Watergate (board game)

Watergate is a 2019 two-player board game designed by Matthias Cramer and published by Capstone Games in English and by Frosted Games in German. One player takes the role of President Richard Nixon and his administration, while the other plays the editors of newspapers such as the Washington Post, recreating the reporting and political maneuvering that unfolded during the real Watergate scandal of the early 1970s. Players build a shared card-driven track representing the growing political momentum of the affair, and each turn they play cards from their hand that can shift momentum in their favor, gain the initiative, or acquire evidence and informant tokens tied to real events and figures from the scandal. The Nixon side wins the game by accumulating five momentum tokens, pushing the story out of the public eye, while the editors' side wins by connecting two informant tokens, representing the confirmed sourcing that broke the story open. The design ties its mechanics directly to the historical chronology of the Watergate affair, making it an example of a card-driven strategy game built around a specific real political event.