The highest decision-making organ in a city is the City Council, which lays down the general operative and financial outlines for a city and decides on its main objectives. The true power, however, is a little further down the hierarchy in the different councils working under the City Council.

In the card-driven game Councils & Contracts, the players act as developers who try to push their own objectives — namely, receiving lucrative building contracts. Therefore, it's important for them to gain influence in every one of the councils since doing so is crucial for deciding the assignment of building contracts. Naturally, all of the developers are keen to gain that influence...

Councils & Contracts is the winner of the third game author's competition "Edition Kofferspiele" organized by Mücke Spiele/Spielmaterial. In that competition the limitation was that the game fits in 11 x 7,5 x 3 cm metal box. Similar to Hart an der Grenze smuggling boxes. It is easy and light to take with you and has a lot of game inside the box.

Components:

1 City Hall card
5 Council cards
25 Influence cards (5 per player)
36 Building project cards
30 Employees (6 in 5 different colors)
5 Point markers (in 5 colours)
25 Transparent markers (to track influence)
1 Score board

Basic gameplay:

Players start with four workers and can lose or gain more through actions.

There are four possible actions but only two of them are available depending whether player has workers in his play area or not.

If a player has workers on his play area he must place them either on council rooms (two in one council room or one in three council rooms) or start a building project using influence and depending on project one or two workers.

If a player doesn't have any workers he must take them out either from one council room (giving influence to each player with presence in that room) or finish a building project and take the depicted building action, which usually returns the workers back to players playing area.

There are eight buildings projects shown and after the building deck is depleted and only four building projects are shown the game ends. There are then two extra actions per player and final scoring.

Game variants:

First/short game: Remove cards 29 - 37 and the promos.

Mixed setup: After shuffling the A and B decks (separately) remove four cards from both of them.

Gears council: Use the gears (brown) council like the 5 player council instructs but receive gears influence.