by MrWeasely
Initial conditions:
Coda is Yellow. Sub-Saharan Africa is faded, and churning with riots - 2-3 panic in all four cities. We've got all 6 research centers permanently built. We've got a Medic with Local Connections (treat an adjacent city) and a Scientist with Pilot (Direct Flight doesn't discard).
Manila and Tokyo both start with 3 cubes. Mexico City fades with 3 faded, but that and Los Angeles are thankfully the only cities with active faded populations ... this week.
First up is Scientist, and she flies to Mexico City and drops a quarantine. She can only get one three-stack, and this is clearly the one to get. She draws the turn-1 epidemic, and draws to city cards, and they're Manila and Tokyo. Sheesh! Twin outbreaks on the first turn! Her move was correct, the game hosed us.
Our city card breakdown is pretty slow to ramp up. We each draw about two of every color of cards, with the Scientist getting most of the epidemics and special events. For this reason the game will be a fairly long one.
LA and Mexico City's faded keep on breaking our quarantines, and the Quarentine Specialist keeps on remotely dropping more. Essentially we got a 3-action-per-turn character who kept these two cities in check for the rest of the game. It was a fair trade.
We got the cure for red, and took advantage of not having to wait a round, thanks to the disease's two positive mutations. Medic went on an two turn tour of the Pacific Rim, and got the eradication, a process aided by 3~4 quarantine markers we'd randomly placed on the east coast of Asia.
But the disease was not so easily beaten. There was an outbreak of faded in Lagos that we allowed to wash over Africa.
Milan, Algiers, and Baghdad went to three cubes, and with the Medic engaging in Pacific erantries, it fell to the sluggish Quarantine Specialist and Scientist to treat them. Quarantine Specialist had one particularly agonizing decision where she could either break her pair of blue city cards (the dominant cache) or have a very slow turn of treatment. She kept her pair, and proceeded to draw 3 blue city cards over the next 2 turns. So she cured blue, as well as red.
We needed the cure for black. We each had 3 black cards (only 2 for Scientist). We had 4 still to draw in remaining player deck of 10. We decided to transfer one of Medic's black cards to the phasing player (Scientist), since she'd have a 67% chance of drawing the game-winning 4th black card that turn - and if not, Medic could just trade the card back from Scientist. Scientist drew black.
One Quiet Night squelched a late outbreak and we stalled for time. Scientist's turn came up and we closed out the game with 6 cards still in the player deck.
Did we win?
Yes, we won decisively. We had an unlucky pair of outbreaks on T1, and one preventable outbreak in Coda-Yellow. Zero cities faded, save for the two that faded during setup. Of late, that's a pretty good track record for the A-Team.
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Upgrades:
We got the third positive mutation for red: now it takes one fewer card to cure, and cures can happen out of turn and away from a research station. That's a no-brainer.
A long discussion about military bases followed. As a means of mobility, they are unimpressive - especially being so heavily invested in research centers as we are. However, as a means of winning the game, they're not bad.
A case was also made for Air Strike (unfunded event) to remove one faded from play.
However, both these ideas eventually lost out to buying the "forecaster" character upgrade for Quarantine Specialist. She gets to look at the top 2 or X cards on the infection draw pile. This, it is thought, will help her get a few more double use quarantines, and help us triage right after an epidemic.
Win Bonus: remove one faded figure at the start of the game.
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New rules:
We immediately regretted the decision not to invest in military bases upon opening the new rules for March.
Rule H: Build Roadblocks: If your current
region has a military base, you may spend one action to place roadblocks on
as many routes as you want out of your current city. Diseases and the Faded cannot spread due to outbreaks along routes cut by a roadblock.
Rule I: If a city is completely roadblocked off, do not mark an outbreak on the outbreak track when it outbreaks since none of the adjacent cities are affected.
Make sure to increase the panic level, however. Players may no longer Drive/Ferry along a route containing a roadblock unless they discard a card of the same color as the city they are entering.
Rule P: Accelerated Incubation: When drawing palyer cards, check if any City cards drawn match the color of COdA. Place a Faded figure in each of the matching cities. If this would place a fourth figure, it's ignored and not placed - no outbreak occurs and no quarantine marker is removed.
We also got new cardboard roadblock counters, new relationships (friends and rivals again, IIRC), and two other things I'm forgetting....
We're ready for May!
