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I Majesty
Greed Reigns
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask
what you can do for your country. And for your
beloved ruler; the regent is the regent, after
all. For his ego and for his coffers – not for you,
the idealizing romantics. In his inaugural
speech, U.S. president John F. Kennedy set out who takes care of whom within the state. His successors developed his doctrine further, and now, the principle has been brought to a head.
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By the players. In Majesty. Every- body rules his own realm and everybody tries to attract the most
valuable workforce, but that doesn’t mean doctors, teachers and game review- ers, to bless the people with health, education and reviews. When it comes to population policy, the con- cerns of the people themselves are of no interest at all – what matters is profit. The dough goes to the king. If you give me something, I’ll let you into my country. But if you don’t give me any- thing, you’d better go elsewhere. A simple principle. Everybody understands it – maybe not at the age of seven, but at least by the time you have reached voting
age.
Six characters form a common waiting
line at the borders of up to four realms. The recruitment process is famil- iar from other games: The first (leftmost) character card is free, but to pick another card from the line you have to place a pledge – in this case, a meeple – on each card leading up to the one you have chosen. Meeples are therefore accumulated on the first character cards so that even unattractive immigrants become attractive at some point as the player who takes a card also
gets all the meeples on it.
But why meeples? Why not glass beads, gingerbread, exclusive goodies or any other things normally used to attract people? Thematically, it doesn’t make much sense that it is meeples that get the people. But in terms of company policy, it does. In order to hammer the message home to the world that Hans im Glück is the meeple company, meeples participate wherever they
can. To be fair, this doesn’t matter too much; it might just seem a bit odd.
I Busy millers
As rulers with foresight, play-
ers have already established workplaces for their future population: a mill, a brewery, a guardhouse, and so on – seven locations await work- ers. If you get a miller, you send her to the mill, which immediately pays off in hard cash – two coins per miller present when placed. So,
the second miller earns four coins and the third six. This accumulation principle also applies to the other profes-
sions. Hoarding cards of the
same type is a good plan to
begin with, especially since
the player who has the most
people in each occupa-
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