John Company: Second Edition

BGG Rank: 230

Players: 1 - 6, Recommended: 6+, Best: 6

Playing Time: 240 minutes

Weight (Complexity): 4.46 / 5

Mechanisms: Bribery, Dice Rolling, Negotiation, Push Your Luck, Simulation, Voting

Category: Economic, Educational, Negotiation, Political

Family: Country: India, Crowdfunding: Kickstarter, Digital Implementations: TableTop Simulator Mod (TTS), History: Anglo-Indian Wars, Misc: GettingGames Tutorial Videos, Theme: Business/Management, Theme: Colonial

Designer: Cole Wehrle

Artist: Jan Lipiński, Amita Pai

Publisher: Wehrlegig Games, 2Tomatoes Games, CrowD Games, Galakta, Galápagos Jogos, Giochix.it, Spielworxx, YOKA Games

Category: Economic

In John Company, players assume the roles of ambitious families attempting to use the British East India Company for personal gain. The game begins in the early eighteenth-century, when the Company has a weak foothold on the subcontinent. Over the course of the game, the Company might grow into the most powerful and insidious corporation in the world or collapse under the weight of its own ambition. John Company is a game about state-sponsored trade monopoly. Unlike most economic games players often do not control their own firms. Instead, they will collectively guide the Company by securing positions of power, attempting to steer the Company’s fate in ways that benefit their own interests. However, the Company is an unwieldy thing. It is difficult to do anything alone, and players will often need to negotiate with one another. In John Company, most everything is up for negotiation. Ultimately, this game isn’t about wealth; it’s about reputation. Each turn some of your family members may retire from their Company positions, giving them the opportunity to establish estates. Critically, players do not have full control over when these retirements happen. You will often need to borrow money from other players to make the best use for a chance of retirement. Players also gain victory points by competing in the London Season for prestige and securing fashionable properties. John Company engages very seriously with its theme. It is meant as a frank portrait of an institution that was as dysfunctional as it was influential. Accordingly, the game wrestles many of the key themes of imperialism and globalization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and how those developments were felt domestically. As such, this game might not be suitable for all players. Please make sure everyone in your group consents to this exploration before playing. The second edition is extensively revised and is not a reprint. —description from designer

Average Playing Time	4-8 hours
Best Player Count	4 Best, 5 Best
Collection	Kevin
Difficulty	Hardcore
Played	Unplayed
Recommended Player Count	Solo, 3 Players, 4 Players, 5 Players, 6 Players

Nostradamus71 rated: N/A/10

JC 2ND ED

DavyC rated: N/A/10

october 2021 - march 2022 - july 2022 - september 2022 - received october 2022

moriarty rated: N/A/10

Not played yet - shelf of shame.

nakedmeeple rated: N/A/10

DriverDown rated: N/A/10

Includes Metal Coins

mexo rated: N/A/10

Flo/JanL/Marius/Jon; Spielworxx, August 2021

JoPo rated: N/A/10

June 2022

CabbageKin rated: N/A/10

Looking fwd to this 🙂

Carter_Burke rated: N/A/10

Thanks Cole. This will be a gem.

ajewo rated: N/A/10

Will I like it? This is very much not a game for everyone. If you like negotiation games, games about history, business simulations, or wish your political games were less about fantasy/scifi empires and more about wearing nice looking hats, you will find a lot to enjoy here. Is there as much luck as in the first edition? There is less, though still much more than your average eurogame. How easy is this game to learn? It's an interesting teach. Unlike many of my other games, the design sort of teaches you how to play as you play it. It is dramatically easier to learn than the first edition but still takes time. I think it's best learned at a sort of leisurely pace as you play through your first two turns. There's a good chance we'll include a walkthrough of some kind. Are there still wild negotiations, marriages, and drama both petty and grand? Yes. This game generates at least one Victorian novel worth of drama each play. Is it a negotiation game? Basically everything in this game is tradeable and players can be quite creative in their deals. However, the negotiations in this game are very different from other negotiation games. In games like Catan or Sidereal Confluence, players trade because of comparative advantage. There's a lot of room for win-win deals that help both parties and getting good at those games is often about knowing when you can push your positions. In John Company, negotiations are more often about raw leverage. That is, players are trying to find points of leverage against each other. This means rather than making deals, you're more often asking for permission to do something you'd like to do.

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