Climate-Poker (2009)

Information from Bewitched website:

Climate negotiations can be so simple! Those lagging behind learn from the front runners how to finally protect the climate. And those who suffer most from climate-induced storms etc. join forces. The bigger the conference the better, however, some countries will just not stop negotiating.

Players are climate diplomats who try to organize conferences for like-minded countries. On the one hand, they want the conferences to be as big as possible. On the other hand players who are the first to have no countries left also have chances to win the game. Hence, at some point it makes sense to hand over countries to more "competent" colleagues, or to collect as many countries as possible in order to hold at least one big conference ...

Gameplay:

Players take turns. In your turn you play a challenge, asking all players to compare one card each from their hands in a category you choose. The lowest value wins all cards. Afterwards you may play a conference of like-minded countries. However, two participating countries are always discontent and thus return to your discard pile. All other participants leave and score for you. Hence, the bigger the conference is the better.

Contents:

o 60 country cards, each of which represents a government delegation. The card informs about the country's capital, the UNFCCC-group and alliances resp. country groups it belongs to at the climate negotiations as well as the risk groups it belongs to in the different categories. Besides, the card shows how many diplomacy points you can score for making the country's delegation content.

• CO2-emissions per capita
• Deaths due to extreme weather events per 100,000 inhabitants between 1998 and 2007
• Losses due to extreme weather events in percent of the Gross National Product between 1998 and 2007

o 40 black chips, they represent the seats in the back room on your hand
o 1 green flag indicating whose turn it is
o 1 black house indicating who was the first start player

Some thoughts on tactics:

While Climate-Poker can be used for educational purposes, the core of the game is timing. Hence learning all 180 values by heart alone will not let you win the game.

The main dilemma in the game is to find out at which point it is better not to win any more challenges. This timing question has to be newly solved in each game as different players will follow different strategies. What is more, the better you get at influencing who is going to win a challenge, the better your chances are for winning the game.