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pandemic legacy season 1

Pandemic Legacy March

Fenland Gamers, game night, pandemic legacy season 1

Once more I issue the mandatory warning that this post may or may not contain spoilers for Pandemic Legacy. If you wish to avoid any possible spoilers stop reading now, and I'll see you in the next blog post.

Right now they have gone let's begin…

Last night saw the rescheduled play of the month of March that was meant to happen last week, but got cancelled due to illness with one of the team.

Funny enough three of the team were this week infected with some form or other of the lethal man flu (or in the case of Debs just a minor cold). Mind you I've had this cough, chesty thing since just before Christmas. It just might be time to see the doc about it.

Back to the game, before deciding what funded events we were going to use this month (because of the win we were down to six funded events that could go into the player deck), it was time to read the scenario for the month.

We were getting some military support and now able to build garrisons instead of the research centres if we wanted to. We also got two new objectives to try and achieve along side the default objective of finding cured for the three curable diseases. Our goal was to complete two out of the three objectives.

There was some confusion though with the mission card, and building garrisons. We had no counters to show a garrison had been built. The mission card told us to open up in order three items when we saw the numbers. Did that mean now, or would we be hitting these numbers later on? We played safe and decided to hold off opening them. This was very confusing, not as clear as the previous card.

We got a new possible team member to add to our rosta. Whose speciality tied in with the garrisons. Plus one of our new objectives was to build a garrison in each of the six zones on the board. The other new one was eradicate one disease.

Once we had chosen our funded events, we drew the initial outbreaks, and then decided which of our three starting research stations we were going to start from. For the last time we also got to place a quarantine marker during set up.

This was an even closer game than February. We eradicated C-Thatcam Major, it was the easiest one to do. I only needed four cards to get the cure, and also now didn't need to be in a research station to find the cure. So naturally that was the first cure we got, and we also managed to eradicate it. One objective down.

Debs and Jonathan were busy keeping COdA-403b under control using quarantine markers. Our unnamed yellow disease got cured. We just had to find a cure for Sithite.

Epidemics happened, as did the outbreaks, COdA-403b came dangerously close to costing us the game. Our planning was based around trying to get Matt and Debbie in the same city to hand a single Sithite city card to Debs, so we could complete the second objective.

This was going to be closer than the previous month, there were five cards left, three by the time it was Debbie's turn. But she had drawn the the fifth Sithite city previously, no need to meet up with Matt. Just a dash to the nearest research centre and discover the cure, all in four actions!

We had won!! But only by the thinnest of margins.

After reading the end of mission legacy card, and seeing the extra rewards to choose from, we choose our winners rewards.

Still the mystery of the garrisons existed. We decided that we had already seen them, and opened up the relevant panels and boxes. There were garrison pieces, a new upgrade of having starting garrisons, a new build garrison action. This should have been done at the start. But that wording was soooo confusing. Jonathan vowed to go read spoilers for March to see what others did. Would this have made the month easier having a garrison in Sithite territory? Would we have got an easier victory being able to build the six required garrisons? Well we will never know.

I think the wording on the mission card could have been better, less ambiguous. Or were we just missing the obvious, and being dumb?

April is going to be HARD…

 

Pandemic Legacy February

pandemic legacy season 1

Ok so here is the warning if the above image isn't enough of a clue for you, this post may or may not contain spoilers for the rather excellent boardgame Pandemic Legacy. So if you want to avoid spoilers I'll see you in the next post.

Last night saw the bruised from defeat team of Matt, Jonathan, Debbie and myself once more take on Pandemic Legacy for the month of February.

For those following our journey through the game, the game beat us twice for the month of January. If you lose the first attempt, you try again and then that's it.

We were starting the month of February with the full compliment of eight funded events in the players deck, plus the three unfunded events.

Once again for the month of February our objective was to find cures for the three viruses that could be cured. The scenario for February saw COdA-403b take a turn for the worst, it had gotten stronger and now couldn't be treated or cured!

Luckily we could now quarantine cities, and also had a new member of the team to select if we wanted to. We decided that we were comfortable with our current roles and would stick with them.

During setup we allowed to define relationships between our characters, which meant we would need to name our characters. I named mine the token sexy scientist! While Matts dispatcher was named Zardoz (after the Sean Connery movie he had gotten recently), Debbie named her researcher B after her nickname. Finally Jonathan named his medic Hawkeye after the character from that long running hit black comedy series set in the Korean War M.A.S.H.

I can't remember all the relationships, they will be revealed at the end when I put up all the characters we played during the game. My Token Sexy Scientist was rivals with Hawkeye, and co-workers with Zardoz.

The relationships were important because they bestowed extra abilities on the player if they were in the same city together, like getting an extra action.

After doing the initial infection and placing one quarantine marker on a city, we decided to start at the Atlanta research station. We stood good chance of getting an early win on finding a cure for C-Thatcam Major, and eradicating it. Which we did.

The game was very tense but we were able to manipulate our use of event cards so that the rivalry between myself and Hawkeye worked in our favour, so that we were able to get multiple uses out of some of the event cards.

Soon with not only curing the black virus but eradicating it, we were looking hopefully at trying to cure the yellow one to get a win.

But COdA-403b was proving a headache, we had team members permantly camped in the region moving and quarantining cities to prevent outbreaks when an infection happened.

While we were trying to get the dispatcher to a research station with enough yellow cards to find the cure, we were fire fighting COdA-403b trying to block a pandemic because that would lose us the game with only four red cubes left in the supply, and watching the player deck getting dangerously low, things were getting nail biting nervous.

We were on a knives edge, victory on one side, another defeat the other. It could easily have gone either way. But we did it, we WON! Matt's dispatcher got to a research lab and found a cure!!!!

The black virus was named Sithite from now on.

For our end of game bonuses we chose to turn our third research lab into a third possible starting lab, and for C-Thatcam Major we no longer need to be in a research station to make a cure for it.

There are also two new funded event cards to choose from, plus for the March game our funding drops to six because we did such a good job in February.

As a bonus we also get to place an extra quarantine marker at the start of March. However memories of our failures for January came back to haunt us as we had to tear up the mystery bonus for winning January, which we will never know what it was.

Onto March…

 

Pandemic Legacy January

pandemic legacy season 1

So if that image above isn't enough of a warning. SPOILER ALERT!! In my write up of last nights play through of Pandemic Legacy I may accidently disclose spoilers from the game. So please if spoilers deliberately given or not will ruin the game for you, please stop reading now, and I'll see you in my next post.

 

 

Right lets get on with the post…

Last night Mat, Debbie, Jonathan and myself met up to start our play through of the number one game on BGG, and many gamers game of the year for 2015 (no pressure on this game to live up to then) Pandemic Legacy Season 1.

Even before you start playing you are peeling off a sticker and putting it on a box! During setup we chose our characters from the five starting ones available. Debbie went with the researcher, Mat went with the dispatcher, I chose to be the sexy scientist, while Jonathan was left with choosing between the medic and generalist. With that wide selection to go with Jonathan chose the medic.

Characters chosen, time to choose our starting four funded event cards.

We got our mission brief and objective for the month of January from the legacy deck (above). The brief and objectives were on familiar ground. Cure the four diseases to win.
Sounds easy doesn't it? Regular Pandemic players know this is not the case though.
I shot across to Asia and Seoul (iirc) to avert a potential outbreak by removing a disease cube. Cool that bit went to plan.
Then Jonathan takes his go. For his two cards from the players deck he draws two epidemic cards! Bugger I'm in a city when an outbreak happens. Which means I'm taking a scar. Looking at the scar stickers is very demoralising, and basically like trying to decide which is the lesser of two evils. Do you want to lose a leg or an arm? From the selection of negative effects to chose from I went with Regretful. Which meant every time I wanted to leave a city that had three cubes of the same colour on it, I had to discard a card.
We did manage to cure one disease, yellow, before outbreaks and chaining outbreaks finished us off. Our chances of success were not helped by hitting two infection cards early on in the game.
Whether you win or lose the month you get to chose two upgrades. We all agreed to add two unfounded events.
Naturally because we got beaten silly by the diseases, we got extra funding! Which meant we could have two more funded events added to the player deck. Surely with six funded events, and two unfunded in our player deck our second attempt at the month of January would be successful?
But before we started the month of January again, we had to go back to the legacy deck. The disease with the most cubes on the board was just about to become incurable! And I got to destroy our first card of the game, our initial objective of the first game. The legacy card politely told us that another objective would be along shortly. Which it was. We now had to cure the three remaining diseases to win the month. Plus I got to put a sticker on the red disease naming it and telling us and the world this disease wasn't going anywhere. This would be a constant reminder from now on that we had failed.

This replay of January was going much much better. We cured the blue disease, not only that we eradicated it. The eradicated disease ended up being names C-ThachCam Major. Using one of the events at our disposal a second research centre was built in Lagos.

Our use of the event cards we had in hand was working, and having a positive affected.

Africa was getting loaded up with the yellow disease. We were starting to converge on the area to handle it. There was already the research station there.

But like the first game, outbreaks and chaining outbreaks but this time in Africa were our downfall.

With January played out, we have a few cities that are unstable, a handful that are rioting, and Johannesburg collapsing.

One of our upgrades this time was to turn the Lagos research centre into a starting research centre, and to take the last unfunded event.

Because we failed to win in January there is a legacy card that you reveal the panel of only if you win in January. However if you didn't win, it gets destroyed at the end of February!

Will we ever know the contents of this card? Why the delay in destroying it? Oh the mystery of not knowing, is just so annoying.

Wow! Despite losing both attempts at January, I had a blast. The game board is changing. The legacy deck is amazing. The tension when you are drawing cards is incredible. There are some nice touches in the way it works and the wording. Like saying a new objective will be along soon.

It's obvious from the legacy deck, without looking through it, that at some point we may possibly get new members to the team to choose from. Also I do believe that we are 50% of the way to opening the mysterious box eight. We don't want to open box eight.

So sorry world we didn't save you in January, we will do better in February.

 

Excited about tomorrow

pandemic legacy season 1

Tomorrow four members of the Fenland Gamers group are thrust into the thick of it to avert the outbreaks of four viruses world wide, before they spread and turn into pandemics bringing about the downfall of mankind.

Really excited about getting Pandemic Legacy to the table tomorrow. Four of us have made the commitment needed to play Pandemic Legacy. Who knows where our adventures on the table will take us? All we know is that we will have between twelve and twenty four plays depending on how well we do.

We have managed to avoid any spoilers for the game, so each twist and turn of the game will be a surprise.

This will be my first legacy game. All I know is that the game changes while we play based on our decisions. We will be altering the board! Tearing up cards! Adding new rules! It's all very exciting.

Pandemic Legacy starts off just like any other game of Pandemic, familiar ground for our team. Then at some point during that first game, things start to change.

Oh I'm so looking forward to this.

So how will I handle my write ups on this blog? I don't know. I'll try and avoid spoilers. But I want to try and capture the excitement of playing the game also. I may find that I use the following “SPOILER ALERT” a lot in the posts.

So one more sleep before the adventure begins…