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Little did I know, but I'd now become a part of StrataMax Games and would for the next couple of years playtest, count bits, and join them on the trip to the Origins game convention in Columbus, Ohio. After that first year at Origins, Max called me out in an interview and said something to the effect that I was due to come out with a game, and that led to my first train game: Congo Line. Of course, I didn't know that in standard train games, trains don't move because you see, I had not played many games, so I didn't have any context to work from.
It's Origins 2006 – my first Origins actually – and I'm back at my hotel room. It's late, my kids and girlfiriend are asleep, and I have small tubs of cubes around me. Earlier at this con, we released Aaron's Iroquoia and Congo Line, which Max and I had put together. I've been wanting to make a voting game, but none of my designs have quite worked out yet. My first shot led to Aaron and Max suggesting a retheme: Salem Town Counsel, where various goofy issues would come up and be voted on by the counsel. I was not happy.
I spent maybe half an hour trolling through my mind for historic scenarios in which voting and, in particular, politicking were significant – and out jumped New York. I remembered those scenes from Gangs of New York in which that actor was asked whether he'd voted yet and he responds, "Twice this morning already." It seemed perfect. I went to BGG and searched for games about New York and voting and Tammany Hall and to my absolute shock there weren't any. I couldn't find a single game from this time or context.
I spent another half hour looking for maps that could serve as the basis for my idea and found two that seemed great: One was the Mitchell map, and the other was the map I was able to use, a much plainer ward map. As beautiful as I felt the Mitchell map was, I knew that we were a white-box, small print company and that I was far better off to start with the other where there would be less simplification for me to do.
The map not used...
The next morning, I was excited to tell Aaron and Max that I thought I'd found what I was looking for and gave them the name Tammany Hall. They were supportive, but still a bit skeptical as voting games rarely come off well. It didn't matter, as for the first time in a year I'd felt I had the right direction.
That convention was held at the end of June/start of July, and we were all going to be together for a game-focused weekend at the end of year for our "winter retreat", so I spent the next couple months thinking about how to make Tammany Hall. I'd had a wider scope of ideas at first, wanting to include taverns and fire brigades as a mechanism to increase electability and add influence; I wanted to use gangs as electoral campaigners ready to do battle with one another between the wards of lower Manhattan, but it just wasn't gelling in my mind. I'd sketched out parts of an economic system but couldn't see the game in where I was going.
I'd met with Aaron a couple of times to swap prototypes, and he suggested that I focus on the election part since that was the game I kept saying I wanted to make. This helped immensely. I came away with a new focus toward how the actual politicking would happen as opposed to how to raise money and influence for running.
It wasn't long after that the idea of political favors came into play and the immigrant function came into being. I'd picked up the book Five Points by Tyler Anbinder and saw the immigration tables that showed over the rough timeframe of my game how the immigrants had shifted from Irish with English and German to Italians and thought I could capture that by preloading the board and having a draw bag for new immigrants. I put an Ellis Island on the board for a draw set randomly taken from the bag. Aaron's Iroquoia game was inspirational to me, but we had taken some review hits for the randomness factor, so I wanted Tammany to be player-determined. Elections would be straight-forward affairs and the bluffing element (because I LOVE BLUFFING games) would be where people could distinguish their play. Now I needed something else, some way to introduce balancing and variation – we'd also been criticized for a game without progression – and that's where the idea of roles came into being. Again, meeting with Aaron, we came up with the basic ideas of roles and what they would do, and made it the job of the mayor to give them out – all the better. We didn't have anything too specific then, but it got the ball rolling.
For the next month, when I walked my dogs in the evening, I'd think about how the game would work. I'd kept running through my mind the way the voting would happen, how the roles would work, and mentally playtest the game over and over. I'd felt it was there! I was sure it all worked and made sense. I was excited and ready to get together to show what I'd made.
When we got together for our winter retreat, I got out my board and bits, and we gave it a go. We pounded out the basic roles and powers: Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Chief of Police, Counsel President, and then Max suggested the near-mythical role that had slander power: the Dog Catcher. It was the perfect name. One of the special bits in Tammany to me is how "winners" are treated: the Mayor gets no power, but the Dog Catcher can effectively spread lies and get ahead.
But when it came to actually playing, it was miserable. We couldn't even get past two rounds, and it was clear the game wasn't working. In the original draft, once-placed Campaign Workers didn't leave, and the board was a dense and confusing pile of bits. It was tough to keep track of scoring, and the analysis was overwhelming. Max and Aaron tried to suggest changes, but nothing made sense. I left the room and sat down, frustrated and knowing it should work.
About ten minutes later: "Max, I know how to fix it. After the election all the campaign workers except one from the winner leave the board." We tried the game again, and there it was. The board became clear, scoring was easy to track, the game worked.
We made a few more decisions; we formalized how slander would work – I'd taken it out, Aaron insisted it go back in – to simplify things we made all the immigrant populations available at all times, and that was that. The game worked, it was non-random, it had a clear ending (Round 16), and it forced people to engage in direct conflict. Max thought it was fiddly to have the immigrants come in randomly, so in the first edition we made them all available to buy, that is, another player choice.
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Components of the first edition of Tammany Hall
Another year, and now we were looking to produce Tammany as our "First Real Essen Game That Makes It to Essen". There were new questions and problems, however. Early feedback from our friends in the UK told us no one there would care about this bit of American political history. Suggestions started floating about changing the time period or theme. Aaron had gone so far as to develop a "Tammany Hall in Space" retheme that put it on a space station and introduced the board expansion rules for 3-4 player games to keep the game tighter from the start, while also adding special spaces that gave bonuses and powers. The Dog Catcher role was out (because there are no dogs in space).
I wasn't real involved when Aaron and Max (and special pinch-hitter Dave Duffield from the Indy Gamers) were playtesting what we were calling THiS, and my first reaction was hurt. Space games were hot, Europeans won't care about Tammany Hall, etc. I disagreed. I met with Max and lobbied hard. The original theme needed to stay! It's unique, there still is no other game from this time period. Space games are popular, but there are already too many! Nobody really knows about 2 De Mayo either, but that's what makes it great; it's a compelling story that gives you a chance to become interested! It worked. We kept Aaron's improvements, while also keeping the original theme.
Max's friend Martin Wallace agreed to manage the production for us. His artist of choice, Peter Dennis, rediscovered the Mitchell map, secured an actual copy, and used it for the board. Peter drew the new art for Castle Garden, Tammany Hall, and that amazing cover, but it wasn't done yet. Out of the blue, Martin actually sent us back an alternative way to play the game that he and the Warfroggers had put together and offered to let us run with it as a revision/rewrite. In it, there were only two factions duking it out in Tammany Hall. It was an interesting new design, totally unsolicited, for us to look at.
Max was torn. Here we were, about to make another big push for a big box game with the chance to print a Martin Wallace design of our own. Another round of lobbying with Max, and the eventual agreement was that we were happy with the design we had and believed in it. One thing did make it in from Martin's redesign: He had the immigrants coming in a random pool drawn from the bag. Max saw this as a great improvement – even if it was part of the original design – which makes sense because as he likes to point out, "It's one thing if an idea is yours and quite another if it is Martin's!"
Essen came, and we sold a few, although were far from a sellout. Initial reviews were favorable, but the people playing the game were having trouble going past the first round if they felt they were too far behind. At Essen, the Germans, Dutch, and Belgians seemed to expect a solitaire optimization game – more along the lines of a typical Eurogame – and why shouldn't they? It was Essen after all. Max also has pointed out that folks at Essen are often only there for a day or two and want to try as many games as possible, so after that first election if someone looks like he is behind, the prospective customers are in a hurry to move on to try something else. Little could they know that the player elected mayor first really isn't way ahead...
So Tammany Hall is not a good game for someone in a hurry to evaluate a game or someone not expecting the direct conflict it creates. I wouldn't call it a flop, but our sales were disappointing. We shipped copies back to the States, added them to the webstore, and kept looking for the next step.
We brought Tammany back to Origins in the summer and were excited to see we had finally found our audience! A great review by Joe Steadman, and Tammany sales picked up; a few more great reviews were published, and Tammany moved into the top 900 games! Then, a few months ago, one of our fans and game publisher [person=58510]Nathan McNair[/person] approached me about a reprint under his company Pandasaurus Games. We'd been interested in licensing the game, but Nathan really came to the table with plans, enthusiasm, and what we think is the right spirit to the game.
I'd like to add a couple closing thoughts. If you're new to Tammany Hall, you should be warned that it's not really a game for players who don't take control of the board – or at least you won't win if you don't try to do so. If you expect the games rules and mechanisms to keep everything in balance, you're in for a surprise. Tammany Hall is not a game of solitaire – it's political theater, a challenge between players. This is the game I wanted to make.
Doug Eckhart
The Mitchell map reborn, thanks to Peter Dennis!
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