John Company 2nd Edition - Playthrough With Friends

Today I am joined by my friends Matt and Dave to play a full game of John Company 2nd Edition! I will start with a "brief" overview of the game, and then we will teach the rules while we play.

Timestamps:
Introduction - 0:00
Game thematic overview - 1:27
Rules overview - 4:12
Hand draft explanation - 12:35
Game start - 15:04
Family phase - 15:14
Chairman explanation - 25:13
Trade minister explanation - 39:46
Shipping minister explanation - 43:52
Military Affairs explanation - 46:07
Presidents explanation - 48:07
Commanders explanation - 51:00
Running a trade route - 58:03
Bonus phase - 1:07:55
Revenue phase - 1:08:22
Company standing explanation - 1:09:51
Dividends explanation - 1:10:15
Storm events - 1:13:23
Events in India - 1:14:49
Parliament phase - 1:17:35
Upkeep & refresh phase - 1:27:06
London season phase - 1:27:24
Hiring phase - 1:36:55
Governors explanation - 1:38:56
Trade in China explanation - 2:03:50
Crisis events explanation - 2:07:51
Retirements explanation - 2:17:26
Blackmail explanation - 2:23:30
Next round - 3:16:06
Final round - 3:51:11
Endgame scoring - 4:20:46
Endgame discussion - 4:22:28

[sebastienscherr]

2:34:52 The purple officer in Bengal Army was also a competitor for the office of Governor of Bengal ! So both Dave AND Jon should have given consent for nepotism to Matt. Which might have changed the negotiation a bit...

[gabemead]

The well edited video quality on this absolute monster of a video is stellar! This is exactly what I needed to really learn this game. Brilliant, no notes!

[EmanuelaleunamE]

(Note that at 4:38, the marker on the Company Standing track was misplaced; it should've gone back to the "S"-labeled position. This was eventually fixed at 55:37 and did not impact gameplay.)

This video has been my *lifesaver*. I especially love the combination of teacher-player, super-experienced player, and new-to-the-game player. I get to learn the game from the excellent teacher-player, hear about planning for successful strategies from the super-experienced player, and learn along with the new-to-the-game player as they ask the questions that sprout organically as someone is being taught and helped along in their first-ever play of a game.

[Crojach]

John Company climbed up to be one of my favorite and now seeing this playthrough is just a cherry on top :)

[Feldingor]

Great video Jon! I think that having Dave not knowing anything about the game has been the key for this playthrough. I found your explaining and planning and talking about the repercussions and interweaving of all the game pieces paramount to understand what’s going on here.
This game is very fascinating and I love historical based games.
Just one hour into the video but I’m loving every minute 👍

[RobWinton]

First of your videos I've watched. This is so well presented - sound, lightning, camera angles, explanations, etc.
Thanks for putting in the hard work to create such a polished item.

[gaaraxebeard]

This was great to watch! I agree with Dave, 5 rounds feels incomplete and I would likely prefer the longer version. I find this game fascinating and am sold on it but I doubt I could convince any of my friends/family to play a game like this.

[MohitSharma-nz]

amazing teach+playthrough jon. loved it. great camera angles to make everything very clear and easy to follow. keep up the awesome work!!

[stevegeorge]

Really appreciate Matt slowing down the game play to explain what is going on with the rule elements. Made understanding what was happening better, calmer, and enjoyable. So thanks!

[gtetyres]

Thank you Jon, Dave and Matt for a really enjoyable playthrough. It is one of the best playthroughs of any game I have watched, the chat remaining relevant to the game, the editing was also superb. Well done all.

[Denialohyeah]

Thank you for making my day better with this kind of content. Love the playthroughs with friends.

[ryanamos]

Jon, I don't think I would have EVER gotten this game to the table without this video! Thanks!

[felseal]

absolutely love the playthroughs with friends, especially longer playthroughs like this :D

[Skycroft]

As promised, I have a lot to say about this game. So much, in fact, that I split up into a secondary comment in the replies! Thanks, first off, for the video, this one was a _lot_ of work I know. I'm really glad you went to the effort. I hope we'll keep seeing some full playthroughs of long games like this, even if it's only once a year or even less frequent.

I like a lot of this game’s mechanics, but unfortunately I’m just not a fan of semi-coop. I think I would actually like this game more if the company failing meant everyone loses – as it is, it is a little too easy for someone who’s not invested in the company to pull it down from the inside. The other players can group together to prevent that, but _that_ leads to situations where the ‘outside’ player is sitting there twiddling their thumbs for hours, which is needless to say not great either. For a big event game like this, that sort of thing is a big failing IMO. That’s my main mechanical criticism, otherwise I like this game a lot.

This game also has a solo mode that deserves a shout out. Ricky Royal did a really good job. To be clear, I wouldn’t rank this as one of my favorite solo games – it’s not. It’s more that I’m impressed that he managed to make a solo mode for a game like this _at all._ It’s genuinely an accomplishment. However, I wouldn’t say this game is worth getting just for the solo mode. You need a group of friends who like this sort of game and have the free time to play it once in a while, and I unfortunately do not have such a thing alas.

Also in every playthrough I’ve seen of this, people don’t defend their regions enough lol. It was nice to see a sort of historical Maratha empire rise in your game though! Well, historial-ish but that’s because of the map quibbles mentioned below.

Now for the big thing: let’s talk about the game’s themes. Now, I can’t speak for every Indian and will not try to, but I think this game does a _much_ better job at handling its colonial theme than, well, the vast majority of board games out there with a colonial theme (which is… a _lot_ of board games). Part of it, of course, is that game tries to be both historically accurate but also unflinching. It makes no bones about how the company looted, plundered, conquered, and smuggled drugs, and your motives for doing so are purely pecuniary. You are the bad guys and the game is clear on that.

But also, I mentioned on your Endeavor: Age of Sail video that that game made me profoundly uncomfortable, even though I happily play video games set in the same era (Europa Universalis 4 is one of my favorite games). I speculated at the time that one of the things I didn’t like was that E:AoS depicted the rest of the world as completely passive, simply sitting there awaiting European colonization.

By contrast, John Company really shines here. India feels _alive_ in a way that’s rare in a board game. Empires rise and conquer and fall independently of what the company is doing. There is pushback and rebellion to British attempts at colonization. It is even possible in the game for the Mughal empire to become resurgent and remain strong through the 18th century while the company completely flounders. It’s not _likely_ (and it wasn’t likely historically!) but the fact that it’s possible at all is great. There’s a real sense that the British are entering into an _already existing_ complex political situation and not just conquering empty land. That’s something about this game I really like. India isn't just sitting there for the British to take, it has agency and power and can fight back.

The one main thematic criticism I have about this game has to do with the map. The region named ‘Maratha’ should not be called that. It is not the core of the Maratha empire and indeed the Maratha rarely controlled most of it. If I were to name it, I would call it ‘Orissa’. The region that _should_ be called Maratha is the region currently called Bombay. Much of that region is the modern day state of Maharashtra, where the Marathi people live. Bombay – now Mumbai – is a _city, _ currently the state capital of Maharashtra. The capital of the Maratha empire was Raigad, later moved to Pune, both of which are in Maharashtra (and Pune, incidentally, is where I was born. My mother is Marathi). Bombay is the name of the Presidency, but at the time it was the trade city the British had _in Maratha territory._ I don’t think it’s too much to ask for players to get that the Presidency is named after the city and not the region. It’s fair to say I care more about this than most because of my own Marathi heritage though.

Although don’t ask me why the Madras and Bombay Presidencies are named after cities but the Bengal one is named after the region, take it up with the EIC. That said, I don’t think there’s a better name for the Madras region. That region is the modern state of Tamil Nadu but at the time it was a bunch of smaller states not a single regional power like the Maratha.

A related map criticism is that the Mughal Empire in the 1710 start is too weak. The Mughal Empire fell apart quite quickly after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 but it didn’t fall apart _that_ quickly. Certainly Bengal should still be part of it. So to modify the 1710 start, I would have the Empire include Delhi and *all* adjacent regions, rename Maratha to Orissa (and reduce its tower to 0), rename Bombay to Maratha (and increase its tower to 2) and move the elephant between it and Delhi. So the first Crisis is still the Maratha revolt, as it should be.

One might make comment that this makes it a lot harder for the company to take land in India but I think that’s actually historical. For a variety of reasons (some of which I’ll talk about in the follow up comment), I actually think it’s not reasonable for the company to own significant amounts of territory (as opposed to trade cities, which they already have at game start) in India until around the middle of the century. Historically, the company *didn’t*.

And a more minor thing, but in 1757 I would say the game should start with the loot tokens in Punjab and Delhi already flipped. Delhi has recently been sacked by a giant army that came from Iran – there’s nothing there left to loot!

I have some other historical quibbles, but I’ve put them in a separate comment in the replies.

[timoseppa]

This was great. I am not running out to get the game, but I would play it if someone asked me - and I had my schedule clear. I really enjoyed experiencing the game through your play.

[stevewithington]

This was awesome. Would like to see you do the other two scenarios then play the ‘long’ game, but appreciate that’s an immense time commitment.

As an aside, regarding the vagaries of dice rolls, the first time I played JC2E I rolled five dice on a fairly crucial matter for the company and rolled five sixes. Seriously, I’ve never rolled a Yahtzee my entire life then did it in the worst possible way with this. However, it instantly became my most memorable gaming moment.

[der.Schtefan]

Matt's approach to go hugh or go home is the correct one. Like his way!

[der.Schtefan]

There is a major misunderstanding of probabilities here. It is not 80 vs 87% success being 7% more. It is actually 20% failure vs 13% failure, thus a reduction of 35% of all failure cases. Humans are terrible correctly valuing probabilities. Technically, you need to assign the potential outcomes an expected value to correctly assess the situation. When you do the role for two regions at 1:52:33, and you roll dice for an outcome of 14 pounds, the expected outcome of 80 vs 87% is 11.2 vs 12.18 (-1). So even after spending an extra pound, the expected value is the same, but the probability of failure is reduced by 35%!!

[TheJawlin]

3:57:54
Minor rule thing: Director of Trade needs be hired from offices. So in the current board state, the candidate pool would be: Military Affairs, Presidency of Bombay, and Presidency of Madras. Blue/Dave Chairman used the Nepotism card, to move a writer of Bombay to Director of Trade, which is incorrect. Rather Blue/Dave Chairman should have used the Nepotism card, to move Presidency of Madras into Director of Trade. And then, properly move attrition (from Presidency of Madras to the incoming Director of Trade), and then return the Presidency of Madras office to the vacant offices.

Writers are only considered for Director of Trade, if there was no Manager of Shipping, Military Affairs, Presidencies or Superintendent of China ie. No offices are filled.

Really fun playthrough and follow along. Great to see gameplay especially in a 3p game.

[hyperteleXii]

This is the *simplest* ruleset for the game? It's monstrously complicated! I love it 😃