Every card carries a fact from the Revolution and the early republic. Every card belongs to one camp — Loyalist, Patriot, Federalist, Democratic-Republican — and covers one issue — who leads, beliefs, economy, war and diplomacy, who backs them. The card tells you neither. Working out the camp is the game.
This is a table game, not a browser game. The demo below is for the projector: run a few turns with the class so everyone sees how a turn works, then print the decks and play it for real.
Your hand. Pick a card to play — then say which camp it belongs to.
At a real table nothing is revealed and nobody checks a screen — the players judge each other. That is what the challenge rule is for, and it is why bluffing works.
Play a card from the same camp as the top card and say the camp out loud. That is the whole turn — you never have to name the issue.
“Federalist.”Stuck in a camp you do not hold? Play a different camp’s card that is about the same issue, and say both. The camp is now yours. It is the hardest move in the game.
“Dem-Rep. Same issue — economy.”Think a declaration does not hold up? Call it. Wrong, and they take the card back and draw 2. Right, and you draw 2. Nothing is printed on the cards, so you can bluff — and that is the point.
Holding a card that is the same camp and the same issue as the top card? Slap it down out of turn. Hard to spot, since neither is printed anywhere.
No legal card means two cards into your hand and your turn ends. Not knowing the material costs you tempo, every single turn.
First player out of cards wins. At one card left, say “Wit!” — caught silent and you draw 2. You cannot go out on a Wild Wit; the last card has to be a fact.
Play it on anything except a Devil’s Advocate. Then name the camp that comes next.
Your whole turn. Play it with any card, even one that matches nothing. Name that card’s camp and argue the connection. The table judges.
The next player may not match the camp, and no action card will save them. Cross over on the issue, or draw 2.
One PDF, 86 pages: a rules sheet, a teacher answer key, and seven complete decks so a class can play seven tables at once. Card backs are numbered by deck, so a card found on the floor tells you which deck it belongs to.
Print double-sided, flip on the long edge, and cut on the lines. Cards are 2.4″ × 3.2″, nine to a sheet. Print at 100% — not “fit to page” — or the sizing drifts.
Every image in the deck is in the public domain, sourced from Wikimedia Commons. No AI-generated art is used anywhere in this deck — a history game is the wrong place for a convincing fake. Among them: Rembrandt Peale’s Jefferson (1800), John Trumbull’s Hamilton, Gilbert Stuart’s Washington, Madison and Jay, Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre (1770), Allan Ramsay’s George III, William Birch’s view of the First Bank of the United States, the 1770s Boston broadside naming William Jackson as an importer, A Society of Patriotic Ladies at Edenton (1775), The Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man (1774), and the Massachusetts Centinel’s Federal Pillars (1788). A handful of scenes — Salem harbor, the Erie Canal, the Whiskey Rebellion — are nineteenth-century depictions of the era rather than contemporary prints.