John Company PBF

[Benkyo]

I’m going to go over the India phase now. While it’s fine leaving India as a mysterious force, unknowable and disruptive, there’s also no real downside to being verbose in async play.

First there’s the storm die. The 6 faces are:
1 all
2 East
2 West
3 South
4
4

The numbers are how many events occur, and the text (depiction of storm clouds) is which ships have to roll for storms.

Every ship in a storm zone rolls: 1 or 2, nothing happens. 3 or 4, flip the ship to it’s fatigued side, or sink if already fatigued. 5 or 6 it sinks. Sunk player ship tokens are returned to their respective shipyards.

Events are far more complicated, and I’ll just provide an overview of the types and odds. In each case “the region” means the region depicted on the next card in the draw deck. Cascade means close all orders in adjacent regions that are directly adjacent to the cascade region. Cascades can chain:
4/20: Turmoil, close the northernmost open order in the region, cascade if all closed.
2/20: Windfall, bonuses for every write in the region and adjacent regions.
1/20: Shuffle, move the crisis elephant, shuffle this tile back into deck, shuffle discard and place back on top of deck. So this causes all the events so far to repeat first, in the same set of regions, re-randomised.
4/20: Leader, increase tower strength in the region, or a strong +2~+4 rebellion in a dominated region. Move elephant if successful rebellion in company dominated region.
2/20: Peace, open orders across the crisis elephant border, or all orders if elephant was fully in a company region, increase tower strength in regions each side of the border.
6/20: Resolve crisis, an invasion or a rebellion with strength -1~+3 across the crisis elephant border. Successful invasions will increase empire size, create new empires, or shatter empires, but does not significantly affect trade. Rebellions are by dominated or governed regions, and successful rebellions close all orders in the attacking region, cascading if all already closed.
1/20: Foreign invasion, invasion crisis in every port region indicated by another roll of the storm die, or “the region” if a 4 is rolled. Invasion with strength equal to another die roll. Successful invasion closes all orders, potentially causes cascades, shatters empires, sets tower strength to half the die roll.

[Benkyo]

Dividends paid out, company standing increases.

Storm die roll is a 4. No storms.

First event is a failed rebellion by Maratha against Delhi. Delhi strength reduced by 1. Crisis elephant moved to indicate looming rebellion by Punjab against Delhi.

[Benkyo]

Second event is a failed rebellion by Punjab. No change. Elephant moved to indicate looming rebellion by Maratha.

[Benkyo]

Third event is turmoil in Delhi, last open order there closed.

[Benkyo]

Last event is where I remember I should have waited for COMaestro to specify writer placement, as turmoil in Bengal closes an order and kills the Sykes family writer.

[Benkyo]

Next up is Parliament Meets.

@GeeBizzle the first law up for consideration is Tenure Limits

So how this works is:
The family in control of the Prime Minister gets to accept the currently proposed law to vote on, or draw another. Can draw up to 3, but a drawn crisis becomes compulsory.

After selecting a law to vote on, GeeBizzle must move the Prime Ministers arm clockwise or anticlockwise to the indicated spot.

In this example, that means to increase the importance of shipping, or social standing.

The initial support for the vote is indicated (0 here). GeeBizzle must vote in favour of a chosen law. A 0 or better final total is needed to pass. Vote clockwise from GeeBizzle. Whoever puts the most votes into voting against the law becomes the leader of the opposition. Players may add their votes to that of the Opposition Leader to form a coalition. Money from family treasuries may be used - £1 = 1 vote.

The law, if passed, has the stated effects that remain in play, and the effect indicated on the wheel. An “increase” in the most influential status would mean the player in control of the Prime Minister can swap any other two markers. GeeBizzle would also get a passed law Power token.

The law, if failed, is discarded. The Opposition Leader gains control of the Prime Minister. The wheel pointer is shifted one space to an adjacent space, and that effect is resolved instead (so, for example, if GeeBizzle selected Social Standing Power, the pointer could be moved to Shipping Power or Shipping Tax + Window Tax).

On the wheel, Bonus = £1 to families for every icon
Tax = pay £1 for every icon, lose card(s) if unable to pay.
Window tax = pay £1 for every icon, lose card(s) and estate(s) if unable to pay.

[COMaestro]

I was going to say just leave it as is.

Question: When Director of Trade gets to move two things (ships or writers), does that include writers on trade spots?

[Benkyo]

Writers will be reset (return to associated presidency) in the upkeep phase, up next, so they are never on orders when the Director of Trade makes that decision.

[Benkyo]

Here I realise I resolved the first rebellion incorrectly. It’s all deterministic, so I will redo.

[Benkyo]

OK, the first rebellion by Maratha against Delhi was successful, which is considerably worse for the company. Maratha is no longer dominated by Delhi, but all orders in Maratha are closed. After the failed rebellion by Punjab, instead of another attempt at rebellion, Maratha as a sovereign region has its sights set on invasion of Bombay. Everything else resolved in the same way as described above.

As a freebie bit of deck knowledge, I will state that we know, based on drawn and undrawn cards, that the next event will definitely be a new leader arising somewhere other than Bengal. That’s all the knowledge that card-counting (ahem spies in India) can glean.

[Benkyo]

Also, reminder that anyone is free to chip in and discuss their probable voting for the law GeeBizzle is currently looking at, and whether that depends on which way the PM’s arm swings - the decision to vote on it or draw another need not be made in a vacuum.

[RossM]

I think it’s a good law if it gets more writers on the table

[GeeBizzle]

I also like the idea of our chairman being a revolving position but @lalunaverde may see things differently. Similarly I would like to push shipbuilding up the power track.

I could draw another card, this could give us the choice of another law (I.e. we could still select this one or the new one) or force a crisis. Is that right? @Benkyo.

[COMaestro]

More writers are good, especially considering we just lost one. Who knew it could be so dangerous?

[Benkyo]

That is correct.

If you want to know the odds of a crisis, I can look that up. Or the odds of drawing tax instead of power, etc. If I had to guess, I’d say that drawing a first law with a general consensus among those that have votes that has no real negative effects is pretty lucky. I suppose the main question is whether whistle_pig is opposed, with her potential 3 votes.

[Whistle_Pig]

I’m all for keeping the chairmanship revolving. We don’t want the company stagnating.

[GeeBizzle]

Ok let’s call a vote on the Tenure limit law.

[GeeBizzle]

I’ll put two votes for it and if it was required remind Ross of our prior arrangement.

[Benkyo]

@GeeBizzle you only have one vote, I think? Your one shipyard. Or are you spending money already?

You also have to specify which spot you picked on the wheel (policy) before the vote.

[COMaestro]

I believe I have a vote from my shipyard which will be a Yea.