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Mr. President is a solitaire game about governing as the President of the United States in the early 21st century. It's not an election game. It begins after you've been elected. It's about sitting in The Chair and trying to advance your agenda while navigating ongoing crises, political enemies, public opinion, your relations with Congress and the press, and keeping your country secure in a world of rival nations and agendas that just seems to keep blowing up around you. Mr. President is a resource management game where you never have enough resources to achieve your entire agenda and the path you take through an always unpredictable storyline rests on the choices you make. Depending on the results of those choices, and on the unfolding of a "different every game" story, you'll either be thinking "POTUS? Piece of Cake!" or "Why was it that I WANTED this job?" many times in each game.

Like the actual Presidents during this period, you'll have an array of allies and resources to help you as you navigate both the corridors of power in the nation's capital and the uncertainties of international relations. These allies and resources will vary from game to game, but you'll always be able to rely on your Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense to help you with foreign policy and the use of the combat power of the U.S. military, where you deem necessary. You'll also have your Vice President, Chief of Staff, and a bevy of domestic advisors and friends in Congress to help you navigate the many challenges in Congress, politics, and domestic life. And you'll always have access to at least one truly exceptional talent (this, too, will vary from game to game), someone who excels in their particular job and is a "force multiplier" for you in their own unique way. How you lead and utilize this mix of talents and experience at your disposal will go a long way toward determining your success or failure during your shot at being Mr. President.

Gameplay

The Map. The game map allows you to see and track the domestic and world situation that the game creates. It is divided into sections:

1. Congress. This is where you track the progress of legislation and the level of Bipartisanship in Congress, as well as Congressional close Friends and strong Opponents.

2. The White House, Advisors, and Priorities.

3. Rogue State Nuke Development Tracks and Strategic Competition Section.

4. Tracks for World Opinion of the US, Relations with Congress, Media Relations, Homeland Security, and the State of the US Economy.

5. The World portion of the map (about half of the map) is divided into eight world regions with additional sections for Russia and China (your key Peer Competitors in the game). The regional displays are designed so that it's easy to glance at a region and be able to quickly determine what areas might need your attention.

6. The map also contains a detailed Turn Sequence Track that details the anatomy and progress of each game year.

There are also two 8.5" x 11" off-map Player Aids. One is the War Progress Track that keeps track of the current status of all of the world's major conflicts. The second is a card full of holding boxes to hold all of your various Terror Groups, Rogue States, Sanctions, and Tensions counters until you need them on the game map.

Crisis Cards. At the heart of Mr. President are the 180 Crisis Cards that help create the storyline for each game. These cards (see the 12 sample cards on this page) are a mix of cards representing Domestic or World Crises, Terrorism Events, Unexpected Benefits, and Opportunities. The Crisis Cards help drive (but do not completely control) the storyline in each game. Here's how it works:

Each game of Mr. President is divided into four one-year turns. There are a variety of ways that you can "auto-lose" the game, but if you survive to the end of your four-year term, your level of victory (including whether you were re-elected) will be compared to the great Presidents in U.S. history.

At the start of each turn, you get to perform assessment and planning actions during the Special Activations Phase. This is where you get to lay out your rough plan, re-examine strategy, and re-evaluate the threats and opportunities that were presenting as the previous turn ended (or at game start). So there is definitely a proactive strategy piece to the game. Unfortunately, though, your plans are not often going to survive intact once the turn gets going. The world stage is a dynamic platform.

Once you have your plans made (and the Mr. President gods laugh at you!), you perform the core Turn Sequence, which is made up of four quarterly Activity Phases. During each phase, you will choose your actions, which are intermingled unpredictably with chit pulls for the game's "opponent" actions to challenge you in unexpected ways. Many of the challenges will come from the game's Crisis Cards, which represent the main world or domestic events that happen (these are usually bad from your point of view, but occasionally they are events or resources that help you) during that quarter. The events on the Crisis Cards (usually) present you with an urgent problem that may immediately alter the board state. They can also introduce lingering or cascading issues that may cause you pain down the road.

You are in control of the actions you can choose, and to some degree when you can choose them, during each round. Actions allow you to make progress on your legislative agenda, attempt to address any new crises presented by the round's actions cards, deal with any lingering world or domestic issues, fight terrorism, perform diplomacy, and attempt to better your situation in the world or in the eyes of the American people.

Once you finish each Activation Phase, that quarter is finished, and you move on to the next Activation Phase, repeating this process until all four Activation Phases for the year are finished. Then you perform the Final Activations Phase, wherein you update and evaluate the board state, calculate potential auto-Victory or Loss, and perform mid-term elections (after Turn 2). At that point, the turn is complete.

Seeded within the "enemy" activations during the Activation Phases, there are chit selections for Russian and Chinese Actions, Terror Actions, War Progress, Chaos!, and a variety of Crisis cards. You know that each of these chits (enemy actions) will likely show up sometime during each turn, but you don't know when. The variable timing of these chit draws each turn adds uncertainty and spice to the game, while ensuring that major players in the game present challenges for you every single turn. Russia and China offer deeper challenges, with two possible postures (aggression levels) each, Relationship with the US tracks, and a country-specific Action Booklet. Postures may shift in-game in response to your actions or to storyline events, making dealing effectively with each Peer nation an evolving challenge.

Contains:

• One 5" deep Game Box
• One 22" x 34" mounted game board
• One 22" x 17" mounted game board
• 180 Cards
• 500+ counters and markers
• One "How to Play" rulebook
• One "How to Play a Turn" FlipBook
• One Scenario Book
• One World Chart Book
• One Domestic Chart Book
• Two Peer Competitor Action Books for Russia and China
• Six Player Aid cards
• One 10-sided die
• One 6-sided die