How to play Hostile Takeover

Most of you are directors and do not know who is not

At the deal everybody is handed one card. Most of the table are ordinary directors and are told nothing else at all. Two to four people are working for the buyers; they were shown each other, and they were shown which one of them is the person the buyers intend to install in the chair.

At five and six seats that person is shown their own side as well. From seven they are not — they know only what they are, and are otherwise exactly as ignorant as any director. It is one line in the deal and it changes the whole game: a small table is two people covering for each other, and a large one is three people protecting somebody who cannot help them do it.

Every meeting is an election, in public

The deputy chair goes round the table. Whoever holds it puts one name forward to chair the meeting, and then the entire register votes on the pair of them at once, in the open. Nobody's slip is visible until the last one lands, and after that every slip stays on screen for the rest of the sitting — that record is the board's only real instrument, and losing a vote is the cheapest way there is to learn something about six people.

Whoever chaired the last meeting cannot chair this one, and neither can the last deputy unless the register has fallen to five. Beyond that the deputy may name anybody, and who they name is usually a bigger statement than how anybody votes.

Nobody outside the room sees a card

If the slate carries, the two of them go behind a closed door. The deputy draws three motions from the docket and strikes one; the chair sees the two that survive and tables one of them. That motion goes on the board where everybody can see it, and the other card is gone.

So the table is handed one fact and two accounts of it. 'I was dealt three buyouts' is the most useful thing anybody can say in this game precisely because it is so often true — the docket holds eleven buyout motions to six governance ones, and a deputy who draws three at random has no choice at all more than a third of the time.

Voting a slate down is never free

Three failed votes in a row and the top of the docket goes on the board unread. Nobody chose it, so it hands nothing to anybody and the term limits clear — but it counts, and about two times in three it counts for the buyers. Refusing every slate is a real strategy with a real price, which is what stops the honest play being to refuse and think about it again for ever.

As the buyout column fills it starts handing the deputy instruments: reading the top three of the docket alone, being shown which side one director is on, naming who convenes the next meeting out of turn, and twice at the end striking a director off the register for good. Every one of them is printed on the board from the first minute, so nobody is ever surprised by what the next lost motion costs.

Two of the endings have nothing to do with the columns

Five governance motions and the board holds. Six buyout motions and the company has changed hands. Those are the long ways round, and most sittings do not get to either of them.

The short ways are about one person. Strike the buyers' candidate off the register and it ends there, for the board. Elect that same person as chair once three buyout motions are already up, and the company changes hands on the vote itself, before a card is drawn. Which is why the back half of every game is a table trying to work out not who is lying, but who they cannot afford to put in a chair.

Questions people ask

Is anybody knocked out?

Only late, and only twice. The last two instruments the buyout column hands over take a director off the register — no vote, no office, no further part. Nothing else removes anybody, and by the time either exists the losing side is four motions down and the sitting has a few minutes left in it. Everyone who is out can still watch, and everybody who is in is still voting on the last meeting.

What happens if somebody's connection drops?

Their seat is held and the meeting carries on. A ballot that never arrives is counted against the slate, because a director who said nothing has not approved it — and if somebody leaves for good the room keeps playing down to three on the register. The one exception is the person the buyers meant to seat: if they walk out, the buyers have nobody left to install and the board takes it, which is a result rather than an abandonment.

Do I need to be good at lying?

Less than it sounds. Most of what gets said is an account of two cards nobody else saw, and the honest version and the dishonest version are the same sentence — 'I was dealt three buyouts' is true about a third of the time. What the game actually rewards is reading a voting record, which is on screen all game and is the same instrument for everybody at the table.

How many should we be?

Seven is the sweet spot: three people against four, and the person they mean to seat has not been told who is helping them. Five and six are tighter and faster and the minority know everything about each other. Nine and ten are the loudest, and the earliest to hand somebody a background check — which on a table that size is the only way the board narrows the field at all.

Does anybody have to install anything to play Hostile Takeover?

No. It runs in the browser everyone already has open. One person opens a room, reads out the six-character code or pastes the link into the channel, and everyone else is at the table in a couple of seconds.

Do we need accounts?

No. There is no sign-up, no password and no email address anywhere in the flow. You pick a name when you sit down, and that is the whole of it.

How many people can play Hostile Takeover?

5 to 10 — best with seven. A room seats up to 12.

How long does a game of Hostile Takeover take?

About 25 minutes, which is the length of a coffee break rather than the length of a games night. Nobody is the host in the sense of holding the controls, so a round finishes whether or not everyone is still looking at it.

Does it work over a video call?

That is what it is for. The game is on the screen and the talking is on the call — nobody has to describe a board to anybody, and the parts that must stay private stay on the server rather than being read out.