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!