Andrew's Ideal Ending

Saturday night was election night, with SHASN on the table. Your possible prime ministers were Andrew, Ian, Adam H, the long-absent Matt Walker, and myself, whose plans to refresh my mind of the rules were somewhat kiboshed by life getting in the way.

Luckily SHASN is not a complex beast. The board is the map with various states to be won by having the most voters there. Cards received in each turn dictate what resources you'll get in that moment, depending on how you answer them: each oft-contentious question allows you one of two binary answers, and the answer you choose gives you certain resources in return - cash, media manipulation, public trust, the somewhat nebulous clout - which can then be spent to influence (ie buy) voters. 

Each such resource is linked to an idealogue; one of the Capitalist, Supremo, Showstopper and Idealist. As the game progresses, you keep your cards in front of you: having a balanced spread across these political rationales is appealing, as having two cards of a matching idealogue gives you extra resources. Diversity is balance. But on the other hand, collecting cards of a kind is really where the juice is: three matching cards triggers a reasonably decent power that can influence non-majority voters on the board; and five a demonically nasty one that can cut down majorities. 

SHASN has you answer the question not knowing exactly which idealogue you're fitting in the moment: the capitalist is relatively easy to spot, the idealist even more so. The supremo and showstopper sound like Trump and Rumsfeld sharing a cab, with both in a crappy mood. 

Those little dudes on the map are voters, with colours representing our five candidates. 

It's a surprisingly straightforward game, even with the shit-stirring Conspiracy cards in the mix. In the early running it's about getting voters out. Later, it's... still about getting voters out. But manipulating them too, as the harsher aspects of electioneering come to the fore. Throughout, having the most voters in a region gives you a gerrymandering power, which is essentially manipulating boundaries to suit you (because SHASN's boundaries can't move, this is represented by moving voters instead). But when those bigger powers kick in, oof. It's a face-slapping, arse-kicking punch up in an east end pub. 

Ian and I, I feel today, began at a slight disadvantage with our three randomly-dealt cards at the start being different ideologies, whereas the others had two cards of a kind: instantly receiving more resources and closer to those three and five-card bonus actions. Ian was also last to play, which might help explain why he struggled throughout the game. It might also be something to do with the fact he kept stealing resources from people, so had something of a target on his back. The early running seemed to favour Adam, as he went from shrewdly pondering our demises to shrewdly activating our demises. In fact he came oh-so-close to winning at one stage (when all majorities are formed) but didn't quite have the gerrymandering stretches he needed. By that time, board was changing significantly from turn to turn, but when Andrew's turn arrived - he and Adam were both predominantly idealists, curiously - he had enough firepower in his armoury - along with a canny conspiracy card - to wrap election night up in his favour: something like:

Andrew 23

Matt 22

Adam Sam both 9

Ian 6

+++edited; see comments+++

I really enjoyed SHASN. There is something rote about how it plays, with each turn the usually-amusing questions, edged with risk on how they answer, followed by voter influencing and board manipulation. But countering this is the fact that this sideshow duels morph over time into the main event, as everyone has far more agency on the board than they started with. I wonder if Ian and I might have stood a chance if we teamed up in a coalition... maybe next time.

the final board

It's probably better with three or four players, tempo-wise, but the sense of being whacked over the head with a shitty stick was still intact, even if your turns rolled around marginally less frequently. 

Andrew bade us goodnight and went off to make his victory speeches somewhere, whilst the rest of us pondered what to play. Perhaps inspired by my description of Paper Dungeon as 'Avenue with bells on' Adam proposed we give it a crack. Although this is a half-hour game to SHASN's two hours, I think it took longer to explain, partly because I was drunk and Adam was tired. Essentially though you're leading a quartet of explorers around a dungeon, fighting bad guys. In eight rounds players roll dice and choose three to use: you can explore, make potions (to take hits for you and avoid minus points), craft artifacts (for stuff) or level up your dungeoneers. You want to level up because then they're better at fighting and can explore more, but although it's quite simple once you know it, first glance of the sheet does look a bit mad. 

Somehow Adam thought he used all the dice, rather than three, so he had to bail on the game with two rounds left when we realised he'd been over-subscribed. At least it made sense of how well he was doing though. When the scores were totalled up, Matt's super-aggressive explore and destroy tactic stood him in good stead:

Matt 70

Sam 50-something

Ian 40-something

Adam n/a

Adam's fatigue was catching up on him so he used the last energy reserves to ride home, whilst the three of us blasted through two games of Cross Clues. We didn't do hugely well, only scoring 14 on each attempt, but it was an interesting challenge to find matches for the likes of palm tree and soldier. And some other words. I don't remember them now. A couple of times we'd hit our stride but then grind to a halt again. Still, a nice way to round off the evening. Thanks all!

President Hickman

A week might be a long time in politics, but 20 minutes gave Ian and I (Sam) time to play a couple of games of Love Letter while we waited for Adam to arrive. This was notable mainly for Ian thrice playing barons when I had the princess, the third time saying "this has to work at some point" before his countess went down in flames. We played with the new 6-player version, which adds two new characters in the spy (potential point if you played the only spy and make it to the end of the round) and chancellor (draw two cards, place two of your three cards at the bottom of the deck).

Then Adam arrived through the rain, and we sat down to a game of SHASN, which tells the story of an election: the regions, the voters, the underhand tactics (my copy is the Indian version; there's also a USA edition). The board is broken into nine regions that the players contest: simply put, voters are the currency of victory - or not. The currency of progress is down to four political resources: funds, media, trust and the somewhat nebulous clout. Basically, you gather resource tokens representing the public's faith in you and 'spend' them to influence (or buy) voters, which you then add to the map. Having the most voters in a region means you can gerrymander: dicking about with voters in your own or adjacent region to swing things in your favour. Having a majority (-not just the most, but over half all the possible voters) means - if you hang on to it - you'll score points at the end of the game, which arrives when all majorities are claimed. 

But although it sounds, and broadly is, an extremely swingy take-that affair of screwing each other over on a regular basis, SHASN's theme comes through clearly in part because of how you get these resources: at the start of your turn you're asked an interview-style question on policy from a deck of Ideology cards, and you're permitted one of two binary answers. In either case, you take the card and collect the tokens on it: if you answer in the style of an idealist, say, you're going to improve the public trust in you. If you take a more populist view, you'll be a hit with the media. As well as gaining resources, you keep the card itself, and the gathering of cards builds an impression of your political identity, as sets of cards spark first bonus resources (for every two matching cards you have) and then additional abilities - usually of the nasty, interfering kind. Five matching cards endow the players with the really brutal stuff: I, predominantly playing the role of the Trump-esque supremo, could steal resources from other players on every turn and force their voters away from the polls. Adam - a more idealist identity - could get voters at less expense and convert others to his cause. But Ian's extra voters and ability to gerrymander not one, but two voters for every region he controlled was brutal. 

When you hear the question, you don't actually know the ideologue identities of the answers you're offered, and must instead work on your hunches. The idealist and capitalist are usually easy to spot, but the lines between the supremo and showstopper are a bit more murky. They both sound like twats, and oftentimes you feel like each question deserves a bit more nuance as to how they are answered. But the fun of SHASN is in the humour of these moments, and the fact that in order to win this election, you can't take a consistent position: simply having loads of the same type of card is ultimately unproductive, so the idealist is forced to tax sanitary towels, the capitalist must make concessions to healthcare and the populist might decide to be anti-capital punishment. 

As a game it feels like an inelegant punch-up, foregoing the control you might enjoy for round after round of face-slapping and shin-kicking, with interesting seams of luck, trading and pact-making running through it. But that's what we signed up for, and we all enjoyed it as a sort of event: particularly Ian, seeing as how he closed out the game in one fell swoop - suddenly polling day was upon us, and Adam and I didn't have time to form a coalition against him.

Ian 34 / Adam 23 / Sam 12

If a week is a long time in politics though (sorry), SHASN only took a couple of hours so there was plenty of evening left to fill, and we began with Fae, or Land of the Old Men's Penises as I immaturely insisted on calling it. 

I love Fae's simplicity of simply pushing old men's penises druids around on your turn in order for them to throw a party once no-one's looking; the catch being each player's colour is secret. Adam's afternoon siesta perhaps came back to haunt him, or maybe he was fatigued from all that canvassing. I snuck a win despite gifting Ian multiple points for getting the parties started.

Sam 47 / Ian 41 / Adam 39

Next up was For Sale. This is a copy Joe gifted to me and we found after our online adventures in 2020 that the older version had a slightly different make-up, with both properties and cheques numbering zero to 20. Ultimately, it made little difference to my experience of For Sale, which often ends something like this...

Adam 72 / Ian 68 / Sam 60

we were baffled by how the boring 20 skyscraper is considered 

better than these bonkers abodes

And we rounded off our night as a trio by playing Project L, which I thought I was rather well set to win until Adam revealed his score. Adammmmmm!!!

Adam 23 / Sam 19 / Ian 15

The winner hit the thankfully-dry road, but Ian and I felt we had one more game in us, and it was Wavelength. I wrote down all our spectrums and clues, but somehow this morning they don't seem quite as compelling as they did last night. Still, we overcame our different spheres of knowledge (Star Trek; Pokemon Go) and different paradigms of perception (IKEA furniture) to scrape a win. A fun way to round off a fun evening, thanks chaps!