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Corrupt Bargain: The 1824 Presidential Election'.
Each player represents one of the major Candidates (Adams, Clay, Crawford or Jackson) and their campaign organization in the 1824 Federal Election and seeks to become the next President of the United States.
Through strategic alliances, campaigning, and back room politics, the players seek to win the election.
The election is won outright by obtaining a majority of the Electoral College votes.
If no candidate obtains a majority in the Electoral College, than the election goes to the House of Representatives where the candidate with the most states wins.
Thus players must balance campaigning for the popular vote with seeking political influence.
Because the game can be played by two, three, or four-players, the strategy and play changes dramatically depending on the number of players.
Games can generally be played in 60-90 minutes. Mounted game board of the United States in 1824, 200 cards including 80 event cards describing the various events during the election and the time period. Like Bleeding Kansas, the game mechanics are simple but tactical card play and strategic plans are plentiful.
—description from the publisher's website
Corrupt Bargain Review
- Engaging three-player experience, with four-player potentially being even better.
- Plays relatively quickly for its depth, achieving a good balance between meaty gameplay and playtime.
- Streamlined and elegant design that efficiently integrates thematic elements.
- The 'lockdown' mechanic adds an interesting dynamic and emergent strategy.
- The cascading tie-breakers are a significant and enjoyable element, similar to games like Liberté.
- The card drafting system with dual-purpose cards (event/action points/suit) provides interesting strategic choices.
- The two-player experience is considered 'okay' but not as strong as three or four players.
- Text on event cards can be a bit small, although pictorial indicators help.
- Multiplayer presidential election
- 1824 Presidential Election
- 1960: The Making of the President
- El Grande
- Liberté
- Twilight Struggle
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Action Point Allowance — Event cards provide action points that players use to perform various actions on their turn.
- Area Control — The core mechanic is described as 'El Grande style area control'.
- Card Drafting — Players draft event cards which provide actions and influence placement.
- Hand Management — Players manage a hand of cards which can be used for a 'final push' at the end of the game.
- Set Collection — Players collect sets of three cards of the same suit to activate a 'lockdown' ability.
- Tie-breaking — Multiple tie-breaking mechanisms are used to determine state control and ultimately the winner.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- this one is kind of a multiplayer presidential election which usually is like a two-player game
- effectively this is it's sort of an El Grande style area control game but definitely with some kind of flavor around the edges to kind of make it you know sort of political and election idea
- actually very simple and straightforward game
- the first place player always goes last on the following turn and it tells you just to use one of these markers to kind of keep track of that and that does add a really interesting kind of turn order Dynamic
- nothing can change that state for the entire rest of the game during the final push or any point at all so that's the other part that you can do for your turn when you play kind of three of a kind of these cards
- it plays nothing like liberte but it kind of does because it has a very different feel
- so it feels like kind of a different take on a CDG and kind of like a multiplayer CDG where you can kind of you kind of go in for the event the event's something that you can always do but are you picking the card more for the event are you picking it more for the action points are you picturing it picking it more for the suit for later so you're kind of weighing all that
- it plays super quick it's kind of that perfect balance of like it's pretty meaty and it's only about an hour
- it's a pretty streamlined you know efficient elegant design but it does kind of Wiggle in some of those thematic elements
- I definitely recommend this