Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
"Passion governs, and she never governs wisely." — Benjamin Franklin, one of America's Founding Fathers.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Deck / Bag Building
Add new pieces during play to improve the cards, tokens, or dice drawn later.
Open Drafting
Select cards or items from a shared face-up display.
Dice Rolling
Roll dice to introduce uncertainty into actions, production, movement, or resolution.
Set Collection
Gather related items that become more valuable when scored together.
Simulation
Model a real or imagined system through detailed cause-and-effect rules.
Tug of War
Competing actions pull a shared marker or advantage back and forth.
Read the full game description
"Passion governs, and she never governs wisely." — Benjamin Franklin, one of America's Founding Fathers. Ninety years later, the very government that Franklin helped create disregarded his wisdom and trampled the constitutional rights of its own citizens in order to feed what seemed an insatiable hunger for vengeance. Now you, as the prosecution or defense, must convince a nine-panel jury that Mary Surratt, one of eight people put on trial for conspiring to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln and other members of his cabinet, is guilty...or innocent. Unforgiven: The Lincoln Assassination Trial is a two-player game that takes place during the May 9 - June 28, 1865 trial of the first woman, Mary Surratt, ever to be executed for treason by the United States. The game begins amidst the chaos of Lincoln's assassination as the country struggles to heal over the wreckage of the American Civil War. Each player must persuade the jury to convict or acquit the accused and thereby win the game. To do so, players draft and play cards that help them strengthen their case with the jurors and recruit them to their side, while also finding overwhelming evidence for or against the accused. In one of the most high-profile trials in U.S. history, will Mary Surratt again face the hangman's noose of American justice — or can you stop the trap door from falling?