How to Play John Company 2nd Edition

hey folks my name is Shay Parker and this is rtfm the show where I teach you how to play a game and normally I start things off with some jokes or a sketch but like I did when I taught Pack's Premier second edition I want to take a quick moment to talk about the historical context of this game and why it's important to know going in now some people aren't going to care about this because it's just a game and if that's you well that's what this is for to anyone else John company has you playing as influential families jockeying for control of the British East India Company an organization that facilitated trade in India and East Asia but was also responsible for colonization Warfare and slavery in those areas to put it bluntly you're not playing good guys in this game your actions will enrich yourselves and the company at the expense of the Indian people leaving the land measurably worse off than it was before and yet because of the dysfunctional nature of the company you'll be fighting each other as much as the locals placing equal importance on quelling rebellions and pillaging the land as it does facil itting nepotism and choosing retirement homes for your family there's a bit of cognitive distance here that is I think intentional in the design as with p's Premiere the designer Cole Worley is not shying away from the absurdity of your actions treating people's lives like a game is core to the experience and it wants you to explore that however it does mean that this will hit differently for some people and I respect the note on the front page of the rule book asking you to ensure that all players consent to this exploration before playing because yeah this game isn't going to be for everyone and it's better to know that going in than to find yourself in an uncomfortable situation halfway through now with all that in mind if you think John company will be a good match for you let's learn how to play so of course before I start I need to mention a few important things first off while I try to get everything right sometimes a mistake or two slips through the cracks and I use the klling on subtitles to post any corrections so please turn those on or check the description box below second my patreon backers voted on this game for me to teach and if there are games you'd like to see getting the rtfm treatment becoming a rules lawyer is the best way to do that so with that out of the way let's get started in John company you'll be playing as an influential family in 18th and 19th century Britain you have a hand in running the East India Company AKA John company but you aren't in control of it instead you share responsibilities with the other wealthy families and will have to negotiate borrow and beg with them in order to achieve your goals which include turning a profit retiring comfortably and exploiting the people and natural resources of uh India and China yeah you're the bad guys in this game but if it's any consolation you're not going to have an easy time of it see besides having to squabble with your friends the Indian people might also be fighting back your family members can retire at the most inopportune moments and if you do a bad enough job the company might just fail if it does or after a set number of rounds you'll end the game and see who has achieved the best reputation amongst the British of course by earning the most victory points so let's get started now the instructions are mostly clear about how to set things up but one thing to note at the top is that there are a few different scenarios that you can play each starting at a different year and each with their own peculiarities in this video I'm only going to teach the normal 1710 scenario which is what's recommended you play with for your first few games if you want to learn the other scenarios I'll have a separate video teaching those and the solo and two-player mode but I'll talk more about that later looking at the board the first few steps of setup are pretty easy to follow along and afterward it'll look like this then you choose your scenario like I said we're doing 1710 so we take the matching card and follow a few more instructions we set our standing and debt we place 3 pounds in each treasury of the company and note that the military Affairs office doesn't have a treasury so it doesn't get any cash we find the Royal protection card in the laws deck and place it nearby and each Army space gets one regiment India isn't a blank slate either and we'll start with these towers in every every region most have one section but marata has two and Punjab has just the Hat also these three are part of an Empire so Place matching flags on them with the big flag placed in Delhi which is its capital these ovals are called orders and they're where you'll be trading with India but many of them start closed so cover them up with the matching tokens and lastly you'll place this elephant on the border of maratha and Delhi with its trunk facing north this represents Rising tensions in the area and where a political crisis might be coming from and heading towards once that's all done you have to sort out each family's starting wealth and power by dealing out these setup cards if you have five or six players add the three or six extra cards respectively but otherwise you'll just use the normal ones these cards will give players a bunch of different things that will enrich them economically socially and politically if you gain money that goes to your personal treasury if you get a shipyard that comes with a matching ship which will either be placed in one of the three SE zones or if it says unfitted keep the triangle on the card if you get a blackmail card this is a one-time use ability that will usually mess with another player keep it face down nearby if you get a specific office like manager of shipping or president of Bombay put one of your family tokens in the matching space and give the player the matching office card writers and officers in training have General spaces that can hold multiple tokens and this symbol refers to shares in the company so place a family token in the court of directors lastly one player will become the prime minister which earns them this dial with the hand pointing towards the scenario starting space Oh and by the way you can draft these cards if you want but for your first game it'll be a lot easier to just deal them out randomly once that's all sorted you'll have a few office cards left over these will come into play during the game so just set them aside for now and lastly Shuffle the blackmail and Prestige cards together and draw out three cards in the London season display with Prestige cards face up and blackmail cards face down after all that you'll be ready to get started so let's talk about the game itself like I said you're playing as a wealthy family managing various parts of the company you want the company to succeed sure but what you really want is to marry rich and die comfortably the game plays through a series of rounds five in this scenario that each followed this track of different phases some of these will be skipped but most will occur and if a player is controlling an office they'll be in charge of how that phase plays out in the early part of the round you'll manage your family using your personal wealth to improve your influence by useful Enterprises or enlist your family members to useful positions after which you'll fill any empty offices before moving on to company operations here each office will go in turn using their company treasuries or any other resources they have to fuel their actions these are all about keeping the company running by facilitating trade and warfare in India and each has an important role to play after the company has finished operations you'll have a number of upkeep reward and cleanup steps as well as an events phase that's a whole big thing but before ending the round and starting a new one all the while you want to make sure that the company standing a measure of the Public's confidence never hits this black circle if it does the company fails and the game will end early however if it survives You'll Play out the game until it ends after the fifth round and score up points now I'm going to go through every step of the game but John company is kind of an interesting case whereby the Publishers actually recommend that you don't try to teach every rule to new players before starting they suggest that one player should know it all and after giving a brief overview kind of like I just did that you simply start playing and teach each round as it comes now that's all well and good for your friends but if you're the one teaching you're going to need to know what you're talking about so let's dive in and see what's what starting with family [Music] actions all right let's play this game each phase has a spot on this red ribbon and we're going to go through them one by one and yes technically before family actions you have the London season but that that gets skipped on the first round so I'm skipping it too it's all about retiring your family and I'm just not ready for that my family is Young and ready to work so that's what we're doing instead during family actions each player will take their opportunity marker and place it on an action whoever is the chairman will go first with everyone else following in clockwise order at the start of the game your marker is off the board but from then on it'll stay where it is between rounds on future rounds you can take a different action if you want but if you keep your marker on the same action you get to do it twice so let's see how they work first off is enlisting a writer when you take this action you simply put one of your family members into a writer spot on one of the three presidencies however if there are four more vacant offices which can happen if a lot of people retire you get to place an extra brigher for free and you can do this even if you're getting the double dipped version of this action in which case you'd put out a total of three writers now writers are useful to have out because when they trade in India that'll get you a little cash on the side writers also fill a lot of positions during hiring so they can help you prepare for eventual vacancies next up we have enlisting officers this is similar to enlisting writers you just place a family token in the military Affairs box these get put into armies later on which will help you fight battles and potentially earn a Commander's position the rest of the actions will cost your hard-earned Sterling so hopefully you've got some cash in your family treasury there are three actions that each let you buy one of the three Enterprises shipyards luxuries and workshops we've seen shipyards already they cost 2 and come with a ship you want to build that ship to help the company but also because you'll get a pound at the end of each round for each of these fitted ships you've got you can't build it on your own though so we'll get to that later and regardless of whether the ship is fitted or not it'll give you a vote when the parliament phase comes around luxuries cost 4 and get you two points straight away but they have these very shiny windows that you may have to pay taxes on later and Workshops cost a whopping 5B but they'll get you a pound back each round and get you two two votes at Parliament on top of that if the company fails each Workshop is worth a point so if someone starts hoarding them be a little wary of their intentions The Last Action you can take is to seek shares place a family member on any open space in the stock exchange track paying the cost shown they'll stay there until the end of the phase when they might Advance into the court see once all players have taken a family action you check to see if the company has any debt it pays this debt by giving shares to the families that seek them sliding the right most token into the court for each debt forgiven on the first round there won't be any debt so this won't happen but that's okay because any remaining share Seekers slide to the rightmost spaces having shareholders helps you become chairman you might get paid dividends for them later on and if the game ends with the company still in business each shareholder will be worth a point however if the company fails each shareholder is minus one point so keep that in mind now before we move on I want to talk about how negotiation Works in this game because you're going to need to make deals with with each other at any point during the game you can pay other players to sway their decision or gain some material benefit if this would have an immediate effect after a deal is made you must follow through with it however if you trade something now for something in the future you weren't actually be holding to that things you can trade are money from your family treasury Enterprises face down blackmail cards company shares and promise cards which we haven't talked about yet each player starts the game with five promise cards that when held by another play player can be returned in order to cash in the favor that the card describes don't worry too much about what these mean for now though because the card tells you how and when you can use them but there are two things to be aware of first off when you give someone a promise card there's nothing stopping them from giving it to someone else and second you can only play these cards during the game you can't call in a favor during final scoring going back to the other forms of bribery when trading blackmail cards you can show them to the other player before giving them away and when giving away a share replace your family member with one of theirs I'm talking about negotiation now because there's a good chance it'll come up in the next phase not firms you actually won't play with this phas in the 1710 scenario just skip that no I'm talking about hiring this is where you fill vacant positions and no there won't be any empty positions on the first round so this would also be skipped but it'll happen eventually so let's take a quick look when positions are empty their card will be placed in the vacant offices box if if there are multiple you'll fill them in ascending order and all of them except the chairman are filled by another office so whoever holds that office gets to choose a family member from the eligible candidates the chairman is a little different though so let's see that one first in order to be elected chairman you need a majority of votes each share gives their owner one vote which means you'll often need to form a coalition and that usually means greasing a few Palms if you've wied and dealed enough to get a majority huzzah you're the new chairman move one of your shareholders into position and take the chairman marker and card congratulations you now sit in the chair however if no players can gain the support needed to field a majority of votes the previous chairman chooses between any player with at least one share including them if possible for all other hiring the process is a little more direct the card will tell you who makes the decision and which family tokens are eligible for the job so the manager of shipping for example will be chosen by the chairman who can hire any writer now some jobs require you to promote an office holder leaving their position empty so that will need to be filled during this phase also we haven't seen fatigue yet but know that these jobs are stressful and if someone gets promoted that stress doesn't just go away it'll move with you so if this President gets promoted to director of trade Place their fatigue markers on the new card and the last thing to mention about hiring is nepotism if you're in charge of filling a vacant office it's possible to choose your own family member but only if you have the consent of every other player in that office office's candidate pool which again might require a little persuasion or if you have a player's consent for nepotism card you can call in that favor and avoid the awkwardness of asking now there are a lot of offices that don't exist at the start of the game so don't worry about appointing any of these just yet and also if there are no candidates available or if the hiring office is vacant you skip that position and move on to the next that position will also be skipped when it comes up during company operation which just so happens to be the next thing we're going to learn about see we're making progress already I bet this company's going to run great this company is a horrible machine with a lot of moving parts and we're going to go through all of them but if you forget how some of them work that's fine because there's a pretty solid reference sheet that you can follow along with now most of these jobs are fueled by Cold Hard Cash and while you do start with a few pounds in each of the company coffers they could do a lot more when properly funded so it's up to the chairman to divvy out the company balance to those departments that truly deserve it the balance is shown along the bottom of the board you start with5 but the chairman can choose to increase the company's debt for a little extra each debt you take on gives you5 more pounds but if you want to advance the debt marker more than three spaces in a turn you need the approval of a majority of shareholders this works basically the same as an election but it's worth noting that the chairman is itself a shareholder so make sure to count yourself in the tally also the track do does end so you can't take on any more debt if you reach that end now after taking on debt you must allocate the entire company balance to each of the company treasuries for each pound you give to a treasury slide your balance marker one space to the left undoubtedly the office holders will try to sway you into giving their office a bit more Moola so feel free to use your position of power to enrich yourself personally in the process but it's important to note that company money and family money is kept separate someone might bribe you with family money to get more more funding but that funding stays within the company and the bribery stays out of it okay next up we have the director of trade but before we get to them I want to introduce the concept of checks lots of offices will require you to make a check in order to actually perform their abilities these will usually but not always require you to spend money from their office's treasury in order to create a dice pool you roll these Dice and look for the lowest result what you want is a one or a two which will be a success and let you do whatever shady business you had your eye on if the lowest is a three or four that's a failure but if you're able to try again you can do so of course if you want to make another attempt you'll need to spend more resources now if the lowest result is a five or six this is a catastrophic failure which means you fail obviously you can't try again oh and also you're fired pack up your desk return the family token to your supply and place the office card in the vacant offices box depending on the action there might be some added consequences as well so make sure to check the chances of success box when choosing how much money to pour into an action now most offices have the option of just not taking an action so if you're worried about catastrophic failure you can just skip it also if the action would have no effect for some reason you have to skip it and as mentioned before if the office is vacant their entire phase is skipped now let's get back to it the director of trade gets to do two things or three if you count just constantly vaping first they can make a special Envoy this requires a check so spend as much money as you want and gain a die for each pound spent I know you just saw this b-roll but it still applies and again whenever an office spends money it has to come from their office's treasury if the check is successful you can do one of two things the more common choice is to open up an order choose any closed order in India and remove the token potentially making trade in that region a little more profitable the other choice is to open up trade with China this creates a new office for which you'll place this tile to the right of the board and you'll need to immediately hire someone to fill it this is another way to make money but only if the company controls regions of India with export icons which look like this you don't have any of this at the beginning of the game though so don't worry about it just yet after taking the special Envoy action or not if you couldn't or chose not to you get to make two transfers a transfer moves a writer from one presidency to another or a ship from one SE Zone to another both of these are used when trading so moving them around will influence both the company and the players after that we have the manager of shipping who's all about putting boats in the water for 3 pounds you can fit a ship from anyone's Shipyard and place it in whichever sea space you want yes they will benefit from that but so will the company and that's your job remember of course if there are no players ships available for £5 you can buy a company ship and put that out instead it has the same Effectiveness as a player made ship it just costs a little more or if you're strapped for cash and thinking more short term you can lease a ship placing a company ship on its extra side this will only last for one round but that might be all you'll need it for none of these actions require checks they're just automatically successful but the caveat is that you have to spend money until you have at most 2 pounds remaining no hoarding allowed next up is military Affairs which has three steps and they're all to do with the three armies in each presidency first you can make two Army transfers with each moving a regiment or officer to a different Army then you take any officers in training and assign them to whichever armies you want and and after all that in each Army if any player has more family tokens than the Commander's family they become the new Commander if multiple players fit this bill you choose between them and because Commander isn't an office you don't have to worry about nepotism okay this next part will cover the three presidencies which are really administrative offices for three specific regions of India you don't actually have control over those regions at least not yet as president your job is much more about facilitating trade of course you also have to work with your commander and if the office has been created your Governor's the president chooses the order between each of these jobs or if there's no president the chairman will choose the order between governor and Commander and the president's action is skipped anyway what the president does is trade the goal is to fill open orders in India and this will be the primary source of company profit for most of the game however this requires a few things first you need open orders and if you want to fill more than one they have to connect in a chain back to your home Port which is the bolded oval adjacent to the water in your region also you can't enter either of the other two presidencies second you need ships because each ship in the connected sea space can only fill one order and lastly you need funding each pound you spend will give you one die towards this action however if any of the orders lie outside of your home region that will increase the difficulty meaning you remove a die in this example we're paying 5s and want to trade in these three regions two of them are outside of M draw so we subtract two dice and then roll if we're successful we then must Place writers in each order if you have more writers in your presidency than orders filled you get to choose which writers you place if you have fewer than you need fill each remaining order with these order tokens now let's talk about why you're doing this as you might have guessed the value shown on the order is what the company makes in profit so here we made 18b which is cool I guess but our aims are a bit more selfish so we're taking a cut on the side for each order you fill as president you gain a pound into your family treasury on top of that players earn a pound for each of their writers that was placed on an order but those blank writers don't earn anything for anybody so it's better to get your family in there if you can now you only get to make one trade but as a reminder if you fail the action and have more money left in your treasury you're allowed to try again paying for the cost of the new check either way that's all you can do so let's look at commanders next and of all the actions in this game the commanders is the most uncomfortable your job is to attack India steal its riches and force them into cooperation with and governance by the company cool it works like this you have control of armies which can be made up of regiments officers and local alliances the regiments and officers provide one strength each but the local alliances can be a bit stronger however you have to hire them first and that requires the president to both have the money and approve its use meaning if the presidency is vacant that money is off limits but let's say it does get approved so we pay the cost Slide the alliance into the top half of this box and now we want to go in the offensive to do this we take the deploy action and select a Target at the start of the game the only option is your president's home region so we're going after Bombay next we need to make a check military units in the top box can be exhausted to add dice to your check equal to their strength let's send everybody in so we'll get five dice you'll then subtract dice equal to the strength of the region meaning how many Tower pieces it has or if it's part of an Empire the strength of every region associated with it that's not the case here though so we just lose one and roll the remaining four we succeed in our attack but before we gain our ill-gotten Goods every officer that fought needs to roll to see if they survived the attack returning to your supply if you roll a six regiments and alliances don't need to do this though just officers okay so the fight is over so soldiers may or may not have died but you successfully attacked the native population the reward is Loot and it might be quite a bit of it you'll form a pool of coins equal to the tower level time four so in this case just four plus the loot modifier if it's still face up so another four for Bombay of these eight pounds you'll need to share with each surviving member of the Attack Force the commander gets a share obviously and takes the first coin then if their family had officers in the fight they'll earn a coin each after which you go clockwise paying other players officers and then for each regiment and Ally return a coin to the bank if there's still money left over keep paying out like this until there's no more loot left next up you take trophies one token for each tower level these are worth power which we haven't actually talked about yet power is connected to a few things and you'll want to have the most or second most of it by the end of the game but I'll talk more about it later anyway after doing that remove the tower and Dome from the board and if it was the capital of an Empire remove all matching Flags then we remove all closed order tokens and if there was any unrest in the region shown by these Brown cubes we'd remove those as well and lastly we form a governorship if it wasn't already company controlled it is now move the loot token to the presidency and put it face down which it will remain for the rest of the game The Riches of this land are lost forever trapped in the British museum never to be returned as long as this tile is here this region is now considered to be associated with this President you you'll place a governor overlay token where the tower was and place the matching Governor card in the vacant offices box we'll talk about the governor in just a bit but there are a few more quick things to mention here first off now that we've conquered a region we can use it as a staging area for future invasions meaning in later turns when you deploy you can attack a region adjacent to one that is associated with your presidency you can also deploy in those Associated regions which you'll want to do to open orders and remove unrest which will start to accumulate now now that its company controlled of course if your attack led to a catastrophic failure not only is your commander removed from their post and returned to your supply you also lose half of any trophies you have rounded up and lastly if the elephant's hind quarters were in a region you successfully attacked place it fully in the region showing that the people intend to rebel against you but that's a later problem anyway you won't have any governors in the first round but once you do they'll get to take a turn as well Governors perform the administ action and it works a little differently than most the office card will show a number which tells you how much your dice pool will start with make a check rolling these Dice and if successful you'll gain a bonus then choose an administer option and potentially roll again the bonus is 1 pound but if your previous role was a failure and this one is a success take two next choose one of three options you can build a company ship which is a two-step process first you place a ship token in the region showing that it's still being built then the next time you choose this benefit move it to the connected C Zone the second option is to commission a regiment placing a token in your president's Army and lastly you can tax the people taking 2 pounds and placing it either in the company balance or the president's treasury this cannot be split and if you tax more than once during your turn you'll add one unrest to the region each time after the first as you might have guessed unrest isn't something you want but its effects won't be felt until later now after rolling if you got a su success or a failure you can roll again just with one fewer die and you can keep doing this until you choose to stop roll a catastrophic failure or just run out of dice so that's all for what I consider the main offices but there are two more that might come into play the superintendent of trade in China and the governor general these are kind of optional though so if you're getting a little antsy feel free to skip to the next section if you're sticking around let's talk about China I mentioned earlier that the director of trade can create and immediately fill this position as a result of their special Envoy action instead of a treasury it works with ships which can be transferred here by the director of trade or added by the manager of shipping as if it were a czone after Bengal is finished this office gets to trade in China you'll roll a die for each ship you have and if successful for each export icon in company controlled regions the company gains 4B and you gain one there aren't too many of these icons but if you can get a few of them it's a pretty profitable venture which makes sense when you realize that what you're exporting is opium which much of the Chinese population is addicted to at this point and the Indian people are forced to grow due to your economic manipulation anyway this check can only be attempted once so no need to hold anything back when making it and lastly we have the governor general which will only come into play if this specific law is passed during the parliament phase and to be honest for your first game they recommend you just take this card out of the deck so I'm not even going to teach it in this video I'll cover it in the next one where I talk about the other scenarios but for now I think we should move on past company operations and into the upkeep phases okay I'm lying a little bit there's more than just upkeep here but most of these phases go pretty quickly first off you'll get bonuses for each workshop and shipyard with a fitted ship that you own you'll gain a pound easy as that next up we have Revenue which confusingly is all about the company paying money it starts with expenses where the balance is lowered by1 for each debt you have each ship in the sea and each regiment and officer in the armies it's possible that you won't have enough money to pay this off and if that's the case the company needs to take Emergency Loans now the first time you would do this you'll instead discard the Royal protection card and then all other expenses are ignored and the balance stays at zero if it happens again however you'll gain 5s for each Deb you take as per usual but if you hit the debt seal you can still take Emergency Loans you just don't move the debt marker anymore once all expenses are paid lower the company balance to zero now emergency loans have a secondary cost Beyond just debt it's also an embarrassment to the company so if you take out one or two Emergency Loans lower the company's standing by one or if you take more than two loans lower it by two and as a reminder if the standing reaches this black space your gross mismanagement has led to the company's complete failure and the game will end immediately there's another way to lower the standing too which happens next depending on where this Pawn is the company has expectations for how much money should be in its balance if the balance is less than the expectations lower standing once more if it's at or higher than expectations leave it where it is they expect this you don't get a pricee for that there is one way to increase standing though and it's by paying dividends at this step the chairman can choose to pay dividends but they don't have to and sometimes they won't be able to in order to do do this you need to be able to pay each shareholder one pound from the company balance and remember the chairman is a shareholder lower the balance to match and pay the players their dividends after paying if there's enough money the chairman can choose to pay out again continuing until they can't or choose to stop and crucially if you paid out more money than the company expectations your standing Will Rise by one so once that's done you'll have the events in India phase and this one's kind of a lot there are just a ton of things that can happen happen here and while it's not ridiculously complex it takes a little while to cover so I'm going to skip it for now I'll teach this phase at the end of the video but in the meantime let's move on to Parliament when Parliament meets the Prime Minister will choose a law you'll vote on whether or not to approve it and then there will be policy consequences these laws may have immediate or ongoing effects and so being able to vote on them is pretty handy but we're not quite there yet first the PM needs to draw a card from the deck and reveal it if the card is a dilemma you'll have to select if it isn't the PM can choose this card or Draw another one again if it's a dilemma you have to pick this new one but if not you can choose either law or draw a third but that's the last one you can draw so you'll need to pick one of these three once that's done you'll choose the policy consequence shown in the bottom left these mostly have to do with Enterprises and shares so you might see icons for those or it will tell you what will happen with them either taxation a bonus or a change in power the the PM will bring out their dial and find the first matching word or icon in both clockwise and counterclockwise Direction and then they choose which way their arm will swing if the log gets passed this policy will trigger let's start nice and talk about bonuses for each matching Target each player controls which will either be workshops or shareholders they'll gain a pound also pretty soon we'll be talking about Prestige cards and these might have matching symbols as well so in this case we'd earn an extra coin for our Foundry on the flip side we might get taxed maxed which will force us to pay for each matching Target so if the arm swung here we'd all lose a coin for each of our shareholders also some of these spaces include the window tax this means that in addition to whatever else we're taxed on we'll also need to pay a pound for each window we have because apparently looking outside is a privilege not a right now if you can't pay the tax you're going to have to lose whatever you can't afford to keep potentially losing points as well this is especially troubling when we look at prices see one of the biggest ways to score points in this game is by placing your family members into the fanciest retirement homes also called prizes and obviously the more windows a place has the better it is but if you can't pay for those windows your family member will get booted back into your supply and you'll lose the points you gained from placing them there anyway back to Parliament there's one more thing that can happen which is a change in the power rankings each shareholder and Enterprise is worth between zero and two power as determined by this ranking when a power consequence comes up swap the associated token with whichever is one space higher or if it's already at the top swap any two other tokens like I said before you want to have the most or second most power at the end of the game but I'll cover it in detail when we talk scoring which will come up in just a bit okay so once the policy is chosen it's time to read out the law and vote on it each law will start with a number of yes or no votes which you'll track with this marker the PM will cast the first vote and then proceed clockwise from there after each player has gotten the chance assuming at least one vote was cast the PM can choose to have another round of votes again with them starting it off and going clockwise to vote you must either exhaust any card you own that grants votes or you can buy them with each pound equaling one vote an indictment on the Democratic process to be sure but not entirely inaccurate now if the PM decides not to hold another round of votes or if a round finishes with no one casting a single vote it must be resolved check the current tally to see whether the vote passes or fails with a zero counting as a pass the law will tell you how it affects the game and some laws have specific effects if it fails so keep an eye out for those also some laws allow for extra actions during the family actions phase but only the most recently passed extra action takes effect the rest are ignored now the passing of laws is deeply important to the Prime Minister and as such their honor demands that they vote in favor of each law law that comes up if they vote at all which they don't have to they'll probably want to though because when a law passes they'll gain a passed law token which is worth one power they also enact the policy they chose and they get to keep their job see if the law fails the position of prime minister will pass to the leader of the opposition which is the player who cast the most votes against the law the opposition leader is tracked while voting so if two players are tied for most no votes the first player to reach that is the leader after taking the dial the new PM chooses a policy adjacent to the current one and enacts that one instead a couple more things about voting if it goes multiple rounds you can vote against a law that you previously voted for but once you start voting against a law you can't vote for it later on also you can cast votes on behalf of another player with their consent which is useful if you prefer one player to be opposition leader over another and lastly if you cash in the prime minister's vote with my Enterprises promise card you can use them to vote against the law so that's all for voting up next we have the actual upkeep and refresh phase which is pretty standard stuff first off if you have family members on prizes you need to pay the upkeep for each of them more on that shortly next you prepare for the upcoming round by returning writers to their presidency returning filled order tokens and extra ships to the supply moving all exhausted officers and regiments to the active side and any active allies to the exhausted side and lastly you'll Advance the turn marker and move on to the London season or if the turn marker was on the end of the track you'll go to endgame scoring but let's talk London first since we skipped it at the beginning the London season is all about retiring your family and increasing your prestige first you'll have to deal with attrition basically stress see each of these jobs is tiring and you probably won't hold offices forever so for each office holder you'll make a check to see if they retire or at least become fatigued if there any fatigue cubes on the card already you'll add one to the die result for each on a 1 to two nothing happens on a 3 to four add a fatigue and on a five or higher the family member becomes a pensioner placing their portrait in the pensioner box and placing their office card next to them oh and the chairman is an especially tiring gig so they'll always add plus one to their die roll in addition to any fatigue they have now losing these offices sucks but it's also key to winning the game because only pensioners can retire into the lap of luxury starting with the chairman or former chairman as the case may be each player May retire their pensioners by placing them into one of the five prize boxes and paying their cost shown in the black circle this immediately earns the points shown on the right so that's pretty cool however there will be an ongoing upkeep like we just mentioned as well as a potential window tax and as a reminder if you can't pay either of those your beloved Mima might just get kicked out of the prize and will be pushed back into the workforce if this happens lose points equal to the prizes value of course if you don't place them in a prize they'll go back to your supply anyway also if you ever need to place a family token and don't have any left you can pull one from a prize but again you'll lose points for that now you might be wondering why this top prize even exists since it's worth no points it's because at the end of this phase players who retired a pensioner might earn a Prestige card starting with whoever paid the most in retirement costs this phase and going down players must must either take or discard one card on offer if there's a tie the tiebreaker is most Windows after you finish taking cards remove any leftover and refill the display these cards might be spouses that will usually earn points and provide discounts on all future retirements but also come with less desirable qualities or other cards that provide votes Enterprises all kinds of stuff really there are also blackmail cards which are face down and are nasty little guys that you keep secret until played though you can peek at them while making your decision after playing these cards will stay face up in front of you and at the end of the game whether played or not usually provide some power speaking of which let's cover scoring as we talked about the end game is triggered when the turn tracker hits its last space for your scenario or immediately if the company fails let's start with a successful company in this case you have all the points you earned plus one point for each shareholder you have including the chairman next find out who has the most power see I told you we'd talk about this power comes from trophies and P laws blackmail cards the Enterprises that are on the top two spaces of the power rankings being the prime minister at the end of the game and Becky sharp who clearly just exudes power Whoever has the most and second most power at the end of the game will score points based on the turn in which the game Ended as shown by this chart in the corner if multiple players are tied for first they'll each get the second place reward and no one else will get anything or if there's a clear leader but some players are tied for second they won't get anything either and lastly you'll have one more attrition role and players will get one last chance to retire pensioners but won't get to take any Prestige cards so that's what happens if the company stays afloat but if the company fails a few things are different Power works the same way but now each shareholder is worth a negative point on the upside though each Workshop is now worth a point where before it got you nothing and lastly there's no final retirement instead you draw a company failure card and have to deal with results these are unpredictable and very swingy so be careful but that's all you really need to know to start playing John company if you want you can stop here and just dive in of course if you want to be fully prepared we've got to talk about the events in India phase so let's do that [Music] next okay so maybe I've built the section up to be something scary it's not that bad and there's a reference sheet that's going to be very useful when this phase comes up what actually happens is two things first you'll roll a storm die which will tell you how many events you'll face and might put your ships in danger and then you'll draw events which have a variety of different effects looking at the storm dive first this horrible Cube will show a number and maybe a storm cloud or three if it's just one that's going to affect the designated sea zone but if it's three that's hitting the whole ocean for each ship in an affected sea zone you're going to make a check on a one or two nothing happens on a three or four it takes damage flipping it over if was undamaged or removing it entirely if it was already flipped and of course fives and sixes destroy the ship destroyed player ships are returned to their shipyards provided they're St in play once you've rolled through the storm it's time to start flipping events there are seven types of events in this game and they'll usually trigger in a specific location determined either by the region shown on the back of the next event tile or by the location of the elephant let's start simple and work our way up if you draw a windfall event each player will gain one one pound per riter they have in the matching region and all adjacent regions how nice a less friendly event is turmoil in the matching region close the northernmost order and if there was a riter there it goes back to your supply they definitely weren't murdered now if all orders in the region were closed you perform a Cascade this is like an outbreak in pandemic so add a closed order to each region that's connected via the order paths if the connected order is already closed close the nor norn most order in the region or if all orders in that region are closed it will Cascade as well it doesn't go back to the original region though because each region can only Cascade once per event so turmoil sucks let's do the opposite and have some peace because this shows the elephant we find where the elephant is on the map it will always either be connecting two regions or in the center of a company controlled region for peace if the elephant is on a border each region will open all of its orders and if they have a tower it will increase in strength by one or if it's within a company controlled region open all orders and remove all unrest there then we're going to perform the elephant's March which in this case means it's going to move to the region shown on the event stack if that region is company controlled place it within the region if it's part of an Empire Place It On the Border facing the capital indicating that it's going to Rebel however if the region is the capital of an Empire or just a normal Sovereign region find the shape matching the shape on the event tile and place the elephant between those two regions signifying a coming Invasion and we're going to talk about Invasion shortly but really quick before we do that let's have another easy one the shuffle event ensures that you never run out of cards even if you're playing a longer scenario when this event comes up you'll first perform an elephant's March like we've just seen and then you'll Shuffle this tile in with the event stack next you'll take the discard pile Shuffle it and place that on top of the event stack meaning you'll have a bit of insight into what's coming next okay these next next three events are the big ones because they have to do with combat and let's start with the big daddy of them all resolve crisis this triggers an attack or crisis based on the location of the elephant this can either be an invasion where the elephant is pointing at a sovereign or company controlled region or a rebellion where the elephant is within a region or pointing from a dominated region to the capital of its Empire and it works a little differently if the defender is owned by India or the company let's start with One Sovereign attacking another first you need to find the attacker Defender strength both of which start with their tower level then if either is part of an Empire you'll add on the strength from each Associated region and lastly the crisis event will have a modifier so you'll add that to the attacker strength as well if the attacker is stronger than the defender they'll win the crisis and expand into the region adding it to its Empire or creating a new one with the attacker as the capital if the defender was the capital of an Empire that Empire is shattered and you remove all matching Flags if it left an existing Empire with only its capital that also shatters it and after a successful Invasion the elephant's March Works a little differently instead of checking the draw pile you trigger Imperial Ambitions meaning you'll move the elephant to the attacker's capital facing towards the matching shape on the event or the next clockwise region if it's already part of the empire of course if the attack was unsuccessful the attacker is left weakened by it and removes one level from their Tower okay so that's an invasion but let's talk rebellions if the elephant is in a dominated region and pointing towards a capital the crisis will be a rebellion in this case the strength is the attacker's tower plus the crisis modifier versus just the defending region strength the rest of the Empire isn't counted if successful remove the small flag from the attacker and the big flag if there are no more regions in the Empire then close all orders in the attacker region however if the attack was unsuccessful the capital is embarrassed that an attack even happened and its strength is lowered by one now let's talk about what happens when an attack or Rebellion is turned towards a company controlled region for the most part it works the same way except that you also add a point of strength to the attacker for each unrest cube in the defending region the defending president must use their army to repel the attack exhausting their military units until you've met or exceeded the attacker strength if you're unable to do so exhaust everything and then you'll suffer a region loss which I'll describe in just a bit if you do successfully defend though you clear all unrest and the commander gains a trophy the other thing to know about attacks against the company are that they embolden the rest of the people to attack as well so after you complete the initial crisis you also have to resolve a rebellion in each company controlled region that has any unrest starting with the commander of Bombay and going down resolve attacks against Associated regions in the order of your choice these secondary rebellions don't gain the crisis modifier but you still need to exhaust Army units to defend and can still suffer region loss if you don't so let's talk about that first things first your reputation is ruined the commander is fired and the controlling player loses half of their trophies rounded up then you roll a die for each officer in the Army and remove them on sixes if there's a governor unrest or ship in the region those are also eliminated and the overlay tile is replaced with a level one Tower adding an Empire flag if it fell as part of an invasion the Region's loot token is put back in the area but is kept face down the British museum is very clear about its return policy and lastly for the region you'll close each of its orders or if they were all already closed resolve a Cascade of course the company had a stake in all this too and is now humiliated the first time this happens in a turn you lose one standing the second time you lose two the third time you lose three and if there's a fourth time that guarantees you hit company failure if you hadn't already if this happens finish the event phase and then go to final scoring now like I said the resolve crisis event isn't the only way for a crisis to happen there's also the leader event when you draw this check the region on the draw pile if it's Sovereign add one strength to the tower if it's controlled by either the company or an Empire resolve a rebellion with a usually pretty powerful modifier then if the elephant was within the region and the rebellion was successful performed the elephant's March and lastly we have foreign Invasion there's only one of these in the stack but it can be rough as it says roll the Storm die and resolve an invasion in each linked region or the top of the draw pile if there are no storms and if you hit the multi storm resolve in all three port regions determine the attack strength by rolling a die and if the attack is successful close every order there cascading if necessary and set its strength to half the die roll round it down this will not create new empires but it can dissolve them and if there was an elephant in a company controlled region that was successfully invaded perform a March using Circle as the shape otherwise the elephant doesn't move and that is everything you need to know know to play John company second edition the first time anyway if you want to learn about the governor general other scenarios or the solo mode of the game I've got another video that my patreon backers can watch right now or maybe in the next day or two I I'm sure this video took a long time to finish anyway it'll go live for everyone in a month or so but if you want to see it early as well as vote on what games I teach and some other cool stuff head on over to the patreon and consider pledging a bucker two it supports the channel and helps me keep covering ridiculously big games like this one but either way thank you all so much for watching and I'll see you next time [Music] bye

Channel: RTFM

Views: 36,760

Keywords: board, game, rules, explanation, learn, to, play, Shea, Parker, RTFM, gaming, rtfm, rftmshow, show, tabletop, gamer, boardgame, games, tutorial, boardgames, how to play, cole, wehrle, werlhe, wherle, wirle, wehrlegig, wherlegig, werhlegig, east india company, euro, hard, john's, 2e

Id: VcEJh47rWMI

Length: 49min 50sec (2990 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 30 2023