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John Company
Not Sure wrote: If the playtime starts to come down when the mechanics get internalized, I really feel like 5 turns is going to feel over almost before it begins.
I think 1710 will fulfill it's intended role as an introductory game but if played regularly, the main game will be one of the other scenarios or the full campaign. Five family actions is way too limiting to really do anything particularly crazy; you'll be railroaded into picking one of a few actions based on your starting position. The rulebook itself seems to support that view:
The 1758 Scenario (The Company Under Siege) is recommended for those who have played the 1710 Scenario a couple times. Here, the Company begins with its monopoly, but this can be broken, opening the gates of India to private firms.
I still haven't seen private firms in either edition so I'm all for playing some more.
I agree that Cole was not just informed by our one game but bringing in feedback from his own experiences as well but it's still cool that it kicked off that discussion.
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I'm getting much more pumped to get my copy, it's kind of amazing watching what feels like the chaotic mess of Cole's tweaks start to find some core things that enrich the play.
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- Sagrilarus
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- Sagrilarus
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discord.gg/7ezjGc3
If the stars aligned schedule wise and you played we would have 5, which would be quite an intriguing game of John Company. We've only played 2nd edition with 3 which has a really different flavor.
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Our game yesterday (Turn 3 company failure) clocked in at about 2 hours, although 3 is a little more common for 1710 scenario, and 1st edition deregulation games could run 4.
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Up for more as always, I can also start an hour later than usual if that helps but probably not more than that because of how long these games can run.
I think Cole has mentioned before that Infamous Traffic is something he wants to revisit in the near future but I’d be happy to try the original to get a feel for what it’s al about.
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On a mechanical layer, the fact that money always has a location and private purses differ from company/office purses is an obvious one but beyond that, the shared incentive structure of co-owned companies and that changing in a heartbeat based on your board position also applies. The fact that rusting trains and dumping companies on people is a key element of 18XX strategy felt so similar to witholding dividends and promoting people against their will into useless offices. I think I prefer the injection of randomness that John Company brings to the 18XX formula (although I do believe some 18XX games have event decks as well) but it did make me even more tempted to try out some train games in the future.
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Preproduction copy pictures for anyone who backed.
The thing about Cole's graphic design eye is that not only do the games look great but they genuinely look classy and wholly outside the hobby aesthetically.
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It was also interesting last week to see them openly acknowledging in Discord that a lot of development decisions and responses had been driven by a very small, ultra-dedicated set of playtesters and their extensive commentary (essentially the thing I had minor concerns about some months ago). That isn't necessarily bad, because they are thorough, genuinely thoughtful players. Anyway, too late to do anything about it now, and it'll likely be more fully tested than a lot of games of similar heft (e.g., from GMT)--but it'll be interesting to see how it hits with a wider audience, in terms of unearthing ambiguities, corner cases, etc. When you're in the molten core of folks who've been eyeballs deep in it for this long, it's got to be hard to extricate yourself from all the parts that've gone through multiple iterations (all of which you know) and really grapple with it in the way brand new players will.
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