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John Company
Unfortunately, I think this game ultimately lives and dies on whether the incentives and tools are great enough to prevent a saboteur at the table from just tanking the company as soon as they get in the lead. I just can't tell because I haven't played it in anger. It could be a stinker if there just isn't enough to keep enough players trying to squeeze money out of the productive company before sinking it.
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I know most of you hate playthrough videos and think they're beyond the pale, but this is a good playthrough with the designer teaching. It hit a few rules I missed so it helped me out. And it really made me want to play the game fucking bad.
Game speeds up after the first turn which is where the rules are taught, fwiw. The play has a nice arc where the company actually works for a while and rewards the people riding it and playing honestly before a late breakdown with the rats bailing out of the ship.
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It's not difficult to bleed the company dry, but actually tanking it and leveraging that for a victory seems akin to trying to ride a wild lion. It feels most advantageous when you're doing much better than everyone else and want to push the red button and try to end the game early. As an act of frustration, it's difficult to predict who will profit the most from causing the company to fail.
You have to be real careful because if you start to tank the company and you have any cubes in riders, you can count on the Chairman promoting you so that you get hit with the most VP penalties.
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This game is endlessly interesting. Now I just need to figure out how to play it with people, ideally playing with people way more than once. It really requires some experience, particularly in being able to understand the implications of the event phase which is *crucial* for planning.
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I look forward to owning an edition without a completely incongruous pro-colonialism postscript from Phil Eklund!
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Gary Sax wrote: 2nd edition Kickstarter next year!
I wonder if I'll ever even get a chance to play my 1st edition before that ships...
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Would any usual or unusual suspects like to play a small game (3, 4 at most) game of John Company via VASSAL? Any more players and I just don't think this would work. Would have to move files reasonably fast since I'm not sure how fast this will play.
I'm also open to scheduling a live game, we could do discord or skype or something. Anyway, just a thought.
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(shouldn't be a surprise, of course)
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Would really like to Gary....
As to whether I should or not....
Hold me in reserve, but yeah, I'm good to go PBEM if you need the numbers and I am called upon!
(I will read the rulebook tonight and then most likely say, ah just count me in).
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- Erik Twice
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John Company is pretty much The Republic of Rome if RoR didn't have a large negotiation element and was an eurogame.Gary Sax wrote: The John Company structure actually makes a ton of sense for a political administration if you make some assumptions about ulterior motives.
Which sounds silly, but makes sense to me.
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