Pandemic Legacy, Season 1, first attempt July
Tarek being sick, we played with 4 : Hannes the Generalist, Kobe the Medic, Leander the Dispatcher and me the Quarantine Specialist.
New feature :
- Search Tracks : we need to find some people to be able to find a cure for the COdA-virus and the faded.
- For now there is only one search track, and we need to find a virologist. She can only be searched in a faded city with a research station (Atlanta in our case).
- To search you need to discard a COdA-virus-card in this city to advance a space
- Whenever an epidemic occurs she advances one space (up to the last epidemic, when she reaches the cold trail space and cannot be found any longer in this game)
- Finding the virologist can be one of the three objectives you need to reach to win this game
As in our last game, we decided to focus on one goal at a time, and take it from there. We discussed taking some more military roles to get a grip on the faded, but decided against this, because our other characters are much more linked together and have a lot of advantages if they play together.
As we realize that the COdA-virus is a real problem that will only become bigger, we were determined to find the virologist. Leander and I focused on this (He could move everybody around (and had a yellow card), and I could put quarantine markers on the faded cities to contain them a bit, and I also had a yellow card) and were able to find the virologist in a few rounds.
She has the gene sequence of COdA, but tells us we need an immunologist to develop a vaccine (which will be dealt with in August I presume, on another search track).
That was one objective reached.
Because there were a lot of red playing cards in this game, we focused on the red disease and managed to find a cure for it. Eradicating it proved a bit tougher, because a lot of the infected city-cards were also red ones, and every time we nearly eradicated it, it popped up somewhere else.
While we were concentrating on this, we had another problem on our hands, because there where also a lot of yellow infected city-cards in the game, which caused an explosion of outbreaks in the faded cities (you can see the result in the picture).
After some discussion, we focused completely on eradicating the red virus, so that we could take some game end upgrades to make this one a bit easier in future games. We managed this in the nick of time, because Bogota had a massive outbreak for at least the 3rd time in the game, which made us lose this game.
Fortunately we still have reached some goals and were able to take some very useful game end upgrades (+2 for the red disease). And no scars earned this game.
What we got after the game:
- Some more medical equipment : field hospital (place a 1-turn research station), binoculars x2 (advance a search party token 2 additional spaces)
- Some more scars : monophobic (you can only search when someone else is in the same city), indecisive (you cannot build roadblocks), weakened (if more than 2 equipment cards, discard the excess)
- Game end upgrade : paramilitary escort (whenever you leave a city with a faded figure, remove 1 figure from that city, can only be taken by a military character).
This last game end upgrade is a very important one, but we still did not take it for a character, because :
- we put so much effort in eradicating the red disease, it would seem wasted not to take the advantage in improving it +2 instead of +1 (we don't know if we can do this in the next game)
- we did not have the right military person in play this game. The only military person was the Quarantine Specialist, and we don't want to damage her in putting her in faded territory to much (you get a scar if your start your turn in a city with a faded figure, if you have to much scars, your character dies).
- There's also another game end upgrade to make someone a military character, but that would take our 2 game end upgrades in total to get the paramilitary escort upgrade, which we deemed to much.
- what we needed for this was the Soldier, who does not get a scar in a city with a faded figure.
So we decided that next game (still July), we would at least take the Soldier to play with, so he can get this very good game end upgrade (at the end unfortunately)
Other conclusions :
- Middle America is totally fucked up. It's very hard to reach a collapsing (discard one card of the city's color to enter this city with the drive/ferry action) or fallen (discard an additional card) city.
- Very important characters for next game : Soldier (see above), Medic (to clear out diseases quickly), Quarantine Specialist (to quarantine the faded), Dispatcher (to move people around, and to get them to the right city to exchange information), The Researcher (if we play with 5, to move cards around, if not with 5, she can only give, not receive, so less interesting).
- I think we will keep concentrating on the search tracks in future games. They don't give immediate advantages (outside of them being objectives), but we can't do without them in the long run.
We worked hard in this game, and got some good benefits, but still lost. With a few lesser yellow infected city-cards (almost no black and blue, because of a bad deal by Leander :-)) a win would have been possible.
Hopefully more luck next time.
- 0
- 0
- Apple iPhone 5s
- 1/17
- f/2.2
- 4mm
- 800
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