The Decktet Wiki

Play party politics - the fun way!

You are a political party seeking to win election by gaining the support of interest groups that control the most popular topics. You will raise topics, shift supporters around, and gather loyal partisans to your cause as you campaign for victory.

Setup

1. Separate the Aces and Crowns from the Decktet and shuffle the rest. Set the Aces aside and place the Crowns in a row alongside the play area; place the deck where all players can reach it.
2. Place 8 suit chips of each suit on the corresponding Crown - these form the supply of supporters for each interest group.
3. Deal 3 cards faceup in the middle of the play area - these are the starting topics. Place supporters from the supply on each topic matching that topic's suits (one suit chip of each suit on the card).
4. Deal each player 2 cards to their hands.
5. Choose a starting player.

Game play

On each turn, the active player will raise a new topic in order to manipulate the power of the various interest groups and their party's control over those groups. Perform the following steps in order:

1. Raise a new topic: Play a card from your hand faceup in the middle of the play area alongside the existing topics.
2. Gather supporters: For each suit on the new topic you raised, you may take a supporter matching that suit either from an existing topic in play or from the supply and place it on your topic.
3. Push supporters: You may move any or all of the supporters on your topic to any other topics and/or take them into your party as loyal partisans by taking the supporter tokens and placing them in front of you (not on any card).
   1. Partisans in front of you indicate your party's control over the matching interest group; your score is based on the number of topics controlled by the interest groups that you win by having the most partisans of. Once you make a supporter into a partisan they can no longer be moved onto topics by any player.
4. Draw & Cleanup: Draw a card at the end of your turn (so you have 2 cards in hand). Any topics in play with no supporters on them are discarded immediately.

The game ends when the deck runs out. When the last card is drawn, finish the round by giving each player an extra turn until reaching the starting player, so each player gets the same number of turns in the full game.

Scoring

Your score is the number of supporters on topics controlled by interest groups that you win.
To keep scoring the same for all players at end of game, follow these steps:

1. Discard any remaining supporters in the supply: So the Crown cards for each interest group have nothing on them.
2. Determine interest group winners: For each interest group, see which player has the most partisans of that group and give them the Crown indicating they won that interest group. If players tie for most partisans of an interest group, then no player wins the group - discard that Crown (also see Leaders variant). You can discard partisans after this step.
3. Allocate topic supporters: For each topic, see which interest group won by a player has the most supporters on that topic. Give the topic card and all supporters on it to that player (including supporters from interest groups they did not win). If there is a tie between interest groups won by different players for control of a topic, split the supporters on the topic evenly between each tied interest group, and discard any remainder that do not split evenly. Keep any supporters you won from topics separate from partisans.
4. Final score: Your score is the number of supporters you won from topics in the previous step. Partisans are worth zero points. Whoever has the highest score wins.

Breaking Ties

Tie for which party wins an interest group: No tied party wins the interest group. Discard that group's Crown.
Tie for which interest group controls a topic: Split the supporters on the topic evenly between each tied interest group. Discard any remainder that do not split evenly.

Glossary

Party: A player, and/or the collection of partisans in front of them.
Interest Group: One of the six suits, with a number of supporters and a Crown to indicate the party that wins the interest group.
Supporter: A suit chip belonging to a specific interest group.
Partisan: A supporter that has been taken by a player into their party. Cannot be placed on any topics.
Topic: A card faceup in play with some supporters on it. Initially a topic's supporters will match the suits on the card, but that will not always be the case.
Supply: The limited number of supporters placed to the side of the play area on each interest group's Crown.
Control: The interest group with the most supporters on a topic controls that topic.
Win: The party with the most partisans of an interest group wins that interest group.

The extended deck

The number of suit chips used in the game is calibrated to be less than the number of instances of each suit present in the Decktet. If using the extended Decktet, double the number of suit chips used to 16 of each suit. This will also double the length of the game.

Variants

Leaders: Ties for winning interest groups are fairly common and do not resolve in a satisfying way. One way to fix this is to mark one suit chip of each suit with a star or other marking to indicate it is the leader of that interest group. Whoever holds the leader of an interest group as a partisan wins ties for winning that interest group. In the event there is a tie for winning an interest group and the holder of the leader token is not part of the tie, then the holder of the leader token chooses which of the tied players wins the tie.

No Pawns and Courts: Drawing a pawn or court gives the player who drew it a little more power on their turn than normal. I haven't seen this be strong enough to break the game, but if you want less randomness in the game, you could remove the pawns and courts from the deck. If doing so, reduce the number of suit chips per suit by 2.

Two Players: There is nothing in the mechanics of the game that prevent playing with two players, so feel free to play with two, but it introduces some weird dynamics related to irl two-party systems. Give it a go! See how it leads to hyper-partisan interest groups!

Links

Inspired by The King is Dead
Gather/Push terminology from Spirit Island

Comments