LogFAQs > #964984689

41. Watergate

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/274364/watergate

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Hand management, card-driven game
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 30-40 minutes
First played: 2019
Experience: 10+ plays over 6+ sessions with 2 players

In Watergate, one player plays the investigate press and the other plays the Nixon campaign during the 1970s. The press attempts to connect Nixon to informants via evidence tokens on a board, while Nixon's team tries to win five momentum tokens and thus get the president reelected. Each round, players draw up from their respective decks and then alternate their turns playing cards either for action points (which allows them to move the evidence tokens and momentum marker) or for their printed abilities, which have diverse effects.

I really think Watergate is incredibly cleverly designed. The only other game I've played like this is Twilight Struggle; also themed during the Cold War, the two games share in common the "card-driven" system - where you choose between the card's numerical value to do a basic action or the card's text which lets them do a unique action. Here, your uses of the action points are extremely important - both the momentum marker (which is Nixon's victory condition) and the evidence tokens (the Press's victory condition) are incredibly important. Then there's the Initiative token as well.

The game has this really nice visual appeal. No specific things looks great - the art is black and white photography; the board is pretty basic-looking - but the evidence web is geometrically really satisfying, with Nixon in the center of an intricate network of informants on criss-crossing evidence token slots. Really looks like those evidence boards you'll see on TV that detectives use.