STORY

We got this game from it being randomly sent to our PO Box, so I have ZERO communication with Fort Circle Games and the designer Tory Brown. So yeah, you heard it here, if you send us a game randomly through the mail…. We PROBABLY won’t end up reviewing it, but if something catches my attention, I’ll give it a spin!

In this case, this was on Polygon’s top 5 board games games of 2023 as of early June, and was even compared to Twilight Struggle, you know the war game that was #1 on BGG for many years? As such, I HAD to dive deep into this game. We played it 4 times, with 2 headed play, true single player, 2 player, and 3 player.

We will also be referring to this game as ‘Votes’ for short sometimes during the review!

WARNING: There might be some sensitive topics in this review, I mean it is American history, we try our best not to mention or show anything too messed up, might have missed some flavor text in the margins or so. If you’re concerned, jump ahead to scoring and just enjoy that yay!

Need to learn how to play? Or want more reasoning for our points? Our review video’s got you!

Component/Learning Pros

• Great components

  • Sturdy wood for cubes, campaigners, congress markers, checks, x’s

  • Lots of extra components, including different shapes for campaigners

  • Different star tokens for each side

  • 14 historical documents in all shapes, sizes, material

    • New York Times newspaper replica

    • Specimen ballot…?

• Easy to read rulebook

Gameplay Pros

• Asymmetry: Suffragists vs. Opposition

  • Suffragists home in the Northeast, have 2 campaigners, can get up to 4 (stronger campaigning throughout game)

  • Suffragists have to have stronger ramp because 2-step goal: getting bill up & getting 36 votes

  • If submission for the 19th amendment too early, opposition who has stronger opening can go on the offensive

  • Suffragists have 12 vs. Opposition 6 star power, so can lock opposition out of the round by round bidding for strategy cards

  • Each side has unique decks, aren’t many duplicates, more differences below

• How women’s suffrage movement theme is presented (DISCLAIMER: we didn’t fact check all the cards for historical accuracy)

  • Every card has flavor text to set mood and help educate

  • Southern “Hospitality” explains souther hostess stereotype while giving opposition to certain southern states

  • Big Liquor’s big money funds anti-suffragists for better campaigning

  • Civil war locks down the suffragists from adding cubes to the south and some border states (because there’s war now!)

  • WW1, Red Scare, San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, 1918 pandemic slows down suffragists

  • Sojourner Truth adds influence to the midwest

Gameplay Pros Cont’d

• Fitting thematic interactions as event cards ride off of each other

  • Opposition plays War in Europe, Suffragists play Women and World War I to add 10 cubes

  • Suffragists play Union Victory to discard the Civil War

  • Opposition play Southern Resentment against the 15th Amendment

• Star management is a decent puzzle and a bit of a mind game

  • Figure out when its worth to spend them to re-roll dice

  • Need to save them up to bid for strategy cards every round, but maybe your opponent won’t actually bet that high

  • Stars required to move campaigners, need to have stars saved up to do so

• Progression: definite early, mid, and late game feeling

  • Decks eventually give more campaigners, or more congressional markers to make the final push

  • Move focus from the east coast to the plains and western regions which makes lots of thematic sense as states get more populated

  • Early-mid game is where players struggle over state cards to get 4 cubes of theirs first there for nice tempo

    • Can even get 2 state cards in 1 turn

  • Congressional markers hitting 6 transforms games as players go hard to lock down states

  • Can manipulate your progression by digging deeper into your deck

• Just a very good time piece game

  • Can see women’s suffrage movement slow in the mid 1800s, facing huge opposition mostly in the south

  • Really hard to get amendment for the U.S. Constitution passed which is reflected in how much the suffragists need to do

  • Suffragists having 2 colors is nice, which reflects the different roots that lead to the suffragist movement

Visual/Learning CONS

• No player aids, at least show the 4 different actions

  • Rolling a D6 for each of your campaigners is easy to forget

• Map isn’t very clear

  • If unfamiliar with American geography (like if not born & raised in America where we were forced to memorize in grade school), going to be very confused with the 2 letter abbreviations

  • Game refers to states on the cards, sometimes in a big list. Should have number of region next to name

  • Is too small, once past 2-3 cubes for some states start to get spillage into other states (West Virginia especially)

    • Could have had more states with the external circle (ex. Delaware)

• Rulebook says can use star to re-roll D6 on events, then later says you can just re-roll any dice roll?

Gameplay Cons: Variance

• Outputting cubes

  • Campaigning action outputting 1 vs. 4 cubes is huge. Can be 1 vs. 6 if it’s upgraded campaigning

  • Event cards are similar to campaigning: you roll dice and spawn that many cubes

  • Strategy card that can give a TON of congress steps if roll correctly, but could also get 0 congress steps

  • Stars don’t strictly give better outcome because re-rolling all dice, and you have to save stars for other things

  • Compare to Twilight Struggle: that didn’t have dice in placing down influence

  • Votes could have had a range of what could happen when dice rolling (if rolling 1-3, get 2 cubes), or expand the dice rolling system, like spending stars to add value to rolls

• How cards are drawn

  • Union Victory RIGHT away after Civil War is good for Suffragists. If don’t draw it for that round, Opposition can really exploit the Suffragists not contesting in the South

  • 15th Amendment, can get nothing on it based off a die roll. 15th divides suffragists removes ALL purple cubes in up to 4 states, which is hard nuke, and forces suffragists to lose 2 stars

  • Letting you keep 1 card between rounds not that much to save when some cards demand to be responses to others. Can get screwed when you do abilities to draw 2 cards pick 1 and discard the other, and draw 2 key cards

  • Won’t see all the late stage cards, and timing for them is really important, more so on suffragists

    • Many help boost congressional markers, but are dead if already completed congress track

    • Opposition’s War in Europe and 1918 Pandemic bombast suffragists by making them spend stars to do key late game actions

  • Have to draw event card to get campaigner, which is really good since they buff all actions (especially campaigning), so earlier you get campaigner the better

    • Getting campaigner at beginning of late pile vs. end is huge difference

    • Should take Lords of Waterdeep idea of giving these workers at a set time

  • Fixing card variance: let players draw more cards every round, then choose a couple to discard

• Final scoring is victim to dice roll swings, even with 1-3 cubes on states to help your roll

  • Lots of unclaimed states late game because suffragists need 36 check marks to win

  • Rolling a 1 vs. 6 on final states is huge swing (or 1 vs. 8 with late game card), happens many times to determine game

  • Tedious dice rolling could have been minimized by grouping states together

Gameplay Cons: Goals not well aligned with actions

• Suffragists must get 6 congressional markers (start with 0) and 144 cubes across America (start with 1, opposition is slowing them down throughout game)

• Suffragists have stronger engine with 2 starting campaigners, should spam campaigning. Keep rolling dice to poop out cubes (especially if buffed campaigning that round)

• Suffragists MUST get 6 congressional markers before game is too late, so if don’t draw right cards to advance them, or if opposition draws congressional marker removal, have to do lobbying action again and again (only 6 gets you marker)

• Culminates in rounds where both players are just campaigning/lobbying again and again to hit numbers

  • Technically some cube and congressional marker manipulation, but both are SO RNG determined from dice rolls/card draws

• Suggest strategy tips to help players pace their actions more smoothly, instead of realizing too late need to keep spamming congressional markers

Gameplay cons: Anti-suffragist in gameplay balance

• Opposition has to just stop suffragists, or have the option to play aggressively for 13 X’s, while suffragists HAVE to do 6 congressional markers then 36 checks (out of 48 states)

• Suffragists need 6/8 states from EVERY region, or have 4 regions entirely filled then need some more, all within 35 turns (round 1 has to be start card Seneca Falls)

• Suffragists need to be playing a little more than 4 cubes a turn, in different states, while getting slowed down

• Suffragists just aren’t 3-4x as strong as opposition

• Game often goes to end game dice rolling, of which opposition wins ties!

Gameplay cons: Piloting Opposition is not satisfying

• Obviously thematically playing them is going to be a bit controversial

• Gameplay is centered around keeping things the same way, which isn’t particularly exciting

  • Can build up support in the south, but doesn’t get you THAT far in aggressive win path

  • Not any cool swings opposition can do besides nasty gerrymandering or congress removal, don’t touch state cards for cool combos because suffragists have wide-reaching early game cards and more campaigners.

  • Opposition has less stars to buy strategy cards

  • Can feel like lots of just reacting to suffragists players, especially more dull if suffragists are behind, because opposition can only win if time runs out or get 13 x’s AFTER suffragists get 6 markers

Gameplay Cons: Player Count

• Single Player OPPBOT too dumb for a game about careful political influence in regions

  • Just plays cards from the top of the deck, which you can get away in a Euro that are about efficiency and less conflict

  • Will not respond to you many times, you trounce all over America while it hunkers in South

  • Very fiddly

    • If choose places randomly to drop cubes, have to roll bunch of dice, one for region, one for state. Very tedious if have to place on multiple states, why not its own randomizer?

• 3 player, where 2 people play as each color of suffragist has weird campaigning mechanic

  • Roll die for each campaigner on team, then put it all on your color, which means you can get 2 campaigner strength in 1 region, even if just 1 person there

  • Strong buff in right direction for suffragists, just too strong

Replayability Cons

• Always play with same decks of cards, because of how decks are ordered, going to see cary-mid game cards again and again

• POWERFUL cards like Civil War, World War I, etc. are auto-drop repeating effects every game, and if you opponent has the follow up card, so be it, the powerful cards too good not to play

• Cards MEANT to be follow ups to others is historical element that shoots itself in foot when you see it too many times

• Lots of repeating cards in players’ decks

  • Thematically sounds like have different hand, actually isn’t all that different

  • Have to start with the start card every game because it gives campaigner to unlock other actions. Could have had more replayability by swapping this out?

• State cards quite simple, 3 types

  • Spawn more cubes

  • Get stars

  • Draw through your deck and play another action

Nitpicks

• Fiddly game because of all the cubes

  • Constantly putting them down and removing them

  • Hunting for multiple states can get annoying, worsened because suffragists have 2 colors to manage

  • Recommend using component bowl or tray for game

• No tracker to keep track of how many states ratified or rejected

  • Counting up to 36 yeses for suffragists is quite annoying

  • Follow suggested component setup of taking out extra tokens, then counting your remaining pieces

• Game is more like 1.5-2 hours instead of 1 hour on box

  • Unless you’re playing solo or are extremely quick at games