Votes for Women Turns the Suffrage Movement into One of the Year’s Best Board Games
Votes for Women Turns the Suffrage Movement into One of the Year’s Best Board Games
Votes for Women Turns the Suffrage Movement into One of the Year’s Best Board Games
By Keith Law
October 03, 2023
Summary
Votes for Women is the first game from designer Tory Brown and follows on the heels of several games in the last few years that try to take major historical events that aren't wars to the tabletop.
In Votes for Women, one of you plays Winifred Banks the Suffragist cause, trying to push the 19th Amendment through Congress and then get 36 states to ratify it, while the other plays the Opposition, trying to prevent either of those things from happening or running out the game's clock of six rounds.
Each player has a unique deck, campaigner meeples, and support tokens, and will play six cards per round to try to add support cubes to states or remove their opponent's, or to lobby Congress to pass the 19th Amendment or remove some of that support.
Every card has text on it that describes a specific action, sometimes depending on what else has been played so far, while players can discard any card to campaign-adding cubes to regions where their campaigners are-or to lobby Congress.
Once Congress has passed the Amendment, it goes to the states; if the Suffragist locks in 36 states or the Opposition locks in 13, the game ends immediately.
If you've played the 2019 game Watergate, which I think has been the gold standard for games that try to depict major historical events, you'll have a decent idea of how Votes for Women works.
The bulk of the game involves a fight for control of parts of the board-here for the 48 states that were in the union when the actual 19th Amendment was ratified and certified in 1920.
Reference
Law, K. (2023, October 3). Votes for women turns the suffrage movement into one of the Year’s Best Board Games. Paste Magazine. https://www.pastemagazine.com/games/board-games/votes-for-women-turns-the-suffrage-movement-into-one-of-the-years-best-board-games