In November Z-Man Games is releasing Campaign Manager 2008, a two-person, deck-building card game designed by Jason Matthews and Christian Leonhard.  The game, which is firmly rooted in the events of the past year, comes with 110 cards and takes just 45 minutes to play. 

 

Unlike Matthews and Leonhard’s award-winning 2-man game, 1960: Making of the President, in which players took the roles of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, in Campaign Manager 2008, contestants take on the roles of chief campaign aides to Barack Obama and John McCain.  Each player creates a unique deck of 15 cards that represents their advice to the candidate, and then the players do battle over 20 “battleground” states in an effort to reach an electoral majority.  Obama and McCain each have a number of states already in their camp, so, as was the case in real life, the election battle is joined over the 20 battleground states that are in play.

 

At the start of the campaign each politico considers a mix a different tactics and strategies that he or she feels will lead their candidate to victory, but they don’t know what their opposite number is planning or how events will change to frame the election in different ways.