General overview of the Basic Rules & Mechanisms – click here.
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Corruption Phase – “Red Vote” Outsider Mayor – Investigation
Red Alert – Big Papa – Misc. Clarifications
If you have not read it, here is a quick reference for the phases of the game.
Questions: # of workers on a Contract.
Is there a limit to the number of workers we can place on a contract?
No. There is no limit on the number of workers placed on a contract.
Is it possible to put all our workers on our contract (for example 4) but before the extraction phase, we remove or move them, like some kind of bluff?
Yes, but this bluff is only possible during the Corruption phase. Once an Election is called, workers are “locked” on their contracts for the rest of the turn.
Questions: How do we bribe and place workers during the “Corruption” phase?
There is no turn order during the corruption phase. Once players are ready, they can bribe each other, place workers and exchange money at will.
At the end of each round, if your contract has two or fewer workers, it will not be completed. (With 3 or more workers, it is completed.) You will then be paid $100,000 again for the same contract in the next turn. Therefore, the goal during phase of corruption is to convince players to send their workers elsewhere, and not to your contracts.
Each contract pays $100,000 per round. Therefore, players do the math, and it makes sense to bribe someone up to $50,000 just to keep the contract, if not more!
Bribes and promises may also include votes. The Mayor has the power to “Festival” the contracts, and therefore to prevent them from being completed. Thus the players can offer their vote, in exchange for the placement of the festival on their contract. The festival would prevent the completion of the contract, which allows its owner to win $100,000 in the next round.
Questions: The ‘Outsider Mayor’
Each player has the option to vote “Red”, which is a vote for an “outsider” mayor;’ a tie, or a successful “red” vote, will result in an Investigation.
So the red cards represent each player’s colour and are used for the vote of the mayor during the round?
Red cards are a vote for no player. It’s like a spoiled ballot. If there is a majority or even a tie with the red cards, there is an investigation. No festival and no Red City workers, unless someone plays the “Big Papa.” card. Similarly, any tie of votes leads to an investigation, bringing the same result.
This card is a way to vote explicitly for an investigation. It happens towards the end of the game when players want to punish the richest player. They’d say, “okay, we’re voting for an Investigation this round.”
If there are 4 players and 2 people vote for the outsider mayor (so not for a player) and 2 people vote for the orange player, is the election won by the orange player? Or is this an investigation phase?
It is a tie election, just like a tie between players. This vote leads to an investigation. That is the purpose of the Red ‘Outsider Mayor’ voting card. Players can explicitly vote for the survey and succeed, even in the event of a tie.
Questions: Deep Merde + Red Alert + Investigation Dice
As shown above, the more corruption you have, the more dice you roll. You start with the white dice, then black, then red.
So, for example, if you have 7 of corruption, you roll 5 white dice and 2 black dice.
If you have 15 Corruption Tokens, you roll all the dice, and if you have more than 15 bribes, you roll additional red dice for each Token over 15.
“Deep Merde” replaces any number of white dice with black dice. “Red Alert” replaces white or black dice with red dice, but “Red Alert” is limited by the number of players’ contracts.
So, with the same example, the “Deep Merde” effect changes the white dice into black dice:
Then again with the same example, the effect of “Red Alert” changes the 7 dice, depending on the number of contracts held by the player:
In this example, each player has 7 corruption. As indicated, player ‘A’ has 3 contracts, and therefore replaces only 3 with red dice. Player ‘B’ has 5 contracts and replaces 5 of them with red dice. The effect is the same no matter who plays the “Red Alert” card.
With multiple “Red Alert” cards, more and more dice are replaced with Red Dice:
In the example above, 1x “Red Alert”, with 3 contracts, replaces 3 dice. 2x “Red Alert”, with 3 contracts, replaces 6 dice. You may not replace more dice than the total corruption of a player.
If an Investigation takes a player down to zero money, that’s it. There is no debt or negative balance. During the final 3 turns, you can feel free to use an optional “Bombardier” rule: if a player reaches zero, they are bailed out $500k by the government.
Questions: Big Papa
When you use the ‘Big Papa’ card, does it only give the mayor more city workers and festivals to place? Or does it give whoever uses it? Can only the mayor place that card?
“Big Papa” gives whomever plays it the power to place additional festivals and red city workers. It is not exclusively for the mayor. It can only be played during the Election phase, either before or after voting.
Does “Big Papa” still work if there is an outsider mayor?
Yes. “Big Papa” still gives the player who plays it the ability to place a Festival and city workers, even if there is a vote resulting in an Investigation. It overrides the ‘Festival Cancelled’ effect of an Investigation.
If we have multiple “Big Papas” played, and pieces run out, who gets to play the Festivals?
If this happens, Festivals and workers are available on the “first-come-first-serve” basis of who played the cards first. In this case, people who play the card would come before the Mayor.
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Does the ‘Red Alert’ effect remain on both players (both the one who receives and the one who plays the card)? Or is it just the one who receives?
Both. The one who receives and the one who plays the card.
What is the effect of two red alert cards? Double the red dice? for example, if the player has 2 contracts, he must roll 4 red dice?
Yes, but the effect is limited by the total of corruption tokens. You cannot have more red dice than corruption tokens.
If you receive a ‘Red Alert” card, does that mean corruption is no longer useful, since you only roll red dice for the number of contracts and not for the number of corruption tokens?
No – red dice replace a number of dice, not all the dice. For example like above, we have 3 contracts, with 10 corruption tokens, so you roll 5 white dice and 5 black dice. With the Red Alert, he changes the composition of the dice into 3 red dice and 2 black dice 5 white dice.
Do we put the Red Alert and Deep Merde cards back in the game after playing them?
Since these cards continue to affect the afflicted players for the rest of the game, its better that the card must remain there, face up. The deck is quite large and has duplicates of these cards; replenishing it is not a problem.
What is the point of being the first player? We didn’t really see how being first player could change an action or anything.
With more players, the contracts run out. The first player card is more important in games with 5-7 players. This is the only value of owning or exchanging the “first player” card.