The year is 2025. You are the new intern at the White House: no salary, no real duties, and a career that will be decided entirely by being in the right place at the right time. Your job description: network. Secure the favor of the President's supporters and make them your own. These are the people who made the headlines. Even if those headlines were all scandals, any press is good press, as long as you're in the photo. Attach yourself to every event they caused, and bank a trick for every match. When the President announces something spectacular that turns out to be less than true, make the best of it.
There are three stacks of cards: Supporters, Events and Distractions. The goal is to match Supporters and Events to win Tricks. The Distractions are quotes that provide meta game actions. Matched Supporters and Events are locked into your Locked Network, where every shared border is one Trick (see Tricks); unmatched cards wait in your Active Hand.
Shuffle each of the three decks. One player deals one Supporter card and one Event card to each player, counter-clockwise. If a player's dealt Event matches the Supporter dealt to them, that Event goes to the bottom of the Event Deck and a new card is dealt, repeating until the player's dealt pair does not match. Draw three cards from each Deck and place them face up in a row next to its Deck — the card closest to the Deck, the middle card, and the furthest card. The three rows are placed in the center of the table as three parallel lines — the Supporter row, the Event row, and the Distractions row — each its Deck followed by its three cards. The player with the highest numbered Supporter takes the first turn; play then continues counter-clockwise from that player.
Each turn, a player takes three actions. Play continues counter-clockwise (unless otherwise directed by the cards), until someone wins. You may only take a card if you can pay its discard cost — a card whose cost you cannot pay is out of reach that turn.
First, take a Supporter. You can take the furthest Supporter from the Deck for free. Or you can take the middle Supporter by discarding a Supporter from your Active Hand to the bottom of the Deck. Or you can take the closest Supporter card to the Deck by discarding two Supporters to the bottom of the Deck.
If the Supporter you took matches a Supporter ID on an Event card in your Active Hand, you can combine them and lock them into your Locked Network as a Trick (see Tricks). Otherwise, put the card in your list of Supporter cards in your Active Hand.
Draw a new card from the top of the Supporter Deck and place it in the slot closest to the Deck; the two remaining face-up cards keep their order.
Second, pick an Event card, following a similar pattern. You can take the furthest Event from the Deck for free. Or you can take the middle Event by discarding an Event from your Active Hand to the bottom of the Deck. Or you can take the closest Event card to the Deck by discarding two Events to the bottom of the Deck.
If the Event you took has a Supporter's ID that matches a Supporter in your Active Hand, you can combine them and lock them into your Locked Network as a Trick (see Tricks). Otherwise, put the card in your list of Event cards in your Active Hand.
Draw a new card from the top of the Event Deck and place it in the slot closest to the Deck; the two remaining face-up cards keep their order.
Third, pick a Distraction card. You can take the furthest Distraction card from the Deck for free. Or you can take the middle Distraction by discarding a Supporter or Event from your Active Hand to the bottom of the relevant Deck. Or you can take the closest Distraction card to the Deck by discarding two Supporter or Event cards from your Active Hand to the bottom of the relevant Deck.
You then play the Distraction card, following the action on the card. After you have played the card, it goes to the bottom of the Distractions Deck (unless it says otherwise). Draw a new card from the top of the Distractions Deck and place it in the slot closest to the Deck; the remaining face-up cards keep their order.
A Trick is a border between a Supporter and a matching Event — the two cards sit edge to edge, and the Supporter's ID is listed on the Event.
Your Locked Network is a grid of your cards. A card borders the cards directly above, below, left and right of it — never the corner cards. A Supporter and an Event may share a border only if they match: a Supporter never borders an Event that does not list it, and an Event never borders a Supporter it does not list. Supporters may sit beside Supporters and Events beside Events, but those borders are worth nothing. Each border between a matching Supporter and Event is one Trick.
You may rearrange the cards in your Locked Network at any time, and your Trick total is the most matching borders that arrangement can achieve. Because a card has only four sides, a single card counts for at most 4 Tricks — one per side.
A card enters your Locked Network when it borders a card already there (or when the network is empty), and it may not be placed where it would border a non-matching card of the other kind. A card that arrives in your Active Hand through a Distraction action (stolen, swapped, taken or drawn) may join the network at once, even though it is not that player's turn.
Example. S1 is a Supporter with two
matching Events: E1 above it and E2 to its right
(each shared edge is one Trick). A second Supporter, S2, also
matches E2. S2 can be placed on the
right of E2 or on the bottom
of E2, but not on the top of
E2: that cell sits between E1 and
E2, so placing S2 there would set it edge to edge
with E1 — an Event that does not list
S2 — and a card may not be placed where it would border
a non-matching card of the other kind.
+--------+--------+--------+
| E1 | X | |
+--------+--------+--------+
| S1 | E2 | S2 |
+--------+--------+--------+
| | S2 | |
+--------+--------+--------+S1 — the first Supporter (borders E1 and
E2).E1, E2 — Events; E1 matches
S1, E2 matches S1 and
S2.S2 — legal placements for the new Supporter (right
and bottom of E2).X — not legal: the top of E2, between
E1 and E2.The first player to make 7 Tricks wins. A Trick is a matching border, so a single card may be part of several Tricks, but it counts for at most 4 of them — one per side — toward the 7.
Each set of cards corresponds to a year of US politics, with a focus on the party in power.
Supporters are member of the administration or political supporters who contributed to scandals — including those on record as defending the scandals publicly. Each Supporter card consists of the following:
Event cards describe events that involved many people in the Administration. Each card consists of the following:
Distractions are lies and other distractions attributed to the President. Each Distraction consists of the following:
Distraction cards are always placed at the bottom of the Distraction Deck after they are played, unless the card says otherwise.
A Distraction is played "against" a player when it removes, steals, swaps or forces the movement of a card from that player's Active Hand, or when it is a Gridlock placed in that player's space. A Distraction action can only take cards from an Active Hand or from the face-up rows: a card in a Locked Network cannot be removed, stolen, swapped or taken. Such a Distraction is blocked by a deflection card — the "Deflection! Place this card face-up above your Active Hand" card — sitting face-up above that player's Active Hand: both cards go to the bottom of the Distractions Deck and the Distraction has no effect. Playing a second deflection while one is already face-up sends the old card to the bottom of the Distractions Deck first.
When a card reverses the order of play, the rest of the current round continues as scheduled. The reversal takes effect from the next round, which starts with the player who would have played just before the player who played the card, and play then runs in the reversed direction.
Gridlock. The player who plays a Gridlock chooses another player and places the card face-up in the space between that player's Active Hand and their Locked Network. More than one Gridlock card can sit in the space at once. That player's next trick-forming move — locking a matching Supporter and Event into their Locked Network as a Trick, or locking a single card in beside a matching card already in the network — does not lock in, whether it happens on their turn or when a card arriving through a Distraction action joins the network at once: the cards go instead to the bottom of the appropriate Deck (the Supporter to the Supporter Deck, the Event to the Event Deck), and one of the Gridlock cards in the space goes to the bottom of the Distractions Deck, the rest staying. The Locked Network itself is unaffected: no Trick is formed and nothing already in the network moves. A Gridlock is always playable — it cannot fizzle.
Lies. The player who plays a Lies places the card face-up below their Active Hand. More than one Lies card can sit below the Active Hand at once. At any point in the game, before a card is added to another player's Active Hand — a card taken from a row on their turn, or a card arriving through a Distraction action, including a Deflection being placed on that player's hand — the player may play one of their Lies cards: the card goes instead to the bottom of the appropriate Deck (the Supporter to the Supporter Deck, the Event to the Event Deck, the Distraction to the Distractions Deck), and the Lies card goes to the bottom of the Distractions Deck. The player whose Active Hand the card was going to enter may block the Lies by consuming their Deflection, which goes to the bottom of the Distractions Deck, and the card then enters their Active Hand as normal. A Lies is always playable — it cannot fizzle.
A Distraction fizzles when its action cannot be completed — there is no card to remove, steal, swap, take or draw. A fizzled Distraction has no effect, but it still goes to the bottom of the Distractions Deck.
You may take any Distraction card whose cost you can pay, paying the cost normally for its position — including a card whose action would fizzle, whether taken for free or paid for with a discard. A card whose cost you cannot pay is out of reach that turn, as always.
Example 1. Player A has one Supporter card and no Event cards in their Active Hand. The Distraction card furthest from the Deck has an action to remove an Event card from their own Active Hand. The second has an action to reshuffle the Event Deck. A cannot execute the first Distraction card because they have no Event card to remove, but they may take it for free and let it fizzle; or they may discard their Supporter to the bottom of the Supporter Deck as the second card's cost, take it, and play the reshuffle.
Example 2. Player B has no Supporter cards and one Event card in their Active Hand. The Distraction card furthest from the Deck has an action to remove a Supporter card from their own Active Hand. The second card has an action to swap a Supporter card with another player. B cannot execute the first Distraction card because they have no Supporter card to remove, and they cannot execute the second card for the same reason. In this situation, B may choose which Distraction card to take, paying the cost normally. It may be a strategic move to pay the Event card in their Active Hand to get rid of the more advantageous Distraction card and block the next player from getting a Trick with it.
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