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!
Friday, 10 August 2018
Wednesday, 8 August 2018
Pandemic Legacy Season One - March - Game One
This post contains spoilers for Pandemic Legacy. You should not read on if you do not want to be spoiled.
For my February gameplay, click here.
For my January gameplay, click here.
March introduced 2 new objectives, on top of the requirement to cure 3 diseases. I needed to either eradicate a disease or build a Military Base (a new structure) in each of the 6 major areas of the game (e.g. Asia, North America, South America, etc). It also introduced a new character, Operation Expert, who could build Military Bases for free, without discarding a card.
After evaluating, I figured the military base objective was way too troublesome, so I went with the same character setup (Op Expert would only be useful if I was doing the military base objective) of Researcher, Dispatcher, and Contingency Expert.
This game was quite underwhelming, but largely due to a very lucky card draw. My 1st and 2nd Epidemics were VERY far separated, and by then I was almost winning. I ended the game with zero outbreaks, and only 2 Epidemics drawn. I sieved through the Player Deck and realised the 3rd and 4th Epidemic were back to back (it's better right? Assuming you draw both in a single player turn, you avoid double-drawing a City card)
I find the Researcher is just too powerful, coupled with the Co-worker 'share anywhere' mechanic, I just use the Researcher as a card dumper, QS to control any potential outbreak with remote Quarantines (and also control the uncurable disease), and Dispatcher to maximise moves. This combo seems unstoppable, as shown by my easy win this game, without any funding to boot.
I'm not sure why it was so easy... could also be because I recognised the snowball potential of Disease Mutations (upgrades) so I focused on them from January, and I already have 4 upgrades which makes Curing a lot easier.
Three for three so far, looking forward to April!
For my February gameplay, click here.
For my January gameplay, click here.
March introduced 2 new objectives, on top of the requirement to cure 3 diseases. I needed to either eradicate a disease or build a Military Base (a new structure) in each of the 6 major areas of the game (e.g. Asia, North America, South America, etc). It also introduced a new character, Operation Expert, who could build Military Bases for free, without discarding a card.
After evaluating, I figured the military base objective was way too troublesome, so I went with the same character setup (Op Expert would only be useful if I was doing the military base objective) of Researcher, Dispatcher, and Contingency Expert.
This game was quite underwhelming, but largely due to a very lucky card draw. My 1st and 2nd Epidemics were VERY far separated, and by then I was almost winning. I ended the game with zero outbreaks, and only 2 Epidemics drawn. I sieved through the Player Deck and realised the 3rd and 4th Epidemic were back to back (it's better right? Assuming you draw both in a single player turn, you avoid double-drawing a City card)
I find the Researcher is just too powerful, coupled with the Co-worker 'share anywhere' mechanic, I just use the Researcher as a card dumper, QS to control any potential outbreak with remote Quarantines (and also control the uncurable disease), and Dispatcher to maximise moves. This combo seems unstoppable, as shown by my easy win this game, without any funding to boot.
I'm not sure why it was so easy... could also be because I recognised the snowball potential of Disease Mutations (upgrades) so I focused on them from January, and I already have 4 upgrades which makes Curing a lot easier.
Three for three so far, looking forward to April!
Tuesday, 7 August 2018
Pandemic Legacy Season One - February - Game One
This post contains spoilers for Pandemic Legacy. You should not read on if you do not want to be spoiled.
After a fairly easy but interesting January game, I approached February with high hopes... which were immediately met with another cool twist when I opened the Legacy deck which has my Mission briefing.
I thought the mutation of one virus such that it needed an extra action to treat was bad enough... now the game tells me this virus has mutated further to become IMMUNE and I can’t even treat or cure it?! Wow. (Since Jan, the win condition changed to curing just 3 of the viruses)
Before I could rip apart the rest of the game in frustration, it introduced a new role and Mechanic, Quarantine+ Quarantine specialist! Quarantine is a new action any character can perform if they are in that city - you place a quarantine token on it, which basically means the next time you need to place a disease cube on it, you remove the token instead of placing the cube. So it’s like a shield!
The Specialist basically lets you quarantine any city without being there physically (and retains the token if your Specialist is in the city which just got a disease cube)
I figured the optimal strategy was to use this new character, and basically perma-Quarantine the immune virus. I dropped Medic, and ran with Quarantine Specialist, Dispatcher, and Researcher.
I added Co-worker and Family Member as my relationships.
The game went fairly smoothly at the start, but got very tense towards the end as I was left with one disease to cure but I wasn’t even drawing any of that colour, and a few cities were in danger of outbreak, even the untreatable disease. Thankfully, I emerged fairly unscathed with just one outbreak, and won with one eradication too.
Looking forward to what twists March brings... and how I will fair with ZERO funding! (Your level of funding basically indicates how many event cards you put in the deck. Each time you win, you reduce your funding by 2)
After a fairly easy but interesting January game, I approached February with high hopes... which were immediately met with another cool twist when I opened the Legacy deck which has my Mission briefing.
I thought the mutation of one virus such that it needed an extra action to treat was bad enough... now the game tells me this virus has mutated further to become IMMUNE and I can’t even treat or cure it?! Wow. (Since Jan, the win condition changed to curing just 3 of the viruses)
Before I could rip apart the rest of the game in frustration, it introduced a new role and Mechanic, Quarantine+ Quarantine specialist! Quarantine is a new action any character can perform if they are in that city - you place a quarantine token on it, which basically means the next time you need to place a disease cube on it, you remove the token instead of placing the cube. So it’s like a shield!
The Specialist basically lets you quarantine any city without being there physically (and retains the token if your Specialist is in the city which just got a disease cube)
I figured the optimal strategy was to use this new character, and basically perma-Quarantine the immune virus. I dropped Medic, and ran with Quarantine Specialist, Dispatcher, and Researcher.
I added Co-worker and Family Member as my relationships.
The game went fairly smoothly at the start, but got very tense towards the end as I was left with one disease to cure but I wasn’t even drawing any of that colour, and a few cities were in danger of outbreak, even the untreatable disease. Thankfully, I emerged fairly unscathed with just one outbreak, and won with one eradication too.
Looking forward to what twists March brings... and how I will fair with ZERO funding! (Your level of funding basically indicates how many event cards you put in the deck. Each time you win, you reduce your funding by 2)
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