Politico
Politico Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Set Up for 3-5 Players
Place all of the follower tokens into the middle of the play area. Each player receives an Influence (hand) card and a Follower (handshake) card; place the remaining action cards back into the box. Shuffle the class cards and place them into the middle of the play area face-down. Shuffle the influence cards and place them face-down in the middle of the play area. The oldest player will begin the first round.
Object of the Game
Players attempt to gain followers of the kingdom's four classes while using their influence as royalty to change the lives of the people. The classes are: Clergy (grey followers), Peasants (green followers), Merchants (yellow followers) and Guild (brown followers).
Gameplay
Politico is played over a series of rounds. Each round, players secretly choose the action they will take for the round. The actions are Follower (handshake) and Influence (hand).
- Follower (handshake): This action gains the player 1 follower of the active class.
- Influence (hand): This action allows the player to draw 1 card from the influence deck or to play 1 influence card from his hand.
To begin the round, the starting player for the round reveals the top card of the class deck and places it in a separate discard pile. This is the active class for the current round. If there are no cards left to reveal, shuffle together the revealed cards and place them back face down in the middle of the play area.
Next, each player chooses one of his action cards and places it face down in front of him. Once each player has placed a card face down, all actions are revealed. During their turns, players get to do their selected action one time, plus 1 additional time for each player who chose a DIFFERENT action than they did.
(Example: Billy, Denise, and Chad choose Follower and Susan and Jimmy choose Influence. Billy, Denise, and Chad each get to collect 3 followers of the active class on their turns. Susan and Jimmy will each get to draw or play up to 4 cards during their turns.)
The player who began the round takes his turn first. Play continues clockwise.
The round is over after each player has taken his turn. At the end of the round, all players must discard down to four influence cards. The person to the left of the person who began the round begins the next round.
More on Actions
If a player has chosen Follower as his action, and there are none of the active class followers left to collect, that player does not collect any followers this turn.
A player may play any influence cards in his hand, regardless of the active class. However, the class symbols on the cards do have some significance.
On a player's turn, if that player has a card in his hand that matches the active class, a special action can be taken. If a player has chosen Influence as his action, the player may opt to discard a card from his hand that matches the active class to collect one follower of the active class instead of drawing or playing a card. This costs one of his or her actions. Alternatively, if a player has chosen Follower as his action, the player may play a card from his or her hand that matches the current class instead of taking 1 follower. This costs one of his actions.
Ending the Game
The game immediately ends when a player has collected 13 followers, with at least 1 follower of each of the 4 classes, with that player winning the game.
2 Player Rules
The game is identical with one exception. When setting up, the remaining action cards are shuffled together and placed face down in the play area. When the players reveal their actions for the round, the player that started the round takes the top card from the face-down action cards and places it face-up in the middle of the play area. The number of times that a player may use their actions for the round is affected by this additional card. When all of the unused face-down action cards are revealed, they are shuffled together and placed face-down in the play area.