New Angeles Review

Oh Capitalism! Isn’t it wonderful! The denizens of New Angeles love capitalism so much they declared themselves independent of the United States and their pesky taxes (socialist nonsense) so that everyone can benefit from the wonders of trickle down economic nonsense… No I can’t do it anymore! Trickle down economics! That’s the leak in my ceiling! It’s a nightm –

NBN apologises for a technical fault. Normal programming will return shortly.

Come to New Angeles! A Utopian society where every need is provided for with perfect efficiency by our android workforce. See: the wondrous space elevator, explore: a vast city home to millions, discover: technological wonders ahead of anywhere in the system. New Angeles: the city where dreams come true!

End Transmission

 

Players: 4 – 6

 

Time: 2 – 4 hours

 

Ages: 14+

 

 

In a far off and frankly unimaginable future, all-powerful mega corporations have complete control over society. And would you believe they are more interested in making money than helping the workingman? I know, right? Still, I guess that’s why it’s called Science Fiction!

It’s a rich man’s world

You take on the role of CEO of one of New Angeles’ biggest corporations, Jinteki, Haas-Bioroid or Asmod Globalsec, to name a few. If these names sound familiar, it’s either because you are a fan of Living Card Game Netrunner, set in the same android-filled universe as New Angeles, or it’s because you’ve been sampling the Creaking Shelves cocktail menu (everything sounds the same after a couple of Gin-tekis).

Life is pretty good as a CEO. Days spent in what I imagine is a luxurious board room as you debate the pressing concerns of the day with other CEOs, Gin-teki in one hand, a selection of action cards in the other. You’re there to make money but money’s a relative thing. This isn’t some vulgar race to get the most. Anyone and everyone can win as far as you’re concerned. Well. Except for that one CEO that you really, really, hate and want to… come at least one credit ahead of at the end of the game. That’ll show ‘em.

How do you know who you hate? Well, as with real CEOs you’ll receive a secret objective card as you take you seat in the board room (as my living room will now be forever known) that designates one of the other companies as your company to beat. Of course you might get your own company and while you probably should hate yourself for the broadly evil ways you make money, what this really means is you just want to do well. It’s the New Angeles dream! What’s doing well? It’s coming first. Or second. Or maybe third if there are lots of you. Hey, it’s really not about crushing everyone, just have a good time, you know?

Money Money Money

The money is going to come pouring in from two main places. Each company has some monopoly, whether its control of the media (NBN – derder-dederder…), androids (Haas-Bioroid) or buildings and xenomorphs (Weyland). Whenever the corresponding parts of the game are affected, someone, somewhere, had to pay to use your products. So when you mop up that infectious disease plaguing La Costa, Jin-teki gets a big ‘ol smile on his face. A second, and very important way to make cash is through wise investments. Each third of the game you’ll pick up an investment to pursue, and after two rounds you’ll score it. These are effectively gambles on the state of the board at the end of the two rounds. You might get 4 money if there are 2 power outages on the board, or 7 if there are 3. Alternatively you’ll get money depending on how much of a certain commodity has been produced. These investments can be big money if played well, or disastrous if played poorly.

This is where we get into the meaty heart of New Angeles. Because the state of the board is entirely in the hands of you, the most powerful players in the city. Each round is broken up into some number of deal phases where you all decide upon the best course of action. A rotating head CEO – the most terrifying of all the CEOs… no, I mean, a first player that moves around after each deal, will briefly put down their Gin-teki to play an action card into the main offer area. Maybe key sectors of the city are in strike, so they select a media action to reduce this unrest (of course, this is the Rupert Murdoch NBN player who gets money for reducing unrest, but sssshhh…!) It then goes round the table and players decide whether to suggest a different action – a counter offer. Let’s say Haas-Bioroid leaps at the opportunity to suggest just moving the androids to districts that aren’t in strike. Look, we don’t even need energy this round, lets move them here where we can get that tech we are so short of.

And now the fun really begins. With a counter offer in play, the other players have the opportunity to add their support to one proposal or the other. And not just their vocal support (though I’m sure that would be appreciated) votes require players to discard cards in support of one side or the other. And cards are a precious commodity! You can only reliably guarantee three new ones at the start of your turn as head CEO, which with 6 players might be quite a wait. Therefore the negotiations begin! Players who proposed offers can’t vote, but they can bribe, cajole, promise or threaten the other players in return for their support. Money changes hands, assets (powerful reward cards players collect when they win a deal) might change hands. Players will appeal to the good conscience of the other players that this action, this one right here that I just played, is the one the city needs right now! And it is glorious.

There are layers to this whole process. I’ve seen players propose counter offers when they love the main offer, because a second counter offer costs an extra card to play. In a move that I am so proud of, we needed to develop a region, increasing its output by placing a develop token there. I had the one action card that could achieve this, and so when someone proposed a reasonably sensible offer (that I didn’t like), I threw this in as a counter offer to force people to vote for me (getting me an awesome asset card at the same time). Otherwise, we wouldn’t have met demand this round. And meeting demand is essential.

All the things I could do

Sadly, with great power comes great responsibilty. You may be the masters of New Angeles but if you abuse your powers too much (I mean, you can still abuse them quite a bit) then eventually even the US government will notice the peoples suffering and come in to take over. Then you’ll have to pay taxes! And you’ll lose the game but taxes! Urgh! Every two rounds there is a demand phase (which is also when you score your investments) where you need to have exported a certain number of goods of the various types produced in the city.

Credits, cocktails, index cards, water drops and science. Failure to meet these quotas will see the deadly red threat track at the top of the board hurtling towards its ultimate conclusion: 25 suffering. The precise quantity of oil – I mean suffering that brings in the US. Each round there will be an event, some potential spilling over of the chaos into the international news. Depending on the board state, threat may increase, and it may increase a lot! Cleverly, the back of the card shows what element of the game the event is focussed on, whether it’s civilian unrest or the android hating, hammer wielding Human First miniatures. You always know roughly what you’re trying to avoid and have the round to deal with it. But that might distract from the main business of whipping those androids into production and making money for yourself.

The other major way is if you do anything in a region with an illness token. These disease markers start off easily ignored, but rapidly become a major issue, forcing you to carefully organise the actions that get played if you want to minimise the threat. But unfortunately for your businesses, not everyone wants to minimise threat…

One player’s objective card might be that of the Federalist! They want the government to take control, presumably having negotiated favourable operating conditions for themselves first. Somewhere around the table, most likely, is a player who is intentionally trying to tank the game. But they won’t be obvious about it. 25 threat takes a long time to accumulate and any obviously federalist moves means no-one will ever support your proposals again – you’ll be effectively put out of the game.

It’s a tricky position to be in but getting your way in New Angeles requires extreme cunning no matter what your role is. You want to force situations to suit you in whatever way you can and there are so many ways. For example, Haas-Bioroid gets money whenever an action is played to move androids. Therefore, whenever he gets to move them, it’s in his interest to leave one out of position, so that the group has to play another move androids card later. It’s as much about creating problems you can solve as it is about actually solving those problems. These are the levels to be thinking at. Finding those little seams in the game system that you can force apart. No game I’ve played has given up the same situations, you’re always adapting, looking for opportunities in the board situation, the action cards in your hand, the behaviour of the other players. I don’t agree with others who say the federalist is hard to win as either; I’ve managed it twice.

I’ve seen others complain that the action cards aren’t variable enough and it’s true, there are only 4 different types of action in each of the 5 action card decks. But that’s a feature that plays into the negotiation. It means other players can have the exact same copy of your action and play it as a counter offer to turn the vote into a literal popularity contest. It means you can say things like “well, we’ve had a lot of these actions get used already, there’s not many left in the deck so we might not get another chance at this for a while…” Everything just becomes one more angle to use in your negotiation. Even the asset cards, where with maybe 2.5 games worth of unique cards might be the area where variability could be extended. It’s how you use them that counts, and generally their abilities are open enough for you to use them cleverly.

New Angeles is a negotiation game. This means any player, especially one who isn’t on the ball with reading the board state, can easily find themselves with little money and influence. It’s also long. 4 hours long, almost inevitably. That does mean it’s not suitable for everyone. Your group has to want to throw themselves into their role and into the sneaky murky world of negotiations and for a long time too. But if you are, then my God, are you in for a treat!

New Angeles is the best negotiation game I’ve played, hands down. There is a tremendous scope for being sneaky, for manipulating the board state, and I keep finding new tricks to try out. Almost everything except your motivations are open and yet you can justify almost anything with good timing and the right excuses and isn’t that just the perfect description of capitalism and politics? This is a game that offers an experience that refuses to compromise on length, complexity or gameplay and it so much the stronger for it. If anything I’ve described has you excited, then you need to get this game!

 

Rating: Up for Negotiation

 

My copy of New Angeles was provided for review by Esdevium Games. You can get hold of New Angeles from your friendly local game store for £54.99 RRP.