Votes for Women - Solo Review (Board Game)
The only thing missing, I thought – as a cascade of D6s, 8s
and 4s clattered across the board during my plays of Votes for Women – is a
democracy sausage. For those unfamiliar, here in Australia the democracy
sausage is practically written into our constitution. On polling days, whether
local, state or federal, the main impetus for many to leave the house is not to
vote for one politically troubling party over another, but to satiate a hunger,
a hunger for a sausage betwixt bread, possibly a bun if you find yourself in a
fancy part of town, smothered in tomato sauce, onions non-negotiable.
Not to trivialise the important motivation and message
behind Votes for Women, but this board game exists within the sphere of entertainment.
This is a game about history, yes, but it sits at the light end of the
spectrum, which suits me just fine. I’m not ready for Spreadsheet: The Game
just yet. Thus, my fanciful desire for a snag and sauce while waiting for
congress to pass the Nineteenth Amendment.
Components
Votes for Women is a classy production. Board art features a
thickly illustrated map of the United States. Black-ink spatter creates texture
across this ideological battleground, while the components are bright, tactile
and clacky. Wooden pieces are used for board-play elements and thick cardboard
punchouts for the badges that you spend for rerolls and to moving your
campaigners across the country. Although I sleeve my cards, I played the first
couple of games without them and the cards felt sturdy enough that I doubt they
would degrade much across repeat plays.
While the game was setup on my desk at work, I showed
several people interested in the hobby what I was currently reviewing and they
were all drawn to it from an aesthetic perspective, asking about the theme and
commenting in a general way about the importance of various historical
struggles. Although I claim only a surface knowledge of the complexities of US
history, the fact that so many conversations came out of the look and theme of
this game is a testament to the corner of the market it occupies and the way in
which it presents itself.
What Works?
In the solo mode, there’s an impressive battle between your
deck of cards and the Oppobot’s. This happens because you sort both decks into
three eras: early, middle and late. This means that some cards, such as The
Civil War, will come out in the general vicinity of its historical happening
(this game covers just over 70 years of the suffrage movement). Such cards will
often remain on the board, either for the remainder of the turn or the rest of
the game, and the Oppobot will play cards that state, ‘If X is in play, do X’. Such
reactions are generally never good, but the powerful effects of the cards that
you place out are always so impactful that you can’t afford not to play them.
And so, there’s a tug of war in the early game that is admittedly quite
scripted.
On subsequent plays, I did consider whether to play some of
these cards. When I did not, the Oppobot was denied the opportunity to pull the
influence rug out from under me, and instead was forced to use those turns to
campaign. However, oppositional campaigning has the potential to be equally
devastating anyway, given that the number of cubes placed relates to dice
rolls.
If you’re considering Votes for Women, you will need to be
okay with rolling dice a lot. Towards the end of each of my five solo games,
some of the turns for the Oppobot saw me rolling dice of various denominations
for minutes at a time, placing out the requisite cubes in specific states,
before re-rolling to work out where any overflow cubes needed to be placed. I mostly
enjoyed this, to be fair, so I think that Votes for Women might connect with
you if you find following the instructional outcomes of dice relaxing.
Such randomness also aligns with the suffrage movement
itself, with huge swings possible across states and entire regions, all from
just a card or two coming out at the wrong time, not to mention some rotten
luck. Thankfully, a large part of the game revolves around gaining and spending
campaign buttons. These can be used to reroll dice or to move your meeples to a
different region to campaign there. They also play a role in bidding for
special strategy cards at the beginning of each turn (except the first turn,
when the strategy phase is skipped). Bid too few and the Oppobot will punish
you by taking a card and pushing out more red cubes. But then you might bid
four and roll a one, effectively wasting three buttons. Some games you will be
swimming in buttons, while others you will be cursing their scarcity, often
because of choices you made earlier. You can also just spend a turn to gain as
many buttons as you have campaigners on the board – an option I kept forgetting
about!
What Doesn’t Work?
While it is entirely possible that I am just not very good
at beating this game, I found it a real struggle every time to raise enough Congressional
tokens to ratify the amendment and move the game into the next phase, wherein
each state that gains four cubes from either side gains a green tick or red
cross to signify how that state has voted on the Nineteenth Amendment. Thirteen
crosses and it’s game over. Compare this with the need to place out 36 ticks to
represent victory for the suffragist player. If congressional voting can happen
early, then the game turns into something quite fun and intense as you try
desperately to stop the Oppobot from gaining four cubes in any states while campaigning
to earn as many green ticks as possible.
Unfortunately, I had to apply a house rule to experience
this, opting to start a game with three congressional tokens already on the
board. This allowed me to get into the meaty part of the game early (I’m still
thinking about that sausage). Otherwise, the experience is quite frustrating as
the Oppobot has a lot of cards in the early and middle eras that will remove
those congressional tokens. If it gets to turn three or four out of the game’s total
of six, you need to give up on getting the amendment ratified at congress and
hope that you can place out enough cubes across the country for final voting.
Final voting. I know I said above that I generally enjoyed
the dice-rolling. The end game is something else though. If you reach the end
of the six rounds without 13 crosses or 36 ticked states, then you simply go
around each unclaimed state and roll dice (adding existing cubes in those
states to the roll). Winner gains a cross or tick. If it comes down to final
voting, you might as well pack it up. The bot will almost always have a card
that allows it to roll a D8 instead of the D6 you roll. Even if you have a heap
of campaign buttons to reroll, or the card that allows you to win drawn rolls
(the Oppobot is otherwise victorious upon draws), it’s still a case of
attrition against the odds. I lost every time it came to final voting.
One other issue I had was that, not being a US native, and
because the states have two-letter abbreviations for their names, I had to find
a map of the US states while playing so that I could quickly locate them. The
abbreviations also invariably ended up being covered by placed cubes,
especially in smaller states. Knowing the states became less of an issue the
more I played.
Will This Be For You?
My experience is focused on the solo mode, which, due to its
design, does have something of a limited appeal on replay. Events seem to play
out with repetition each game. You’ll come to anticipate certain cards that you
know the bot will likely play. I would have liked more options to dig through
my own deck, as I only got the card that let me do so once, and I don’t think
there’s another one in there that can help you dig down to the more powerful
cards.
Even if the replay value for solo feels limited, each game felt
lovely to play, with a deep tactility to rolling dice and placing out cubes,
ticks and crosses. I enjoyed learning about history from the included brochures
and articles, as well as from text on the cards. I’ve no doubt that the
two-player game would offer a deeper experience, as there is an entire
oppositional deck that a second player can use. You could probably even
two-hand that solo if you wanted. No one can stop you.
Votes for Women: an easy to learn, insightful game of card
play and state control. Sausage not included.
A copy of this game was provided by the publisher Fort
Circle Games for this review
