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Bugs: Recent Topics Paging, Uploading Images & Preview (11 Dec 2020)

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× Talk about the latest and greatest AT, and the Classics.

John Company

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11 Oct 2021 12:55 - 11 Oct 2021 12:59 #327114 by sornars
Replied by sornars on topic John Company

Not Sure wrote: If the playtime starts to come down when the mechanics get internalized, I really feel like 5 turns is going to feel over almost before it begins.


I think 1710 will fulfill it's intended role as an introductory game but if played regularly, the main game will be one of the other scenarios or the full campaign. Five family actions is way too limiting to really do anything particularly crazy; you'll be railroaded into picking one of a few actions based on your starting position. The rulebook itself seems to support that view:

The 1758 Scenario (The Company Under Siege) is recommended for those who have played the 1710 Scenario a couple times. Here, the Company begins with its monopoly, but this can be broken, opening the gates of India to private firms.


I still haven't seen private firms in either edition so I'm all for playing some more.

I agree that Cole was not just informed by our one game but bringing in feedback from his own experiences as well but it's still cool that it kicked off that discussion.
Last edit: 11 Oct 2021 12:59 by sornars.
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30 Oct 2021 18:30 #327577 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic John Company
Kickstarter peanut gallery time again, mezike, Not Sure, and I played again. There were a bunch of recent adjustments in the newest build and it is really getting close to something special. Wehrle simplified some stuff which was great and then added a wrinkle or two here or there which added a ton of richness.

I'm getting much more pumped to get my copy, it's kind of amazing watching what feels like the chaotic mess of Cole's tweaks start to find some core things that enrich the play.
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30 Oct 2021 21:06 #327580 by Sagrilarus
Replied by Sagrilarus on topic John Company
Can’t believe I’m not in on this.

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30 Oct 2021 21:07 #327581 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic John Company
I can't tell if this is a sarcastic post or not.

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31 Oct 2021 11:08 - 31 Oct 2021 11:09 #327589 by Sagrilarus
Replied by Sagrilarus on topic John Company
Oh no, dead serious. I loved my couple of solo plays of Infamous Traffic, this looks like a big step up. Watching you guys talk this up has had me intrigued.
Last edit: 31 Oct 2021 11:09 by Sagrilarus.
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31 Oct 2021 11:55 - 31 Oct 2021 11:59 #327590 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic John Company
When we plan a game we usually play Saturdays about noon pacific, so late afternoon for you. We can make adjustments to that though to play earlier, we organize through discord, anyone is invited and we organize other games there too (arkham LCG, Oath, etc):

discord.gg/7ezjGc3

If the stars aligned schedule wise and you played we would have 5, which would be quite an intriguing game of John Company. We've only played 2nd edition with 3 which has a really different flavor.
Last edit: 31 Oct 2021 11:59 by Gary Sax.
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31 Oct 2021 14:30 #327593 by Not Sure
Replied by Not Sure on topic John Company
If you want to play 3p on US time zones some time, we could probably arrange that too. Our Saturday afternoon (US) sessions are a best-time compromise to get a 7-8 timezone split in the same game.

Our game yesterday (Turn 3 company failure) clocked in at about 2 hours, although 3 is a little more common for 1710 scenario, and 1st edition deregulation games could run 4.
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31 Oct 2021 14:46 #327594 by Not Sure
Replied by Not Sure on topic John Company
Oh, and I’d be very interested in getting An Infamous Traffic played on TTS sometime too. I bought a copy to round out my Wehrle collection but it’s never hit the table.
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31 Oct 2021 17:48 #327602 by mezike
Replied by mezike on topic John Company
It’s wild how much we are enjoying our 2e plays and we haven’t even added in private firms yet!

Up for more as always, I can also start an hour later than usual if that helps but probably not more than that because of how long these games can run.

I think Cole has mentioned before that Infamous Traffic is something he wants to revisit in the near future but I’d be happy to try the original to get a feel for what it’s al about.
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31 Oct 2021 19:21 #327605 by sornars
Replied by sornars on topic John Company
+1 to more John Company whenever we can fit it in and another +1 for giving An Infamous Traffic a whirl as well.

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10 Jan 2022 13:02 - 10 Jan 2022 13:05 #329618 by sornars
Replied by sornars on topic John Company
I mentioned elsewhere how I've started watching 18XX streams to understand the genre a bit. After doing so I can't help but see a fairly strong influence of those games in John Company 2e.

On a mechanical layer, the fact that money always has a location and private purses differ from company/office purses is an obvious one but beyond that, the shared incentive structure of co-owned companies and that changing in a heartbeat based on your board position also applies. The fact that rusting trains and dumping companies on people is a key element of 18XX strategy felt so similar to witholding dividends and promoting people against their will into useless offices. I think I prefer the injection of randomness that John Company brings to the 18XX formula (although I do believe some 18XX games have event decks as well) but it did make me even more tempted to try out some train games in the future.
Last edit: 10 Jan 2022 13:05 by sornars.
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29 Jan 2022 17:12 #330252 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic John Company
www.kickstarter.com/projects/1243243962/...second-edition/posts

Preproduction copy pictures for anyone who backed.

The thing about Cole's graphic design eye is that not only do the games look great but they genuinely look classy and wholly outside the hobby aesthetically.
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29 Jan 2022 19:05 #330255 by Msample
Replied by Msample on topic John Company
On the one hand it looks good and functional, but I do mildly miss the more compact footprint of the original. Once you got used to the board, I found it quite functional . Same for the new version of PAX RENNAISSANCE, the new version's box is ginormous compared to the original. I get that the old Sierra Madre productions won't get the KS juices flowing but there is something to be said for little boxes packing a big punch.
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30 Jan 2022 10:05 #330261 by JoelCFC25
Replied by JoelCFC25 on topic John Company
Conversely, I think it's an immense improvement to have put the state of India on the board itself. There are still going to be piles and supplies of pieces off to the edge of the board, but not as much off-board space will be taken up by the clumsy overlapping region cards that needed to be flipped back and forth and moved between the two sides of the board. I think it's just going to be so much easier to visually interpret both the current state and the potential future states. But I am surprised to see how much stuff got added to the design in the past year.

It was also interesting last week to see them openly acknowledging in Discord that a lot of development decisions and responses had been driven by a very small, ultra-dedicated set of playtesters and their extensive commentary (essentially the thing I had minor concerns about some months ago). That isn't necessarily bad, because they are thorough, genuinely thoughtful players. Anyway, too late to do anything about it now, and it'll likely be more fully tested than a lot of games of similar heft (e.g., from GMT)--but it'll be interesting to see how it hits with a wider audience, in terms of unearthing ambiguities, corner cases, etc. When you're in the molten core of folks who've been eyeballs deep in it for this long, it's got to be hard to extricate yourself from all the parts that've gone through multiple iterations (all of which you know) and really grapple with it in the way brand new players will.
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30 Jan 2022 10:45 #330263 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic John Company
Even our little group had a little say in the whole thing, I think. I see what you're saying and worried about. I still think the game has gotten a lot better around the edges in the last 6 months.
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