Company Operation

Phase IV of John Company: success checks, then each office in ribbon order — Chairman, Director of Trade and Special Envoy, Manager of Shipping, Military Affairs, the Presidencies with Trade, Commanders, Deploy and loot, Governors, China and the Governor General.

Overview

Starting with the Chairman, each office acts once, left to right along the red ribbon: Chairman, Director of Trade, Manager of Shipping, Military Affairs, then the Presidencies of Bombay, Madras and Bengal, then the Superintendent of Trade in China. A vacant office is skipped.

• Spend from the office. Money for an action comes from that office’s treasury and goes to the bank.
• No dead actions. You can’t take an action that couldn’t do anything — trading with no ship to fill an order, or deploying without a die to roll.
• Bonuses. When a box on the board shows an office’s pay, the officeholder takes that cash from the bank into their family treasury.

Checks

Most actions in India need a check:

1. Decide what to spend or exhaust and take that many dice, as the office card says.
2. Remove dice for any penalty.
3. Roll. Only the lowest die counts.

Chairman

1. Debt (optional). Move the Company Debt marker right up to 3 spaces; each adds £5 to the Company Balance. Each further step needs the consent of players holding a majority of Company shares (the Chairman’s share counts). The marker can’t go past the end of the track.
2. Allocate (required). Hand out the whole Company Balance to the other offices’ treasuries.

You may take debt while allocating, as long as the debt rules are kept.

Director of Trade

First take the Special Envoy action as many times as you like, then make up to two transfers: each moves one writer or one ship from one Presidency or sea zone to another.

Special Envoy

A check: £1 per die, no penalty. On a success choose one:

• Open trade with China — create the Superintendent of Trade in China and hire it at once.
• Open an order — open one closed order in a region the Company does not control.

Manager of Shipping

You must keep spending until the office has £2 or less left:

Each sea zone serves one Presidency: West Indian Ocean → Bombay, South → Madras, East → Bengal.

Military Affairs

1. Transfers. Up to two: each moves one officer or regiment from one Army to another (always to the top, active half of the box).
2. Officers-in-Training. Send every officer in training to an Army of your choice; they become officers.
3. Commanders. In each Army, if the Commander slot is empty or a player now has more pieces there than the Commander’s owner, pick a player among those with the most pieces and move one of their officers into the slot. The old Commander becomes an officer again. This is not hiring, so nepotism doesn’t apply.

Presidencies

Each President decides the order in which they, their Commander and their Governors act. Each must finish before the next starts. Commanders and Governors may pass, but must be offered the chance. The President’s Trade fits anywhere between them.

If the President is vacant, the Chairman sets the order but can’t trade or approve local alliances.

Trade

1. Declare regions. Always your home region, plus any others you could reach with your ships through open orders.
2. Check. £1 per die, minus 1 die per region declared besides your home.
3. On a success, place one writer from your Writers box on an open order for each ship in your sea zone, in the declared regions only, as many as you can. The first goes on your home port; each next one must be next to a writer you placed. Run out of writers? Use filled order tokens for the remaining ships.
4. Pay out. The Company Balance gains each filled order’s value; you take £1 per order filled; each player takes £1 per writer of theirs you placed.

• Home region privilege — you may never fill an order in another President’s home region, even if that President is vacant.
• One trade — after one success, a President can’t trade again this turn.

Where writers of two Presidencies end up next to each other, put a Presidency divider between them so they go home to the right place.

Commanders

First, ask your President to pay for local alliances in your Army box. Then Deploy as often as you like and can.

Local alliances

Each local alliance has a cost (paid from the President’s treasury) and a strength. Once bought it moves to the top of the Army box and can be used once that turn: either for one Deploy or to defend in Events in India — never split.

Deploy

1. Target. Your Presidency’s home region, a region tied to your Presidency, or one bordering it. Not another President’s home region, nor a Company-controlled region of another Presidency. A Company-controlled target needs a closed order or unrest to fix.
2. Check. Exhaust pieces (move them to the bottom half of the Army box): one die per officer or regiment, and a local alliance’s value in dice. Subtract the target’s strength — for an empire, the strength of all its regions. Company-controlled regions have strength 0.
3. Losses. Each player rolls one die per officer of theirs exhausted (never regiments); each 6 loses an officer to the supply.

Loot

On a success:

1. Loot. Take £4 per tower level, plus the loot token’s value (£4–£9) if it is still there. The minimum is the number of surviving officers used + 1. Pay it out in rounds: you take £1 as Commander plus £1 per officer of yours; then clockwise each other player takes £1 per officer; then £1 per regiment or local alliance goes to the bank. Repeat until the money runs out.
2. Trophies. Take one trophy per tower level. Remove the tower and dome (and all matching flags if it was a capital).
3. Impose order. Open every order and remove all unrest in the region.
4. Governorship. If the region wasn’t Company-controlled, its control token goes above your President’s box, its Governor overlay goes on the map and its Governor card goes to Vacant Offices. The region is now Company-controlled.

If the Elephant was in the region facing elsewhere, put it in the centre: the region now threatens to rebel against the Company.

On a catastrophic failure, lose half your trophies (round up) and your Commander returns to your supply.

Governors

Governors exist only after a successful Deploy. A Governor takes the dice shown on their card as a pool and may Administer again and again.

Administer

A check with all dice left in the pool, no penalty. On a success, take £1 (£2 if the previous roll was not a success) and choose one:

• Build a Company ship — two successes: the first puts a ship in the region (half built), the second moves it to your Presidency’s sea zone.
• Commission a regiment — a new regiment in your Presidency’s Army. Regiments count as officers, but their loot goes to the bank and they are never lost on a 6.
• Tax — £2 to the Company Balance or to your President’s treasury. From the second tax this turn, add one unrest to the region each time.

On a failure, add one unrest. After every roll the pool shrinks by one die. Stop when you choose, run out of dice or fail catastrophically.

Superintendent of Trade in China

Created by a Special Envoy or the Envoy to China law, and hired at once by the Chairman from any writer. Its treasury holds only ships, sent there by the Manager of Shipping or Director of Trade. They count as East Indian Ocean ships for storms, expenses, events and laws. It acts after Bengal.

Trade in China — one try per turn: one die per ship. Needs at least one export icon in Company-controlled regions. On a success the Company Balance gains £4 per export icon in Company-controlled regions and you take £1 per icon.

Governor General

Created by the Governor General law. All Governors become pensioners, their overlays and any half-built Company ships leave the map, and no new Governors are ever made. The Director of Trade’s holder swaps that card for the Governor General card (fatigue moves across). It is hired like the Director of Trade, acts in its place on the ribbon, uses its treasury, hires the Presidents and rolls for attrition.

When acting, first add £3 per Company-controlled region to the Company Balance. Then Govern as often as you like:

1. A check: £1 per die, no penalty. Each 6 rolled puts one unrest in every Company-controlled region.
2. On a success, take £1 per Company-controlled region, then for each such region choose one: a Company ship in any sea zone (or China); a regiment in any Army; or £2 to the Company Balance or another Company treasury plus one unrest (in a different region each time).
3. On a failure, one unrest in every Company-controlled region.

Only one successful Govern per turn. Lost regions skip the Governor step of Region Loss.