Game: Koalition

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keith hunt — 2007-10-22T20:42:22+00:00

Politician cards

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keith hunt — 2007-10-22T20:41:52+00:00

Politician cards

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keith hunt — 2007-10-22T20:41:24+00:00

Politician cards

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keith hunt — 2007-10-22T20:40:53+00:00

Politician cards

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keith hunt — 2007-10-22T20:40:16+00:00

Politician cards

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archivists — 2007-10-21T17:32:12+00:00

Selection of Newspaper Cards from Koalition

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archivists — 2007-10-21T17:30:55+00:00

A Selection of Politician Cards from Koalition

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archivists — 2007-10-21T17:28:48+00:00

The Country Cards from Koalition

Thread: FallCon 19 - Koalition in Calgary

scattered — 2006-10-05T03:53:17+00:00

SESSION REPORT

FallCon 19 - Koalition in Calgary
Sat Sep 23, 2006

Players: 9
Version: 2 (15 countries, all played)

Koalition is played each year at FallCon. This session report will describe the game played, outline the benefits of the FallCon Koalition spreadsheet tool which improves the flow of the game, and mention some game options that introduce variety. I moderated the game, and had a blast. Hopefully everyone can now share the experience.

First, as a caution, I have never read the actual rules to the game. Usually I prefer to know and understand the rules of a game I moderate. But since I learned the game at FallCon, as played the FallCon way, this did not seem a hindrance. Please feel free to add comments regarding rule choices and playing modes.

During the initial demonstration for the new players it was clear Koalition players can be divided into three main groups: A) those who know the game; B) those who have played the game but do not really remember it; and C) those who have never seen the game. As a C player I won the game at FallCon 18, so luck can overrule the advantage of the A and B players.

FallCon Rule #1
"The Rules stay in the box".
The Politician Cards, Action Cards, and Leader Markers are placed in the centre of the table. An experienced player outlines the rules which also defines the specific variations to be played that game. Any rules questions are decided by consensus among the players. When a rules question arises it is resolved quickly and amicably. If only the negotiations went that smoothly ...

Your moderator felt comfortable accepting the moderator and scorer duties due to FallCon Rule #1.

FallCon Table Setup
Players sit in a U-shape around three sides of a table close to a wall. The players can see each other and the cards played on the table. The moderator has a PC and a projector. The FallCon Koalition spreadsheet tool is projected onto the wall to provide common information to all players. This year it was suggested to enter the player names in their seating order around the table. As moderator that was an excellent suggestion and improvement, making it easier to collect scoring information from the players. It worked well.

Amusing Tangent#1
The most frequent instruction to the Moderator during the game (they were not quite phrased as requests) was "Move the cursor". It seems the newbie moderator had an innate ability to leave the cursor covering the one cell someone wanted to see. At least that means the tool was helpful.

FallCon Game Setup
Country Cards are shuffled and left in a stack. One is turned over at the start of each country round. With the spreadsheet tool projected on the wall the players know which countries remain, and their sizes, but not the order they will be contested.

Politician Cards and Action Cards are shuffled together and 7 are dealt to each player. Some players get few action cards, some get few politicians. The player with the fewest politicians is thus motivated to play all his action cards that round so he gets politician cards for the next round. This skews the game towards an active use of the action cards. The players like it that way. Most countries were contested with fresh hands of cards.

Since the prior year champion was not playing, the first player for Country #1 was decided randomly. It was not clear if the prior year champion: A) had to be player #1, B) chooses player #1, or C) chooses player #1 by rolling a D10.

First Country Jitters
It seems an unwritten truth (FallCon18 and FallCon19) that the players will try to play the first country leaving the Leader Markers in the table centre to then be assigned at the end of card play. Suggestions or questions from the moderator do not shorten this errant path. Halfway through the second round of cards for the first country the players finally changed their minds and the leader markers were distributed. Now the game was underway.

Action Cards
When an Experienced Player played an Action Card, he tended to "take control" of that round of Action Cards, asking players, in turn, if they wanted to play an action card, until the Action round ended. When a newer player played an action card, one of the experienced players would take control. As moderator this worked fine for me. Perhaps something like a Vegas Craps ON/OFF marker could be used to distinguish Action-only mode from Politician-Action mode.

Last Card Face Down
The last Politician Card was played face down. Once all have chosen their last card, then play resumes with just that one card. Of course sometimes a player has no more politicians, so they played action cards. And some played action cards instead of politicians. These last-minute ambushes were often quite effective. The odds of seeing a vest/waistcoat as last card were low.

Tallying the Votes
Negotiations seemed to start as soon as the last card was played. Experienced players as experienced party leaders had a distinct advantage here. Once the moderator could get each Party Leader to add up their delegation seats, and put them into the Tool, then the minimum Koalition size was known to all.

Negotiating the Koalition
The Tool identifies all feasible Koalitions for that specific combination of party seats. The players wanted to do it all themselves, so the tab of feasible Koalitions was never displayed. This gives a distinct advantage to the leaders of the two larger party blocks, as it makes it harder for the smaller blocks to unite and form a bottom-up Koalition ahead of the big dogs and their top-down recruiting.

During the negotiation the moderator stayed apart from the discussion, just as a head of state awaits the forming of a governing Koalition and the determination of its leader, the prime minister, who will head the government. Before the handshake the players were wheeling and dealing, testing their options. After the handshake among the party leaders in the Koalition there were a few unsatisfactory Koalitions that were sent back for more negotiation. We debated using a 5 minute time limit, with a 1 minute warning. It would have been moot this day, as the longest negotiation was under 2 minutes.

Koalitions were found for all countries, which means no election results were infeasible for government. Of the 24 possible Koalitions, the 4 party ones: Rose-Hat-Lemon-Church and Rose-Leaf-Lemon-Church can be hard to put together.

Amusing Tangent #2
As Moderator part of my role was to validate Koalitions after the handshake. This entails asking the leader of each party if he is indeed in the Koalition. In one election the one player with a Church politician, thus leader of the Church party, got egged; and thus he had to relinquish the leadership marker. His Church party was now leaderless. This experienced player thus had no leader trying to bring him into the Koalition. So he insisted on negotiating on his own since the purple church can join with the most parties. It was finally explained to the other leaders that bringing in the church would invalidate a Koalition since there was no leader to shake hands and say yes. He did keep trying; eventually a Koalition was formed without him.

Not-so-Amusing Tangent #3
With the pairs of politician-levels in the Green Leaf party, we had one election where the green party had two players tied for leader. While some players debated what to do to fairly treat the two Green Leaf co-leaders others negotiated a koalition as the two Green Leaf leaders tried to fend for themselves. This situation can happen in other parties as well, so it would be good to clarify how it will be treated ahead of time.

Amusing Tangent#4, Noise Levels
This year our Koalition game was right next to the Circvs Maximvs chariot race. Last year we could hear them across the room loudly cheering as chariots got knocked out of the race or suffered major damage, and it got hard to think at a few spots. This year they must have been quieter at the Forvm. Or maybe we just couldn't hear them. They may have some comments regarding some of our noisier negotiations.

Scoring the Country
At FallCon this year, as last year, players could score Politicians in multiple Koalition parties for the same country. This makes it harder for the moderator who has to go around the table once for each party in the Koalition, rather than just going around once. The second party tended to be rare, and usually was just a point or two that did not really affect the outcome.

As moderator-scorer scoring was the hardest job. The moderator had to add a one-digit number to a two-digit number IN HIS HEAD (previous total on screen and current score this round) and enter the total into the tool. I had eighteen eyes looking over my shoulder helping with the addition, and I felt each one. After that the Tool did all the hard work.

Amusing Tangent #5
For one country the same player had the leader marker for both Roses and Hats. His 2-party koalition was negotiated, shook, and announced even before the final vote totals went up. He scored both the 4-point leader bonus and a 3-point leader bonus. The table felt quite chilly. They might play this rule differently in the future, we will see.

Party Bonus Points
For the first time, this year, the Tool kept a running count of the leader bonus races. It showed the player scores of points earned and party bonus points they would have if the game ended right then. This made the scores after each round more helpful. It also made the final totals very easy to compute. Those same eighteen eyes verified the bonuses were correct, and the winner was crowned.

Conclusion

Would I moderate again? Heck yes.

Would I moderate without the Tool? Probably not.

What were the standings? Oh, right. The game is supposed to be about the players, not the moderator.

As I have reached my RSI daily limit, I will have to add more later. PLease feel free to comment on rules variations that work well for you.

Thread: User Review

Norbert Chan — 2005-07-17T16:20:11+00:00

I am blessed to be in a gaming group, where we can virtually get hold of any game, no matter how obscure, to play. Sometimes we have gems, sometimes we have lemons. Sadly, the game is more of the latter, rather than the former. This game is actually good for a few laughs, very light and suitable for a large number of players (up to ten).

Koalition was released in 1992 by the designer Hartmut Witt, published by Hexagames Salagmes and supports from three to ten players. The picture of the designer is at the back of the rules: he has long hair running down below his elbows, and he has a cunning grin on his face. It basically resembles a mug shot. Why would a designer put his picture on the rules? To mock us for buying the game?

Rules: Koalition is a card game, where one attempts to earn political party points in the main countries in Europe. A country card is first flipped over, then in clockwise order, players play down one political party strength card at a time, with values ranging from 1 to 10, and there are seven possible political factions: Roses, Top hats, Leaves, Lemons, Fists, Acorns and Crosses. The flipped up country card dictates how many total cards a player may play (two to four cards). There are 15 country cards, so the game will consist of 15 elections. The player who won the last election plays a card first, then in clockwise order, everyone plays a single card, until their card limit has been played. For instance, if Great Britian is the country card flipped up, everyone will play a total of 4 cards each, if Spain is the country card, 3 cards each are played or if Ireland is the country card, then only two cards will be played.

The distribution of the values of the cards are as follows:
Roses - 10, 10, 9, 8, 8, 7, 6, 6, 5, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1
Top Hats - 10, 10, 9, 8, 8, 7, 6, 6, 5, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1
Leaves - 8, 8, 6, 6, 5, 5, 3, 3
Lemons - 9, 8, 7, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1
Fists - 10, 8, 6, 4
Acorns - 10, 8, 5, 3
Crosses - 9, 7, 4, 2
Jokers - 7, 7, 5, 5, 5

When played, the jokers are announced to be part of one political party. In addition, there are a number of action cards:

X2: Seven of these cards that double the value of a politician card

Cracked Egg: Four of these cards; they are played on an opponent's politician card to remove that politician from counting their value

Death symbol: Party leader is replaced by the next highest ranking politician of that suit

Sausage: Political party of that type only score half (2 cards)

Clean Shirt: Bad action cards are removed (3 cards)

The cards are shuffled together and everyone gets an equal number of cards, with some leftover cards in the draw pile, and this depends on the number of players.

Each of the country cards state how many parties can form the government, the number of bonus points for being the leader of the largest party in the coalition and points for having secondary parties in the coalition. For instance, the Denmark country card states two cards from each player will be played in this round; the ruling party leader earns a two point bonus, anyone with a ruling party member earns one point, and if there is a coaltion party, players who played a card of the coalition party earn one point per card.

Once everyone has played the requisite number of cards, the political strength of each and every party is added up. The total strength of all political parties are recorded, including the total sum. In the case that one party has more than half of the strength, that party forms the government, and there will only be one ruling party. In this case, only the players who contributed cards of that party will score points. Amongst those players who played that party, the sum of their contributions is totalled. Whoever has the most strength will earn the point bonus on the country card (in case of a tie, the tiebreaker is the person with the single highest politician value); then every player who played cards of that party will earn one point per card played.

In the more common case that there is not one party that has more than half the strength, then negotiations must take place. A representative for each party is determined by the numerical contributions of each player. Whoever has the highest sum total of the politician values of a party becomes the party spokesman (again, in case of a tie, the single highest politician value breaks ties). It is possible that a player can be spokesman for more than one party. All party spokesmen then negotiate a coalition party that will have more than half the strength of all the political parties. The only restrictions are that some parties will only ally with certain parties. For instance, Roses will ally with anyone except Acorns, Religious will ally with anyone execpt Fists, Acrons will only ally with Top Hats and Religious, etc.

Example: In a four player game, Denmark is flipped up.
Fritz plays 8 Acorn, 3 Lemon
Arhippa plays 9 Religious, 1 Top Hat
Egomonte plays 10 fist, 8 fist
Odu plays 4 fist, 4 lemon

The total value of all parties is 47: 8 Acorn, 7 Lemon, 9 Religious, 1 Top Hat, 22 Fists. A majority value of 24 value is required. Fists have 22 strength but can only ally with Roses or Leaves, none of which are present. Egomonte is the spokesman of the Fists, but cannot ally with anyone. Arhippa is the spokesman of the Religious party and proposes an alliance of Religious, Acorns and Lemons. (This is in fact, the only legal alliance). This alliance is agreed upon by Odu, spokesman for Lemons and Fritz, spokesman for Acorns. Arhippa earns three points, two points for the leader of the highest party contribution, and one point for the ruling coalition party. Fritz earns two points, a point each for his two cards in the coalition, Odu earn one point for his Lemon card, and Egomonte earns 0 points.

Once a country is finished, the next country card is flipped up. The person that plays first to this country is the person who won the election in the previous country.

Points are marked off in the specific party they are scored. In the example above, Arhippa's three points are marked under the Religious column. Fritz has a point marked off in the Acorn column and 1 point under the Lemon column. This is important, since at the end, a majority bonus for each party is also added. Whichever party has the most points at the end of the game will earn a 7 pt bonus to the person who scored the most points for that party. The second highest scoring party will score 6 pts to the person who scored the most, etc, down to the 1 pt bonus for the smallest party.

General gameplay: There are different sets of rules floating around for this game. I think I can summarize the differences. As written here, it tends to be quite a random game. The broken egg cards and the death cards tend to destabilize the game very much. We played the game a few times and thought the game was too random. The cards were quite humorous. There is a "Donald Mc Chicken" and "Sokrates Spartakis" (an 8 value Fist card), with a funny picture of a Russian symbol emblazoned on his forehead. But as a game, it didn't really stand up. It actually reminds me of a Martin Wallace game, where there are some neat majority concepts, but the random bugger cards really destablilize the game. A couple of my friends thought so as well, since we began to play with one noteable improvement. All the random bugger (the 'action' cards) cards were removed, just keeping the jokers.

The scoring can be a bit confusing, especially with the majority calculations at the end of the game. It took me a couple of games to figure that out.

Perhaps the author realized the action cards caused too much randomness, since version two of the rules gives everyone an equal amount of action cards, e.g., the politician cards and action cards (including jokers) are put into separate piles, and every player gets the same number of politician and action cards.

Our gaming group really enjoys the game without the action cards. Some members of the gaming group enjoy the "negotiating" aspect of the game, which sometimes involving manipulation, or shouting down other people, a huge aspect of the game I personally do not enjoy. The scores have to be visible so that players can see who is winning so that they do not form coalitions that give the leaders more points. In reality, I find that there isn't much to this phase. Most often it involves the party spokesmen looking at the scoreboard, and attempt to maximize their points while minimizing those of their opponents, especially those who are leading.

My friend, Steve Zanini, runs a gaming weekend extravaganza in September (www.fallcon.com) called Fallcon, and on Saturday evening, he organizes the Koalition game with 10 players. Steve creates a giant scoreboard on the wall so that all players can see who is leading and who has the most points in each party. This is recommended if you play. The game does come with a scorepad, but it is quite small and hard to read by all players. I'm surprised a scoring board hasn't been designed for this game yet, but this game appears to have a small following.

Strategy tips: Like all card games, there is a large luck of the draw. Because you only recycle cards a few times, it is possible to see all the high cards go to your opponents, and you get the small cards. Having said that, trying to strategize is like playing the stock market. If your four largest cards are Top Hats and you blindly play them (in this example, assume the country card is Great Britain), and everyone else plays Roses, you will have wasted your four best cards, scored zero points, and everyone else gains on you. On the other hand, if you had a sense of where the wind was blowing, you could have put down four small Rose cards (if you had them) to earn some points. That is the essence of this game. You must be fleixible to see which parties could become the ruling coalition. It is suggested that you add a house rule where a person is not allowed to count the cumulative values of party values as they are played. This slows the game down tremendously and takes away the fun.

Having a general idea of what party cards to play is a bit inexact, but if in the previous country, people played a bunch of Top Hat cards, then it is more likely that Rose cards will be played in future countries. You also have to keep in mind that coalition members also score points as well. Even though you may not be able to compete in the largest party leadership, that party will more than likely need an ally, and if you can be leader of a secondary party, you will also earn points, sometimes with only one card. For instance, Lemons can ally with Top Hats and Roses, so a well timed Lemon card, could give you a few unexpected points.

There is a bit more control if this game is played with less players. A decent number appears to be four players, but the interesting aspect of this game is that it supports up to 10 players, and one of those rare games that supports a large number of players. However, the larger the number of players, the less amount of control one has and one is really trying to go with the flow and play cards to score points depending who they think will be the ruling party.

If there is a clear leader, trying to avoid what the leader plays is a good idea. If the current leader plays Top Hat cards, then you are probably best to avoid Top Hat cards since no one else will want to give the leader points and avoid playing Top Hat cards. If you play them yourself, you will just happen to be an unintended victim.

It is rare to see one party win the majority outright. If people start playing Rose cards, you might want to try playing some Lemon cards to earn the second party bonus. It is usually not in any one player's favour to follow everyone else since the person with the high cards will earn the party bonus. Having said that, if you have small cards in that suit, now might be a good time to play them to play off your small cards to earn points and save your big cards so that you have a chance to earn the leadership bonus points.

One also has to note that there are more Roses and Top Hat cards than any other party cards and plan their play accordingly. This usually means that the end game scoring bonuses, the 7 and 6 pt bonuses will usually be scored by the Roses or Top Hats. This can be viewed as unfortunate, but due more to the distribution of cards.

Conclusions: There are some neat scoring mechanisms in this game, and the cards are good for a few laughs. If you really enjoy negotiating games and political party games, you will enjoy this game. If you are like me, and tend not to like the negotiating aspects (the raising of voices, why this person should ally with this person), then you will not be too fond of this game. It is suggested you play with no action cards (but leave the Jokers in), and do not allow players to count the party strengths as they are played as this slows the game down too much. The one advantage of this game is that it supports 10 players and with the right crowd can be fun. Most games take two and a half hours, but this can be shortened by playing a specified number of country cards, rahter than all fifteen countries.

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puppi — 2005-04-21T13:42:51+00:00

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jayiv — 2004-12-08T13:15:35+00:00

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Thread: Session Report

gschloesser — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

I had heard good things about this one and upon reading the rules thought this would be a wild and frenzied negotiation style game. Unfortunately, it wasn't. It is one game which would seem likely to play much better with more than four players.

Players vie to win the elections which are held in twelve European countries. This competition takes the form of players playing politicians from their hand, each of which has various strength points and belong to a particular political party. Each player places a card from their hand, then a second round is held wherein a second card is played.

Points are then totaled for all cards played and a majority figure calculated to see if any of the political parties have secured a majority to capture the election outright. If so, the players who participated in the winning party receive victory points. If no one party has secured an outright victory, then party chairmen are determined for each party played, and players must attempt to form coalitions to capture the election. Care must be taken, however, as each card lists the parties which that card may enter a coalition with. If a coalition is formed, then those players who have participated in the coalition then split the victory points, the larger faction receiving more points.

There are other cards which can affect play, including a sex scandal which ousts the top politician played that round (gee ... in the U.S. it seems a sex scandal actually enhances a politician's status!).

With four players, two rounds of six elections are held, then points are tallied. Then, there is a bizarre rule concerning bonus points, which are awarded to players based on winning percentages with the various political parties. The player who garnered the most points within each political party is determined, and then bonus points are awarded to those players on a sliding scale, with 7 points going to the player who has the most votes in the party which had the largest share of votes, 6 points for the next greatest total, etc. This throws a real twist into the game, as there is extremely little, if any, control over this aspect of the game. It would take incredibly precise planning ... and some luck ... to maximize these points. We all detested this rule as it seemed to completely skewer the outcome (in fact, it totally reversed it in our game). Yuck!! I can see that the rule might be used to one's advantage if he was a seasoned player, but I'd rather see it implemented ONLY when the game is being played by such veterans.

Using the rules as written, and awarding the bonus points, here were the final results:

Greg 34, Eryk 33, Lenny 31, Jerry 29

Without adding the bonus points, here were the results:

Jerry 27, Eryk 25, Lenny 24, Greg 24

The game received mediocre to poor ratings, which was disappointing as I have heard good things about it and the theme seems wonderful. I'd love to hear other's thoughts on this one.

Ratings: Eryk 6, Greg 5, Lenny 5, Jerry 1

Thread: Session Report

dougadamsau — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Doug writes:

Oh dear, oh dear. As we had seven players we thought this would be an ideal time to try out the second (and supposedly superior) edition of Koalition, new to everyone (David, Doug and Janet had played the first edition).

The theme of the game is the election of governments of about 14 nations of a united Europe. Politician cards are played during a round, to resolve the election of one country. Each politician has a value, and these are totalled to determine the number of votes needed to achieve a government. Usually coalitions between political parties have to be formed.

This aspect of the game has changed for the better, in my opinion, from the first edition. Instead of two politician cards being played per country, now the number of cards varies from country to country. It is still two cards for the minor countries, but that increases to four cards for Great Britain, France and Germany. I like this change of pace from election to election.

Another excellent change is the fact that players who contribute cards to an election win now score one point per card. The earlier edition awarded points to only the leaders of parties, while the minor players missed out. Thus players with a poor deal had nothing to do but sit back and help others; I feel the new edition works better in this respect.

Now the problem - the action cards. These are dealt to players from a separate deck to ensure that each player is given an equal number of these powerful cards. The older edition had them shuffled in with the politician cards. I like this 'equal' aspect, but I don't like how they are now used.

What happens now is after a player has played a politician (mandatory) card, they may now optionally play an action card. This triggers a round of action card play, where each player in turn may also play an action card, until everyone has passed in turn. I found this tended to break down the flow of the game as players were unsure whether they were in a "politican" round or an "action" round. Once the action cards were played, nobody was sure who's turn it was to continue the game, and it was all rather clumsy.

This is where I prefer the old edition, which if memory serves me, was simply on your turn you played a card, action or politician. Simple, and it works, as there is no action card round to break the flow of the game. I would like to try the game again with the action card round taken out and simply replaced with either:

* play a card, action or otherwise, on your turn and continue until each player has played the required number of politicians for this election, immediately ending that round.

* play a politician (mandatory) and an action card (optional) on your turn, without an action round being triggered.

It reminded me of 6 player Siedler, where the flow of the game broke down as you had to ask each player whether they wanted to build before passing on to the next turn. Bernie said he disliked that rule in Siedler, and they play a house rule that only the player opposite you has the build opportunity. I'm not sure how that would work in Koalition.

I don't often do this, but I am going to try and rebuild the game based on the best bits of edition 1 and 2 - I feel the underlying mechanics are too good to discard.

So what happened in our game? Well, we waded through Ireland, Finland and Portugal before everyone simply got sick of it - simply from keeping track of the action rounds from what I could observe. A coalition was required in Portugal, but David didn't want to do it as it gave Doug points (who'd done very well in the first two elections). Rules were examined at length to see if the coalition was mandatory (which David didn't want). Bernie examined the German rules and discovered that if a government cannot be formed, the special cards are discarded and the election is resolved again, with players taking their politicians back. Interesting, and I think I like this. However, by this time, Janet, Dey, Roger and Moray had left and had started Mamma Mia! At this point we realised the game was over, and the rules desperately needed tweaking.

Any thoughts on those familiar with both editions of Koalition?