Note: I wrote this article in response to questions about history and the Event cards in Mr. President. I hope you find it interesting! – Gene

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There is a lot of history in Mr. President—but it is primarily a game, though it certainly has strong elements of simulation. The way the game is structured (with the ally, peer competitor, and rogue state configurations) is intended to mirror the realities of geopolitics from a US President’s point of view during the 2001-2020 time period. Just perusing the map and seeing the potential interactions can certainly give you a good look at the history of the period from a “10,000 foot view.”

The 180 cards (and you’ll only use 90-100 in any one game) are intended to give players a feel for what events happened (although with little regard to the historical order in which they happened) or could have happened during the period. I’ve aimed for “surprise and unending replayability” over simulation for sure. To give you a sense of this (and hopefully give everyone some insight into the game cards that you may not have seen before), I’m going to include 15 cards below in three very broad, functional “Card Type” categories with notes on each. I hope you find this helpful.

Group A: Event Cards that primarily do something to affect the game with less emphasis on current board state or player choice
Group B: Event Cards that have varying impact BASED ON the current game state
Group C: Event Cards that require you to make a choice in various aspects of the game and provide results based on that choice

You’ll note that there is overlap between the three broad groups, and some cards in the various sections will have aspects of all three groups.

Here’s the list; I’ll do my best to explain as I go, knowing that much of the game terminology will be unfamiliar to most of you at this point:

Group A: Event Cards that primarily do something to affect the game with less emphasis on current board state or player choice

This card represents a US/Canadian summit, one of the generally easier things to not mess up as the US President. So this event mostly just happens, but it does have both a game state component (if your Ally Relationship with Canada is VERY CLOSE or you have the AN ALLY’s BEST FRIEND Presidential Attribute) and player choice (do you choose to spend a Presidential AP (Action Point) to improve your odds of a good result). So it’s a WEIGHTED random roll that is ALREADY (before DRMs) skewed toward success and good benefits because of the nature of the recent historical relationship between the US and Canada. It’s hard to do poorly on this event unless you’ve already damaged the relationship with Canada in game or refuse to (or cannot) spend a Presidential AP.

This one just happens to you—and it’s a GOOD EVENT (the playtesters wanted DOZENS MORE good events, but, alas, I had no pity on them!)! Even so, you don’t know which attribute you’ll draw, so that will have varying effects on the future game-state. Note, too, that this is a “R” event (bottom right) which means it is not discarded from the game after it is played (as all the “D” events are) but goes into the Reshuffle Pile, where it has a 50/50 chance of getting shuffled into the next year’s Crisis Deck and may come up again.

This event has a small bit of reliance on game state but none on player choice. It mostly just happens. But it IS reflective of the historical growth of China’s Factory Automation during the period. And the “dependent on game state” portion at the end could improve both your economy and your relationship with China if you haven’t let your relationship with China dip below 3 (on a 1-5 scale) thus far in the game.

This is a CASCADING EVENT Card. The way these work is they are designed to represent a longer-term recurring problem or event with (usually) worsening effects over time if not addressed. In this case, it’s an event that happens to you, at least initially. So when you first draw the card, you consult the “C” result space (representing being drawn from the Crisis Deck). This creates a Domestic Crisis, makes the public kind of mad at you, and randomly inflicts either a scandal or a resignation. And that’s it.

But instead of being discarded (or going to the R pile), Cascading event cards go to the “2” pile after play—then to the “3” pile after they are played from the “2” pile. Draws from the “2” or “3” pile are a random draw after shuffling all the cards in that pile whenever the “2” or “3” chits are drawn from the chit cup during one of the turn’s numerous Chit Draw segments. So, when you see and perform the “C” result, you can also look at the “2” and “3” results and see what you need to do in game terms to mitigate future bad results (the card might never get drawn again, randomness being what it is, but it is a RISK to ignore these cards). And by the way, cards in the “2” and “3” piles are the only cards in the game that sit in their piles FACE UP, so you can browse through them anytime and remind yourself what you need to work on to mitigate future effects if the card comes up again.

Now in the case of this card, if you draw it again from the “2” pile and you have worked on your Cyber Strategic Capability so that it is not less than either Russia or China’s, then you get to both ignore the “2” result AND discard the card (that’s what the “D” image represents in the “2” result) instead of placing it in the “3” pile. If your Cyber is still weaker than at least one of the Peers, though, you get hit with another Domestic Crisis, more anger from the public, and a hit to your Relations with Congress (RWC), as they’re embarrassed and ticked off that this keeps happening. It’s similar for the “3” result, where if you continue to lag behind the Peers in Cyber, you’ll get similar hits, and ALSO a long-term impact to Homeland Security will weaken you for the rest of the game if you don’t do something to deal with it.

Here’s another “happens to you” card. In this instance, the card introduces a new Political Opponent, gives you a minor hit to Public Approval, and, worst of all, changes the issue for which the public is most interested in you passing a bill in Congress. The game creates an ongoing storyline where what the public wants gets out of synch with your priorities at unexpected times. It can be frustrating, especially when you spend a lot of time and effort to get what you THOUGHT the public wanted through Congress, but, by the time you get it passed, it’s no longer their #1 priority. You’ll still get some benefits from passing it but not NEARLY what you’d receive if you pass a bill that matches the highest public priorities. There are around a dozen events in the game that change the Public Legislative Priorities. Of course, many of those won’t even be shuffled into every game, so there’s really no way to plan for the public’s changing whims.

Group B: Event Cards that have varying impact BASED ON the current game state

Here’s a card based on game state that may or may not pull India and Pakistan closer into China’s orbit. Keeping Conflict Track levels low (“1” is pretty peaceful, “5” is War) is usually something you really want to do because wars are generally bad for the region and usually not great for you either. Usually, you don’t get much benefit from that except the obvious one of avoiding a War. But in this case, you get to further reduce Tensions if levels are low AND ignore any cards that affect China/India/Pakistan conflict for the rest of the year. THAT can be a nice relief—to cross two Conflict Tracks off of your “Worry List” for a while. And this is kind of a “Win/Win” card because even if the Conflict levels are higher in this case, Russia and China still cooperate to bring more Stability to Central/South Asia, about which you would, in most game circumstances, be happy.

Here’s a card that looks at TWO game states and then creates an outcome based on that. If Russia doesn’t have any Sanctions counters (which generally means they haven’t done anything to wildly tick you off YET) AND the Eurozone State of Economy is fairly robust, European banks will invest in Russia. Benefits are a slightly improving economy for Russia (which helps them, not you) and reduced Tensions (which helps you because the more Tensions Russia or China accumulate, the more aggressive they become on the world stage). If the two game states don’t meet the first criteria, then Russia’s economy gets hurt by the European banks divesting (helping you in game terms), and Russia and a couple of your Allies get Tensions—which creates more aggressive attitudes from all parties and more problems for you to navigate.

Here’s another “weighted random” event where the weighting is based on the current status of the DPRK/ROK Conflict Track. That Track runs from “1” to “5” (War), so you could have anything from a +1 to a +5 drm here. So if you haven’t been paying attention to reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula, this could be bad. That 10+ result could mean immediate War if the Conflict Track was at “4” when you drew the card.

Here’s one that is very rooted in history in terms of the event, but the game gives you different branched results based on current game state—specifically Russia’s Relations with the US (“1” represents the coldest of Cold War relationships and “5” is Friends and Trading Partners). In general, you’d like to see this Track be at least a “3” to stay away from Russia getting too aggressive (all kinds of bad can happen when they are aggressive). So this event uses a weighted random result based on the state of the US/Russia relationship to spit out a result for Russia’s strategic advance into exploring and exploiting Arctic resources. The lowest result helps the US and Russia pretty much equally. The middle result benefits Russia in a big way in terms of Russia Influence counters in Europe (part of their automatic victory conditions), but it also benefits the SoE in Europe and removes a bunch of Tensions, both of which are very desirable to you. The highest result helps Russia and China alone, which is kinda bad for you.

This event starts with a “happens to you” portion: adding a Tensions counter to your Cabinet Focus. This is bad because each turn you get to set up your hierarchy of 6 priorities for your Cabinet that year. In game terms, these are pretty “easy” ways to improve a lot of your domestic areas of concern. Twice each turn, during POTUS/Cab Focus segments, you get to roll d6 for each of those priorities. Higher priorities get easier “Success” die rolls; for example, it takes a 1-5 to succeed on your #1 Priority (you’ve put extra time and effort into it, after all), a 1-4 for your #2 Priority, and only a 1 for your #6 priority. Each of those Priorities has a Tensions box beside it on the game board. So events like this that add a Tensions add one to the box beside the Lowest (which is why it says “6 to 1”) priority that currently doesn’t have a Tensions marker beside it. During those POTUS/Cab Focus segments, you don’t get to roll for any priority that has a Tensions by it. In the big picture, the press of events is causing you to ignore some of your lesser priorities during the year, and if you get Tensions by ALL SIX of your priorities, you won’t be able to roll for any of them. So managing Tensions on those Priorities (don’t worry, you have an Action that can remove a Tensions Counter) is kind of a big deal on the domestic front.

After you place the Tensions marker, the rest of the left column of this event is dependent on game state, specifically your Homeland Security rating and some randomness (as you roll against that rating). If you’ve done a good job building up Homeland Security and aren’t just plain unlucky on the Homeland Security check roll, the rest of this is fairly benign, overall (just making Israel more tense for now and more intel-focused when they act next). But if you fail the check, it decreases your Homeland Security, which makes you more vulnerable to future probes/attacks. And of course it makes some people mad at you (do you see a trend here?).

Once that part is done, the game assumes the Israelis are not going to take this sitting down, so they attack a Terror Group in the Middle East and decrease it by a level—good for stability in the region and ultimately good for you. Lastly, it focuses the Israelis on their intel failure and further building up their Intel arm. So their next Joint Action must be an Intel Action. This hamstrings you a bit (because that may not be what you need them to help you do most when they activate), but it’s not a huge deal overall.

Group C : Event Cards that require you to make a choice in various aspects of the game and provide results based on that choice

This card could reflect MUCH of the history of 2001-2020, unfortunately. It starts with a couple of “happens to you” directions. For reference, here’s the PENDING BILLS section on the game board.

Bills in Congress move generally RIGHT TO LEFT on that track. When you get to the Legislative segments in each turn, you perform a process that includes attempting to pass a certain number of bills and then potentially introducing new bills (based on how well Bipartisanship is going on the hill—Bipartisanship mostly equals more attempts to pass AND introduce new bills). When you attempt to pass bills, you need a 1-3 on a d6 to pass the bill. Those big numbers in the boxes are DRMs for the d6 roll to pass. So you want your bill as far left as you can get it to have the best chance. Well, this event moves ALL the bills right by one box, which makes all bills harder to pass and could be catastrophic because any bill in the “Cannot be Passed” box is removed (it couldn’t get enough support to get to a vote) and has to be re-introduced later as a new bill and start the process all over. So, as you can see, this “move all bills right” part has teeth. The “move Bipartisan cooperation one left” is also bad for you because that gives you fewer attempts to pass and introduce bills. You can try to mitigate this before the next Legislative segment, but this is a pretty ugly combo in the near-term.

After that, you have a choice. Remember, this event is about gridlock. You can choose to use your Bully Pulpit to call for more Bipartisanship or stand by the party line and throw rocks at Congress. If you choose Bipartisanship (which will help you try to pass and introduce more bills), you’ll take a hit with your party (you need them to like you for support and re-election purposes). If you choose to be a partisan hack, your Party Relations are going to improve, but you’ll take a hit with Congress and then make a Relations with Congress check (there are a lot of these in the game, so PAY ATTENTION to your RWC rating and don’t let it get too low!). If you fail it, you add a Political Opponent.

I’m going to put my tongue firmly in my cheek and say, “This event is just NOT AT ALL historical.” If only, right? First you find out whether it was your Friend or Opponent caught in a web of lies, and that part is totally random. After that, the choices are a bit more nuanced than you might think. Losing a Friend is bad, but so is running Bipartisanship too far left on that chart. In this case, if your Party Relations were low and Bipartisanship was in really good shape, you might want to support your Friend so you could keep him/her and also get a bump to Party Relations while living with the decrease in Bipartisanship. Or not, it’s up to you—you’ll probably make different decisions over many games based on game state at the time. If the target is an Opponent, here’s a chance to get rid of the opponent (representing that he/she’s no longer an ardent voice against you because you helped them when they were under attack) AND improve Bipartisanship at a cost to Party Relations. Or you can drop the hammer on them and make your Party happy while taking a Bipartisanship hit. Decisions, decisions…

Here’s one with a “happens to you” event followed by a choice on the international stage. This is a pretty nasty event; it adds Terror and Crisis to Central America and decreases regional Stability (which is a VERY important track that you’d love to keep as high as possible in every region). Then, if the event has created a lvl 3 or 4 Terror Group (representing more sophisticated Terror Groups) in the region, that triggers a request for help to which you may respond.

If you say no, you lose Alignment in Central America (representing how aligned they are with the US), so there IS incentive to say yes. But if you do, it costs you Presidential APs (which are limited—there’s an “opportunity cost” aspect to this), some of your troops deploying to the region (also “opportunity cost” because they can’t be somewhere else you may need them), and, maybe worst of all, a US Military Footprint counter. These counters are one way I represent the downsides of having military on the ground, but you don’t know what those downsides will be when you place the counter. Instead, during the end of turn clean up process, you flip all the US Military Footprint markers and inflict the consequences they impose. A few of the counters have “No Effect,” so you MIGHT get lucky, but most of them cause more regional crises, add terror, ruin US alignment, etc. So unless there’s a ton of terror or a Rogue State in Central America and you need to build up forces there to deal with it militarily, a lot of times I’d take the Alignment hit here and say “no thanks” to the deployment. Of course, game state matters, so you’re likely to make different decisions in different games.

Here’s another Cascading event card. The initial draw (from the Crisis Deck) inflicts game state impacts. The “2” and “3” draws mimic the “C” draw with the additional OPTION for the player to choose one of two actions (you don’t have to—you could just take those initial effects and live with them if you want). So, “a),” “b),” and “do nothing” amount to three choices for the “2” and “3” draws. If you want to take action and go the Sanctions route, you’ll hurt your relationship with Israel (hurting ally relationships is always some level of bad), but you’ll acquire UN Goodwill, which can help you in many ways during the UN Action Phase. If the Sanctions attempt succeeds, that will hurt Iran in various ways until they are removed. But there’s that Israel problem… You can also choose to deal with this militarily, which the Israelis and the Saudis/Gulf States are going to like, but you’ll cause a small problem with Russia. Missile strikes can be unpredictable, though, so you’ll roll the dice, and you MIGHT set back the Iranian Nuke/Missile program—or you might not get a result you like. But that’s why you get to eat snacks in the White House kitchen—so you can “eat for stress” while you figure all this stuff out and get some comfort food when things don’t turn out well.

Now you’ve done it. You had a few issues with your fundraising, and somebody found out. So you have choices. Basically, this card lets you choose to take your licks up front and maybe kill the problem or “deny, deny, deny” and take a chance that it’ll go away over time. The longer you wait to fess up, the worse the consequences become, but there’s no guarantee (it’s 50/50) that you’ll get out of it even if you Appoint an Independent Counsel up front (because hey, laws may have been broken). Generally, unless you’re late in the game and think you can run out the clock on this card (I know that never happened historically), you’re probably going to want to admit a problem by the time you get to the “2” draw and take your licks, if you don’t get the problem dealt with during the “C” draw. Because you really don’t want a POTUS scandal if you can avoid it.

I should note that MOST of the player decision-making in Mr. President has very little to do with the Event Cards, but there are some cards, as you can see, that present decision points.

One last point of general note here. As you see from the sample cards above, an event card in this game can have multiple different outcomes and branch your game in different directions each time it comes up. So even though 180 cards is a pretty large number to help drive the game’s story, in terms of game outcomes and branching, the cards will create around 500 different outcomes or branches in your game storyline. Suffice to say, replayability should not be a problem.

I hope this peek inside the cards gives you all some insight into some of the types of events that the game portrays and also the way that it deals with the intersections of history, story immersion, game state, and player decision-making.

Gene

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