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4-player playthrough · 1710 scenario

John Company: Second Edition: strategy and opening decisions

Three decisions to watch in the teaching game. These notes explain why a move can help, what it costs and when the position may call for something else.

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Decision 01

Hold offices and keep cash ready to retire

Only officeholders roll attrition, so each office is another chance to produce a pensioner, and retiring pensioners onto prizes supplies most victory points. Community advice favours holding more than one office and keeping enough family cash to pay when a retirement arrives, because the dice decide the timing. Early retirements, even to the £2 prize, can earn an early prestige-card pick; later ones suit the larger estates, which then charge upkeep every turn and carry more windows for window taxes. With two pensioners, two £4 prizes score the same as one £8 prize and lose less if a payment fails. Spouses add secure points and stacking retirement discounts, though a restriction such as Mr. Rochester’s writer ban can bite. Commanders never retire, so a military career needs real offices too. In the last turn, a luxury can turn spare cash into 2 VP. Benyon’s steady retirements, two spouses and five shares produced the recorded win; different attrition rolls could have stalled the same plan.

Decision 02

Fund ships and trades without breaking the Company

Ships cap how many orders each Presidency can fill, so community advice ranks the Shipping budget among the Company’s best investments. The Chairman may take three Debt a turn without consent to finance ships and trades. Each Debt adds £1 of expenses but also lets a waiting Stock Exchange bid become a share, and every extra share makes a later dividend dearer. How much to borrow remains disputed. Missing expectations lowers Standing; paying out more in dividends than expectations raises it. Use at least three dice on a check that matters, since a lowest die of 5 or 6 removes the officeholder without retirement; whether to hold money back for a retry or roll more dice once is also disputed. Here, storms sank four ships on turn four and Standing slipped to the £6 expectations space, but the Company survived, so every share scored. Forum advice, though contested, is to support the Company unless clearly ahead: failure makes shares cost points and draws a random failure card.

Decision 03

Price consent, votes and the leader’s position

Hiring your own family needs the consent of every other family with a candidate in that pool, so one well-placed writer can turn an appointment into a deal. Benyon’s Madras writer did that on turn two, and the presidency went to Benyon in exchange for a promise card. Consent, appointments and Shipping fees changed hands for small sums or promises; only immediate transfers bind, and promise cards are the only enforceable future commitments. In Parliament, enterprise votes cost nothing, and whoever casts the most votes against a failing law becomes Prime Minister, a title worth 2 power at the end.With winning totals often near twenty, the 5 VP power award can decide a game: Larkins’s final opposing vote took the dial and lifted shipping to the top of the Power track. Tables often gang up on a clear leader, as three families did to keep Benyon out of the Chair, but that cannot remove points already banked and can push a leader to sink the Company. Most cited advice assumes five-turn 1710 games; little of it isolates four players.

Test the idea at the table

This original four-player route plays the 1710 Early Company scenario, which the rulebook recommends playing first, over its five turns. The Hastings, Benyon, Larkins and Walsh families start from one authored legal deal of the twelve base setup cards, and the India event tiles follow one fixed legal order chosen to show a wide range of events. All 293 steps reach the real Final Scoring with the Company surviving: Larkins takes the 5 VP power award and Walsh the 2 VP second award, and Benyon wins with 22 VP to Hastings 12, Larkins 11 and Walsh 10. Fixed dice and draws support teaching; alternatives explain decisions without branching the replay.

Revisit a decision in the guided playthrough and compare its payment, position and next available action. The alternatives explain trade-offs; they do not branch into a simulated new game or promise a winning line.

Sources and scope

The English Second Edition rulebook (second printing, 2023), the publisher’s errata thread and the official print-and-play card faces were checked on 30 October 2026. This original four-player route plays the five-turn 1710 scenario with an authored setup deal, a fixed legal event order and recorded dice. Substantive BGG Strategy-forum threads and designer posts inform conditional strategy commentary. Foreign Invasion, region loss, China, the Governor General, Company failure, Deregulation and private firms, and the Crown solo and two-player rules are outside this playthrough. Board, card and component art: Wehrlegig Games, used under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 from the official print-and-play. On 5 November 2026 the tutorial was checked again against the printed cards, the rules and the latest errata available, and corrected where they differed.

Reading guide reviewed 2026-11-05; based on tutorial v1.0.5. This date records an editorial review of the existing tutorial, not a new rules edition. Strategic suggestions are conditional interpretations, separate from official rules.