Pandemic Legacy January Session Report – Redacted (Spoilers Hidden)

*** SPOILER ALERT *** Many sections of this report have been redacted (placed in Spoiler boxes).
Revealing redacted details may spoil some of the surprises in store for you in Pandemic Legacy Season 1.

January 2015
For our first game of Pandemic Legacy, my husband Tim and I chose Scientist and Researcher hoping for some good card draws so we could hopefully knock out the viruses quickly before they could do much harm. While we were setting up, our friend Jason dropped by, so we quickly adjusted: Tim took the Scientist and played first, Jason the Researcher playing next and me the Dispatcher. I really wanted to play the Dispatcher anyway: it’s my favorite role. I know we’re supposed to name our characters, but we haven’t gotten around to that yet. Being veteran Pandemic players, we wanted to jump right in and we did!

We set up the board, distributed cards, etc. Unfortunately, we each got three different colored cards. First hope dashed.

From the beginning, the Red Menace proved a nasty threat (so named from previous games of Pandemic: On The Brink), but we hoped to shut it down quickly by finding the cure and then deal with the infections, not having a Medic with us to help. Tim got a lucky draw his first turn and picked up a second red card. Jason picked up two more on his first turn and gave them to Tim on his second, then pulled our first Epidemic.

Since my red card, Beijing, was no longer needed, I headed there, built a research station and pulled the Scientist (Tim) there – ignoring the spreading Red Menace infection. Now he was all set to find the cure to the Red Menace on his turn. Our plan was to cure that sucker, so we could treat it quickly and efficiently.

Then I pulled our second Epidemic! Which, being back to back with the previous one, meant an Outbreak – I think we got a chain reaction.

Spoiler (click to read)
The purple Reminder token we placed during setup according to the Legacy Deck’s instructions, reminded us to refer to the Legacy Deck. A virus, had become incurable (the one with the most cubes on the board): the Red Menace (12 cubes, black had 11). Noooooo!

Not only was it incurable – our Objective also changed to only needing to cure 3 viruses – it has also become more difficult to treat: 2 Actions are now required to treat the disease.

Tim finished his turn, there was little he could do where he was. The Red Menace was on the brink of Outbreak in several places, as were a few other hotspots, Miami was one but Red looked more threatening, so he did a little first aid there. Of course, Miami then had an Outbreak. Our mission seemed doomed, but we mustered and continued the fight.

We raced to find the other three cures as quickly as possible, Outbreaks occurred repeatedly, plus 2 more Epidemics. The last virus to succumb to our ministrations was the black one and it was hairy. Tim and Jason were both at Research Stations, Jason intended to give Tim 3 black cards on his next turn, to go with the one Tim already had, so we only needed to survive one more round. Luckily Tim drew One Quiet Night (the only Special Event card we drew all game) and immediately used it. Jason handed off cards and we had another Outbreak. I got to and treated one really bad hotspot that would’ve caused a chain of Outbreaks and ended the game. At the end of my turn, we were now at Outbreak Level 7. Tim cured black and we won!

Or did we?

Spoiler (click to read)
We left the world in a pretty nasty state: Miami is rioting at level 3. Four other cities are at level 1 – Mumbai, Ho Chi Minh City, Tokyo, and Istanbul. The Red Menace is still uncurable AND very difficult to treat.

We may need to recruit a Medic next time. Our reward: we get to remove 1 cube from the board after setup next game. I think we also get 2 Upgrades, but we haven’t chosen them yet. We did not eradicate any diseases, so there won’t be any upgrades there. We’ll probably opt for a Research Station as one of our Upgrades. Next game, because we prevailed even though it was by the skin of our teeth, we get 2 less Funding next game, which means only 2 Special Event cards in the deck.

We had a lot of bad luck. We each started with three different colored cards and only drew one Special Event the whole game, though we experienced four out of the five Epidemics (two back to back), with a third of the deck still left.

It was fun and frustrating. As veteran players we expected to win the first game no sweat. We sweated!

Spoiler (click to read)
That little wrench thrown in the works after our second Epidemic, making the Red Menace uncurable and so difficult to treat, put a major dent in our plans and nullified all the work we had accomplished in our first two turns: we were on the brink of curing Red! It also left us with a huge mess in Asia with no way to fix it, so we mostly ignored it and concentrated on fulfilling our new objective of just finding the other 3 cures. That that one little event could make such a difference to the play was both surprising and thrilling.

Kudos, Matt & Rob.

 

Copyright © 2015-2016 by Tina G. McDuffie. All rights reserved.
Photo rights retained by their respective copyright holders.

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