Wahlspiel Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• What the Game Includes
• Game Preparations
• What's It About?
• The Game Begins
• Who Is Elected?
• The Federal Council Election
• Useful Notes

What the Game Includes

• 1 game board

• 6 coloured game pieces and 1 die

• Game money

• Vote stones (Stimmsteine, "votes"):

  • 35 light vote stones, each worth 1 vote
  • 15 dark vote stones, each worth 5 votes

• 45 politician cards (Politikerkarten): as might be expected, each shows the portrait of a politician, his or her name, age and occupation. Beside it the politician "profiles" themselves, i.e. they list 5 interest groups or concerns they will champion if elected.

• 125 voter cards (Wählerkarten, yellow): each represents a voter who decides, by his or her own criteria, to whom to give a vote.

• 90 event cards (Ereigniskarten, green): each names an event that unexpectedly influences the election campaign.

Game Preparations

• The voter cards and the event cards are placed face down in two stacks on the game board.
• The politician cards are distributed evenly among the players. Each player now has their party together, which they may name freely, for example "Free Christian People's Party", "Party of the Open Centre" or "Farmers', Workers' and Employers' Party (BAU)". Each player also chooses a matching party colour, then one of the 6 game pieces, which they place on the start field.
• Each party receives a one-time start-up sum of 6000 francs, plus 4 voters (its core voters, Stammwählerschaft) and 2 events (the party's election strategists plan them ahead). It is advisable not to show these cards openly.

What's It About?

Three election rounds are looming:

1. The election of 5 cantonal councillors (Kantonsräte); the winners each gain 5000 francs.
2. The election of 3 national councillors (Nationalräte); the winners each gain 8000 francs.
3. The crowning election of a Federal Councillor (Bundesrat).

The winner is the party that can provide the Federal Councillor.

The Game Begins

Each party nominates two of its politicians from among its cards as candidates for the time-consuming office of cantonal councillor, which they make themselves available for in a spirit of selflessness. The player lays their candidates face up on the table and praises them duly. In doing so the player takes care to nominate candidates for whom their core voters can warm up. Already at this point one notices: capable candidates are thinly sown.

Election rounds are then played on the game board in turn, using the die. In this first round the goal is the field KANTONSRAT (cantonal council).

On the way, parties and candidates may experience a number of things:

Voter purchase (Wählerkauf; icon: a figure of a person). The party may buy as many voters as it likes. A voter costs 1000 francs and must be taken blind from the stack. "Unusable" voters may not be returned, but may be kept for future election rounds.

Purchase of events (Kauf von Ereignissen; icon: an exclamation mark). The party may buy as many event cards as it likes. A card costs 2000 francs and must be taken blind from the stack. Unusable events may not be returned, but may be kept for future election rounds.

Prize field (Gewinnfeld; icon: a round "GEWINN CHANCE" seal). The lucky party may take the prizes depicted here (1 event or 1-2 voters) free of charge from the stack.

Voting field (Wahlfeld; icon: a hand dropping a ballot into a ballot box). The party may (but need not!) vote, i.e. place as many voter cards face up into the ballot box in the middle of the game board as it likes.

Example 1: The voter card "votes for more objectivity" (wählt für mehr Sachlichkeit). All candidates with the matching symbol (a grid pattern) on their politician card receive one vote each (1 vote stone). The party affiliation of the candidates plays no role here.

Example 2: The voter card "votes for art and homeland" (wählt für Kunst und Heimat). All candidates who bear one or both of the two symbols on their politician card (a square frame for art, a Swiss cross for homeland) receive one vote each (one vote stone). A voter can never give the same candidate 2 votes.

Example 3: A voter card without a symbol. The voter gives no credence to the election promises and judges purely on human grounds, by the sex, age, name, occupation or the picture of the candidates, e.g. "votes for smokers (Raucher(innen))". Accordingly, all candidates who clearly show themselves on the picture as smokers, i.e. who are shown with a pipe, cigar or cigarette, receive one vote each. Personal assessments, such as "my Ernst Tanner smokes secretly", are to be excluded. There is also plenty to talk about if, for instance, a voter card "votes for men who radiate authority" turns up. In such a case the majority of the other players decides whether the male candidates radiate authority or not.

Sensation field (Sensationsfeld; icon: a television screen with an exclamation mark). The party may (but need not!) play one event in the middle of the game board: the event is made public in the media.

In contrast to the voter cards, the event cards can:

• win or lose money,
• often win or lose more than one vote per candidate, and
• refer to individual candidates that the player playing the card designates.

Example: "A woman writes a book. Gains 2 votes and receives 4000 francs." The player who plays the card may decide which candidate (a woman) the card refers to. If no woman is standing, the card has no effect.

Normally one plays prize cards on one's own candidates and plays the bad events on political opponents.

If an event refers to two (or some other specific number of) candidates with a described property, then these two must actually exist. Otherwise the card has no effect.

"Half" is always rounded up in the case of events. A poor fellow with 5 votes who loses "half" must therefore give up 3 vote stones.

Candidate change (Kandidatenwechsel; icon: a crossed-out face). The party may (but need not) withdraw one of its candidates and send another into the election campaign in their place. It may also replace an already eliminated candidate. However, the newly fielded candidate starts without votes. The vote stones won with the old candidate are lost.

Coalition field (Koalitionsfeld; icon: a handshake). The party may choose a coalition partner among the other players: one other player with whom it may immediately exchange any number of event cards and voter cards. Purchase and exchange deals are also permitted. Outside the coalition fields, purchase and exchange deals are forbidden, because they are unethical.

Goal (Ziel). The goal need not be reached with the exact number of points. The party that arrives first receives 2 vote stones, which it may distribute among its candidates as it sees fit. It may also begin the following election round by rolling the die. The election round ends when all players have reached the goal. Until then all fielded candidates remain in the race, meaning that they can win and lose vote stones, even when their party has long since reached the goal.

Who Is Elected?

Elected are the candidates who have collected the most votes after the election round:

• After the 1st election round, the 5 cantonal councillors, who now each receive 5000 francs from the state treasury.

If several candidates are tied on the decisive places (for example on places 5 and 6 in the cantonal council election), a run-off (Stichwahl) takes place between them. The parties of the run-off candidates may each send one more voter to the ballot box. If there is still no decision, the top card of the neutral voter stack decides.

The Federal Council Election

The 2nd election round proceeds exactly along the pattern of the 1st round: each party nominates two candidates, who this time compete for only 3 national council seats, each worth 8000 francs in bonus. Naturally everyone starts with 0 votes, whether an old or a new face. The goal this time is the NATIONALRAT field.

The Federal Council election (election round no. 3) brings, by contrast, two essential innovations:

• Each party now puts forward only one (instead of two, as before) candidate for election. In addition, however, the three elected national councillors also take part in the election.
• The goal BUNDESRAT must be reached with the exact number of pips on the die. Surplus pips are moved back.

The party that has reached the goal of its dreams and may celebrate itself as the election winner is the one that provides the Federal Councillor. Money is now a secondary matter (it can be recovered through indirect taxes over the next four years).

Useful Notes

• In a game for three players, deal 10,000 francs per player at the start, and admit three candidates each in the cantonal council election.
• In a game with 5 or 6 players, it is advisable to admit only 1 candidate per party already for the national council election.
• It is wise to convert the larger part of your money into cards early on, so that afterwards you can nominate, or swap in, suitable candidates from your own ranks.

The Gnomes (advanced optional rule). As soon as a candidate reaches 17 votes, he or she has become too powerful for... (the printed text has an ellipsis here, kept as printed) They quietly disappear into a corporate management.