John Company planning for weekend? Weeknight?

FYI, here's a good thread with some mindfuck rules I never would have guessed:

www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1931640/pos...rio-and-deregulation

The firm receives presidential bonuses???

Missed the rule on no losing shares on Company bankrupcy, need to look where that is in the rulebook. Seems close to impossible for Company to fail.

I think it’s the president that receives the bonus for orders filled by private companies - Cole’s explanation is that the bonus is actually parasitical leeching of the Indian populace through an abuse of power by the President, so fulfilling orders increases this “bonus” by enriching the locals. Which makes the single Presidency even more attractive.

I get the impression that making the company immune to failure is a design choice for this scenario; you want to get the full six turns out of it or there isn’t enough room to properly see how private firms work.

We slightly misplayed the "money to firm on last turn" thing. On a deeper re-read, you're not allowed to put money in "to cover expectations", which is to say you're not allowed to convert family cash to make the VP reward go off.

Throwing in a few bucks to make a Sail action seems legal, though. (In practice, because we paused at the bitter end of T5 to do this, it was all fine anyway).

We never quite let the company fail, but the share counts were really low the whole time (like 4-5 shares between three players). There's some ambiguity about how Jones company shares interact with that, I guess.

All in all, I think the post-monopoly scenario is a weird starting point for anything other than a learning game like we did. The total lack of money in the company combined with the players not really having enough to fund their own firms at the beginning means it's a slow start with lots of chances to mis-value something. In a slow, cash-starved environment, misvaluing by even a pound or two can have dramatic snowball effects.

I had a good time playing that scenario, but it just made me want to play the open game much more.

Repeating something I said in the game, we really stopped haggling on promise cubes as that game moved on, and I think it was simply coming to terms with the bigger ruleset and play space. It just sort of saps your attention.

We also need more players, because this game is awesome.

The bailout rules are in J3:

Bailouts after Deregulation. If the Company has lost its monopoly, a Bail- out will not cause the elimination of any shares.

The Chairman still has to vacate, so the share count will drop by one on each turn the company is bailed out. If nobody buys shares, it can go to zero directors and fail (but even then the private firms get another turn to try for the magic VP payout!).

But his is what I mean about Jones family cubes. They can't be elected to the Chairman, but they aren't reduced either. I guess since they can't hold office and don't vote, the sensible thing is to ignore them for company failure too.

Agree with Mezike, it looks like that ruling means the President of that region receives bonuses for all orders filled, whether by the Company or private firms (ie count both cubes and disks). For the late-start scenario, that makes the Governer General a more important position and a good springboard to grifting enough cash to start your own firm. (thematic again)

Sooo - we ought to plan the next session. The usual time of Noon Pacific on Saturday works for me and any week is fine as I've no plan to be out of the house on a Saturday night for quite some time.

Keen to just dive into a full game, we can always pause and play across two sessions if the game ends up running overly long. I think the longest session I could stretch to would be five hours if we go a little earlier with an 11:30 start time; given that we all play with fairly fast decisions and little downtime I think it is achievable in one sitting, especially now that we've figured out the super-janky family firm dividend rules. Would also be happy to go back to the early game if it means we can welcome in a fourth player.

Start time isn't really an issue for me (I'm +1 to Pacific time anyway), we can set it back to wherever works on a Saturday. A couple of hours earlier would be doable to me.

While I'd like to play the full game (and agree we should dive in if it's just us), I'm also fine with playing early company if we have 4 players.

100% on would be glad to go back to intro if we got more players---feel free to post if you're reading this.

Otherwise, I can't do this Saturday... maybe we could get a full game started one of these days or evenings and then pick it up the Saturday after? I'm off contract and *very* pointedly not working if they're not paying so I'm uber flexible.

OK sure. Weekdays are fine for me as it is the evening here so all the same for me, but the timezone difference means that I personally am still limited to daytime Pacific meets. If you guys want to get a weekday evening game going then I'll just wait out until the next weekend session, no worries.

I can do weekday afternoons, dunno about Not Sure not everyone has a job with off contract summers

Otherwise let's push till the weekend after this and plan for that?

I might be able to make a weekday with some notice, but I'm supposed to be working. Saturday the 11th definitely works.

Happy with the plan for 11th.

Also, I'm likely to be running an early scenario teaching game with one or maybe two of my non-TWBG friends at some point mid-week, just mentioning it here in case anyone wants to join in. It'll be roughly 8pm UK so Noon Pacific, precise day to be confirmed.

I might be in for it, let me know when the day firms up.

Same here, I might be able to swing an afternoon to play a slightly bigger game.

Not like I'm taking any other time off work these days.

Looks like Friday will be the day we play, let me know if you guys are still up for it.

I can do a Friday afternoon game but I probably can't then do a Saturday afternoon game from a time with my family perspective... if Not Sure is around Friday, we could finally get in a more than 3 player game. If I had to choose between the two I'd probably like to do the 4+ player game and punt the 3 player to another time/weekend?