Watergate

June 17, 1972. Five men have been arrested at the Watergate complex. You are either Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein chasing the story to the Oval Office, or you are the Nixon Administration trying to suppress evidence and ride out the next two years until the presidential term ends. Either way, the cards in your hand are decisions about whether to play history or rewrite it.

Watergate is a card-driven two-player game from designer Matthias Cramer about one of the most consequential political scandals in American history. The Journalist gathers evidence and tries to link two informants directly to the President. The Nixon Administration accumulates momentum to make it through the term while quietly burying anything that looks like a smoking gun. The game ends when one side wins or the calendar runs out.

What makes Watergate special is how tightly the theme and the mechanism fit. Each card has a historical figure or event on its face, and you are constantly choosing whether to play it for its event or for its raw value, the same kind of decision real journalists and political operatives were making in 1972. The cork-board map with red strings stretching between informants is one of the most thematically tight presentations in modern card-driven gaming.

This is a duel game for couples or two-player groups who want a heavy theme in a relatively short play time. Plays in 30 to 60 minutes once both players know the cards, supports asymmetric strategies, and earned 2019 Cardboard Republic Striker Laurel and BGG Best 2-Player nominations on the strength of its design.

Heads up that Watergate has a learning curve. The first session will run long and feel one-sided while you both learn the cards, but by the second game the asymmetry starts paying off. The included history of the actual Watergate scandal is a nice touch that turns the box into a small artifact about the period.