Certificate Distribution
How 18 India begins: preparing the certificate deck, dealing hands, building the three IPO rows and the Open Market, keeping and drafting your stock options — plus the auction and 2-player variants.
Preparing the deck
Set aside the 9 Directors’ Certificates. Shuffle the remaining eight 10% shares of each of the 9 Companies, the ten GIPR shares and the 6 Private Companies into one deck.
Dealing
| Players | Dealt to each | Each IPO row | Open Market | Kept |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 15 | 18 | 4 | 8 |
| 3 | 13 | 15 | 4 | 7 |
| 4 | 11 | 13 | 5 | 6 |
| 5 | 10 | 12 | 2 | 5 |
Hands are secret.
The IPO and Open Market
Deal the IPO: three face-up rows, fanned so every certificate shows, in the dealt order (never sorted), from the player-number icons toward the numbered space at the end. The few leftover certificates go to the Open Market; for each, the bank pays its printed value onto that Company’s charter.
Keeping certificates
Each player keeps the number shown above and discards the rest face down to the middle.
Strategy tip from the rulebook: count what the IPO shows. If five shares of a Company are in the IPO, only three are in hands (10 – 5 – 2 for the Director’s Certificate) — a poor candidate to start unless all three are yours. About four options in one Company make a good start.
The draft
Shuffle the discards, lay them face up and add the Directors’ Certificates. Draft one certificate at a time: reverse turn order first, then turn order, round and round (4 players: 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2…) until none remain. Some players get one more than others. The player after the one who drafted last starts the first Stock Round.
The certificates in your hand are options: you never have to buy them.
Variants
Certificate auction
For experienced players: instead of the draft, in turn order each player picks an available certificate and bids on it (₹1 steps; zero allowed); the winner adds it to their hand. Takes about 20 minutes more.
Two-player variants
Published by the designers in MAINLINE Magazine issue 3 (spring 2024) to hide information with 2 players (BGG thread):
- Remove certificates: remove four random 10% shares unseen before dealing, and deal 13 to each player instead of 15.
- Dummy hand (untested): set up as for 3 players (money and certificate limit stay as for 2); the third hand lies face down by the market, and whenever you buy from your hand you may draw its top card.