John Company

To echo the comments on the dev process, the next few weeks are likely to be an especially frenetic period--the TTS kit that went out on KS launch has already been superseded by a new one posted last night that reorganizes the board and introduces a set of changes that aren't even fully reflected in the rules document yet. Fixing the number of shares in the Court of Directors seems like a pretty major shift--the track next to the court where players could deposit a child to "seek share" is just GONE. So if you're looking for some stability, maybe sit tight for a bit yet!

JoelCFC25 wrote: To echo the comments on the dev process, the next few weeks are likely to be an especially frenetic period--the TTS kit that went out on KS launch has already been obsoleted by a new one posted last night that reorganizes the board and introduces a set of changes that aren't even fully reflected in the rules document yet. Fixing the number of shares in the Court of Directors seems like a pretty major shift--the track next to the court where players could deposit a child to "seek share" is just GONE. So if you're looking for some stability, maybe sit tight for a bit yet!

Where can I find the current iteration? We'll be playing later; do you think it would be worth trying to newest version or what was on the kickstarter?

He's posting in the Wehrlegig Discord channel (and in fact just posted another update within the last hour). I'm not experienced enough to make a call, but would probably stick with what went up in the KS for awhile yet unless you want to live on the bleeding edge.

I don't plan on touching it for a few months yet tbh. Oath was the same way.

I watched the stream Sax posted last night as a warmup, and then noticed some changes from the posted KS version.

Things I saw:
* In KS, governors act before commanders
* In the dev branch, there's a huge expansion of governor powers, making them more interesting (and making the commander switch obvious)
* Voting got a huge rebalance in the dev branch, with shipyards and workshops double or triple their previous vote value (and it was remarked this might be too much vs money votes).
* PM prestige is lowered, but you can gain permanent prestige by passing laws.

Overall I liked what was shown better than what's in the KS published files. Now I want to see what's up with the "seek share" stuff Joel just mentioned.

There's a lot more activity and choice in 2e than 1e, enough that in a 3-handed solo learn I found myself struggling to be effective at picking goals.

edit:

Okay, I looked at it, he has the changes broken out into a nice doc. The "seek shares" is massively overhauled, but the track is still there. You just don't get a share anymore, you get a company debt token. When chairman hiring happens, whoever has the most of them gets a new share. The chairman position still counts as a share for everything involved. Debt tokens are +1/-1 VP at game end depending on success. This is a huge shift in company shares, since there's only ever going to be what's allocated on the setup cards. 1 in each hiring, 1 out (the retired chairman). It also means that dividends will be smaller, and potentially very lucrative for majority shareholders. I'm still sort of turning this over in my mind, but it's pretty big in Company terms. Welcome to the tinker zone....

I agree with you on letting it alone but I noodled around with the KS build for a few turns yesterday and tbh it gives as good an impression of the gameplay as 1e but in a style closer to what the finished product will be. I think for a couple of the guys playing tonight that might make for a more informative experience.
edit: by extension I mean we should let Orlok and Duke decide as I’m more than happy to play 1e if it’s the game rather than the current project that is important.

Looking at it now, they seem like good changes. I'm totally fine playing whatever version, with the major caveat that I haven't played any, nor have I read the 1st edition rules.

A note on the big lump of changes from the Wehrlegig Discord. Someone joked that once in the Kickstarter the pace of change was expected to slow:

Cole: Hah! I think what happened is i made only small changes for the past few weeks and now that the KS is launched i'm finally getting time to move through that backlog.

This discussions around the debt token mechanic are interesting. It's easier to pay double dividends because the share count is so limited, which means the company can be a little more stable even under high debt. I doubt it will make it through unchanged, but it's an interesting shift. You can aggressively seek control of the company, but it takes time to do it. If you're holding debt tokens, you really want that "chairman always retires" law to pass.

This is slightly juiced by the return of the permanent +1 on the Chairman's retirement roll. That geezer should cycle out more quickly now.

I'm not even going to look at it til the game gets published. We're talking of basically a year of seemingly crowd sourced playtesting; shit's gonna change. I'm already involved in several playtests at various stages; I can only keep track of so many changes before I lose my mind .

I watched the late scenario they played last week... I really like the ideas they're toying with about making the Company and private firms execute simultaneously. It always felt very artificial and weirdly libertarian that the private firms automatically executed and filled orders first in 1st ed and left the Company with scraps.

A lot of interesting ideas in that build, esp with the share. Still not super interested in playing it for a couple months tbh though, till we get to the equivalent of the August build of Oath.

Cole put up another designer's diary on the BGG page a couple hours ago, talking about how he borrowed an idea from TI4 to change the promise cubes.

I watched that stream as well, and I really like the way the game is shaping up.

I think the private firms rules are still looking pretty bendy, but I really like the new debt/share market.

I'll check in with streams and maybe read the rules from time to time, but I'd agree I'm not going to invest a bunch of time playing until it stabilizes more.

Each iteration looks a little better to me.

Dalrymple's The Anarchy is currently only £1.29 on the Kindle store for anyone interested in further reading on the subject matter. Sadly, the offer does not appear to extend to US Amazon.

I don't mean for this to rise to the level of a "concern", but sadly I haven't taken my own advice to stop looking in the Discord dev channels. Lately it sort of has the feel that the final parts of the design (largely the private firm aspects of the game) are currently whipsawing about on the basis of 3 to 5 very vocal individuals reacting to a set of changes on the back of just 1 game using them. To be fair, these people are putting the time in to playtest, but I hope there's more going on than just kneejerk tweaks on pretty limited input. He probably deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Oath discord felt like this, fwiw, but stabilized pretty nicely eventually.

I don't enjoy watching the process either, it makes me deeply unsettled about the same things.