Landslide (board game)
Landslide is the name of two board games about the U.S. presidential elections, where players compete to become the president of the United States.
1971 game
The first board game titled Landslide was published by Parker Brothers in 1971. Up to four players aim to obtain as many electoral votes as they can. The players use their popular votes (used much like money in other games) to bid for states, and whoever has the most electoral votes at the end of the game is the winner. The game follows the 1970 census, and correctly represents the electoral college apportionment for each state. For example: New York is apportioned 41 electoral votes, representing its 39 congressmen and two senators. California at that time had 45 electoral votes with 43 congressmen and two senators, etc.
The board features a circular track in which players moved their tokens to land on spaces that had various rewards or triggered game action. The country and states are divided into 4 regions (East, South, Midwest, West) and the circular track is divided into these four sections as well. The player tokens and regions are color coordinated: East = red, South = yellow, Midwest = white, and West = blue. Each player starts on the space called "Home State" in their respective color/region and starts with five vote cards, which range in value from 250,000 to 5,000,000 votes. Players roll a single die to continuously circumnavigate the board, triggering various actions until all 50 states and the District of Columbia (with its three electoral votes) are in the possession of the players. The game ends when the last state is won. The various spaces on the board are as follows:
- Home state — the starting point for each player. In addition, when as players passed his/her home state space, he/she earns a vote card while landing exactly on the space earns two cards (similar to passing "Go" in Monopoly). If an opposing player lands on another's home state space, he has to allow that player to blindly steal one of his vote cards.
- Votes — landing on this space allows the player to collect a vote card.
- State — landing on this space puts the next state in the pile of state cards up for auction, with the state name and number of electoral votes known only to the player who landed on the space. This is where bidding skills and bluffing come into play. The highest bidder wins that state with the amount of his bid (votes) going to the player who landed on the state space as payment.
- Politics — this allows the player to earn a "politics" card. These cards allow a player to do things like steal a state from another player, stop a game action, steal vote cards, or gamble (in which he pits one of his states against an opponent's state of equal or lesser value; both players roll the dice with the highest roll winning both states).
- Secret Ballot — this space puts the next state from each region up for a blind auction with the winner getting all 4 states.
- Open Ballot — this allows a player to put any of another player's states that he already won back up for auction among all players.
- Fly Anywhere — allows the player who landed on this space to move his token to any space on the board.
The player with the most electoral votes is the winner (a majority in the game is not required, unlike in real life).
2004 game
- The second was released by Ezakly in 2004. It is a completely different game, with a Monopoly-style track around the outside of the board. The cards contain some humorous citations such as Ronald Reagan's "I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting."
See also
External links
- Landslide '71 at BoardGameGeek
- Landslide '04 official site
- Landslide '04 article at about.com