Description

In the world of politics it seems nothing is every completely clear and many c operations work hard and spends millions to see that their interests are put before all others. In the game of Lobbyist - Shaping the Vote, players get to try their hand at lobbying, working to influence politicians to vote their desired way while competing with other lobbyist who are working towards a different means and outcome.

Lobbyist - Shaping the Vote is a game where players take on the role of Lobbyist trying to influence the political committee to voting in their desired way. Each player is a lobbyist starting with $50,000. The board is a political committee voting on five issues, Education, Health and Welfare, Infrastructure, Taxes and Revenue, Crime and Punishment. Each issue's influence is represented by a dice value and Lobbyist play cards from their hand to increase and decrease those dice values. Around the board will be 5,7,or 9 (depending on difficulty of play) unique politicians, all with a voting position value for each of the five issues. Politicians will not vote yes until the die values matches or exceeds their voting position values. Each lobbyist it working to gather desired votes on these issues, wanting to gather yes votes on two issues, and no votes on two issues, being indifferent on the fifth issue (each player lobbyist card has different yes/no goals on their cards).

Throughout the game players will have cards in hand and will draw and play a card on their turn. Most cards will allow then to influence one or more of the voting issue dice. Vote cards are shuffled into the deck and when one of these is drawn the player immediately plays the Vote card and the committee votes on the issues. Prior to voting though the Lobbyist all have one final chance to influence their politicians by either taking a vote action (indicted on the cards), or by spending up to $20,000 of their money to increase or decrease dice values. Once each player has had a chance to take or pass on an action, the politicians vote on the issues and players get yes/no vote tokens for their successful lobbying. Game ends after the fifth vote happens and final scores are tallied.

I came up with this game idea after sitting through a number of political action committee meetings and hearing the same info numerous times, so I started jotting ideas. The can has been play tested some and everyone I have played with has enjoyed the game at this point.

—description from the designer