The Election Workspace

Way down at the bottom of the form is another Workspace, the Election Workspace. This area is designed to help you calculate your Base Votes. Your Base Votes are how many votes you are guaranteed should you run in an Election against HappyCOM-9. You can derive the number of Base Votes you have at any given time at any point by adding your Power, Intelligence, and Influence Statistics.

If you run against HappyCOM-9 in the end- of-game Election, you will generate a random three-digit number (000-999) to represent a number of unpredictable “Swing Votes” that go to you in the Election. You will add this number to your Base Votes to yield your Total Votes. Note that the Election Workspace has a slot for each of these figures.

In order to win the game, you need to have more Total Votes than HappyCOM-9 in the Election. In the Short Game, HappyCOM-9 has 2,000 Base Votes. HappyCOM-9 will also capture a random number of Swing Votes (again between 000 and 999). The important thing to note here is that when your Base Votes equal HappyCOM-9’s, you have a fifty-fifty chance of winning the Election and the game. If you have 1000 more Base Votes than HappyCOM-9 has, you have an almost-certain “lock” on the Election, and you should definitely attempt to move to the center of the board and end the game. One restriction applies: there is no theoretical limit to how high your Statistics can get, but in the Short Game, no single Statistic may provide over 1,500 points towards your Base Votes. This means that if, for instance, your Influence was 2,100 at the time of the Election, you may still only count it as though it were “capped” at 1,500.

The Epic Game works similarly, except HappyCOM-9’s Base Votes are 3,000 instead of 2,000, meaning that you should get to at least 3,000 if you want a fair shot in the Election. Also, in the Epic Game, no single Statistic may provide over 2,000 points towards your Base Votes.

All the rest of the specifics on ending the game or triggering the Election can be located in the section called “How To Win The Game” on page 21.

Remember, you can figure out what your Base Votes are at any point in the game without using the Election Workspace: simply add your current Power, Influence, and Intelligence. You should do this whenever you want an idea of how close you are to winning, or when an opponent asks you to.