Crazy detailed President Board Game

[MrPotatoTed]

Yeah, I've messed around with it in tabletop simulator, but you still need all the charts and books that come with the physical board game.

Once mine arrives, I'll use the books to play it on boardgame simulator.  The game takes something like 8 hours to play, and I have three cats (plus a kid).  Ain't no way they avoid messing up the game over the course of 8 hours. Haha.

[MrPotatoTed]

It will still be a few days until my copy of the game arrives, but I'll walk you through set up and answer any questions that I can, until I hit the part of the game where you need the books that come with the physical board game.  Then I'll have to pause until they arrive, obviously, but once that happens I'll continue with what we started here.

There are several starting scenarios, based off of the years 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and a sandbox game that is not specific to any particular year (just generically the 2000-2020 range).  Each game takes place over the course of 4-8 years, depending on whether you win re-election.

No real politicians are in the game, and there are no named parties either.  There's just your party and the opposition party.  Laws are generic as well -- for example "healthcare reform", "immigration reform," "gun reform" can mean whatever you want them to mean.  There's a version of each bill that your party wants to pass, and an opposing version of the bill that your opponents want to pass.

No real politicians in the game, and the President doesn't get a name.  Several key members of your cabinet and a list of your friends and enemies in congress do get names, but they're fictional.  Each also potentially gets specific traits, as does the President.

So, let's kick off a game.  I'm starting with the sandbox setup.  There's also an easy/normal/hard setup.  Let's start with normal.

Looking around the world map, I see possible trouble brewing as Russia is expanding their influence into the Eurozone and Eastern Europe at the start of the game.  There's also major problems in the Middle East, of course, and we can't ignore the signs of pending trouble in Africa, South America, Central America, and Central/South Asia alike.  

To begin creating our own unique start, I randomly draw two positive traits for my President character.  (Later, there will be opportunities to add additional traits, including negative ones).  I randomly draw "Likeable" and "Media Savvy".  Not bad.  Likeable will give us +3 Public Approval per turn, and Media Savvy will give us +1 Media Relations per turn.  Nice.  I'm starting to feel Obama-esque.  Having a low public approval hurts our legacy points, and that's the name of the game -- we want to get as many legacy points as possible to earn a rank amongst the greatest Presidents in American history.  Everything from major domestic successes to achieving a degree of world peace can generate legacy points.  

I then move over to building our cabinet.  We start with the Vice President, which we have no say over -- we're just drawing a random politician for this.  We randomly select a woman as VP -- Kelly Borgeson.  Kelly has a +1 to domestic issues.  Actually, technically, it's a -1.  Generally speaking, you want low numbers in this game, which admittedly is counter-intuitive.  In most cases, when rolling a die, the best outcomes are with the lowest numbers.  Vice President Kelly Borgeson will help us subtract -1 from rolls for certain domestic issues.  It's possible to get a VP who gives you that -1 for domestic, foreign ("diplomatic"), and war rolls -- it's also possible to get a VP who is useless across the board, or a VP who is exceptionally helpful and can take extra actions per turn.  But VP Borgeson is pretty run of the mill, giving a boost in only one area.

Next, we fill three key cabinet positions:  Chief Advisor (domestic issues), Sec of State (diplomatic) and Sec of Defense (you guessed it, war).  We have "some" degree of choice here.  We draw three random politicians for each position, choose one, and then put the other two back in the pool of politicians before selecting three again for the next position.

For Chief Advisor, we randomly consider Andy Lewis, Ivan Mercer, or Allen Box.  Andy Lewis gives no bonuses in anything, he's useless.  But the choice between Mercer or Box for Chief Advisor is an interesting one.  Like our VP, Mercer gives a helpful -1 to certain domestic rolls.  Box doesn't -- his specialty is foreign diplomacy, which is outside the scope of the Chief Advisor.  But Box does grant +1 Action per turn, which could be helpful in any position.

In the end, I decide to go with Mercer, whose skills best fit the position.  I'll shuffle both Lewis and Box back into the politician list, hoping to see Box again amongst the Sec of State candidates.

 For Sec of State, we've got three strong options.  Rick Campbell isn't that helpful diplomatically (he could give a -1 for diplomatic AND war rolls, but not as Sec of State), but he does have a +1 Action.  The other two options are even better.  There's Allen Box again, who gives us a -1 in diplomatic rolls AND +1 action, the best of both worlds.  And then there's Andy Lewis again...but this time, instead of being worthless at everything, he's actually amazing at everything, giving a -1 in ALL rolls within his role's scope AND a +1 Action.  (Why are there two Andy Lewises?  Apparently it's an inside joke about the game designer's buddy Andy Lewis, who didn't believe in the game and told him to stop designing it because nobody would want it, ha.)

I decide to choose Allen Box as Sec of State, since Lewis could be a potentially good Sec of Defense but Box is a specialist in the areas of State.

For Sec Defense, I randomly pull the useless version of Andy Lewis again,  John Long who gives -1 to war rolls AND +1 Action, and Rick Campbell, who gives a -1 to both domestic and war rolls AND gets +1 Action.

I choose John Long, under the assumption that Secs of Defense cannot help with domestic issues, and maybe Rick Campbell will become available again one day if I ever need to replace a cabinet member, given he can help in several areas.

So I've got VP Kelly Borgeson who gives a boost to domestic issues.
Chief of Staff Ivan Mercer who also gives a boost to domestic issues.
Sec of State Allen Box who gives a boost to diplomacy issues AND grants +1 diplomatic action per turn.
Sec of Defense John Long gives a boost in war rolls AND grants +1 war action per turn.

The rest of the cabinet is unnamed, but is represented abstractly with "cabinet effectiveness" meters, for the most part.  There is one exception:  we get to randomly draw a "White House Resource" card, which shows one additional area in which things are going really well for us.

I randomly selected "Superstars on the NSC Staff -- Your National Security Council Staff is Filled with Brilliant Minds and Experienced Operators."  This gives multiple benefits when dealing with a variety of foreign issues.

Next, I randomly draw the public's top five most urgent priorities.  I randomly select Infrastructure Upgrades as public priority #1, followed by Expanded Military, Privacy Legislation, Lingering Domestic Issue, and at #5 it's Social Security.

I then have to choose one random Campaign Promise, plus hand-select my top three legislation priorities.  

For campaign promise, I randomly select Social Security.  Great.  My campaign promise overlaps with the public's priorities.  You don't often see that. Score.  

For the three priorities that I can choose, I select Infrastructure, expanded military, and privacy legislation (in that order) just like the public did.  They're my bosses, after all.  Their priorities are my own!

Tomorrow, I'll start drawing some crises cards as we learn more about this world we've wrestled free from our predecessor.  Can we make better choices than he did? 

[MrPotatoTed]

Next up, we randomly select 2 congressional friends, and 2 congressional opponents.  

Our friends are Julia Chen and Milana Tone.  Chen has a legislative score of 1, she's a moderate, and she has a media score of 2. Tone has a legislative score of 2, she's a radical, and she has a media score of 1.

Our enemies are Ahani Vasquez and Kathleen Bell.  Vasquez has a legislative score of 2 and is a radical and has no media ability.  Kathleen Bell has a legislative score of 2, she's a moderate, and has a media score of 1. 

If our friends' legislative abilities outweigh the legislative score of our enemies, we'll have an easier time passing bills.  In this case, our friends have a combined score of 3 (1+2).  Our enemies have a legislative score of 4 (2+2).  We're going to have some trouble advancing our legislative agenda through congress. Crap.  That said, at least my friends have higher media levels than my opponents do, so we'll be able to spin their legislative blockade in our favor, helping our public opinion polls.  

I'm actually not sure what the "moderate" and "radical" do yet.  We'll figure that out together!

Coming up next: we draw three escalating crises cards.  These refer to things the previous President left on our plate, that will keep getting worse unless we can find a way to mitigate them.


 

[MrPotatoTed]

These are a special kind of crisis called a "cascading event" as they can get worse over time.

Here's the problems the previous president left on our plate:  

1)  "Iran Defies IAEA: Imports Nuke Components from Russia."  Iran gets +1 on their nuclear missile development, advancing from long-range missile testing to miniaturizing/mating warheads.  They're now just one step away from nuclear missile testing and just two steps away from mass deployment.  Uh-oh.  This creates tension in Iran, Israel, and the Gulf States/Saudi Arabia, so I had tension markers in those areas.  The card also tells us this increases the regional crisis level for the middle east +1.  This actually reaches the top level of the middle east crisis tracker, so we would roll for a random event on a middle east crisis chart -- but I don't have that chart yet.  In the interim, we'll look at our other two cascading events:

2)  "Your party fundraising practices under scrutiny: We have to immediately choose a response to this card, either appointing an independent council or defending my party.  I'll appoint an independent council.  Public Approval improves +1.  Relationship with Congress -1 (shit, this was already a problem area for me.)  Relationship with our party -1.  I roll on the cabinet tension table.  Uh-oh -- worst possible outcome.  "Open hostility in cabinet fosters domestic crisis."  The Domestic Crisis tracker moves +1.  It's manageable for now, but if the domestic crisis tracker gets to high, it's an automatic game over event.  I add a tension marker on cabinet effectiveness and indicate that it is declining.  Public approval falls -2, undoing the good that I caused by creating the independent council in the first place.  Ouch.  I then roll again to see if at least the investigation is over now.  Nope!  Fuuuuuck.  This one is going to keep coming back to haunt us for a while.

3)  Economic Crisis in China; Banks Over-Leveraged."  China's economic tracker takes a hit, and they also lose some of their ability to have a direct influence globally.  That's good news for us...but our economy also takes a hit as we're so intertwined economically.

[MrPotatoTed]

I found a glimpse of the relevant chart on Youtube for the middle east crisis (inspired by Iran advancing its nuke program).  Public approval drops -2.  (I started at 40% approval.  Thanks to the fundraising investigation and the Iran nuke crisis, I'm now at 34% approval and I've only barely been sworn in. Ha.)

Regional stability in the middle east drops to the lowest possible level.  Our relationship with the middle east in general declines, and our close relationship with the Gulf States/Saudis evaporates -- we are now "estranged".  Fuck.  

 

[10centjimmy]

Did your game already show up or are you using the tabletop sim?

[MrPotatoTed]

1 minute ago, 10centjimmy said:

Did your game already show up or are you using the tabletop sim?

I'm actually using the Vassal version right now.  But no, my game hasn't arrived yet (still probably about five days out).  I've been able to piece together some things from the online documents, videos, forums, etc so I'm going as far as I can.  But eventually I'll hit a wall where I'll need charts that are only available in the boardgame and I'll have to pause until it arrives.

[MrPotatoTed]

Now the setup is over and the actual game begins!  First, we figure out how many action points we have.  We start with 15 in a normal game.  We get +2 for our cabinet's current effectiveness level, but we lose -1 each for how developed Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs are, which puts us right back at 15.

My traits improve my public approval (we're back to our starting position of 40%!) and media relations, which is now slightly slanted in my favor.  

Next we select a global region to focus on National Intelligence Collection.  (We'd be able to focus on two regions simultaneously if our cyber abilities were better than Russia and China's, but it isn't.)  Naturally, I'll select the Middle East.  I probably would have focused there anyway, but with the whole Iran nuclear mess, it's become all that more urgent.

Now I can try to boost some of my strategic  capability.  There are seven potential areas I can boost.  In addition to US levels in each of these seven areas, I can also see Russia and China's levels in them.  Thanks to my decent economy, I can aim for improving two of them right now.  The US is currently behind China in Space Warfare and behind China AND Russia at Cyber warfare, so those will be my two areas that I try to improve in.  

My Secretary of Defense gives me a boost in these rolls, but it turns out I didn't even need his help.  I successfully improve the two areas that the US was falling behind on, keeping up with our potential enemies.  Score!
 

[MrPotatoTed]

Now I need to set my priorities.  There are six to choose from, and I need to rank them from most important to least.  The priorities I put at the top of my list will be easiest to achieve.  The priorities at the bottom will be the hardest to achieve.

I decide to rank them in the following way:

1:  Improve relations with Congress -- I'm concerned I won't be able to achieve anything legislatively right now with the way Congress is aligned against me, and I also have that ongoing fundraising investigation lurking in the shadows.  My top priority is to smooth out our relationship and hopefully make more friends over there.

2:  Improve cabinet effectiveness -- This took a hit due to the fundraising investigation.  I need to get them back on track.

3:  Address Domestic Crises -- This is about half way to the game over end of the track, in part thanks to the fundraising scandal and investigation.  I'd like to start moving that meter in a better direction.

4:  Homeland Security -- This isn't a problem yet, but let's keep it that way.

5:  Economy -- Again, not a problem yet.

6:  Public Relations/Approval -- This is important, but both of my personal skills are boosting this area so out of all the options, this is the one I'm worried about the least.

[MrPotatoTed]

Time for individual actions!  I get one action, the VP gets one action, and the Chief of Staff gets one action.  The Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense each get two actions, thanks to their personal "+1 Action" indicators on their cards.

PRESIDENTIAL ACTION:  There's a ton of possibilities here, so I need to narrow it down.  I consider corralling my cabinet to boost effectiveness, making a United Nations speech to increase global goodwill, making a Presidential trip overseas, inviting an ally leader to the White House to further improve our relations, address a domestic crisis, improving relations with congress, encouraging bipartisanship in congress, discrediting a Congressional opponent, engaging in foreign crisis relief, improving a region's alignment, decrease tension, summit with China or Russia, attempt to impose sanctions, de-escalate a conflict, broker peace, request rapid capabilities, direct intel gathering ops against terror groups, and building up infrastructure in a war-torn region.

And those are only SOME of the options.

I decide to invite an ally leader to the White House.  I choose to invite the leader of the Gulf States/Saudi Arabia (considered a single country for this purpose.)  I successfully rebuild our relationship from "Estranged" to "Close," undoing the diplomatic fallout from Iran's expanding nuclear capabilities.  Huzzah!
-----------------
Vice President Kelly Borgeson could theoretically help with a lot of potential tasks -- but she's a specialist in domestic actions, getting a die roll boost there, so that's where I'll concentrate her efforts.  She succeeds, giving us a +1 to our relationship with congress.  Outstanding!
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Our Chief of Staff Ivan Mercer is limited to only helping with domestic actions, but he does give us a die roll boost there at least.  We'll have him encourage bipartisanship in Congress.  Unfortunately, he fails.  That's fair.  It was a herculean task. Haha.
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Our Secretary of State Allen Box is limited to diplomatic options.  He gets to take two actions and boosts the die roll for each.  I'll have him try to decrease tensions between Russia and Ukraine -- there were ten potentially tense areas I could have sent him to, but Russia & Ukraine are the closest to breaking out into war.  Unfortunately, he fails.

For his second action, I ask Secretary Box to launch multilateral sanctions on Iran.  Success!  (I don't know what this actually does yet, but woe to Iran, no doubt.)
-------------------
Finally, our Secretary of Defense John Long gets two actions and boosts rolls.  First, I have him building up infrastructure in a war-torn region -- Central/Southeast Asia (Afghanistan, I suppose).  He would have succeeded in lowering the regional crisis level there, but China and Russia are both influencing the area so he ended up having no impact.

Then I have him request rapid capabilities.  We won't see the impact of this right away, but once it comes time to build up our strategic capabilities again, I can choose one of the seven strategic areas to make it much easier to boost that area.  I select Strategic Missiles/Missile Defense.  Right now we're on par with Russia, and I also am getting antsy about Iran so this feels like a good area to focus on improving.

[MrPotatoTed]

Now it's either Russia or China's turn to act.  I roll randomly -- Russia will go.

However, I don't have access to the Russia actions booklet yet, so we'll have to pause there until my boardgame arrives in the mail!

[10centjimmy]

Probably missed it but does your president have a name or demographics or is it just the random skills from the beginning?

[MrPotatoTed]

2 hours ago, 10centjimmy said:

Probably missed it but does your president have a name or demographics or is it just the random skills from the beginning?

Just the random skills at the beginning.

[Dobs]

10 hours ago, MrPotatoTed said:

Kathleen Bell

Maybe NOT Kathleen Bell?

[Umbrella]

Mine is scheduled to arrive today.  I'm going on vacation later this week, so I don't know how much I will get to dive in.

[Willthescout7]

This game sounds awesome

[Umbrella]

Did you get yours yet Ted?  Mine was originally slated for Monday delivery, but now the USPS is saying "later than expected".  I'm guessing Wednesday for mine. 

Every time I try to start a run without the rules, my initial cascading effects end up causing a major crisis in a region, and I don't have those tables to consult.  I'm getting impatient.

[MrPotatoTed]

9 minutes ago, Umbrella said:

Did you get yours yet Ted?  Mine was originally slated for Monday delivery, but now the USPS is saying "later than expected".  I'm guessing Wednesday for mine. 

Every time I try to start a run without the rules, my initial cascading effects end up causing a major crisis in a region, and I don't have those tables to consult.  I'm getting impatient.

Not yet.  I was supposed to get it tomorrow, then Thursday, then I noticed they sent it to my old address even though I updated my address on their site a month before they shipped.  
 

i emailed them and they were able to change the delivery Enroute, but I imagine that’s still going to add a day or two to delivery.

[Umbrella]

Out for delivery!  I'll be diving into this one tonight.  I'm thinking I'll start on a hybrid of easy/medium difficulty since I don't know what I'm doing.  Over/under 2 years before I completely plunge our country into disarray?

[MrPotatoTed]

11 minutes ago, Umbrella said:

Out for delivery!  I'll be diving into this one tonight.  I'm thinking I'll start on a hybrid of easy/medium difficulty since I don't know what I'm doing.  Over/under 2 years before I completely plunge our country into disarray?

Awesome!  Mine is showing as being delivered tomorrow.  

[Umbrella]

My game is going kinda crazy right now.  I started off with military and team builder, as well as a good cabinet.  My opponents in congress are much stronger than my friends, so this will be an issue.  I do have a slight media advantage with my friends though.

For my three lingering events, I have North Korea naval provocations, multiple mass shootings at home, and Russian hybrid war in Eastern Ukraine.  Luckily these are spread through different regions, but now I have three regions with problems, along with the Middle East and Africa which start out troublesome.

I've found military ability is pretty strong early, as you can automatically improve your cyber ability without a roll.  In turn, this allows you to have two focused Intelligence markers at the start.  For my cabinet focus, I chose domestic crisis as my #1 priority, mostly due to the mass shootings.  This turned out to be a great decision, as you'll see.  

China went first, and pretty much spread their influence all over the map, including 3 in South America.  They now have the capability of building a base there.  They also stole some of my war plans, which hurts us in the war against the Taliban.  My regional alignment in South America is too low to remove their influence, so I started improving that, as well as reducing crisis levels in various regions.

For the first round of chit drawing, everything went to hell in a handbasket at home.  Terror groups formed, Social Security became a major issue, and my opponents reacted better than I did, everyone hates my policy on renewable energy, a drought hits California which causes food prices to spike, which then hurts the economy and forces me into a major domestic crisis roll.  Luckily the roll wasn't too bad, so all it did was make congress and the public hate me more.  The only "good" card I drew was negated since Russia has an aggressive posture right now, and doesn't want to work with me to feed starving kids in Africa.  So even the good card ended up causing problems in Africa.  If I didn't have domestic crisis as my #1 priority, I would be hurting even worse right now.

I don't even know which fire to fight first right now.