Tammany Hall

About this board game

Tammany Hall is a political power game for 3–5 players that plays in about 90 minutes. Set in lower Manhattan between roughly 1850 and 1870, during the era of Boss Tweed, it places you in a world of backstabbing, corruption, temporary alliances, and relentless ambition.

To rule New York, you must work with the city’s growing immigrant populations. Help immigrant groups settle in New York and collect the political favors they owe you. When the time is right, call in those favors to slander opponents, strengthen your position, and compete for votes.

• Help immigrant groups settle in New York.
• Collect and use political favors.
• Send ward bosses into Manhattan to secure votes.
• Slander political opponents and build your power base.
• Compete in elections held at the end of every fourth year.

The player who uses their power base most effectively is elected mayor. Yet victory offers no lasting security. After each election, the mayor must pay off political rivals by placing them in offices, giving those rivals opportunities to wield influence and attempt to take control of the city.

In Tammany Hall, alliances are temporary and loyalties are never certain: every player may be your friend, your enemy, or both. The game draws its setting from the real Tammany Hall political machine, whose influence stretched from its founding in the 1790s to its collapse in the 1960s, while focusing on the organization’s power in nineteenth-century New York.