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sean johnson
United States
avon
Indiana
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While everyone knows Indianapolis as the city that hosts Gen Con. The city also happens to have a couple of local cons. For the past few years I have gone to Indy Con. This is a weekend of nonstop board game playing. The organizers are also really good at getting raffle prizes donated, and they give away a ton of games. Every year I have been lucky to win a game. In 2011, my wife game and we were lucky enough to win four games between the two of us. Campaign Manager is one of the games we won. So did we get lucky with this win or is it a game we would rather not have?
Game Overview
Campaign Manager is a card drafting and hand management game. One player will be in charge of the Obama campaign, and the other player will be in charge of the McCain campaign. At the beginning of the game both players will draft their 15 card deck. This is done by taking all 45 cards, drawing three and keeping one. Once the deck is drafted both players draw 3 cards and begin competing over states. To simplify things, only the 20 battle ground states are part of the game, and at any time four of these battle ground states will be out and available for the players to fight over. Each state will support a candidate on either their economic position or national defense position. If a player is able to fill up the entire support track with discs of their color of one of the two issues, then that player will win the state as long as the issue they have all the support in is the majority issue. On a player's turn they can either play a card or draw a card. The vast majority of cards a player plays will allow them to add support to a state of their choice in either economy or defense. Other cards can allow a player to shift which issue is the majority issue or minority issue. A player can "go negative" by playing certain cards that are very powerful, but require a die roll that gives the opponent a benefit as a backlash to the negativity. There are other cards that have some various special effects, but the basic idea is playing cards to win the electoral votes of a state. The game ends when one players wins enough states to get to the required 270 electoral votes to secure the election.
The Game We Played
I played McCain and my wife played Obama. She got off to a big start by winning Ohio quickly. I got back up by winning Washington and a couple of the smaller states. She then won another state, and put out Florida. Florida is the state in the game that has the most electoral votes and winning Florida is always a big deal. Unfortunately, for my wife I was in a good position to do this. I first played a card that stayed in play that made it so when I played a going negative card I would not have to roll the die for backlash. While she had to draw cards, I was able to play back to back Attack cards and sneak the state away. She was genuinely surprised this happened! What further hampered my wife's efforts is that every time she went negative and had to roll the die, she rolled a 1 or 5 which were the two results that were best for me and worst for her. She slowly fell more and more behind. She rallied and gained a couple of states at the end, but at that point it was to late. I was able to win Virginia and that pushed me over the 270 needed votes, my wife had somewhere in the 220s.
Our Thoughts
My Rating: 4 (like it)
My Thoughts: There is very little I do not like about this game. I find the card drafting really fun at the beginning. I think the back and forth tug and war of fighting for states is fun, as is the agonizing decision of playing that last card or drawing back up for more options on a turn. I also really like the historical context and how the game delivers on that theme but still stay extremely accessible.
Her Rating: 2 (do not like)
Her Thoughts: Honestly, one of the reasons I do not like this game is I never win, and I do not know how to win. I feel like when I try to set something up it does not work, but when someone else plans ahead it works every time. This gets really frustrating.
Verdict
Combined Rating: 6
It turns out this is a split game. I feel lucky to win it, but my wife would rather not have it. Even though my wife is not wild about, we are not in any hurry to get rid of it right now. It seems that this is a game that is a bit flooded on the market right now though. There a lot more people who want to trade than who want it, and it is readily accessible online for fairly cheap.
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