So, this past Sunday, Silas and I decided to play All the Presidents Toast Crunch again, to determine (again) how the presidential election will play out.
Since it had been 4 years since the last time we played, we were a little rusty on how the game was supposed to truly be set up and executed (and, you know, the fact that this playtest was essentially only the 3rd time we'd run thru it all), but, after re-reading the original blog post, and just kind of looking at the board and pieces, I was able to more or less figure it out.
I wasn't sure if Si wanted to actually play it, as when I had brought up the idea on Friday, his response had been, "I dunno about that". And when I first brought the game down and started setting it up, he did seem ...teenagey-dismissive of it.
But, once we both got into playing, we had a good time.
We actually played it twice, because the first play had Trump absolutely demolish us. We went maybe 3 turns total before he had completely wiped out all 4 starting presidents. (I ...don't remember who they were. Washington was on the yellow team...and that's about all I recall.)
But, after having the first play thru be so demoralizing, and talking with Silas about some of the ways to tweak the game, I wanted to give it another go.
So we reset up the board, and opted to ignore the color spaces on the board. (One of the key takeaways from the playing was how absolutely UNbalanced the game is overall. Trump being able to attack so many of the spaces on the board is simply too "OP") We also changed a rule so that presidents can summon backup members using an attack die, rather than having to move to the summoning space.
Both of those changes made the game MUCH fairer. (Still not a completely balanced match-up, but at least with those tweaks, the game lasted longer than a few rounds.)
What really helped the game along though, was the fact that Obama got summoned pretty early on. His 'super power' is that whenever doubles are rolled, it does 10 points of damage to Trump. The dice were pretty much on board with that, as I think at least three different times doubles were rolled, which helped bring Trump's health meter down quite quickly.
Of course, the Trump/Obama feud is well known, and it extended to the game as well. On one attack that Silas did for Trump, he pulled out BOTH pink dice, which essentially nuked Obama. Fortunately, we had ...er... Zachary Taylor? I forget if that's who it was (just looked it up - it was Millard Fillmore) on the board, and HIS power is the ability to revive any president who has died (while taking a 3 point hit on his health). He revived Obama, who ...other than a few more digs at Trump and some amendment collecting, didn't really do TOO much more. But it felt good having him back in the game.
Carter was the only other living president to make the roster, and, just like last time, he kicked some major ass. His movement factor being so high made him the perfect prez to run around the board collecting the majority of the amendments for us.
We were able to obtain all 10 amendments, and - with another tweak that we decided we didn't have to move to the 'amendment space' on the board to trade them in, but rather that it could be done instantly, we used them to remove ...a green die from the box. Even though, at the time, there were NO green presidents on the board. (Trump had wiped out Grover Cleveland early on)
At some point, we decided that summoning in a good handful of "backup" presidents was a good strategy, and we ultimately ended up with 6 Commanders-in-Chief (Commander-in-Chiefs?) on the board taking shots at the Orange One.
About halfway through, we commented on the weird fact that the MAGA counter die hadn't been pulled during any of Trump's attacks. It was then that we noticed that ...it wasn't in the box. It had at some point (probably during the first play) fallen off the table and onto the ground and we hadn't noticed it. OOps.
I joked that Trump would claim that the game was rigged, and, I mean, it SORTA was, as that die not being in the box IS a slightly bigger disadvantage to him. But. We put the die back in the box (it came up 1 other time after that, so...) and we moved the MAGA counter up by 10 to make up for it.
We continued to move people around, collecting the amendments again (we summoned ...I think Harding? ...who had a superpower of "starting with 4 amendments", which was a HUGE plus for us) and eventually collected enough to remove another die (a blue one this time). And we continued to chip away at Trump's health. Lincoln's power played a pivotal role as well, since it can essentially double the damage inflicted on him in a round (although doing so damages ol' Abe as well. We used his power a few times, and he ultimately sacrificed himself to help bring Trump down to a more manageable threat level.) Eventually, Trump's health was brought down to the single digits. We had Obama do another attack, thinking that might be the final blow, but he fell JUST short, leaving Trump at just 1 health.
Both Silas and I decided that the best outcome of the game would be to have Trump use the black die to inflict the final damage point on himself. So...we kind of just had the other presidents wander the board for a few additional turns longer than we needed to, just to make it so that we would eventually draw the black die out of the box, and Trump would, in deed, be his own demise.
So... all in all, the game is FAR from perfect. The board - and most likely, the presidents themselves (heh, we even commented on the fact that there is no Biden piece, since when I made the game, he wasn't president...we said that this time he was off taking a nap.) need to both be re-worked to be more balanced and fair. But there's a kernel of a good game in this, I think, and if nothing else, this serves as a sort of interesting time capsule of 2020.
As for whether it was a predictor of tonight's election results? Who the hell knows. I certainly hope so. As fun as the game is, I don't really want to have to play it again in 2028 to find out if we're going to defeat him AGAIN.
Ultimately, the game provided me and my son with a fun Sunday afternoon, so in that regard, I'm totally the winner.
