You're a challenger with four weeks. The incumbent has the city, the donors, and voters who already know his name. He doesn't have to persuade anybody. He only has to run out the clock.
Not plus. Times. A voter you persuaded who stays home is worth nothing, and neither number wins a ward alone.
You start under-mobilised, because that's what a challenger's coalition is. You can lead on paper all month and lose on the night.
Undecideds drift to the incumbent every week, on their own. He needn't do anything to earn it.
While there are undecideds left, a block walk spends its whole effort converting them. This is the part everyone understands.
It's also why the first walk through fresh turf feels so much more productive than the fourth.
Once the undecideds are gone, the same play switches by itself to turning out the base you just built.
Which means walking a ward you've already won isn't waste. It's the second half of the job, and it's the half that beats a machine.
Each week you pick a focus neighborhood and spend your plays. Plays are scarcer than money, and the campaigns that lose here spent a turn on something cheap instead of something useful.
The best play in the game and nearly the cheapest. It converts harder than anything else, and it's the only one that also builds the turnout that beats a machine.
It's the play that does whatever the ward actually needs, without you having to decide which.
One ward at a time. You have six of them and only a dozen plays, so shoe leather alone can't cover a city.
The volunteers walk for nothing, but the turf, the lists and the literature don't, and a brand-new campaign is short of volunteers anyway.
The strongest pure persuasion for the money. When a ward is thick with undecideds and you need them moved, this moves them.
It rewards a candidate people warm to, and it's cheap enough to run in a week when the chest is thin.
No turnout at all. It creates support and does nothing to make sure it votes.
A ward full of people who like you and stay home is a ward you lost, and it will look like a win right up until the count.
The cheapest play, and the only cheap one that touches every ward. It persuades a little and turns out a little, everywhere.
The move for a week when no single ward is screaming at you.
Thin. It does a fraction of what a block walk does in the ward that matters.
Spread across a city, that's a lot of effort landing in wards you were never going to win.
Persuasion at scale, and it reaches the people who'll never come to a coffee morning. Roughly twice the punch of a phone bank, in one play.
It needs no volunteers at all, which makes it the reach play for a campaign that hasn't built a field operation yet.
Expensive, and it only converts undecideds who are still there.
Send it in the last week, after the soft vote has broken, and you've posted a fortune into six wards with nothing left to give.
The biggest persuasion hit available, because you're talking about the one thing the city already cares about. Every town has a wound; this is you pressing on it.
It cuts through in a way a generic event never does.
Pricey, one ward, and no turnout. It creates want, not votes.
And like all persuasion, its value decays as the undecideds vanish.
Cheap, and it reaches specific congregations wherever they are, regardless of your focus ward.
Some candidates carry real weight in those rooms, and for them this is far better than it looks on the tin.
You don't aim it. It goes where the churches are, which may not be where the race is.
And behind the wrong candidate it's close to a wasted turn.
It persuades nobody and it's still one of the most important plays here. Being known slows the drift that's bleeding you every week, and being trusted decides how the toss-up wards break.
It also puts a shield up against the mayor's next attack, which is coming whether you're ready or not.
It costs no money at all, but it still costs a turn, and turns are the only thing you're actually short of.
You'll finish the week and see nothing happen. That's the hardest thing about it, and it's why players skip it and then wonder why the undecideds keep walking away.
Name recognition is the brake on the drift, and that's real. It puts you everywhere at once, and being everywhere is how an unknown stops being unknown.
There is a version of this race where nobody has heard of you and this is the fastest way to fix that.
The most expensive play in the game, and it converts nobody.
The press interview buys you more of the same thing, plus credibility, plus a shield, and it is free. You are paying a fortune for the worse half of a play you could have had for nothing.
The only play that takes votes off him instead of finding you new ones. It peels his support where he's strongest, and raises your credibility on the way past.
Against a machine boss, this is the weapon the whole campaign has been waiting for.
Two plays out of twelve, and here's the part that decides races: against a beloved incumbent it backfires.
Swing at a mayor the city is fond of and the city turns on you. Same play, opposite result.
A play that plays itself, every week, in every ward, without ever spending one of your twelve turns.
Buy it in week one and it works four times. That's the whole reason it's worth what it costs.
A large slice of your entire war chest, up front, in the week when you can least see what it's doing.
Buy it in week four and it works once. You've paid a fortune for a single turn.
The ad blitz is the fastest name recognition in the game, which is the brake on the drift. Rapid-response mail hits his strongest ward every week without you lifting a finger.
Internal polling quietly makes your focus ward better at converting, for the rest of the race.
You can't have them all. The shelf is longer than the budget, and every dollar here is a dollar not in the plays.
Everything recurring is a bet on the weeks you have left, and four weeks is not very many.
A ward you persuaded and never mobilised gives you almost nothing, and it'll look like a win right up until the count.
Twelve plays, all game. Stop counting dollars and start counting turns.
The drift takes voters off you every week for free. Being known and being trusted are the only brakes, and neither shows up on the poll you're watching.
Against a machine boss the knife works. Against a mayor the city loves it turns in your hand, and the clock runs faster too.
Lose, and it is usually because you persuaded a ward you never turned out, or you let the clock run, or you swung at a mayor people liked.
Persuade every ward in the city. Lead the poll all four weeks. Then watch the night, when the people who liked you stayed home and the machine's people did not.