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John Company

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30 Jan 2022 11:34 #330265 by Msample
Replied by Msample on topic John Company
While its true that a small "hardcore" group can go off on a tangent/rabbit hole, at the same time they are also just as likely to unearth those same edge cases etc and polish it up. Ideally you want to have them go at it then pass it off to a separate blind group at the end to make sure it passes the sniff test. Lord knows Cole has had enough time and input by now.
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30 Jan 2022 11:41 #330266 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic John Company
We helped bitch enough about VP awarding "most of" cards to get rid of them, so...

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30 Jan 2022 12:44 #330270 by Not Sure
Replied by Not Sure on topic John Company
I'm not one to put a lot of faith in "box size" as a proxy for "game quality", but I think both JC and Pax Pamir are major improvements over what was done in their first editions. Pax Pamir more by Cole being a more accomplished designer, because the game could probably still fit in a Sierra Madre square box.

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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30 Jan 2022 13:04 #330271 by JoelCFC25
Replied by JoelCFC25 on topic John Company
I don't feel worried about anything, it was just interesting to see their own self-awareness about the "high on our own supply" potential. Honestly I've no idea which way it'll go, and it will take awhile to get a sense of it. With the people involved it's more likely than not that they've hit it out of the park!
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30 Jan 2022 17:11 #330276 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic John Company
I don't feel worried partly because I've played near final and think it's really good, lol, beta testing amirite.

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30 Jan 2022 18:32 #330281 by Msample
Replied by Msample on topic John Company
Yeah I wasn't saying they had to keep within the extremely tight box limits that the old Sierra Madre games had but PR was too much IMO. I think Pamir 2.0 is the sweet spot both box wise as well as footprint wise. Besides the bigger box and ridiculous player boards, I didn't care for the new colors in PP 2.0 for the rooks, knights, and bishop pieces.

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23 Jul 2022 18:32 - 23 Jul 2022 18:32 #334433 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic John Company
I'm amazed how Cole's chaotic tinkering mostly lands on great solutions to previous problems. Our 4p game today kind of sung for me. Firms are like infinitely better than they used to be.
Last edit: 23 Jul 2022 18:32 by Gary Sax.
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02 Oct 2022 16:11 #335866 by Jackwraith
Replied by Jackwraith on topic John Company
JC, 2nd Ed arrived today and it's massive. They did a pretty brilliant job at enabling everything to be organized in the provided trays and so forth. I admit to being mildly confused at how sleeving those cards are supposed to work. I suspect there will be some box lift if you choose to go that way but Cole has been on BGG assuring people that it is possible. I honestly don't think the cards will see enough handling to require it in the same fashion as many other games, although I know that some do it mostly to prevent real problems with food and drink around the table.

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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02 Oct 2022 17:02 #335869 by charlest
Replied by charlest on topic John Company
On Tuesday we have JC2 scheduled along with Sidereal Confluence (using the Bifurcation expansion).

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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02 Oct 2022 18:08 #335871 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic John Company
It's broadly the same game with the crucial addition of a power/domestic politics aspect.
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02 Oct 2022 20:08 #335873 by Jackwraith
Replied by Jackwraith on topic John Company
Believe me ,Charlie, I had the same reaction. I pulled everything out and saw the components explanation and thought about immediately running to YouTube for an explanatory video. But it's really all right there. If you read those first couple pages of the rulebook, you'll understand pretty much everything else that spills out of the box. Keep in mind that, as with many printing practices, the small card decks are thoroughly mixed together, so you'll have to sort out all six player decks and the three scenario decks from each other. That's not to say that the rules aren't somewhat daunting, because they are. I'm in the middle of them now, even though I know how the game is played.
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02 Oct 2022 20:53 #335878 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic John Company
Follow the line.
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03 Oct 2022 08:57 - 03 Oct 2022 09:13 #335885 by sornars
Replied by sornars on topic John Company

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!)

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.

charlest wrote: On Tuesday we have JC2 scheduled along with Sidereal Confluence (using the Bifurcation expansion).

That's a lot of negotiating you've got scheduled!
Last edit: 03 Oct 2022 09:13 by sornars.
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03 Oct 2022 21:47 #335934 by charlest
Replied by charlest on topic John Company
I read the rules and I'm feeling much better about this. It seems like JC1 at a high level, with much more detail added to each sub-step of the game. Most of it looks really intelligent and well-considered. I'm getting a sensation that the simulative element has been enhanced, something I always considered as a backbone to Cole's designs and how they flirt with a wargame feel.

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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21 May 2023 00:57 - 21 May 2023 01:07 #339390 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic John Company
Our online group played today, some TWBG members...

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.
Last edit: 21 May 2023 01:07 by Gary Sax.
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