What Do I Do in the Mr. President Demo???

The demo gives a taste of the gameplay, but the big picture is hard to see

Our demo has been live for two days now, and the overall response has been wonderful and encouraging. But a common sentiment among players - especially players unfamiliar with the board game - is often expressed as: “What am I supposed to be aiming for in this game?” So in this post I’m going to go over some of the intro points I’ve made while streaming in the last couple of days.

In the full game, you’ll be looking to score Legacy Points. These come from major successes: winning wars, passing legislation, and maintaining a strong political position at home (with high Public Approval, relations with Congress and the media, etc.). In the demo, though, your main concern will be China: containing the PRC’s influence and managing crises that can precipitate two of the 15 different auto-loss conditions.

The first of those requires China to reach 15 total influence on the map. You’ll need to take actions to reduce their influence, which can come on to the board through several of the Crisis cards. The second auto-loss condition triggers if China and Japan go to war; you’ll need to keep an eye on their Conflict Track and use diplomatic actions to mediate these two countries’ disputes. If you can reach the end of the demo without either of those happening, and with US-China relations still neutral or better, then you’re in good shape, and in the full game you’d have some breathing room to advance your other goals.

In the demo, the best way to understand the gameplay is to look at all the tooltips you can. We decided that the best approach to demo-ing a sandbox game was to make the rules and systems available to the player, and to avoid scripted scenarios and rails. We may change our tune on this for the full release, but for now, the tooltips on all of the counters and markers and tracks should give you a sense of what you need to watch out for and what actions you should consider taking.

Looking for some more hints?

• Look at the Regional Crises tracks in the world map part of the board and check out the tooltips on those track markers. Are any of them close to precipitating a major regional crisis?

• Look at the targeting conditions in the Remove China/Russia Influence action. Can you manufacture those conditions somewhere, so as to enable you to keep the PRC’s global influence under control?

• Read the tooltips on Terror Groups, and the action descriptions for SOF Raid and Air Strike / Drone Strike. Are there opportunities to degrade terror groups?