Democratic Dogs

Democratic Dogs is a card game for 2-6 players. Players take turns in which they use character abilities to progress their political ambitions. This includes canvassing for votes, targeting your rivals campaigns with investigative journalists, hacking, hiring bodyguards and even turning to eliminating your rivals more permanently.....

Victory is achieved by gaining 5 votes, or by eliminating all of your rivals. Like in a real election you must develop multiple layers of strategy, bluffing and be able to hold your nerve to become leader of your country!

Like our other card games, Democratic Dogs is easy to learn, but has depth and replayability. Games of Democratic Dogs are designed to be fun and quick, with a game length of 10-15 minutes.

Game Setup

Each player is dealt 4 character cards (of which they keep 2 and return 2 to the deck). These two cards also represent your 2 lives, for every life you loose you loose the guaranteed ability of one of your cards. 
On your first game the starting player is the last player to shake a dogs paw.

Aim of the game

To win the election and become leader of your great nation! This is done by either gaining 5 votes (by means fair or foul) or eliminating all of your rivals (certainly foul).

How to Play

On your turn you either state which of the character actions you wish to take, or you can draw and discard a card. Here's the twist, you do not have to take one of the character actions of a card you own, you can use any of the 7 character actions. However using a character action for a card you do not have in hand carries substantial risk

Before we get onto the risk, you may notice that certain cards block the abilities of other cards. If you are targeted by a card, you may claim to block that card if there is a block action available. Again you may claim to block an ability targeting you even if you do not have the associated card in hand, but that again carries substantial risk.

Ok onto the risk then. As you may have gathered you can lie about what cards you have in hand. This is not necessary, but certain moments may present opportunities to good to pass. At any point another player may challenge your claim of character action or challenge your block, other players can even challenge your character action even if they are not directly involved in that character action.

If your character action or block is not challenged, then it goes ahead. No cards are revealed.

If your character action or block is challenged then you must reveal the associated character card you claimed to have. If you cannot or choose not to do this then you lose a life by discarding one of your character cards. The challenging player then gains 1 vote for a successful challenge.

If you do reveal the associated card that was challenged, the player who challenged that character action or block looses a life by discarding one of their character cards. If you reveal a card that was challenged in this way, you have the option to immediately discard that card and draw a new card from the top of the deck.

You will need to develop and adapt your strategy, maybe bluff at that critical moment and definitely be able to hold your nerve to come out on top in a game of Democratic Dogs.

All our artwork has been hand drawn by our amazing artist on procreate. Here are some sped up clips of the card art in progress!

Democratic Dogs - get the game @ KS price of £14

Extra copies of DD

CC

CC:Rev (?limit number vs reprint)

Necrohamster

Necrohamster Looting Hell

A7 art print of one of the cards

Foiling on the box

A7 art print of one of the cards

Please note shipping will be collected in the pledge manager after the campaign has finished. The above table is what we expect the shipping costs to be. The shipping costs above include tarrifs costs from the USA at the current rate and the EU customs and handling fee.

If your country charges VAT on imports from the UK please note this will be in addition to the above pledge and shipping costs and will be collected by the postal carrier (we will be sending with Royal Mail from the UK). This is your responsibility to check before pledging, please do so that there are no surprises.

If your country isn't listed please drop us a message, it's very possible we can ship to you! We'll check it out and then add to our list of countries.

We're a team of 2 people, based near Manchester in the UK. Both of use enjoy playing board and card games, which led us to creating our own games. This is now our 6th Kickstarter campaign. Our previous campaigns have been successfully funded and successfully shipped out. Check them out below:

Communist Cats by Jackdaw Co — Kickstarter

Frontier by Jackdaw Co — Kickstarter

Communist Cats: Revolution by Jackdaw Co — Kickstarter

The Necrohamster by Jackdaw Co - Kickstarter

The Necrohamster: Looting Hell by Jackdaw Co - Kickstarter

We also sell our games on Etsy, and have had over 2,000 reviews on there. Feel free to check these on the link below:

JackdawCoGames - Etsy UK

We feel to have come full circle with this game, in a way it's a spiritual companion piece to Communist Cats, our first game launched 8 years ago. Both are card games that share a political theme, where the aim is outmanoeuvre your opponents. While this is true, they are two separate games that certainly have different styles of play. Both Communist Cats and Democratic Dogs have been inspired by both card and board games that we have greatly enjoyed playing with friends over the last 2 decades. Games such as Love Letter, Citadels, Coup, Sushi Go, Dominion and 7 Wonders (amongst many others) all have been inspirations for these games. We really hope you enjoy our latest game, and thanks for taking the time to check it out.