Our step-by-step guide to the rules of how to play Evil Corp board game. This is a take that and territory control game that has players building business and controlling markets to support the construction of different phases of your master plan. You are constantly avoiding sabotage and doing your best to fend off other players in a race to the end. The game is for 2 – 6 players at ages 13+. The rules for how to play Evil Corp are long because there is so much to consider but it is very easy to learn.
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HOW TO PLAY EVIL CORP – WHAT IS IT?
Play as a technology billionaire. An entrepreneur genius far above the law.
Humanity is on the verge of extinction. Only you can save us from this dark destiny. Only you have the vast resources, the unique vision, and the fiendish plan. Only you can get us to the end game. After all, who is there to stop you?
In Evil Corp, you play as one of six colorful CEO characters, each defined by a signature technology and a promise to save the world. Your wealth and power put you above the law. It is just a matter of pressure, money and time. But the other CEOs are racing to launch their plans too..
Spend your cash wisely. Exploit every opportunity. Build your business empire while sabotaging every enemy’s effort. Acquire your R&D team, build your prototype, complete your killer app and launch your endgame.
HOW TO PLAY EVIL CORP – STEP BY STEP
Time Needed: Approximately 45 – 120 minutes.
This is a step by step guide for how to play Evil Corp the fun take that domination board game. Additional notions and special rules can be found below the list. These will be referenced for your convenience.
1. SETUP | Setup Game Board
The first step of how to play Evil Corp setup is to form the game board. It is six triangle modular pieces that fit together to form a hexagon with a circle in the center. These represent different “markets” and can be placed together in any order they fall.
2. SETUP | Add Central Materials Holder
Place the black plastic card and money holder piece from the game boc in the center of the game board. It should fit in there perfectly. This is where you will put many of the communal components.
3. SETUP | Put Out Money & Cards
Take the stack of the billion dollar bills (anything less is a waste of time) and place them in the center slot going across the middle of the materials holder. On either side of the money, there are two spaces for the two decks, “opportunity” and “world event” cards. Shuffle these up and place each deck in one of the spots face down.
4. SETUP | Put Out Die
There is one six-sided die with different countries on it. This is to signify what market gets hit by a world event. Place this in an accessible spot nearby.
5. SETUP | Put Bankrupt Tokens
There are cardboard hexagon pieces that have “bankrupt” on one side and “rebranding” on the other. These are given out if you run out of money and need to mark that you are not receiving any money for a few turns. Place this in an accessible spot nearby.
6. SETUP | Determine First Player
Using the randomization method of your choice to determine who will play first. It doesn’t give much of a benefit so no need to put much thought into it.
7. SETUP | Choose CEO
Starting with the first player and moving around the circle clockwise, players choose one of the CEOs to represent. They all have different philosophies and slightly different win conditions. You do not get to see the condition when choosing though you will know in subsequent games so take that with a grain of salt. Place that CEO info card in front of you so everyone can see the public-facing profile.
8. SETUP | Take Player Materials
Each player chooses a color and takes their corresponding building and secret base tokens in that color.
9. SETUP | Place Secret Base
The secret base comes in three pieces and gets added onto over the course of the game when phases are played. The bottom piece is a wide base that matches the player color. The second pieces are all white and the top pieces are all black. To start, everyone places their base piece on one of the triangles found one per “market” game board triangles. This will correspond to your overall hand size max as it grows. On top there is a fourth piece but that is one of your building cubes.
10. SETUP | Place 3 Businesses
The color cubes in your player color represent “businesses” that you build and give you revenue during your collection steps. Each one gets you $1B per turn, and if you have a business in all the cities in a market you have a “monopoly” and double your money. Cities are open so any player can build a business, there are no maximums. To start, each player places 3 to start and they must be in 3 different markets.
11. SETUP | Take Starting Money
Each player gets $5B to start. Take that money from the bank.
12. SETUP | Take Starting Opportunity Cards
Each player gets $3B to start. Take these cards from the center of the board pile.
13. GAMEPLAY | Play Flow
Players take turns one at a time completing the three steps of the turn – Collect, Spend and Event. There are different things to do within each step. All of these unless otherwise noted are optional, can occur in any order within that step and can be done as many times within a turn as you have the requisites for. Players continue in rotation taking turns until someone triggers and succeeds at their end game event.
14. GAMEPLAY | Be Mindful of Hand Size
Your hand size really matters because you can discard, draw and do pretty much anything you want related to cards as long as it doesn’t make you go over your hand size. This changes over time. To start your hand size is 3 max. When you play your 1st phase you go to 4 cards, 2nd phase brings you to 5 cards and the 3rd gets you to 6 cards max.
15. GAMEPLAY | Collect Step | Earn Money
You get a base amount of $2B for a secret base and $1B per business. Depending on where your businesses are located, world events may be altering your revenue total (making them worth more or less). Calculate what everything is worth after effects, add everything together and take that amount
16. GAMEPLAY | Collect Step | Discard & Gain Opportunities
You can discard as many opportunities cards you want and draw new ones until you have cards that equal your current hand maximum, which as previously mentioned, starts at 3 and goes up by 1 each phase until it maxes out at 6.
17. GAMEPLAY | Spend Step | Lay A Phase
If you want, you can lay one phase from your hand. You have to go in order (1, 2, 3), so you wouldn’t be able to play a 3 until you played a 1 and 2 first. You can only have one of a specific number in play at a time. If you have one and you play a new one, you put the old one is a communal “wasted opportunity” pile. To play one of these, you pay its cost found in the top right corner to the bank. If it is your first time playing a specific number, you get to add a section to your secret base, which increases your hand size. There will be a city on the phase, you place one of your color tokens in that city as a new business. Put played phases in front of you for all to see.
18. GAMEPLAY | Spend Step | Perform A Hostile Takeover
If anyone has a phase in play that is your specific player color, you can perform a hostile takeover of it. If this is the case, you can just pay the cost in the corner to that player and take it. If this is done, it goes in your hand (assuming your hand max can take it) to be played in the future like normal.
19. GAMEPLAY | Spend Step | Play Nasty Business / Agent Cards
The opportunity cards mostly have two sections, one side can be played as a phase and the other section can be played as a “nasty business” or “agent” card. You get to chose how you use each card. These cards are typically instant effects that are beneficial for you or bad for an opponent. Whenever an “agent” is used, all cards in the wasted opportunity and world event piles get shuffled back into their respective decks.
20. GAMEPLAY | Spend Step | Buy Opportunities
At any time during this step you can buy new opportunity cards for $3B each. You can buy as many as you want as long as you have the money to pay and the space in your hand to accommodate it.
21. GAMEPLAY | World Event Step | Flip Card & Roll Die
Take a card from the top of the center World Event deck and flip it over. This is the event for the turn. It could be a one-time effect that the active player has to deal with or it could be a lasting effect that is applied to one of the markets. If it is the latter, role the six-sided die to determine which region is affected.
22. GAMEPLAY | World Event Step | Apply Rule or Effect
Rules that apply to a specific region go in the space at the top of that region near the central materials holder. This rule remains there until another one replaces it or a player uses some effect to remove it. If it is a one-time effect, the active player must deal with it even if it makes them, go bankrupt.
23. GAMEPLAY | Pass & Repeat
After a player has gone through the three different steps, their turn is over and play passes to the player clockwise in the circle. That player then competes all the same steps and repeats this process until is a player is ready to launch their end game.
24. GAMEPLAY | Playing Cards On Other’s Turns
Some of the opportunity card’s nasty business effects are “counters”. This means they can be used in response to other things and are used at any time they are relevant. This may be during other player’s turns which is totally reasonable. Hold on to these for when they will be useful.
25. GAMEPLAY | Endgame | Triggering
Once a player has three phases built in their player color, they now may choose to either start a turn as normal or to trigger an “endgame” turn. If they chose to go engame, they flip over their card and pay the cost to proceed, $9B.
26. GAMEPLAY | Endgame | Defense
Once the $9B is paid, each player gets a chance to bring an attack against the player with agent cards. If the player succeeds in all attacks, or there are none, they have completed their end game. If they do not succeed, they are out the $9B and their turn ends.
27. WINNING | First Player To Complete End Game
The first player to trigger and succeed at their end game event wins the game. There are many different elements and things to keep in mind for how to play Evil Corp, but as you can see, the gameplay flows quite smoothly.
HOW TO PLAY EVIL CORP – KEY INFORMATION
IMPORTANT NOTES
If a player has a business in every city within a market, they have a monopoly. They get double whatever their value is and ignores any effect that may alter that like world events.
An optional rule is to give each player their CEO’s corresponding “CEO Power” card which is a special ability that can be used once at any point within a game.
When you have to pay a cost and you cannot, you go bankrupt. When this happens, you take a bankrupt token in front of you “bankrupt” side up. On your next turn you flip this token over to the “rebranding” side and collect no icome. The next turn you get rid of the token and collect revenue again.
If you believe a player made a mistake in calculating money or taking cards you can call them out by “auditing” them. If you can prove they screwed up, they have to fix their error and then pay you a spotting penalty of $2B. If you are unable to prove your accusation, you must pay the accused player a penalty of $2B. This usually has to do with players exceeding their hand size or miscalculating their revenue and taking the wrong amount from the bank.
GAME CONTENTS
- 1x Hexagonal Board (6 pieces)
- 1x Center Piece Materials Holder
- 1x Custom World Six-Sided Die
- 6x CEO Endgame Cards
- 6x CEO Power Cards
- 61x Opportunity Deck Cards
- 30x World Event Deck Cards
- 72x Billion Dollar Bills
- 72x Colored Business Tokens
- 18x Colored Evil Lair Components
- 6x Bankrupt Tokens
- 1x Instruction Pamphlet
- 6x Quick Guide Reference Sheets
- 1x CEO Icon Sticker Sheet (for visual spectrum issues)
HOW TO PLAY EVIL CORP – IN CLOSING
We hope you can now say you know how to play Evil Corp. This take that game of technological domination runs a fine line of playing like both a party game and strategy one. It has a cool dystopian style and tons of player interaction from start to finish. The main name of the game is hand management but being able to make a friend or two doesn’t hurt either. There are many steps and things to constantly consider in learning how to play Evil Corp, but gameplay does run smoothly once you are up and running.
