument, terrible jokes and watching friends discover previously hidden reserves of political amorality.

It is particularly suitable for:

• Game nights

• Parties

• Election-night gatherings

• Political nerds

• Role-players who enjoy improvisation

• Debate enthusiasts

• People who like Cards Against Humanity-style social games but want rather more performance involved

• Anyone who has ever shouted at a politician on television and thought, I could do better than that

You probably could.

The game is interested in what happens immediately afterwards.

EVERY CAMPAIGN GOES WRONG DIFFERENTLY

A Celebrity promising Fully Automated Luxury Communism while attempting to survive a leaked-nudes scandal is one campaign.

A Dull Moderate explaining the strategic necessity of invading Mars while insisting that the suspicious death presently dominating the news cycle has been blown entirely out of proportion is another.

Shuffle again.

Different candidate.

Different platform.

Different disgrace.

The cards generate combinations rather than a fixed comedy script, and the personalities around the table do the rest.

One group will turn everything into elaborate political parody.

Another will discover that shouting increasingly unreasonable promises is an effective electoral strategy.

Someone will unexpectedly become very good at this.

Keep an eye on that person.

WHAT YOU GET

This is the physical hardcopy edition of Election Party.

The core game contains:

10 Candidate Cards

Choose—or become—the politician.

70 Policy Cards

Build the manifesto nobody asked for.

20 Scandal Cards

Discover why your communications director has stopped returning calls.

The remaining limited hardcopy pre-order stock also includes the:

Rachel Haywire Bonus Card

Everything arrives as a professionally manufactured physical card game.

No print-and-play assembly is required.

LIMITED STOCK MEANS LIMITED STOCK

This listing is for the remaining hardcopy pre-order stock.

There is only a limited amount available.

That is worth being clear about because “limited” has been abused by marketing departments almost as thoroughly as “new”, “improved” and “serves four”.

These are the physical copies that remain.

When the stock runs out, this particular batch—with its Rachel Haywire bonus card—is finished.

There is also a separate PDF print-and-play edition for those who miss out or simply prefer digital games.

TAKE POWER

Election Party is a game about convincing the room that you deserve authority despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

The policies are ludicrous.

The scandals are appalling.

The candidates are shameless.

None of which makes it quite as unrealistic as one might hope.

Pick your candidate.

Discover what you now apparently believe.

Explain the photographs.

Ask the electorate for its trust.

Election Party.

Because if politics is going to be ridiculous, you might as well score points for it.