New Angeles is a political game in which four to six players assume the roles of the megacorporations of the Android universe.

The players cut deals and forge temporary alliances to gain leverage and financial superiority over their corporate rivals, all while trying to maintain order and profitability in their home city of New Angeles.

Components

• 1 Game Board
• 9 Human First Units
• 9 Orgcrime Units
• 6 Prisec Units
• 16 Event Cards
• 7 Rival Cards
• 6 Setup Cards
• 6 Corp Sheets
• 9 Demand Cards
• 12 Investment Cards
• 34 Asset Cards
• 100 Action Cards
• 6 Emergency Action Cards
• 79 Tokens
• Rulebook

Object of the Game

New Angeles is the thriving heart of the solar system's economy, and every nation has a stake in its success. It is each corporation's responsibility to combat threats to the city's productivity, ensuring that its districts continue to produce their many goods and services.

If the corporations fulfill their roles in this endeavor, the city will meet the demands of the economy and will remain under corporate control.

Fulfilling their roles is one important way in which the corporations earn capital, the measure of their wealth and success. Each player's objective is to have more capital than his secret rival at the end of the last game round. Multiple players can win the game, but at least one player must lose!

Negotiation and manipulation are the keys to success in New Angeles-no individual can accomplish much without greasing palms and making promises.

Players can and should do whatever it takes, all in the name of success. One thing to remember, however-if the players cannot work together to keep the city productive, no one wins.

Setup

To set up the first game of New Angeles, players mRaubotsgoRtodperform the following setuqupInde steps, which are slightly simplified:

1. Create Asset, Demand, Investment, and Event Decks: Return the setup cards to the game box. Shuffle the asset, demand, investment, and event decks separately.

   Place the event deck on the "Events" box of the board. Place the asset, demand, and investment decks below the "Assets", "Demands", and "Investments" slots of the board.

   
   
   

2. Create Action Decks: Separate the action cards by type (color) and shuffle each type to form its own deck. Then, place each deck next to the slot on the board with the matching type and color.

   
   
   

3. Set Round Track and Turn Track: Place the round track token on space "1" of the board's round track. Take the top three cards of the asset deck and place them facedown below slots "1", "2", and "3" of the board's turn track.

   
   
   

4. Establish City: For each component listed in the "City Setup" sidebar to the right, place one copy of that component on the board in each district listed.

   Tokens are placed in the boxes of the matching shape; the plastic units are placed on that district's image.

   Nihongai (district 7) should have an android token and a prisec unit.

   
   

5. Create Reserve: Place the remaining outage, unrest, illness, and development tokens and the remaining Human First, orgcrime, and prisec units next to the board to create the reserve.

6. Set Resource Tracks: Place each of the five resource tokens on space "0" (the icon space) of the track with the matching icon. Then, reveal the top card of the demand deck and place it faceup on the deck.

   For each resource on that card, place a target token on the indicated number of the matching resource track.

   
   
   

7. Assign Active Player and Corporations: The most experienced player places the active player token, the Jinteki corp sheet, and the Jinteki emergency action card in front of him.

   In clockwise order from him, each player takes the next available corporation from the "Corporation Setup" sidebar at the bottom of the page. Corp sheets are placed with the four-player or five-to-six-player side faceup, as appropriate.

   The four-player side is identified by an icon on the lower-left corner.

   
   
   

8. Place Capital Tokens and Threat Token: Place the threat token on space "0" of the board's threat track (the icon space). Then, each player places his corporation's capital token on the capital track as indicated in the "Corporation Setup" sidebar.

   
   
   

9. Draw Action Cards: Each player draws the action cards listed for his corporation in the "Corporation Setup" sidebar.

   
   
   

10. Assign Rivals: Shuffle the "Federalist" rival card with the rival cards displaying the corporations being used this game, returning the unused rival cards to the game box.

    Then, deal one rival card facedown to each player and place the remaining card facedown and partially under the board. Each player secretly looks at his rival card but cannot share this information with other players.

    
    
    

11. Draw Investment Card: Each player draws one investment card from the investment deck and places it facedown next to his corp sheet. He may look at his investment at any time.

Game Play

New Angeles is played over a series of rounds. Each game round begins with an Action Phase, which consists of several turns. During each turn of the Action Phase, one player draws action cards, and then players bargain for the chance to resolve an action card and gain a powerful asset.

After resolving a set number of turns during the Action Phase, the city produces resources. Resources are vital because players will eventually need them to meet demand or else they risk losing the game!

At the end of each round, an event card is drawn which brings about new problems for players to deal with in the next round.

Action Phase

During the Action Phase, players use their cards to manage the city's problems and manipulate other corporations, all with the goal of securing precious assets.

Each Action Phase consists of several turns. The player with the active player token is the active player; he takes the first turn, resolving the following three steps:

1. Draw Action Cards

The active player draws the type and number of action cards indicated on his corp sheet.

The Jinteki player draws 2 biotech action cards (red) and 1 labor action card (purple).

A player may need to draw a "General" action card. To do so, he draws an action card of any type that he has not already drawn during this step.

Each type of action card has a special role in the city. These roles are defined more in the "Action Card Types" sidebar.

2. Resolve a Deal

The players collectively resolve a deal, which is the process by which players play action cards and gain assets. The full process of a deal is explained later.

In short, the active player reveals the rightmost asset card below the turn track and places it in the "Revealed Asset" box of the board. Then, each player can play an action card from his hand and attempt to convince the other players to support that action.

The player who receives the most support resolves his action card and claims the revealed asset card.

To begin a deal, the active player reveals the rightmost asset card on the turn track and places it in the "Revealed Asset" box of the board.

3. End of Turn

The active player has a chance to resolve his "End of Turn" asset cards, which are explained later. Then, if he has more than five action cards in hand, he discards until he has only five. Then, he passes the active player token to the player to his left.

The turn track indicates when the Action Phase is complete.

If at least one asset card remains on the turn track, the Action Phase continues and the new active player takes a turn. If there are no facedown asset cards on the turn track at the end of a turn, the Action Phase ends and the Production Phase begins.

Because the number of turns is fixed, some players may not take a turn each round, but they will take an equivalent number of turns over the course of the game.

Production Phase

The city of New Angeles is a massive megalopolis that outputs enormous quantities of consumer, agricultural, and technological products every day. Despite this incredible supply, demand for these products never ceases, and the fortunes of the megacorporations are intimately connected with the city's productivity.

The city consists of ten districts, each with a unique name and number. Each district belongs to one of three tiers, represented by a colored border and a number of horizontal bars under the district's name. Tiers are referred to by some event cards.

Rutherford District (9) - Tier 3 (three red bars)

Each district produces one or two types of resources in the amounts indicated below their icons. The leftmost resource listed in a district is the primary resource; its icon is framed by a colored circle. If there is another resource in this distrct, it is the secondary resource.

During the Production Phase, the three districts that contain an android token are exploited. When these districts are exploited, they produce their resources.

To track this, players move the resource tokens in the supply to reflect how much of each resource has been produced. Some units and tokens affect a district's production as described in the "Production Modifiers" section below.

When exploited, Rutherford district produces 2 credits and 1 entertainment.

Next, the exploited district's unrest increases, even if it failed to produce anything. To represent this, an unrest token is placed with the yellow protest side faceup in that district's condition box.

Unrest in Rutherford increases to protest.

If the district already has an unrest token, the token is flipped so the red strike side is faceup. If the strike side is already faceup, it remains faceup.

After each district that contains an android token is exploited, play proceeds to the Event Phase.

Production Modifiers

Some components affect a district's ability to produce resources:

Strike: A district in strike cannot produce any resources.

Outage: A district in outage cannot produce any resources.

Orgcrime Unit: A district with an orgcrime unit cannot produce its primary resource.

Development: The value of the primary resource in the district is increased by one.

Event Phase

Sometimes one of the city's problems rises to the forefront, splashed across the tabloids for all to see.

During the Event Phase, the top card of the event deck is revealed and resolved. An event card is resolved from top to bottom and affects the game in a variety of negative ways.

The top half of each event card is an effect that may increase threat (see the "Mitigating Threat" sidebar).

Threat represents how close the United States government is to taking full control of the city; if threat reaches 25, all players lose the game! Threat is tracked by the threat track; when threat increases, the threat token is moved to reflect the new total.

Threat increasing by two.

The bottom half of each event card indicates which units and tokens are placed on the board; one copy of each component is placed in each district listed next to that component.

A district cannot have more than one copy of any enemy unit, outage token, or illness token. Ie a second copy must be placed in a district, it moves to the next district instead; how units and tokens are moved is described later.

One Human First unit is placed in Esmeraldas (district 8), one orgcrime unit is placed in La Costa (district 3), and one illness token is placed in Quinde (district 2).

The number in the lower-right corner of each event card indicates the number of turns for the next Action Phase.

The players reset the turn track by taking that number of asset cards from the top of the asset deck and placing one of those cards facedown below each slot of the turn track, starting with the lowest-numbered slot.

After players resolve the event card, the Event Phase ends and the round track token is moved to the nexgtuasYpaqaucILe on the round track. The round track consists of both numbered spaces and demand spaces.

If the round token moves to a numbered space, the players resolve another standard round starting with the Action Phase; the new active player takes the first turn. If the token moves to a demand space, the players resolve a demand round, which is explained next.

Demand Round

A demand round is a special type of round that resolves differMenanttlay from a standard round. During a demand round, the players determine if they have met the demand for the many products and services required by the city. Players resolve the following steps in order:

1. Score Investment

During this step, each player reveals his investment card and resolves it. Investments are one of the primary ways for a player to earn capital. Capital is the measure of a player's success and is necessary to win the game.

Each player tracks his current capital on the capital track by moving his capital token as he gains or loses capital.

2. Pay Demand

Demand cards represent consumers' ever-increasing demand for goods and services. Meeting the demand ensures corporate growth, happy stockholders, and the continuation of New Angeles' lucrative tax privileges.

Failing to meet demand angers the many politicians whose willingness to fight corporate regulation extends only as far as the zeroes in their bank accounts.

Players collectively meet the demand using the resources in the supply. If each resource in the supply equals or exceeds the quantity indicated by the corresponding target token, the demand is met.

If at least one resource token fails to reach the target token on that track, the demand is not met and threat increases by the amount indicated on the demand card.

3. Reveal Demand

Players establish the demand that must be paid during the next demand round. First, they place the currently revealed demand card on the bottom of the deck and reset the supply by moving each resource token back to space "0".

Then, they reveal the top card of the demand deck. For each resource, they place a target token on that resource's track on the numbered space indicated by the demand card.

4. Choose Investment

During this step, players choose another investment to secretly work toward during the next two rounds. All of the investment cards are shuffled together to reform the deck.

Then, each player draws two investment cards, chooses one to keep facedown in his play area, and returns the unchosen card facedown to the top of the investment deck.

After investments are chosen, the players move the round track token to the next space on the track and the next round begins.

End of the Game

The game ends during the third demand round after the Pay Demand step. At that time, each player reveals his rival card. Each player that has more capital than the player indicated on his rival card wins the game.

If a player's rival is his own corporation, he wins if he has more capital than at least three other players (or more than two players in a four-player game).

It is possible (and even likely) for multiple players to win the game, and at least one player will lose.

The game also ends if threat reaches "25" on the threat track, signifying political takeover by the United States government and the end of the corporations' special economic privileges.

When threat reaches 25, all players lose the game except the player with the "Federalist" rival card. That player wins the game if he has at least 25 capital; otherwise, he loses as well.

Continue Reading