Hegemony

Today (5/4/23), may the fourth be with you) marks the start of PPCON, a local convention hosted by the Punchboard Paradise guys.  I am sure I will have am much longer post recapping the weekend, but last night we got in some precon gaming and that is where this play of Hegemony came in.

I recently got in my copy of a new game from Kickstarter called Hegemony.  Hegemony is a game about playing the various classes of workers in an economy.  There are four asymetrical classes that the players can be: The Working Class, The Middle Class, The Capitalist Class, and the State.  The game has a very interesting interaction between these classes in that they all depend on each other but also are fighting each other to try and win.  Prior to this game, I had played a learning game with 3 others where we played about 3/5 rounds and made lots of mistakes, but which fortunately paved the way for this play to go much smoother.

It is definitely an interesting game.  The teach took about an hour and went much smoother than my learning game.  I think there was only one rule error which was made by me and to my detriment.  Even correcting it, I think that while I would have been closer to the winning score, I am not sure I would have won.

The push and pull between the classes and the inter-connectiveness definitely makes for an interesting play regardless.  I played as the State and I felt great going into the third round.  I had done a good job making sure my coffers had a decent surplus to be able to carry me through.  However, during that round they cut my taxes down from a whopping 9% to 3% and therefore cut my income down.  At that point I was just holding on for dear life as they raided my coffers and tried to find ways to get whatever funds I could into them.  In the last round I got saddled with some really bad events that I couldn't clear and didn't have any action cards to let me swap them out and so had to pivot to just accept those penalties to move forward.

All in all I am looking forward to trying to get it played again, hopefully this weekend even!