Voting

Crappy Birthday

Crappy Birthday is a humorous game about pranking your friends with gifts they don’t want.

How to Play
Deal 5 Gift Cards to each player.

1) When it is your turn, it is your birthday! Everybody gives you a crappy "gift" from their hand.
2) You shuffle the cards, turn them over one by one, and pick the gift you dislike the most.
3) The player who gave you that gift gets a point.
4) Draw back up to 5 Gift Cards. Play moves to the left.

The first player to 3 points wins.

When to Play
Crappy Birthday is designed to be taken as a gift to a party instead of a bottle of wine or a 6-pack of beer. The goal of Crappy Birthday is to get people talking, laughing, and having a good time as quickly as possible. Don't be surprised if some people dislike the same gift that other people at the table love, because the gifts were designed to start fun and interesting conversations. Crappy Birthday is simple enough that a group of non-gamers can read the rules and start playing within a few minutes. Or if people do not want to play at the party, they can have fun by simply looking at the cards and laughing at the pictures and funny concepts.

So the next time you are going to a party with non-gamers, consider bringing Crappy Birthday as a gift.

Quo Vadis?

In an interesting departure from his normally computational-heavy game structure, Reiner Knizia put together this negotiation game. Players are represented on the board by a group of politicians moving through a network of committees, and need to seek support from their competitors to advance upward toward the Senate. Supporting an opponent gains you prestige, needed in quantity at the end of the game. Once all five Senate positions are filled, the game is over, and only players who have a politician in the Senate are eligible to win. Of those players, whoever has the most prestige wins.

Resistance

The Empire must fall. Our mission must succeed. By destroying their key bases, we will shatter Imperial strength and liberate our people. Yet spies have infiltrated our ranks, ready for sabotage. We must unmask them. In five nights we reshape destiny or die trying. We are the Resistance!

The Resistance is a party game of social deduction. It is designed for five to ten players, lasts about 30 minutes, and has no player elimination. The Resistance is inspired by Mafia/Werewolf, yet it is unique in its core mechanics, which increase the resources for informed decisions, intensify player interaction, and eliminate player elimination.

Players are either Resistance Operatives or Imperial Spies. For three to five rounds, they must depend on each other to carry out missions against the Empire. At the same time, they must try to deduce the other players’ identities and gain their trust. Each round begins with discussion. When ready, the Leader entrusts sets of Plans to a certain number of players (possibly including himself/herself). Everyone votes on whether or not to approve the assignment. Once an assignment passes, the chosen players secretly decide to Support or Sabotage the mission. Based on the results, the mission succeeds (Resistance win) or fails (Empire win). When a team wins three missions, they have won the game.

Rule Correction:

For first printing (2010 purchases), the expansion rules should read: "Games of 5-6 players use 7 plot cards, games with 7+ players use all 15 Plot Cards." and "...each Round, the leader draws Plot cards (1 for 5-6 players, 2 for 7-8 players, and 3 for 9-10 players)" - This has been corrected in the subsequent printings.

Dixit: Journey

Dixit: Journey features the same basic game play as Dixit: Each round one player takes on the role of Storyteller, choosing one card from his hand, then telling a story, singing a ditty or otherwise doing something that in his opinion is associated with the played card. Each other player then chooses one card in her own hand and gives it to the Storyteller in secret. These cards are shuffled and revealed, then players vote on which card was played by the Storyteller.

If no one or everyone votes for the Storyteller, then he receives no points; if he received some votes but not all the votes, he scores based on the number of votes received. Each player who submitted a correct vote or who received a vote on her card submission also scores. After a certain number of rounds, the player with the most points wins.

Dixit: Journey differs from Dixit in a number of ways, starting with a simplified scoring board that doesn't have players moving around a track in the bottom of the game box. Instead the scoring track is on its own board, and this game board includes a summary of the rules as well as numbered places to put the cards each round to facilitate voting. The game rules have been revised to make the game easier to learn, while keeping game play the same.

Similar to:

Dixit 3 – In Europe, the cards from Dixit: Journey will be packaged as an expansion and not sold as a complete game.

Integrates with:

Dixit
Dixit Quest
Dixit Odyssey

Chicken Caesar

In Chicken Caesar, players represent aristocratic ancient Roman chicken families trying to create a legacy for their family name. Each family has several eligible roosters eager to jump into the world of politics, getting rich and creating a legacy by any means necessary.

Roosters gain renown for their families by occupying various political offices. Low-ranking officers don't yield much fame, but they hold both the purse strings and the power of the sword. A few roosters in the lower offices of Aedile and Praetor, together with the votes of a few well-paid (and temporary) allies, can clear a path to the luxury and recognition that come with the titles of Censor, Consul, and even Caesar.

Being Caesar isn't easy, though: fail to bribe and bargain to ensure the welfare of the whole coop and today's Caesar is tomorrow's Coq au Vin. Dead roosters don't earn any more points, but they do offer opportunities for their surviving relatives to exaggerate their accomplishments. All that matters, in the end, is history's judgment, and history can be rewritten.

Mechanically, players gain and maintain areas of influence through negotiation and voting. The game features a Suffragium marker that players pass after voting to either promote a Rooster to a higher office, or throw him to the fox. Players can also strategically demand bribes for their votes or even refuse to vote (pass) to gain a later advantage.

Murder, betrayal, votes for cash, fragile alliances, and bloody vendettas will separate the legendary families from the forgotten ones in the struggle to become – and remain – Chicken Caesar!