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Pandemic Legacy 2-March

March is here and we have been on a winning streak so we have no rationed events going into this game. We do, however, have 2 unrationed events we haven’t used yet. We have the Decontamination Kit which allows us to remove all plague cubes from 1 location and the Relocation event that destroys up to 3 cities in the infection discard pile.

During the set up of our first game in March we were told it was critical to recon South America before the Hollow Men sabotage anything important. We also learned there are 4 main labs but they were not designed to last beyond 50 years. There was also a hint that we need to find havens outside the Atlantic because they could have supplies or equipment we could use. We got information from the archives about finding a cure. There was something called PEARL that was on the verge of finding a cure but it went silent. We learned that OPAL, JADE, AND TOPAZ are in place to support PEARL but they cannot find a cure on their own so we need to keep routes between viable. This was from Year 57.

We now have 3 objectives to complete in March. We still have to build 3 new supply centers, but now we have to do an additional 2 more objectives. These other objectives are Recon 1 unknown region, connect 2 new cities to the grid, complete 2 searches, or access a lost haven. The same characters were used as in the February game.

Everything about this game in March was difficult. We were not getting a good combination of cards and cities kept being infected. We considered using the Relocation card a couple of times to take out cities out of the infection discard pile, but we ultimately decided to try to handle it on our own. Even if we did this I think it would have been nearly impossible for us to win. Newt ended up having to use the Decontamination Kit card to save himself from being exposed. So now this card is out of the game forever, but fortunately no one was exposed during this game.  We were able to build a supply center in Paris and search it as well. Paris gave us a Companion Engineer, which allowed us to build a supply center with 1 fewer card if you had this card in your hand. This is an ongoing effect that can be used in future games. Our other search occurred in Chicago. This search allowed us to put 2 supply cubes from the stockpile on Chicago, which at that point helped out a lot. We were not able to build any more supply centers or recon South America before we had too many incidents from the plague cubes and the game was lost. Our first loss.

Our March loss–first loss of Pandemic Legacy Season 2

When we finished our game in March we still had things to open. One of these things included more epidemic cards because now that we are adding more cards to the player deck the game thinks we should make it harder. So depending on how many cards are in the player deck determines how many epidemic cards you should put in the deck. We also got some more character upgrades and the ability to spend 2 supply cubes to make a sea lane from one port city to another.

As our game end upgrades we added the Architect ability to the Laborer so now she needed one less card to build a supply center. This would mean she would only need 3! We also upped the population in one city which is escaping me right now.

It was getting late but we didn’t want to end on a loss, so we decided to play again. We got 2 rationed events because of our loss and we chose one quiet night and drastic measures. We still had our unrationed event of Relocation.

Our second game in March was also crazy. From the beginning things were out of control. Washington, Lagos, and Sao Paulo were huge problems from the beginning so we decided to use Relocation on Sao Paulo since we needed the ability to be in that city to recon South America. We permanently removed 3 Sao Paulo cards from the game. I believe these are all of the Sao Paulo cards. One of our produce supplies card was also destroyed because we used the system-wide production ability on it.

Even with all of the craziness we were able to win March by re-conning South America, connecting 2 new cities to the grid, and building 3 supply centers. We had a supply center in New York, Washington, and Jacksonville. We connected Santiago and St. Petersburg to the grid. This game was near the brink of losing. We had 4 cards left in the player deck and London was blowing up. Luckily Aofie was able to help London and help give Claire her last yellow card to make the supply center in Jacksonville. I’m pretty sure 2 of us were in cities with plague cubes but since the game ended and we didn’t have to start in those cities and we escaped without any exposures. THIS GAME IS STRESSFUL!

Now we finished March. We have 14 cities on the grid and we got a new unrationed event called Strategic Reserves. This allows us to move up to 8 supply cubes from the reserve to the stockpile for use in the game. This could be good for starting a game without many supplies. We upgraded by giving the Administrator the Runner ability. The Runner can discard a city card while in a haven or supply center to move to any location on the grid. We also made a permanent supply center in Washington. I forgot to take a picture of the board because it was so late.

 

Pandemic Legacy 2-February

Before playing we chose our game end upgrades from the January game. We decided to upgrade the Farmer character named Goods. We gave her the courier ability, which allows her to deliver supplies to an adjacent location. With our last remaining unit I believe we increased the population in a city, but right now I am having trouble remembering.

So now we were ready to see what February would bring us. I played my usual character, Claire the Laborer. Cassie played Aofie the Administrator. Ian played Newt the Radio Operator and Don played the newly transformed Goods the Farmer. To start our game out we had to draw some cards from the Legacy Deck. We were told to destroy our objective of re-conning North America (which we accomplished in January). Then we read another journal entry about the Hollow Men expanding their raids into South America. The entry hinted at the the Hollow Men possibly trying to look for one of the labs working on a cure. So now we have a hint that we should try to recon South America. There’s also a hint of having to dilute supplies or abandon supply routes due to the Hollow Men. In February we started with 33 supply cubes in the beginning of the game as opposed to the 36 in January. From here on out supplies look like they are less and less in each month. We also got another Turning Point to add to the Game End area. This one tells us to scratch off the box if we have lost 4 games in a row….hopefully that never happens! We still have our Turning Point #1 that we tells us to open things if we have any cities with 0 population.

Starting February we had 3 objectives, that of which we had to complete 2. One of them that had to be completed was creating 3 new supply centers. Then we could either connect 2 new cites on the grid or recon 1 unknown region. Going into the game we planned on  re-conning South America because it seemed the easiest with being able to have any 4 yellow city cards while the other recons had to have different cities. We also thought connecting 2 new cities to the grid seemed doable so we would see how the cards fell.

The game didn’t go as planned but things still worked out. We built a supply center in Istanbul so we could increase its population at the end of the game. In the middle of the game we saw that re-conning Europe would happen because Newt had all of the cards needed. So we abandoned the idea of re-conning South America. We were able to recon Europe fairly early on, because Goods had the ability to make a supply center in London.

Once we discovered Europe we found out there were still some functioning aircraft on old military bases. This gave us the ability to fly between havens and supply centers! We also discovered a new city–Paris, and we got another unrationed event. This unrationed event allowed us to destroy up to 3 copies of one city card in the infection discard pile. So now we had 2 unrationed events in our deck which was good because if we won this game we would have 0 rationed events for our first game in March.

After re-conning Europe we saw that Claire would be able to make a supply center in a yellow city to finish the game. Claire chose to make the supply center in Sao Paulo because one of new game end upgrades we received allows us to keep permanent supply centers. If we have one here we would be able to more easily recon South America in a future game.

We were able to leave February pretty much unscathed. With our supply centers we could increase the populations in Sao Paulo, Istanbul, and London. We also had the help of 2 rationed events in this game-One Quiet Night and Drastic Measures. Drastic Measures helped us remove plague cubes so we wouldn’t have to worry about the population at the end of the game. As our game end upgrades we added a permanent supply center in Sao Paulo and we increased the population in Paris and Chicago because they were low and we figured we would be discovering Chicago soon. Can’t wait for next month!

Our board at the end of February Win.

Finally! Pandemic Legacy Season 2!!!–January Game.

We have been waiting over a year for Season 2 of Pandemic Legacy. If you don’t know anything about the board game Pandemic, it’s awesome and you should check it out. You could also go back in the gaming section of this blog to read about the base game and see my attempt at blogging about Pandemic Season 1. We have been playing Pandemic with our friends Cassie and Ian for probably over 4 years now. We went through Season 1 together and loved it. We also feel like we have an awesome team, so here is my attempt at recounting our Pandemic Legacy Season 2 story. And who knows, maybe we will start vlogging like we always joke about?!

***If you just want to hear an awesome (but confusing if you have no concept of the game) story keep reading but if you’re wanting to play the game this will have spoilers!! Starting….Now.

Season 2 occurs 71 years after Season 1. The world has been mostly destroyed by the plague and now we are just trying to keep afloat. Many people live in the sea on floating stations called Havens. The people in the Havens work to give supplies to the mainland. As you can imagine something has went wrong and we have lost contact with cities on main grid so now we have to send some people out to figure out what’s wrong so we can save humanity.

The whole premise of the game is different. It used to be our main goal of the game was to find cures for diseases. Now the disease is incurable and we are trying to keep supplies moving. If a city becomes devoid of supplies it becomes at risk of being taken over by the plague. So before we dove into Season 2 it was recommended that we played a practice game (or as many practice games until we felt comfortable).

So before our first practice game we had to name our 3 Havens on the map. At first it is surprising at how few cities are available on the map compared to the previous Pandemic games where we had access to the whole world. Now we just have a few cities on the East coast of North America, one city in South America, a few in Africa, and a few in Europe. The 3 havens are in the sea and we named them Avalon, Andromeda, and Atlantis.

 

After we named the Havens we had to make our characters. This was different because previously all characters were made in Pandemic games. In Legacy 1 we could name our characters and we could add different abilities later in the game but here we are naming, choosing a photo sticker, and choosing a job. We were told to make 5 characters and there were only 5 jobs to choose from so it wasn’t entirely hard.

For our Practice game Ian played Newt, a 30 year old Radio Operator from Andromeda. The Radio Operator is able to spread supplies to other players anywhere on the board without being in the same city as them. Cassie played Aofie, a 28 year old Administrator from Avalon. The Administrator is basically the Dispatcher from the original Pandemic. She can move another player to any other player on the map. And Cassie is the ultimate dispatcher so it’s only natural that is her character. Don played Goods, a 27 year old Farmer from Atlantis. The Farmer can immediately deliver supplies for free after making them. We think he may be the equivalent to the Medic. I played Claire, a 27 year old Laborer from Andromeda. I am basically the Scientist from the base game because I need one less card to build a supply center, but I also need 2 supply cubes.

We read the journal entry for the practice game and put out our objective of building 3 supply centers on the board. The objective feels similar to finding cures like in the original game, but now it’s about keeping cubes on the board because they represent supplies (safety) whereas before we wanted less cubes on the board because they represented disease (death). So it kind of felt like we were working backwards. We also had to get used to cities being in the infection pile multiple times, whereas before cities were only in there once so we could gauge when a city would come up much more easily. Anyway, it was difficult but we ended up being able to build the 3 supply centers and win the game.

Now it was getting late and the question was do we stop, play another practice game, or just dive in? We decided to go for it and play the first episode or January as the game calls it. Now things get more real because our characters could be hurt or even killed by effects in the game. In the practice game, nothing could happen to our characters and certain actions were not allowed to be taken. A character can be hurt in the game if a city loses all of it’s supplies, the plague moves into the city, and the character is unable to get out before their next turn.  Then the character gains an exposure and if you notice on the bottom of the character card there are 7 silver boxes. These boxes will be scratched off one by one with each exposure. The scratch off could reveal nothing and your character is lucky or it could reveal a scar which would mean you would have to add a handicap to your character. In the worst case scenario an exposure could reveal a skull and your character dies. These 7 scratch off boxes are randomized so we have no idea what will happen.

So we started the January game feeling pretty nervous. We now had the objective of building 3 supply centers as before but then also performing the Recon action in North America. This meant we would have to build a supply center in Washington and then later bring 3 more blue cards there to Recon. We read the journal entry and found out that supplies were dwindling and cities were projected to fall within a year so we needed to do something. We also found out about something called the Hollow Men that raid surviving cities. Don decided he wanted to switch up characters so he played Shino, a 50 year old Instructor from Atlantis. The Instructor is basically the Researcher from the original game. He can give any player in his location any city card. When we started the game we immediately had cities losing supply cubes fast and plague cubes popping up. We also had a clear path to making a supply center in Africa and Washington quickly, so we did that. Throughout the game we realized the Dispatcher was essential to getting players out of cities before their turn so they would not gain an exposure. We also realized it was beneficial during the set up of the game to not put any supply cubes in the havens at the beginning because they could not be affected by infection cards. This allowed more supplies on cities that could be infected. Throughout this first game it was a constant struggle. We were torn between letting cities get out of control with plague cubes and going right to the objective. This was especially hard because Ian had 4 yellow cards to make the 3rd supply station (with 1 more card) and he also had 3 blue cards to do the Recon action in Washington. We had a plan; we could see victory. Victory did not happen though because we ran out of plague cubes and had too many incidents. We were defeated, but nothing had happened to our characters and we had no idea what plague cubes meant for the continuation of the game so we decided that instead of calling it a loss we would call it a second practice game.

Now it was really late, around 12:30 am. We were all tired but I could tell we didn’t want to give up entirely. So we decided to try again. Maybe it would be terrible and something bad happens immediately so we just quit and go to bed. Or maybe we win. We decided to stick with the same characters. This time around we really were able to control supplies better; I think this was due to using the Produce Supplies cards more freely.  I think in the first 2 games we were hesitant to use these because we didn’t know how many we had so we were holding onto them. We used them all the time in this game, but we never used the System-Wide Production ability. Things were working in our favor and we were making good decisions. We were able to get through the game and win. It was hard though because towards the end we were on the brink of having players being exposed to the plague and we were also almost out of cards which would also end up in a loss. We had 3 cards left in the player deck when we were able to finish the last objective of the North American Recon. When we finished the objective which also ended the game we were able to open package 1. Package 1 had new city cards and event cards. It also revealed a sticker of the map to add to the board.

There was now a connection to Chicago and we had “discovered” Chicago. We now have infection and city cards for Chicago to add to the deck. You can notice on the map though there are other cities on the new portion of the map but they don’t have roads or connections to them. We now have a new action where we can Establish A Supply Line by spending 2 supply cubes to actually draw a line from the city we are in to another city. Once a line is drawn to the new city we add those cards to the infection and player deck. Package 1 also revealed another player action of Searching. This means if we come across a city card with a box to scratch off on it and we are in that city we may reveal what the city card says without discarding it. We also revealed more Scar stickers to add to our reserve in case our characters are injured. The last thing Package 1 gave us was an interesting card called an Unrationed Event Card that allows a player to remove all plague cubes from 1 location for free and at any time. Once this card is used though it has to be destroyed.

Now the game was over but it was time to do our Game End Actions. Now was the time we figured out the consequence of plague cubes in a city and the benefit of supply centers. For every location that had at least 1 plague cube we had to adjust the population to decrease by 1. But if a city had a supply center we would increase the population by 1. Adjusting the population is done by using the stickers provided. We had 2 cities with plague cubes: Istanbul and Washington. Washington had 2 plague cubes. I think we did pretty well because this meant we only had 3 incidents the entire game and too many incidents also lead to a loss. Istanbul’s population went from 3 to 2. Since Washington also had a supply center its population stayed the same because plague cubes and supply centers cancel each other out. We were able to increase Jacksonville’s population to 4 and we were able to do the same with Cairo because these locations had supply centers. Population is important because when you produce supplies this is the maximum amount you can produce there. I’m sure something terrible happens if you let the population dwindle to zero also though.

Next we checked the Legacy Deck for further instructions. Then we resolved cards in the Game End Area. Our Game End Area had one card called a Turning Point that said if any city has a population of Zero we were to reveal A & 12 and then destroy the card. We had no cities with a population of Zero so this card will stay in our Game End Area until it is destroyed….

Our final Game End action was to Spend Production Units. This meant we chose upgrades and this was done by calculating the number of cities on the grid and comparing that to the table shown in the Game End Area. We discovered a new city (Chicago) so we now have 10 cities on the grid. With 10 cities we got 3 production units, but we also got a +1 for winning the game, so 4 units. With these 4 units we can upgrade a character’s abilities, put advantages on city or infection card, or increase the population of a city. It was super late so after a short discussion we decided to make our final upgrade decisions before our next game. One upgrade we are leaning towards is the Courier character ability which we would add to the Farmer character. This ability allows the character to put supply cubes in an adjacent city.

We were super excited to win. Did we cheat by starting January and technically losing the first round? I don’t think so. We hadn’t done anything in the game like expose a character or use the system production ability that would cause permanent consequences. I’m excited to see what the February game will bring us. Luckily we will start with same amount of supply cubes (36), but from there on out supply cubes at the beginning of the game lessen. Since we won January the game will become slightly harder because we will only get 2 event cards instead of the 4 we started with.

This game is awesome!!

Pandemic Legacy March Review

The March game was a little scary at first because we learned we would have to complete two objectives. In addition to the mandatory objective of curing the three diseases we would also have to either eradicate one disease or build military bases in each of the six major regions of the world. We got a new character in this game, the operations expert. We also got a new set of available scars for players, which fortunately we haven’t had to use yet.

We didn’t think the instructions really explained military bases much. Only players with dog tags on their character card were allowed to jump from military base to military base. It also never told us how to make a military base, but the new character was able to make them so it only made sense to play the operations expert.  Don was excited to have the operations expert because he likes to play him. He can also make research stations easier. We opened a box that gave us little green houses to symbolize the military bases.

Don played the operations expert, Ian was the quarantine specialist, Cassie was the dispatcher, and I was the scientist again. This was probably the hardest game so far; cities were out breaking like crazy and the outbreak marker got down pretty far.  We won though and at the end we got to choose upgrades. Since we eradicated one disease we upgraded that one. While we were choosing the upgrades we noticed we did the upgrade on the disease wrong during the first game. In the instructions it says to make sure to upgrade the diseases in the correct order, but on the sticker sheet it just tells you that these are the upgrades for the eradicated diseases.  The first time we upgraded an eradicated disease we only read from the sticker sheet. So like anyone, we questioned that the upgrades were numbered level 1-4, but we still decided to choose a level 3 or 4 upgrade. We should have chose a level 1. So this time we went by the rules in the book and chose a level 1 upgrade. We keep misreading things! Can’t wait for April.

Pandemic Legacy Season 1 January-February Review

pandemic

A few years ago we fell in love with the board game Pandemic. Pandemic is a cooperative board game where everyone either wins or loses. This cooperative concept was pretty new to us. The premise of the game is everyone plays a character role with special abilities to help cure four diseases that are threatening the world. There are ways to make the game easier or harder depending on your level. There are also many variations of the game due to the expansions. The game is so fun because it is different every time and you really have to think about things to make it work. We first played this game with Cassie and Ian and we lost several times in a row. We probably lost 10 times in one night. We played until about 2 am when we finally beat the game by putting it on its easiest level (it might had been even easier than suggested in the rules). But once we won we continued to get better, the expansions kept coming, and we were addicted.

Continue reading Pandemic Legacy Season 1 January-February Review