Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory

Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory does not merely hand you a role; it asks you to defend it with conviction, persistence, and a little well-timed deceit. By the second game, after we had switched roles and everyone had become rather more suspicious, the contest was properly close.

The different classes pursue their own interests, but policy decisions are made at the same table. Playing the Working Class, I went straight for pro immigration and pushed to keep education free; everyone agreed, until they realised the proletariat had not been making a polite suggestion.

That is where the game bites: you need to see who benefits now, who pays later, and how willing the Capitalist is to become bloodthirsty in order to stop you. Cards can betray you, though, because a strategy dependent on particular draws may simply never receive the material it requires.

For more euro-minded groups, I would recommend the variant where you choose one or two cards from your opening hand before drawing the rest, giving your plan an actual starting point. Hegemony is thoroughly respectable, provided you accept that your class revolution will sometimes be waiting for the right card.