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Terrible Candidates: Review

Terrible Candidates: Review

Information:

Mechanics: Party, Debating 
Player Age: 12+ 
Player Count: 3 - 8 Players 
Time to Play: 20 - 40 Minutes 
Game Designer: Sean Dowling, Jack Ford Morgan
Game Artists: Sean Dowling
Publisher: Half-Monster Games
Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.

The Game:

Objective:

Are you tired of Trump being president? Do you really think you could do better? Well, now it's time to prove what you’re worth with 'Terrible Candidates'. If you win enough debates you could be the groups' new president and rule the people how you see fit.

Card Anatomy:

The cards are simple and come in two types; topic cards and policy cards.

Topic Cards:

This is the topic that to be debated by the two presidential candidates.


Policy Cards:

This will be played to finish the sentence of the topic card to meet your view and agenda of the topic card.


How to Play:

Let's get this debate underway. Firstly, choose two eager (or unlucky) candidates and deal both players five policy cards. Next, reveal the top card of the topic deck. Each candidate will now choose one policy from their hand to create a sentence combining the topic and their policy card (this will be their agenda that they are debating).

Taking turns, each candidate is given 30 seconds to plead their arguments. If the arguments are, quite frankly, boring or filled with contradictions then the audience (not including the opposition) has a chance to call out these speakers once both debates are presented. You may raise one question to either candidate to poke holes in their argument. However, there can sometimes be a barrage of questions, so a candidate can say the words 'Fake News' to one question, meaning that the question is then ignored. It wasn't worth the time to answer anyway. After hearing both arguments, and presenting questions the public votes for the winner who is then given the topic card as a victory point.

This will continue with new candidates until every player has had a chance to run for presidency twice. The player with the most points is now the newly elected president, surely they must be better than Trump, right?

Final Thoughts:

Pros:
- Great conversation piece
- Fun to get into the spirit of debating and answering questions

Cons:
- People can be stubborn about political views
- Politics isn't a theme that a lot of players are familiar with
- arguments can arise over political views

Terrible Candidates is a great conversation game to play in a party setting. Despite myself and other players not being largely engaged in politics, the debate and question mechanics of the game brought out a fun and engaging environment. My only downside with the game would be the theme, a more engaging theme would have been preferred, such as something from popular culture. With all that said if you are looking for a game that invokes conversation and laughter than 'Terrible Candidates' is worth your time. Just try not to take the politics too seriously.

Click...feed the addiction:

Half-Monster Games
Terrible Candidates on BGG
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