Early last year, I caught wind that The Dietz Foundation was working with a new designer named Yoni Goldstein on his first game called Chicago ’68 and I was immediately interested. Chicago ’68 deals with the Democratic National Convention riots of 1968 in Chicago and sees players taking on the role of either the Establishment or the Demonstrators in a fast-paced game of street battles and political maneuvers. I reached out to Yoni and he was more than willing to discuss the game with me and also work on a series of Event Card spoiler posts in a run up to the Kickstarter campaign at the time. But now, the game is available in retail and I asked Yoni if he would do a few more Event Card Spoilers to share with you about the game.

In this series, we will cover several different types of cards included in the game and give their details so that you can understand how the game works and how it incorporates the historical narrative of the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention Riots.

But first off, a bit about the game itself. Chicago ’68 is a game about the riots during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, set against the social upheavals of America in the sixties. On one side: the Youth International Party (aka The Yippies) and the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (aka the MOBE), on the other: Mayor Daley, the Chicago Police Department and the National Guard. The game unfolds over the course of three days during the Democratic National Convention – from the 26th to the 29th of August, culminating in the nomination of a presidential candidate. There are two victory conditions: one is to gain the most media exposure favorable to your side and the other is to influence the delegate vote and bolster your political aims. The Demonstrators may pivot between these two objectives while the Establishment, although more powerful, must fight and win on both fronts.

Card #11: Boss Daley

Richard J. Daley was elected five times before his sudden death in 1976 and during his tenure “machine politics” as it became known roared into one electoral triumph after another. It was perhaps the last and most powerful apparatus of urban power in America at the time. The “Last Boss” commanded a mighty Democratic patronage army, estimated 35,000 to be office holders, civil servants, and aldermen (elected members who nominally represent their ward on City Council).

The “Boss Daley” is one of the six Tactics Cards, free actions that can be activated during a Police turn. Typically, these cards give the Chicago Police Department an extra lever to pull. “Boss Daley” allows the Mayor’s faction to muscle into Police affairs with one off turn policy activation…the only real cost is public disapproval. But when has that ever deterred a politician from asserting their power?

“Everybody in the game has a piece, and that piece is workable, it is equivalent to capital, it can be used to accrue interest by being invested in such sound conservative enterprises as decades of loyalty to the same Machine. So long as the system progresses, so will one’s property be blessed with dividends. But such property can also be used as outright risk capital — one can support an insurgent movement in one’s party, even risk the loss of one’s primary holding in return for the possibility of acquiring much more.

This, of course, is still politics at city hall, county or state house, this is the politics of the party regular, politics as simple property, which is to say politics as concrete negotiable power— the value of their engagement in politics is at any moment just about directly convertible to cash.”

– Norman Mailer, The Siege of Chicago

You can catch up on the series to date by following these links:

Card #1 – Police Action Card: Mass Arrest

Card #2 – Mob Chaos Card: “A stiff west wind…”

Card #3 – Supplementary Police Action Card: Flame-Throwers

Card #4 – Street Theater Card: The Battle of Michigan Ave

Card #5 – Tactics Card: Mob Payoffs

Card #6 – Street Theater Card: Improvised Barricades

Card #7 – Street Theater Cards: Jean and Allen & Allen Ginsberg OMM Chant

Card #8 – Mob Chaos Cards – Conditional Events

Card #9 – Antiwar Sympathy

Card #10 – Psychedelics