Welcome back to this series of peeks inside Mr. President!
When last we left our intrepid Tri-Presidents, we had finished the game setup and were ready to begin the game’s first six-month Round. If you missed that first article, check it out here before you read on. And please remember, this game is still in the testing phase, so all the images you see in the article are playtest images, not final art.
As many of you have read in my most recent monthly customer updates, I’ve been back working on the new version of Mr. President weekly, and sometimes daily, over the past couple of months. The updated, streamlined design is falling into place, and we’re a little over a month away from handing the game off to Mike Bertucelli for final development and testing. In this article and those that follow, I want to give you a sense of how it feels to play the current version of Mr. President. With the able assistance of my son Luke and daughter Rachel, whose most recent plays of the game have netted two auto-losses, we’ll take you along with us as we begin a new administration. I hope you enjoy the article! – Gene
Last week, I let you guys know in our monthly update that I’ve been working on a solitaire game called Mr. President. Some of you read last year’s teaser article about the game, but virtually everyone is still in the dark about how this game plays. Well, it IS still in the design and alpha testing phase, but it’s starting to come together, so I decided to put together a sneak peek to give you a sense of how the game plays. So I’m going to let you guys virtually share in a round (one month) of game play – to look over my shoulder as I play – so you can get a sense of the flow of Mr. President and some of the things you have to think about as you play. I’m not going to teach you how to play the game in this article – that comes later – but I do hope to give you a sense of how you feel – and some of the things you think about – as you play.
One thing that I’d like you to pick up here is that I am not intending this to be a “beer and pretzels” surface level game. If that’s what you are looking for, RUN AWAY! 🙂 What I want is a game that is deep and immersive, one that will both frustrate and delight the solitaire player, an experience that will beckon you back to the game table after each round, turn, or completed game. I don’t think it’s quite “there” yet, but it’s well on the way.
As we pick up the action, we are six months into the game, my first playtest ever of the Moderate Complexity level in the game (we did all the initial alpha tests with the Easy Complexity level, and now I’m wanting to see how well the next level of challenge plays).
So in the first six months (Turn 1), chaos ruled, especially in the Middle East and Central Asia. Thus foreign policy took a big portion of my time and effort. The Moderate level At Start situation (I may have to tweak this) is pretty intense – Unstable Governments, Terror Groups, and Festering Crises are seemingly everywhere. I did get a little progress made on my two legislative programs (Homeland Security Improvements and Energy Independence) thanks to a couple of advisors who are quite skilled in the legislative process, but most of the action was overseas. I spent a few months tracking down the leadership of a huge (level 4 is highest in the game) Middle East Terror Group, and finally got actionable intel on their locations near the end of turn 1. I gave the go ahead for a large SoF Raid in spite of the fact that the target location was deep in Indian country. Unfortunately, things did not go well; the terrorists somehow got wind of our intentions and the raid failed with heavy US casualties and the Terror leadership cell scattered. Public opinion took a big hit, and the ensuing scandal gave me no real choice but to replace my Secretary of Defense (one of the better Sec Defs available in the game). On top of it all, I lost a Legacy Point! Ouch! (Rolling 10’s is a bad thing in this game!) That was an ugly way to end turn 1, but it’s good to know that the game has some teeth and that the solitaire player can’t just Raid with impunity to solve the Terror problems.
Hitler gave two speeches targeting Czechoslovakia during the Munich crisis. The first speech at the Nazi party rally in Nuremberg was mainly a message to Sudeten Germans that they are “not helpless and abandoned”. Two weeks later, during the second speech at Berlin Sportpalast, Hitler targeted Czechoslovak president Dr. Edvard Beneš, revealing his world view of a fight between two men embodying their nations. Beneš was so tired from his hard work trying to manage the crisis that he slept through the whole speech. When he was later told about Hitler’s personal attack, he just smiled and replied: “That’s an honor.” The Bell of Treason is a game about the Czechoslovak decision to either concede the demanded Sudetenland territory to Germany, or to stand and fight against German aggression, even without allies and with little hope for victory. From the perspective of the decision itself, achieving victory is simple, with victory points representing the popular legitimacy of the decision to Concede or Defend. However, the strong personalities of Beneš and Hitler complicate that decision for both players. Let’s start with Beneš.
In Part 1 of this article, we looked at all the Set-up options, processes, and decisions when you begin a game of Mr. President. This article picks up where that one left off, as you begin play on Turn 1. We’ll cover the first month of your Presidency this time.
Note that over the past several months, I have streamlined the way the game deals with both Instability and Crises in a region. We still track Instablility and Crises per region, but I’ve eliminated the fiddliness of dealing with a bunch of chits marking Unstable Governments and Festering Crises. So the map situations you see in this article are going to look a bit different from those in the preceeding article due to these changes. Here’s a peek at Africa as an example.
Welcome to another look inside Mr. President!
(Please note that not only is all the art you see below playtest art, it’s playtest art mostly created by me, and I have trouble drawing straight stick figures! It’ll look a lot better when our artists do their magic!)
This time, we’re going to start a new game, and give you a sense of how you populate the game board, choose and prepare your assets, assume your persona, and dive into a new story. First off, let’s introduce YOU, the newly-elected President!
You make a few die rolls and find out that you are a 40-something male (you can have different ages and potentially gender here) who just won the election handily! In game-terms, that means that a) you’re relatively young, and thus less likely to die in office – unless you make someone really, REALLY mad – and b) you get to start on the public Public Opinion Track at 52%. This is the EASY setting for the game, although I’m betting some of you will question my definition of “Easy” as you play (and maybe LOSE!) a few games of Mr. President.
Now let’s find out about your Special Attributes. There are eight Presidential Ability markers in the game and you get to randomly choose two at game start. You MIGHT get another during game play (gaining experience and expertise), but for now, these are your special talents. We draw, and get LIKEABLE and TEAM BUILDER. You were probably hoping for PERSUASIVE SPEAKER – always a good one – but the ones you have are good attributes. We’ll set these two markers in front of you for now and use those abilities in a few minutes.
Those of you who have been to a GMT Weekend at the Warehouse know that the Billingsley kids have been involved with GMT for most of their lives. Samantha, our oldest, was born six months after I created the first version of Silver Bayonet in 1990. Rachel came along two years later, and Luke in 1996. All of them worked at GMT during summers and sometimes on weekends from very early ages, and all have done virtually every job in the warehouse and many of the jobs in the front office. Many of you have received packing slips signed by one of the Billingsley kids dating back to the late 1990s. They all grew up with GMT as the “family business” and are about as “Inside GMT” as you can get. Even now, they stay plugged into what’s going on with GMT (they watched the TS Kickstarter campaign with great interest this summer) and continue to offer good suggestions and feedback on how we’re running the business. Most of all, though, they all PLAY our games!
They’ve played a bunch of our games over the years, starting with a road trip with the girls about 15 years ago to meet Reiner Knizia in a San Francisco hotel and play games all day when Andy and I were first looking at some of his games. And they are fiercely competitive (must be from their mom’s side of the family! 🙂 ) Samantha owns family bragging rights as the only sibling to have, partnered with dad, won Mike Lam’s ACES Down in Flames tournament. The other two have made valiant attempts, but so far 2nd place is the best finish for Rachel and Luke. Besides Down in Flames, the girls mostly like our more Euro titles – we STILL take Ivanhoe with us on every family vacation. Rachel plays a mean game of Labyrinth, though, and reminded me just last week that she beat me the last time we played. Luke, though, likes both Euros and (thank you, Lord!) WARGAMES! He and I have played a lot of games of Combat Commander over the years, and he’s had a friendly grudge match going with John Leggat over various Combat Commander battlefields for years now (John, you have been a tremendous positive influence on Luke over the years. Thank you!). He also likes Labyrinth and the COIN series games, and this year discovered he liked to play Chess, so we’ve had some fun over the chessboard, as well.
My “little playtester” got big!
This summer, in between a lot of travelling, Luke has been helping me get Mr. President ready to hand off to the test teams. I always knew he was a good gamer, but this summer he has really impressed me with his attention to detail. He has an editor’s eye and reminds me of Volko in terms of organization and detail skills (that’s about the highest praise I can give), so he has been very valuable to me with his work on Mr President this summer.
Below you will find an article from co-designers D. B. Dockter and Mark Herman on the design of their upcoming game titled Defiance: 2nd Russo-Ukrainian War 2022-?, which is available for P500 preorder from GMT as of this December. This article was originally published on Conflicts of Interest Online in April 2023, and you can find the link to their version of the article here. Onward! -Rachel
