The first game published by Civic Forum Games was Presidents versus Trump, successfully launched on Kickstarter in May 2020 and delivered to backers in October 2020, including two expansions: Patriots versus Trump and Protagonists versus Trump.

If you wish to purchase a Print and Play copy of Presidents versus Trump, including full art on all cards and both expansions, for just $12, contact us via BGG!

Presidents versus Trump is an action-packed, fun-filled, 30-minute card game for 1-4 players. The American presidents have all come back to kick Trump out, but villains from American history have come back to defend him. It’s a shamelessly Ameritrashy presidential rumble full of keywords, variable powers, tons of stuff from real history, light deckbuilding and (of course) dice by the fistful.

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Here’s a complete playthrough with rules explanations, from the original Kickstarter campaign:

The core of the game is 24 presidents, divided up evenly among the players.

• With four players, each player gets six presidents based on National Era (Founding, Civil War, Gilded Age, Superpower).
• With three players, each player gets eight presidents based on Presidential Era (Patrician Presidency, Party Presidency, Popular Presidency).
• With two players, each player gets twelve presidents based on Team – the Blue Team is the Democratic Party, and the Red Team includes the Federalist, Whig and Republican Parties.
• The game also supports one player if you want to hog all 24 presidents!

Every turn, you draw five cards out of your deck and play them. Each president has a presidential power based on that president’s actual strengths (integrity, popularity, party building, policy leadership or maneuver). Presidents can also gang up to attack villains or recruit new cards into your deck.

You’ll recruit cards that represent support coming in from other presidents (hello, Millard Fillmore!), constitutional provisions that give powers to the presidency, and real forces from American history – as well as cards representing Trump’s weaknesses and foibles. During your turn, you can play these support cards to interact with keywords on your presidents and other game factors. They give you extra power, extra card draws and lots of other bonuses. This gives you tactical choices that keep the game exciting without bogging it down.

The players use their attacks to place wounds on villains from American history, ranging from Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr to John Calhoun and Jesse James to Al Capone and J. Edgar Hoover. The number of villains out on the table in each round is equal to the number of players (four villains at a time in a four-player game, etc.) but players have freedom to decide which villains they will attack and how much of their resources to devote to each attack, balancing that with the need to make other attacks and recruit new cards. If other players have already defeated the villains when your turn comes around, you can be brash and bold and provoke new villains to come out early, so you have someone to attack – but there’s risk in doing that!

When a villain has enough wounds on him, he is captured by whichever player put the most wounds on him – and, to keep the game fun and fast-moving, there’s also a juicy reward for being the player who makes the final attack if you didn’t also capture the villain (that way, attacks don’t stop when one player “claims” a villain by putting enough wounds on him).

After each player has had one turn, the villains get a turn. Any villains who are still on the table at the end of a round impose a negative effect on the players. Assassins can force you to discard presidents, Scoundrels make it hard to recruit new cards next round, Fiends can block presidential powers, and Oppressors reduce the number of cards you draw. Then you replace defeated villains with new villains and a new round begins.

After the last of the 12 villains is captured, it’s time for a massive Final Showdown with Trump himself. During the player turns, presidents attack Trump to place wounds on him; during villain turn, Trump attacks back and can capture your presidents! If Trump captures all the presidents, he wins; if the players defeat him first, the player who is holding the most captured villains wins – but Trump himself counts as three villains for determining who wins. With this system, you can’t afford to sit back and let the other players do all the villain-fighting during the game before the Final Showdown, but in the end, victory will still hang on how well you do in that Final Showdown!

Rules and no-art prototype versions of the cards are all online free, so check it out.

If you wish to purchase a Print and Play copy of Presidents versus Trump, including full art on all cards and both expansions, for just $12, contact us via BGG!