Sunday, 12 August 2018

Pandemic Legacy Season One - May Gameplay

This post contains spoilers for Pandemic Legacy Season One , May.

This game was the first time in Legacy I thought I would lose.

May forced you to complete 3 objectives, which meant I shouldn’t ignore the military bases Mechanic anymore.. but I still tried to. Against my better judgment, I aimed for the Quarantine 7 Fallen cities objective (along with eradicate, since that’s a joke now with my black virus  upgraded 3 times).

There was also a new complication where any Player cards you drew that were the colour of the mutated untreatable / uncurable virus WOULD ALSO place Fallen figurines on the board!! That’s crazy. This meant the mutated virus basically spreads twice as fast compared to everything else since you get it from 2 sources!

My luck was absolutely terrible too as I drew many Blue (my mutated virus) cards early, along with a  3 cube Blue in the opening infection draw. This meant I spent the whole game spamming Quarantines, trying to keep blue at bay and also meet my 7 Quarantine objective.

When I won, I was 1 outbreak away from losing, and down to 4 Player cards. This was the closest I came to losing in 5 games. 

I decided to play along with the Military Bases and took 2 upgrades to have 2 Military Bases on my board at the start, instead of upgrading my black Virus to tier 4, which I deemed not that critical given how my biggest issue was containing Fallen with their double spawn rate. Let’s see if I can beat June more comfortably!

Saturday, 11 August 2018

Plica Syndrome - Day 11 - Stitches Removal

Knee extension is almost 100% (I can straighten my leg), but according to my physio I'm still walking with my leg slightly bent. This is because I feel this little bunch of muscle above my knee being very tight still, which subconsciously makes me bend the leg. Knee flexion is still bad, I can't go beyond 90 degrees much, something tight is pulling me back at the knee.

Physio work today involved riding a bike, some other stretches/exercises that Mark guided me through. More interesting and worth it than lying on a bed and letting TENS zap me. He gives me a glimpse of his 'roadmap' for me, which sounded interesting I suppose, being my first time working with a PT. Looking forward to recovery!!

After the physio session, I went to see Dr Lim to remove my stitches. It was fairly simple, just snip the knot at the end, and gently tug out the thread with a tweezer. I barely felt anything, not even a tugging sensation. Wounds seemed to have healed alright, but still some swelling there.

Recovery will be training the quads to prevent atrophy, getting range of motion back. Will post the next update probably in 2 weeks time (about Week 4) when I visit the physio again. Ciaoz

Friday, 10 August 2018

Pandemic Legacy Season One - April - First Gameplay

This post contains spoilers for Pandemic Legacy April.

One of the hallmarks of Pandemic is the sudden realisation that you messed up a particular rule. The first time I played Pandemic, I thought the Researcher’s ‘pass any card’ ability was also a ‘take any card’.

When playing April in Legacy, I suddenly realised I was playing Quarantine Specialist wrongly - I was using her Quarantine-from-anywhere ability more than once every turn, completely missing out the ‘Once every turn’ wording. That could have explained why March was so easy... luckily I found out pretty early in the game, so I would place an asterisk only on March, and maybe Feb.

Anyway, I quickly corrected myself and played it as it should be, which did make the game a bit harder.

April’s curveball was the introduction of ‘Fallen figurines’ replacing your mutated untreatable, uncurable disease. The major downsides of Fallen are:
- If you start your turn in a city with any Fallen, your character gains a scar
- If Fallen outbreaks to a neighbouring city of a different Color, that city becomes Fallen as well and will permanently spawn Fallen if infected.

The way I see it, this makes the QS even more of a necessity, and may warrant the use of Mil Bases eventually (I don’t quite see the need yet) if they have some proxy-Quarantine ability. It makes the whole Blue side basically out of bounds, and I’ll have to dart in and out if I want to Quarantine it, a whopping 3 turns just to do that. Will need to re-evaluate in May how best to deal with Fallen...

Anyway, April ended with a win, with 2 outbreaks and one city hitting Rioting level. I continue to snowball my disease mutation powers with one eradication. (Random thought - what if you spent a disease upgrade on the eventual cODa virus? That would suck). One third the way through to saving the world!