PODCAST – 1960: The Making of the President
Something a little different from the latest episode of Never Mind The Bar Charts: a board game review with Jim Williams. A political board game, of course.
It’d be great to hear what you think of this game review. Should Jim and I play more games and talk about them in future episodes?
Show notes
- Get your own copy of 1960: The Making of the President.
- Eugene Burdick.
- My cunning advantage over Jim.
- Canadian Check Shirt Guy (aka Rodney Smith) reviews 1960: The Making of the President on YouTube.
- How Nixon’s poor shaving helped lose him the 1960 election.
- The famous Nixon/Khrushchev photo.
- Make Votes Matter – campaigning for electoral reform in the UK.
- If Then: How One Data Company Invented the Future by Jill Lepore: Bookshop (independent bookshops) / Amazon.*
- Codenames and 13 Days.*
- Theme tune by Hugo Lee.
- New to listening to podcasts? Here are some tips on how to listen to podcasts.
Enjoy the show? Spread the word
- Follow the show on Twitter.
- Share the show’s website, www.NeverMindTheBarCharts.com.
* This list includes affiliate links which generate a commission for each sale made.
Dear Mark
Once upon a time in the mid-1970s, at the University of St Andrews, the man to whom I am now married founded the university war-gaming society. One day, he was asked to make up a 4 to play a game called Election X. Two of the other players were the president of the Labour club, who of course took the Labour Party part, and a Scottish Nationalist called Alex Salmond. (The identity of the student who played the Tory has been lost in the mists of history.) Pete, my other half, was left to play the Liberal.
As the game progressed, the Labour and SNP players concentrated on attacking each other. I’m not sure what the Tory did but the upshot was, when all the seats were counted, the Liberal had won, because nobody was paying attention to him!
So we could have had a headline ‘Liberal beats Alex Salmond in St Andrews.’
Maybe you should try to locate Election X and review it?
What a great story!
After one defeat during the “Brexit Wars”, my friends and I consoled ourselves with the ultimate pro-European board game. Europa was designed in the optimistic 1990s; players run rival pan-European political parties, and compete to bring new countries into the fold whilst fighting various crises.
It’s a pretty good game with lots of tactical decisions about when to form coalitions. History has shown the designers to be very optimistic (that time, we brought Russia in from the cold and into the EU), and also a bit unimaginative (the board doesn’t include Cyprus or Malta).
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/295/europa-1945-2030