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John Company
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But JC in its current form really wouldn't fit under the 1000g hard limit that Phil required for the first edition, even in a no-frills fashion. And I think not literally designing to a weight limit helps.
Both of the Wehrlegig releases definitely have some design indulgences, but I think they make nice, coherently styled games.
I'll definitely concede that the Pax Renaissance reprint feels overdone. I bought it, but mostly it just feels big and ugly compared to my earlier edition. Not one of my happiest purchases after the fact.
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- Jackwraith
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- Maim! Kill! Burn!
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It looks great. The only thing I'm arching an eyebrow at was the addition of metal flags for the tower pieces. Not sure those were quite necessary but, again, they look good. I've been describing this one to one of my regular groups and they're all kind of geeked to play it, although I've warned them that there are a LOT of moving parts, so we'll see. That group usually meets on Monday nights, which likely won't allow enough time to see a game like JC put into action. But there's a local game convention happening next week and I might just try to pitch it in the open gaming area (Save me, jeebus!)
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I've somewhat organized JC and it's surprisingly intimidating. The first edition was so concise and meek compared to this. This feels sprawling. Going to read the rules tomorrow night.
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- Jackwraith
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Maybe not for the initial teach where you might need to budget some additional time but we've found our online games (with TTS overhead included) round out at around 2.5-3 hours pretty consistently. One of the nice things about 2e is that it's a realistic weeknight game. My only advice for a smooth first game is making sure at least one person has a good grasp of the Events in India phase as it's the one place the game is likely to grind to a bit of a halt.Jackwraith wrote: That group usually meets on Monday nights, which likely won't allow enough time to see a game like JC put into action. But there's a local game convention happening next week and I might just try to pitch it in the open gaming area (Save me, jeebus!)
That's a lot of negotiating you've got scheduled!charlest wrote: On Tuesday we have JC2 scheduled along with Sidereal Confluence (using the Bifurcation expansion).
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I think ignoring the development of this game, coupled with it landing when I was in a funk and low mood, really hit me unexpectedly and I was kind of surprised by the depth of this product. It gave me a negative first impression, really.
I'm back to a state of unreasonable excitement now, hoping John Company remains my favorite Wehrle design.
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So I'll baseline this. With any problems or lingering issues I have with this game I always think about it a lot more than I do most other games, for the rest of the day. The only games I've thought about more in the last 3-4 years are Arkham Horror LCG and maybe Almoravid/Levy and Campaign.
I have some issues with the game, though, I think, though I hope to play more still. Which are *mostly* choices by the designer. One is writers. They are this aspect of the game which is just a tempo halting punch in the balls you have to do when you see your money making positions in the company running low. So you have to choose to writer up for a couple of turns at least to get back into the game. This is a very consequential choice that I find important but not not very thematic. Family actions are the most important thing in this game, all told, and JC asks you to waste between 1-3 of them brutalizing your tempo. Probably at least 2-3 realistically. I keep wishing that writer introduction happened through some parallel system only minorly affected by family actions in some way. Young ambitious 2nd sons were always going to staff the EIC so it doesn't hit me well thematically or mechanically. There would be other ways to handle this like always making you place 2 writers as a base and 3 writers as a favored suit, or something similar to that, but at 3-4 players this system clangs for me. I could see it working better at 5-6 but I don't think this was an issue Cole ever solved, even upstream in this thread from playtesting.
On another note, I still think there is not enough preventing "anti-social" behaviors that are not easily stoppable by the other players, a constant complaint about the much more fragile 1st edition which has been ameliorated but I don't think solved. It is very doable to get basically out of the game such that your only chance is to wreck shit or try to get into personally beneficial but company wrecking positions---which is, as I have stated before talking about this game---essentially throwing a die roll into the game end scoring. The ideal here is that no one wants to throw that die roll into the game who believes they even have a chance of winning traditionally. But I think it is still too easy for someone to basically end the company with some dumb decisions that benefit them, and I think in a lot of ways I determined the winner of our game today because I felt I was out of anything but completely self serving destructive army moves. Cole's decision on how to handle this problem in 2nd edition is sort of sound---make the company much more durable to bankrupcy and have deregulation (a natural reaction to a fucked company) put the company back on track. But ultimately, these are changes which make the company more durable but not fundamentally more profitable. This game has programmed into it two straightforward permanent death scenarios which will almost always happen with rational players---buy too many regiments and go adventuring for personal gain if you're fucked, and/or simply end up with a map which is simply filled with closed orders and basically means even if the company is in zombie mode for the next couple turns since it won't technically fail it is dead from a realistic perspective. I dunno. I got forced into an "anti-social" position because I am a shitty player, in part, and my last productive money making position got torpedoed, but I feel like this is almost always going to happen. So the new version makes the company much harder to kill, and makes company death close to literally throw a -D6VP dice roll into the end game after company failure (ideally dissuading anyone from trying win this way) but it doesn't make the company any stronger/more durable to being fucked with and someone will always be in a desperate enough position that throwing that -D6VP into end game scoring is better than not doing it.
Rules grit, I do think this is a net negative no matter who you are. Not Sure was discussing this during our game but the events phase just isn't streamlined enough. The randomness variance of Indian events is important and thematic but it's not doing enough to justify the corner cases and weird hard to remember rules around them when you actually run the phase. By contrast, I think almost all the rest of the operations system grit is justified and runs smooth even when complex.
As a final note, there is always going to be a legitimate argument around compensation that counters a lot of my concerns. If I get into a company wrecking position, for example, because I am backed into it thorugh poor play, there is a legit argument others should compensate me not to do minorly personally maximizing dumb shit. But I just don't think this sort of precise table balancing is possible in such an opaque game from a money and VP perspective.
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