Aras An Uachtaran társasjáték

Angol leírás

A self-published game that shares components with Dail Eireann, with both games being themed to Irish politics.

From the review by Stuart Dagger in Sumo Magazine:

Each player is a presidential candidate, with a playing piece that moves around the map picking up votes. Movement is by die roll. My first reaction when we started to play was that there was really nothing much to the game, but by the time we were a third of the way through, everyone was clearly having to think, I was enjoying myself and my opinion had been changed.

Three constituency cards are dealt face up by the board. The first candidate to visit the constituency collects the card and replaces it with another one from the deck. The object is to collect as many cards as you can and eventually an overall majority. Very much at the ``6 and up level so far. The fun again comes with the markers. When you collect a card you place one of your markers in the constituency, and on a turn when you fail to pick up a card you place one in a constituency of your choice. The effect of these is to slow down the movement of your rivals. The basic cost to move from one constituency to the next is one point from the die roll, but if you are trying to move into a constituency where some other player has more markers than you, you increase the cost by the number of markers you are behind the constituency leader.

So what starts as a level field soon develops some very adverse gradients, and regional fiefdoms begin to appear. If this were the only effect the markers had, the game would still be fairly straightforward, but it isn't. Once again, this is an Irish election, and a simple majority is not enough to become president; you need an overall one. So after all the cards have been picked up and a pecking order established on the first count, votes start being transferred. When a candidate is eliminated, the votes they had switch over on a constituency by constituency basis, going to whichever still active candidate has most markers in the constituency. The effect of this is that in the later stages of the game proper you have to start making choices. Do you place markers so as to impede your rivals, or do you start planning for the count? And if the latter, whose switches do you aim for? What looked easy at the start isn't any longer.