Game #39: Tammany Hall by Richard Huzzey

Thanks for the feedback so far. I've replied point-by-point, if that's okay.

Prior to getting into my thoughts of the game, I have some questions in regards to the rules:

1) Do all of the Captains get placed in the "Idle" spot at the beginning of each turn. If not, you can run into the situation where all of the captains are either in a busy spot or on the board making the organize machine action impossible to do.

Yes, the point is that they are a limit, so I should have said that they are refreshed (moved from Busy to Idle) at the start of every turn.

Yep.

Does a player have to announce the amount they are going to embezzle prior to looking at the cards passed to them, or can they look at the cards and then declare the amount they want to embezzle?

A good question, and something I need to clarify. The intention is that you look at them and then decide if to embezzle.

Your own Captains count.

Sorry- 15.

Definitely, and I'd expect them to be.

He, and any other officer or Senator, can be re-elected the next turn he's up for election (i.e. always 2 turns after his last election)

Yep.

1) For the "Win Support" action you say that you may not discard duplicate cards. This limits you to a total of 5 cards you can discard (one for each category). It seems quite possible, that there may be easily 5 opposing captains in the neighborhood or adjacent ones (let's assume no rats), thus making it impossible for a player to win support for a particular neighborhood. Maybe this is what you intended.

It is certainly meant to be a limit on the number of support chits that can realistically be deployed in a single neighbourhood. Rats or Captains will need to be used to lower it further, but there will be a rapidly-flattening curve of profitability in fighting to get in there.

Well, your own Captains don't add to the cost of Winning Support, so they certainly aren't a liability. Also, I think that there is fair competition across the board, as it is in everybody's interest to grab less-developed areas.

Hm, I'm not sure. I'm not sure the problem its correcting is really a problem, but I may be wrong.

I think this is achieved with the prohibitions on how you can pay.

Rats won't be moved until turn three at the earliest (as the Rat Catcher is first elected at the end of turn 2), and I think there will be reasonable support in all neighjbourhoods by then, so rats will probably be reducing cost without making it free. Also, a build-up of rats will be slow, as the Rat_Catcher probably can't afford to spend too much of his time concentrating on giving his Ward Captains rat herding duties. You're certainly right that the Rat-Catcher can influence things, but that's why he isn't worth many glory points, and he does have to sacrifice his own Ward Captains' actions to move the rats. I'll keep an eye on this. He's definitely one of the easiest to get re-elected as, because dead rats count in your favour, and you can pull rats out of communities where you're not winning (or, more profitably) pull them out of neighjbourhoods where you are winning, in order to win DA next time).

It certainly is powerful to have first pick, but spoils cards only represent a relatively small share of the cards players will need to be drawing. Also, the nature of the game means that it is easy to "jump on" a percieved leader by making a point of competing with him. But I agree with your point, and I'll have to watch this in further playtesting. One balance is the fact that he'll be going first in each following election, meaning other people have knowledge of how to beat him.

They were just intended to add an extra thematic element, and provide an additional way to get a few points. At the end of the day, you're right that they're basically money cards with restrictions on when they can be used. Perhaps they should just be used as if they were a money card, but with the points-scoring possibility.

You get to choose whether to cover an existing Fed. Investigation symbol with a blank,or a blank witha Fed. Investigation symbol.

Embezzlements can only be taken by office-holders, so those without offices, or who don't want/need embezzlement tokens, will have a vested interest in restricting them. Equally, players who are already doing well in an election will want to reduce the possibility of successfully Bribing Officials, as they don't want others catching up that way.

Also, when a player chooses to discard money cards for Bribe Officials, they may discard cards with or without a Federal Investigation symbol. This will change the situation for the next player.

Maybe reduce the number of rats to begin with, and on a turn they multiply and one new rat chip is born that is placed in an adjacent neighborhood.

Perhaps, although it might make the rats more significant in reducing costs, which you pointed out was aproblem. But it's nice thematically.

Yes, this is a definite possibility.

Thanks for your comments and excellent ideas-- very much appreciated; it must have taken a while to plough through the rules!

Best wishes,

Richard.

Richard,

Hello and thank you for sharing Tammany Hall! I take it from this and from your next offering to the GDW (POTUS: KvB) that you enjoy creating games with election mechanics? May I be so bold as to presume that POTUS is a larger version of Tammany Hall--on a national level using states and their electoral votes instead of neighborhoods?

I very much enjoyed reading through your ruleset. The rules are very clear and very concise (you pack so much information into so little space that it amazes me!). I agree that the flavor text really helps add to the theme of the corruption/election mechanics. Even your suggestion for deciding a starting player works to underscore this theme!

Some thoughts and comments:

Am I correct in my interpretation that only the office of the Mayor is given out at the start of the game, and that the office is redecided upon at the end of the first turn? There will be no Ratcatcher until the end of the second turn and no Senator until the end of the third? Therefore only one player may embezzle in the first turn and no more than 2 may embezzle for the next turn.

I am curious to see how strategies develop based on this mechanic. Obviously those who do not embezzle will have more spoils to use to win support. Since embezzlement tokens are powerful at game end (they contribute directly to each player's final score and goods cards do not), you could entice their use during the game more by allowing them to be used as a "wild card" for goods cards. For example, when winning support, a player could play 3 unique goods cards and one embezzlement token to gain support. You would, of course, have to limit their use, but it would provide an interesting decision for players to make (do I spend them now to further my political career, or save them for game end to enhance my score).

In section 2, you indicate that play should always flow clockwise. It would be interesting to have the Mayor again decide direction of play. Reward those whom he favors by letting them go earlier, etc. Just a thought...

In section 2, may I suggest moving the "Post Ward Captain" to the first action slot? There are many other actions that refer to captains in the neighborhoods, it would be helpful to introduce players to the method of getting captains into the neighborhoods sooner rather than later.

In Types of Election, you mention in several places that tied election results may be decided by player chit position in a stack of support chits. Do I understand correctly that support chits, when placed in a neighborhood, are to be placed in a single vertical stack? If so, then you will want to be specific about doing so in section 2, Win Support.

Excellent job with the variety of polling procedures. You have truly captured the feeling of each type of race (local, city wide, statewide) very efficiently (you make it look easy)! Since there are quite a lot of formulae, I presume that a player reference chart will be made available to each player for determining the different processes/elections without referring back to the rulebook. Possibly printed onto the playing mats. I don't think that the math or procedures are overly complex in any way, just that there are so many of them that the rulebook would see some heavy use if no other reference is supplied.

Overall you have succeeded in crafting a very elegant and tight set of rules. I would be very interested in hearing a few session reports to get a feel for the game play.

Thank you again for bringing Tammany Hall to the GDW!

First of all, I love the richness of the theme and I also enjoy allt he lttle quotes throughout the rules - greta for helping to get the feel of the setting.

Thanks! The game was inspired by a lecture actually. The lecturer mentioned, in a lecture on Progressivism, the fear of populist demagogic blocks of immigrant voters, and the overt bribery by Boss Nast, with turkies and bags of coal at Christmas. This seemed a nice idea for a game, and the Plunkitt quotes actually came quite late in the day. I think embezzlement tokens were the only addition he inspired, as he spent so much time defending his personal gains and unfair advantages of office in the interviews that I felt it had to incorporated as an adjunct to electoral success when determining the winner.

That said, having done that, I now (think I) understand the game better.

That's an excellent summary and probably what I was trying to get at in the section where I tried to explain what the pieces were. I think I'll incorporate your run through as the structure of that section of the rules, with clarifications of the items as sidebars, or extra bits in the steps. Thank you!

Yes, while Busy Captains all become Idle at the start of a turn (as other people have pointed out- this is a strong inference in the rules, but, unfortunately, never stated!) the Captains on the board sit there until used to stuff ballots or brought back thanks to "reorganise the machine".

Yes, I think the most likely reason for doing this is because you are feeling short of actions.I don't think it is an action that will often be used from a position of strength, and I almost wonder if it is worth including at all, given its limited usefulness. Eliminating it would probably make little difference, and dramatically simplify the rules.

Yes, true. I think eliminating 'Organise The Machine' is the way to go, leaving 'Enjoy a drink' as the default for people with one Captain left. I do also expect there to be some situations where waiting seems worth it, as being "on top" of the stack of support chits in a neighbourhood is either the criterion for victory or the tie-breaker in a number of the types of election.

Virtually no testing-- this is a first draft. I've been busy on Presidential Election (more on that below!) and a Hundred Years' War game since I finished Tammany Hall, meaning it has been very much the neglected stepdaughter. Why? I'm not sure-- perhaps because the people I was with (a) included some people who'd played a primordial version of the Hundred Years' War game, and so would have interesting views on its changes, (b) included the publisher I have in mind for it.

Thanks for all your comments-- more superb ideas. I'm deeply grateful.

Best wishes,

Richard.

This is my first GDW slot, and the game I've uploaded is Tammany Hall.

Thanks to everyone who kindly commented on Tammany Hall in the past week. Lots of very helpful suggestions, and I'll pay attention to the "Whom to credit?" thread when revising the rulebook to incorporate them. ;-)

Now- what's next? :-)

Best wishes,

Richard.