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Trump: The Game has a tagline: “It takes brains to make millions. It takes Trump to make billions.”

And if you plan on playing, you’d better enjoy trying to become Donald Trump. Though the underlying gameplay is simply about auctioning off properties and trying to make more money than other players, this is one of those board games where you have to at least not dislike the theme—because Trump’s gold-plated presence is everywhere.

The plastic player markers are all shaped like uppercase T’s. The die’s six-pip side has been replaced with a T. The paper money features Trump’s face. Two of the game’s most important cards are the “THE DONALD” and “YOU'RE FIRED” cards. The game board is a gaudy circle of gold and marble. “TRUMP THE GAME(tm)” adorns not one but all four corners. Donald stares out from the cover of the rulebook.

Trump: The Game is something of a curio. Designed in 1988 by Jeffrey Breslow, the game was issued with Trump’s approval. Breslow returned to Trump Tower to negotiate the profit split, as he told the Washington Post earlier this year.

It was a quick meeting. “I pointed to my chest and said ‘50,’” Breslow says, “and I pointed to him and said, ‘50.’ Trump said, ‘I don’t do 50-50.’ He pointed to his chest and said, ‘60’ and at me and said, ‘40.’ And I said, okay, we got a deal.” Not that Breslow had much choice: “The game wasn’t sellable without Donald Trump. He could have squeezed me for even 80-20. He knew he was in the driver’s seat.”

As part of his bid to make board games great again, Trump even appeared in a late-'80s commercial that simply begs for repeated viewings:

The game was re-issued in 2004 thanks to the popularity of The Apprentice TV show, on which Trump starred.

With Trump the Republican presidential nominee and the election one month away, Ars Cardboard decided to crack open this time capsule and see how it holds up to more modern designs. Spoiler: “many people are saying” that the game is about as much fun as a gold-plated toilet. Sure, the novelty is exciting for five minutes, but then you’re ready to be on your way.

Those people are right.

Trump card

Gameplay, such as it is, is a roll-and-move affair. On each turn, you draw a “Trump card,” roll two dice, and move your plastic T around the board (unless you roll a T, which lets you blindly steal a card from another player). Most of the board spaces have you adding money into the plastic coffin-style boxes representing various properties like “international golf course” and “hotel” and “luxury residence.” Five of the spots launch auctions during which one of these properties is sold to the highest bidder.

These auctions, the core of the game, should be more exciting than they are. All players make a blind opening bid; then, starting with the high bidder, players proceed in turn order to raise or pass. They can also play cards from their hands, such as the “YOU'RE FIRED” card, which knocks the target completely out of the bidding. The only way back in is for the target to play “THE DONALD” card.

But because there are 16 “YOU’RE FIRED” cards and only four “THE DONALD” cards, when I sat down to play against reluctant Ars staffers Eric Bangeman and Aaron Zimmerman, many bidding rounds went like this:

NATE: I raise by $20 million. ERIC: (plays “YOU’RE FIRED” card and chortles). Nate, you’re fired! AARON: (plays “YOU’RE FIRED” card). Sorry, Eric. So are you. NATE: I really enjoyed that round!

The one other wrinkle is that, instead of rolling the dice, players can use their turns to play cards from their hands. These often provide big cash payments if a player owns particular properties. If a player doesn’t own the property in question, the card can be sold to the player who does for a negotiated amount.

In practice, this also didn’t work well because no one wanted to help the leader get richer, so the only viable deals were between those with fewer resources.

Once all seven properties are sold, the game (mercifully) ends.

I think it fair to say that no one actually enjoyed playing this. The card draws and card stealing introduced too much randomness, and the repeated short-circuiting of the auctions stripped them of enjoyment. Eric, who led for much of the game, seemed to develop a gleeful relish for taxing other players, but even this failed to satisfy after 20 minutes. Aaron ultimately won, though as he confided to me later, “I loathed every miserable second of it.”

Personally, the highest compliment I can pay Trump: The Game is that it didn’t suck as hard as I expected it to suck. OK, sure, it’s a cash-in. And yes, it feels old-school (in the worst sense), random, and simplistic. But there are auctions and hand management and hidden information (the exact amount of money inside each property’s coffin box)—as though Breslow was actually trying to do something more interesting and just couldn’t make it happen.

You know the game is not a winner when its creator can tell the Post that most people who bought it never played it.

Breslow was under no illusion that Trump: The Game would ever join Monopoly as a permanent staple in American dens. “A huge percentage of those games were never taken out of the box,” he says. “It was bought as a gift item, a novelty, a curiosity. Trump got that. He had zero interest in how the game played.”

Still, I’m glad to have played this historical artifact. And who knows, perhaps it will resurface in relevance? Should Trump manage to become president, I anticipate a third edition of the game in which players roll, move, and auction their way toward making Mexico pay for a border wall.