Players: 4-10
Playing Time: 30-45 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

The Components

Democrazy comes with:

• 112 cards
• 60 chips
• 1 clothbag
• 1 rulebook

Cards: The cards are regular sized, printed on medium weight cardstock in full-color (though the majority of the cards have a very limited pallette). The cards include: 74 law cards (which each state a law, use colors to show the duration of that law, and use an icon to mark the results of ties); 30 vote cards (10 yes, 10 no, and 10 wild cards, which include "definitive" yes and no cards which are really hard to tell apart from the normal ones at a glance); 1 End card; and 7 blank cards.

Other than the issue noted with the definitive yes and no cards, everything is pretty easy to use. The cards all have simple, but cute cartoonish art, though it doesn't come across that well on the monotone law cards.

Chips: 60 small, circular wooden tokens in 4 colors (blue, green, yellow, and red). The paint seems quite thin on many of the tokens, with the natural wood color sometimes showing through.

Clothbag: A standard black cloth bag.

Rulebook: A simple 4-page rulebook, printed full color with limited illustrations.

Box & Tray: The game comes in a small bookshelf box, with a pseudo tray, which does little more than keep the cards from going all over.

Overall, the components of Democrazy are fine and utilitarian, but not special, and thus earn a "3" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The object of Democrazy is to maximize the value of your chips through the passage of clever laws.

Setup: Each player blindly draws 4-6 chips from the bag and also draws 4-6 law cards. He also takes one Yes vote, one No vote, and randomly draws one Wild Card vote. Then, 25 additional law cards are set to the side, and the End card is shuffled somewhere into the bottom 10. Play begins.

The Chips. The chips are simply markers in 4 colors. Each player will have a different selection thereof, which will affect his gameplay. The chips initially have a value of 1 each, meaning each player starts out with a score of 6.

The Laws. The laws are truly the heart of the game. Each one modifies the values of chips, the number of chips each player has, or otherwise changes the way victory points are scored. Some of the laws are red, which take instant effect if enacted, and some are blue, which stay out and have a continuous effect.

Here's some example of red (instant) laws: "The player who has the largest number of chips loses two chips", "One law of your choice, chosen before the vote, is discarded", and "All players lose all of their green chips."

Here's some examples of blue (permanent) laws: "The red chips are worth two points", "Each time a law is adopted, the player who proposed it takes an extra turn", and "After the scores are calculated normally, each player subtracts from their score the score of the player on their right."

Order of Play: Each turn a player takes the following actions:

• Draw a Card
• Propose a Law
• Vote
• Play or Discard Laws

Draw a Card: The active player adds one card to his hand.

Propose a Law: The active player takes a card from his hand, reads it, and puts it up for vote.

Vote: Each player takes a vote card from his hand, and plays it face down; all votes are revealed simulataneously.

If only Yes and No votes are cast, majority wins. In case of a tie, the Law card is consulted. It will have either a black or white dot; black dot means the vote failed, white that it passed.

Alternatively, one or more players may have cast Wild Card votes, which could have been a Definite Yes, a Definite No, or a Scam.

Definite Yes or No means that the vote automatically passes or fails (as appropriate) ... unless more than one Definite card was played on a vote, in which case they cancel. The Scam vote flips the success or failure of the vote.

Players get their Yes and No votes back, but not their Wild Card votes.

Play or Discard Laws: If the law was red, its instant effect takes place immediately.

If it was blue, it's placed out with the other permanent laws.

However, each blue law has an icon marking its category; if there is already a blue law out in that category, the former one is automatically discarded. In addition, there may be only 6 blue laws in effect at once. If this is the seventh, one of the old ones must be discarded (which one will be discarded must be stated before the vote is taken).

Winning the Game: When the End card is drawn (or when the last chip in the bag is taken), the game ends. Each player calculates his victory points, based on 1 point per chip, as modified by all the laws out there. The person with the most points wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Democrazy is a voting game in pretty much its purest form. Each player starts with unlike, but identically valued resources, and must use the majority voting system to try and connive his way into having greater value of resources than his opponents.

This sort of per-player voting game hasn't shown up that much. Werewolf games are one of the few others that use this mechanism. Reiner Knizia's Quo Vadis? is another notable voting game, although one where votes are per-playing-piece, not per-player.

This is a fairly typical Bruno Faidutti game, combining a few amount of strategy, with a lot of chaos which can shake things up (here exemplified by the wild card votes & also the effects of some of the law cards).

Some of my review players also referred to this as "Fluxx with voting", which I can generally agree with. Like Fluxx it can be chaotic and unfair; also like Fluxx it offers for a very vivid, constantly changing gameplay.

The Game Design

Democrazy is at heart a pretty simple game. It's a neat model of democracy, but at the same time suffers from democracy's greatest flaw: the tyranny of the majority. The minority in the game can get totally screwed with no real ability to recover. It happened in my last game; a group of four bearded gamers ruthlessly voted in a law that gave +5 points to anyone with a beard, and the fifth player, a naval officer who can't wear a beard due to military regulations, never recovered.

Beyond that, Democracy is quick, clever, and never the same game twice; all good points. There's also some nice bits of strategy and having to read other players, as you try and determine which laws to offer up and which not to.

Some of the flaws of the game include: the fact that it's spoilable (meaning that one arbitrary voter can throw off a lot of the strategy in the game); it's random (with card draws offering up laws that may or may not help various players); it's chaotic (even if you're a good judge, it's hard to predetermine how some votes are going to go); and the scores are a pain to calculate (notably because they sometimes include points from a neighbor to either side; this difficulty in calculation can make it harder to determine who's winning and what laws are good).

On the whole, I like Democrazy, but will also admit it's neither the most strategic or the most fair game; I nonetheless give it a high "3" out of "5" for Substance--a little bit above average.

Conclusion

Democrazy is one of those games where tastes definitely vary. If you don't mind chaotic, even random, games, Democrazy offers some fun, some color, and good replayability. On the other hand, if you have to have a very high strategy level, Democrazy isn't the game for you.