🎮 Four Terms in Three Minutes: Little Mister Gets Voted Out of the 1790s Again

Published Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Verdict: defeat, final score 3,111, and a presidency that ended in a landslide loss to a man named Sen. Harlan Voss. Little Mister fired up GTNW on the macOS app, ran 46 turns in roughly 3 minutes, and got fired by the electorate on Nov 20, 1792. Voss took it 58.1% to 41.9%. That’s not an election, that’s a restraining order.

What he actually did

The sandbox scenario on Normal, a monthly turn clock, and the United States in January 1789. Most people would start with a budget. Little Mister started with a flag. He planted it in Antarctica and then in South Africa, five thousand troops each, and promptly renamed Antarctica “Bottomland.” Bottomland went on to produce sealing and whaling worth $0.2B, which is the most dignified thing that happened all session.

He renamed it “asdfasdfsadfasdfasdf,” which is what you get when a cat walks across the keyboard and wins a naming contest. That territory produced agriculture and an income of exactly $0. Colonialism has had better ROI, and that’s saying something.

He did it again in 1792. Canada became “Canadaasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdf” and Mexico became “Mexicosdfasdfasdfasdf.” Let me be clear that I respect the commitment to the bit. In the entire session the naming department was the only one pulling consistent overtime.

Planted a flag in Antarctica on turn one. The electorate noticed. Forty-six turns, zero re-election bids.

The one real play

In January 1792 he bought British North America from the United Kingdom for $2.8B. Little Mister, you paid a hundred million dollars extra for the privilege of being told no first, but fine. The territories started earning: Canada at $1.3B in agriculture, Mexico at $1B.

The part where the voters noticed

Popularity opened at 40 and sailed up to a peak of 42.6 by December 1790, which in this game counts as a honeymoon. Then January 1791 arrived, the new fiscal year landed with a deficit of 15.5% of GDP, and approval fell off a cliff to 32. It clawed back to 40.7 by the end of that year, and then January 1792 dropped it to 30 again. He ended at 36.4. I suspect the budget did that, given the final numbers: defense at 20, personal tax at 23, corporate tax at 20, social spending at 1, foreign aid at 0, tariffs at 0. That’s a government that spends on soldiers, taxes everyone and funds nothing nice. Voters have a word for that, and it’s “Voss.”

Nation after nation publicly condemned the United States: Mauritania, Afghanistan (three times), Palestine, Switzerland, Bhutan, Algeria, Vanuatu and more. When Switzerland condemns you, it’s because you’ve been so loud that even the neutral country had to say something. The FBI also kept busy, arresting agents working for Czechoslovakia, Nepal, Palestine, the Solomon Islands (twice) and Siam. DEFCON sat at 3 and not a single warhead was launched. Casualties still hit 41,263, all of it from the Egypt-Sudan war he watched from the cheap seats while British Egypt beat Anglo-Egyptian Sudan twice.

How it stacks up

He has 17 earlier sessions in this game: 11 defeats, 2 quits, 2 abandoned, 1 unfinished and exactly 1 victory. Average session is 23.8 minutes and 40.1 actions. This one was 3 minutes and 46 actions, so he matched the action count while skipping about twenty minutes of the suffering. The 3,111 score is well above his 1,887.9 average, which is a nice sentence until you notice it doesn’t come close to the 9,617 best. That best came in his last outing, a 10.8-minute, 198-action defeat. So the pattern is clear: when Little Mister plays longer, he scores higher and loses anyway.

Grade

The land buys were a real strategy, the naming rights were a cry for help, and the budget was a recipe for losing. Next time, Little Mister, try funding something besides the military and keyboard mashing. Gam zu l’tovah, as the Hebrew has it: this too is for the good. Barely.

The numbers

From the Nova Games play log. Session ref: 9010aef2.