No? Well, now’s your chance! From Presidential Games comes the latest action-fun craze that’s sweeping the nation: TanTrump! This surprisingly strategic boardgame takes only ten minutes to play, but you’ll be so riveted with terror that you’ll feel like you’re right there in the Oval Office!
With sets of rules for both easy mode and strategic play, TanTrump is a wild ride through the halls of power. You’ll choose a White House Staffer, build up a gamut of dirty tricks, and backstab your allies to get your agendas to the President’s desk. But watch out! If the Stuff you bring makes the President erupt in fury, you’ll have to pump the Trump! If he table-flips the Resolute Desk on your turn, he’ll fire you by rage-tweet!
Presidential Games—a wholly owned subsidiary of the political action company Basket of Adorables—is running this campaign for the “protest game” TanTrump: Impeachment Edition—from the opening of the House’s public impeachment hearings to their projected “wrap by Christmas” end date. We’ll keep you updated on the months’ events with podcasts, Kickstarter updates, and other nonsense. That’s just how adorable we are!
TanTrump comes with a mechanical Donald J. Trump, straight out of the Hall of Presidents. You won’t need any batteries or power cords—it’s all powered by magic and gears and things. Just sit him in his comfy chair and get ready to pump his ego. It also comes with a scale model of the Resolute Desk, complete with presidential seal.
There are 12 Stuff standees to be delivered, and a deck of 50 cards (click that link to see them) including 20 Staffers, 24 Maneuvers, 5 Rage-Tweets, and a Stuff Inventory. (We’ll add more in an expansion if our goals are hit. See below for details.)
Every contribution to this campaign goes to making copies of TanTrump for people like you! For the base level price of $45 (in honor of our dear leader), you can get the base game and The Swamp expansion.
Also, because the President’s visage is admittedly terrifying, every copy of the Impeachment Edition of TanTrump will come with a sleeve to obscure the box’s politically explosive contents. Tastefully adorned as a “regular game,” it is sure to complement any home (even someone else’s)!
Check out our other levels below that add a Cards Against Humanity Saves America pack, a booklet of Presidential Games puzzles and games, some books from Basket of Adorables, and even a Basket membership card to fund our hijinks.
Now with special bonus tariffs! A game like this would not be complete without a colossal array of tariffs that <mumble mumble> will pay for. Because our president says trade wars are good, and easy to win, all copies of TanTrump: Impeachment Edition will come with an extra 25% cost of goods!
Plus, there’s shipping! We charge you for shipping after the campaign, using our pledge manager. We charge you exactly what we are charged to send it to you. Rough estimates are about $13 in the US, $20 to $23 in Canada, EU, and Australias, and some crazy high number everywhere else. Seriously, it’s a lot.
You probably want to know how to play TanTrump! Basically, it’s Guillotine meets Don’t Wake Daddy, with a few other things thrown in. You join the White House staff and maneuver your way to be the last staffer standing. The game is played in a week of chaos at the Trump White House, where a line of Stuff must be delivered to the President’s desk. Start by choosing a Staffer, who has powers you can use during the game. Draw three Maneuver cards.
When everyone is ready, each Staffer puts a Maneuver facedown, then they’re revealed and played in numerical order from lowest to highest. Most Maneuvers require you to deliver a Stuff, which is rated from 0 to 3 pumps representing how much doing his job enrages the President.
So you (perhaps hesitantly) pump the Trump and hope he doesn’t explode with rage. If everyone makes it through their maneuvering, a new day starts. If you deliver all the Stuff to his desk, congratulations! No one gets fired, and you all win cooperatively. But that rarely happens. Instead, someone will push the President too far, and they’ll get rage-tweeted out of the White House. Here’s a rules page!
Here is gaming luminary Bebo (Brittanie Boe) with a couple Basketeers showing off how the game works.
TanTrump’s (extremely) rich cast of characters comes with realistic powers, lavish illustrations, and stunningly accurate quotations. Every colorful henchperson (and the occasional patriot) that’s attempted to focus the President’s attention is depicted in the base set, called Term One. Many have already been fired, and they all will eventually. That’s the fun of the White House! The Impeachment Edition comes with these characters.
But that’s not all! This campaign includes our first expansion, called The Swamp! Now, we don’t know yet who’s in The Swamp. You—and the events of the next 45-ish days—can help us determine that! Each of these denizens will be unlocked based on how the campaign and impeachment hearing goes. The Swamp ventures outside of 1600 Pennsylvania to pick up some hangers-on, criminal operatives, and even a few members of the opposition! We also hope to add more Maneuvers to The Swamp such as those below.
And who knows what other fun tactics a public impeachment hearing might bring. What a fascinating time to be alive!
If you want to give us more money, we have levels for you! At the Even More Presidential Games Level, you can get The Presidential Games Catalogue of Games and Puzzles, awash in rules for other games about presidents, crosswords, a foldable table-flipping game, and more! You’ll learn the rules to Wild Wild Watergate, Lincoln’s Night at the Theatre, and many more! Plus you also get the extremely rare Cards Against Humanity Saves America pack! This set only shipped to a limited number of players in 2017, and is available again thanks to their generosity.
Reading books is also fun! We have a level called The Presidential Library, in which you can get Basket of Adorables’ popular comic book The Ghastlytrump Tinies. It’s based on the Edward Gorey classic The Gashlycrumb Tinies, but this time with more casualties. There’s also an audiobook by the nerd-folk duo The Doubleclicks! Also included is Game Theory in the Age of Chaos. Based on a series of Medium essays, this strategy guide on fighting fascism shows how game theory explains and justifies the behavior of all the actors in the system. Earlier this year we sent copies to every Democratic member of Congress with your help! And if we get at least a hundred backers at this level, we’ll also put into production the essay book Game Theory in the Age of Chaos 2!
Finally, at the Basket Case level, you will help us make a life-size TanTrump to entertain and horrify children at our booths and conventions. Plus, you can identify yourself as a member of the squad that did all this nonsense. If you know our work, you know Basket of Adorables is a loosely organized group of politically active game professionals from a bunch of companies. If you’d like to support our pranks and hijinks, you’ll get an ID card that makes you a card-carrying Basketeer. When we do something that supports an organization or creates an event, you’ll know we’re thinking of you when we do it. Even if we’re doing so from inside a detention center.
A protest game is like a protest song—a work of art intended to protest the state of things. It starts with the principle that a game can channel a message, and that message can spur action. But we believe that just like a protest song can be shrill if it’s a bad song, for a protest game to be great, it must first be a great game. So that’s why TanTrump is really fun. Even though it might have a terrible villain that you want to avoid angering, that tension makes for a rollicking good time. And you’re being subversive too! Isn’t that clever?
Each of the Stuff in the game will have a QR code on the bottom of its stand. That’ll connect to a page on our Presidential Games site that will describe how to take action against a harm caused by the Trump administration and its allies. Now, with Basket being the pranksters that we are, we’re planning to couch this action plan in satire. The pages will be written from the point of view of a White House staffer, with titles like “How to Sabotage International Diplomacy” and “How to Make the Emoluments Clause Work for You.” But you’ll get the idea. It’ll be loaded with links and methods to take action against the bad folks and their bad ideas.
Plus, we made a meme generator that you can use to spread your message. Just click on this link and you can use our fabulous caricatures of the rich and powerful to spread whatever fun and subversive messaging you like. Y’know, like this:
Of course, the last thing we’d want you to do is tweet one of those at Kellyanne Conway or Sean Spicer or any other of Trump’s minions. That’d be totally wrong. So please, please don’t.
© 2019 Basket of Adorables. Game design by [REDACTED]. Toy design by Nextoy. Art by Len Peralta. Basket logo by John Kovalic. Video by Zombie Orpheus Entertainment. Music by Austin Wintory and Joris Hoogsteder. Impeachment hearings by Nancy Pelosi.
The critical “where we are now” paragraph: The base set is done in design, illustration, and layout, and so will be prepared for printing not long after the campaign ends. The expansion is not yet designed, but will be designed and finalized quickly after the base set goes to the printer. Additional products should be able to be corralled before the base set is done printing and shipping to us. We’re using the best makers of action-toy games to make this game awesome for you.
There are a couple of potential issues which we’re planning some workarounds for. One is the specter of additional tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. Another is heightened attention on the product as it ships into the country, or into other countries. These are concerns not only on the nature of the product, but also due to the volatility of the trade war. We’re keeping an eye on it and hope there will be no delays caused by these factors.
Oh, and please, for the love of Heaven, register to vote!