Burned out by the modern 24-hour news cycle? Believe that electoral politics is one of the least fun things on earth? Think you’d find a board game enmeshed in decades-old “current” events totally uninteresting? Too bad. You’re likely to miss out on one of the best games I’ve ever played.
1960: The Making of the President is as close as most of us will ever get to run- ning for president of the United States. This game makes you feel it — the highs of campaign momentum, the lows of debate gaffes, the pressure of limited time, the tension of sudden shifts in popularity, and the uncertainty of election day.
As its title promises, the game portrays the 1960 presidential campaign between Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy. These two figures were (and still are, to many) polarizing figures who evoke strong emotional and philosophical responses — definitely a plus for energizing a game. 1960 approaches both candidates honestly and evenhandedly. You can play either and have an equal chance of winning; there’s no innate bias in the design toward either political party or candidate.
One player directs Nixon’s red-colored GOP campaign while the other player is Kennedy’s. blue-colored Democratic campaign. Many of the game’s components use those easy color codes to denote political affiliation of a card, a state, or an event. Your objective is to collect the 269 electoral votes you need to win the U.S. presidency.
Most 1960 games last between 90 minutes and two hours, depending on how familiar the players are with the rules and how quickly they strategize during their turns. The game always lasts nine turns — five turns for the campaign, turn #6 for the debates, two more turns for the late campaign, and turn #9 for Election Day.
You build up your votes during the game through many mechanics, though most are tied to cards.
The game’s primary mechanic is in its point-valued cards. The cards can be used for campaign points to build support for your candidate in a state, on an issue, or simply to sway the electorate through advertising. You can also use the cards’ historical events to affect candidates. For example, the Nixon’s Knee card moves the injured candidate to Maryland for hospital help and makes it harder for the Nixon player to campaign. You can even spend your own political momentum points to activate beneficial events on cards your opponent has used for campaign points. The Nixon player gains four campaign points from the Harvard Brain Trust card, but the Kennedy player can spend one momentum in conjunction with the card to gain a campaign point to all issues during the debate in turn #6. The trick, then, becomes playing cards that help you, even as you deplete your oppo- nent’s momentum points so he or she can’t trigger such helpful events. The cards also have uses that apply to the special turns for the debates and the election, so a wide array of possible strategies need to be considered. Any one card can impact the campaign in wildly different ways at different times.
Another interesting mechanic is the Political Capital bag. As you play cards, you earn points of rest in an inverse relation to the card’s potential actions. The more powerful your card’s effect, the busier the candidate is and the less rest you get. These point cubes go into the bag and help you out later in the game when you’re drawing to find more votes in battleground states on Election Day. The more rest you get, the more cubes you have in the bag. Play too few powerful cards during the campaign, though, and you risk letting your opponent build an insurmountable lead.
There are many different options for every turn. Should you work on getting media support in the Midwest or change the focus of the campaign to civil rights issues instead of your opponent’s strong suit: defense? Do you concentrate on locking in your control of battleground states or increase efforts to gain endorse- ments and sway undecided votes? Planning is important, but you can’t control what you randomly draw from the deck or the Political Capital bag. A seemingly foolproof strategy can be undone by an endorsement card in the last turn before the election.
I know folks who insist that a game based on history must follow the actual events closely. The peril in that is predictability. We already know who won the actual 1960 presidential contest. So while 1960 is rooted in the actual events, it manages to maintain tension by allowing for randomization through the card draw. Nixon might get egged in Michigan or he might benefit from the discov- ery of KGB bugs in American embassies. Kennedy might gain from President Eisenhower’s silence during the campaign or he could commit a gaffe during a press conference. Kudos to designers Leonhard and Matthews for enlivening the historical episodes with very well-balanced mechanics.
I was neither alive during the 1960 campaign nor, I must admit, all that inter- ested in it until I played this game. That a board game made me want to read more about political history says a lot about its potential educational value. As a former teacher, I see 1960 as a great tool for showing teenagers how fascinating history can be, especially if you play out the campaign as part of a civics class. And if you want to dig deeper, one of the best books about the election shares the game’s title.
From its board to its cards and counters, the game benefits from great pro- duction values and graphics. Joshua Cappel’s evocative board and card designs enhance the game on many levels, from the cards’ faux-newspaper layout to the full 50-state map board. There’s no wasted space on the board or on the cards. Everything’s carefully coordinated, right down to the colors of regions or even the candidates’ coffee mugs.
The Campaign Manual is a brilliant example of both consummate graphic design and solid game design. The graphics-heavy booklet is 24 pages long and organized for easy use. Though the actual rules fill only half its pages, there are detailed examples of every step up to the final turn of Election Day. These helpful examples reinforce the core rules and turn sequences and illustrate specific tactics or cards in actual play. The booklet’s back cover provides a much-appreciated player aid that summarizes the rules. In fact, after the first game or two, I found the player aid was clear enough to cover most questions without having to flip through the rules at all.
I can hear you asking me the question already: “Why talk about a two-player game in a book about family games?” Simple — families come in all shapes and sizes, and there are not always three or more people ready for a game. And 1960: The Making of the President is one of the best two-player games I’ve ever encoun- tered. Its mechanics puts players in direct competition and keeps them engaged, no matter whose turn it is.
Regardless of your feelings about Richard Milhous Nixon, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, or the parties they represented, Christian Leonhard and Jason Matthews have created a game that allows you to see how personal foibles, political machines, and the whims of history can all make or break a candidate, even as it encourages you to develop your own play style and strategies to forge a winning campaign. At its best, 1960: The Making of the President helps you shake off the barnacles of political cynicism and appreciate the historical relevance of the events and figures upon which it’s based. That it can do so while also managing to be a fun and exciting game amazes me still.
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